More Advanced ideas

A Peak at GU

what i'm seeing i should be following GU more closely before i'd actually but just a quick
where would you target and stop your trade?

My tp is at 1.5080. I'm an intraday trader. I don't keep trades overnight. Not worth the risk.

SL now at 1.5120. Whatever the outcome, I'm done for the London/US early Session. EU stopped out for small profit.

Will be back around 2 hours later to see if there're any nice counter-trend London/Euro Close trades to take, and might post here if there're any.

Choosing Pairs to Trade

As an intraday trader, I only consider the most liquid pairs with the lowest spreads. EU and GU are the two I am trading right now, but really I only look at one at a time. I never take the same correlated trade on both. It's EU > GU. If I am in a trend-trend trade on EU, then I wouldn't even look at GU. Today started off with a Easter Egg counter-trend trade on GU -- the one where I got stopped out 1 pip before it turned around and went 60 pips up. During this time I took a countertrend-trend trade on EU. When the Easter Egg trade/range resolved itself, I went back to GU to look for trend-trend trades because those are my priority and ended up with a GU short. All these in a 3 hour long trading session. I skipped London today because of the Bank Holiday.

So that's just to give you an idea of how I choose my pairs and how I prioritise between taking different trades. You need to have some kind of system of your own. Avoid correlated trades as much as possible because you are just doubling your risk and that makes no sense to me. I used to look at UJ as well but I dropped it because it behaves slightly differently in that it has long tails/wicks on intraday. So if one trades UJ, might be good to use limit orders and try to catch the retraces to demand/supply on a 5 min chart. But that's not my strategy; the retraces hit my stops. This is a good example of how different pairs behave differently because different traders are dominating them. I suspect this behaviour of UJ is because of its high value. 11x.xx is quite a large number and the interdealer-bank quotes might not be that exact and because of that there's a lot of fluctuation within a bar.

Preventing Overtrading

One of the things I struggled with for a long time is over-trading. Speaking from experience, there are a few reasons and a few easy fixes.

1. Addiction to Losses
In the book The New Trading For a Living, Alexander Elder compared traders to alcoholics. He claims that like alcoholics, traders who can't stop taking trades and losses are addicted and powerless. I personally struggled with this for a long time, blowing many Live accounts because I would over-trade and take trades that don't make sense. I was one of those traders who never traded Demo and jumped straight into Live. Big mistake. In his book, he recommends traders acknowledging that they are powerless over losses and have the potential to cause serious financial damage to their account and to bear that in mind before each trading session.

I also use a metaphor for my trading. As a Bridge player, I imagine myself at the bridge table while I trade. It's easy for me to pass on a poor bridge hand or in a situation when I shouldn't be bidding on. I have practiced that over and over. I use the same imagery to keep myself focused during trading. It works.

2. Overleveraging
I used to not use SL and overleverage. It always starts and ends the same way. I will make 100% returns in 5 days and then lose it all the next week. This repeated for like 10 times. Yes, I am a slow learner.

A huge factor contributing to over-trading is risking too much. Doing so damages your psychological balance more than you can ever imagine. When I made huge gains and huge losses in a day, I was in tilt and started seeing opportunities everywhere when there are none. This is also due to the nature of markets. Different methods work during different times of the day. So it's easy to rack up gains and then give it all back when the time of the day changes. Will elaborate more on this later.

So the solution to this is to use smaller risks. Now I risk up to 1% per trade and scale into my trade to achieve that 1%. It is a lot easier psychologically and I can do well. Over time I seek to raise this to 1.5% and perhaps to 2%, but I'll give it a bit more time say another year before making that jump.

3. Trading 24 hours a day.
Yes the markets are open 24/5, but it doesn't mean you should trade during all that time. My methods only work during certain times of the day, and I have different methods for different times of the day. That is the nature of the markets. No use trading a breakout strategy during Asian sessions.

Set defined trading hours for yourself, it's the best way to prevent over-trading.

4. Not having a clear plan.
One of the easiest ways to fall into disarray during trading is to not have a clear plan. Trying to tell what the market is going to do is hard enough, the battle is lost before it even begins if you don't even know what you are going to do. (Elder, 2014) This is so important. When the market starts moving everywhere it can confuse you and if you don't have a clear plan and defined action steps, it's easy to panic and start making wrong decisions. Always have a clearly defined plan and always execute it as if your life depended on it. This way you wouldn't go into tilt.

***

Once traders learn how to deal with the over-trading problem, a lot of success can come.

Taking Counter-Trend Trades

One of my favourite set-ups is around London Close when the pair has fulfilled its NY and London volatility.



Waiting for GU to go into the 1.5074 area within the next 1 hour or so for a possible counter-trend long trade.

ac
updated

no trades for me today...hindsight looked nice though...


there is an indicator im going to see if it helps spot correlated s/r true levels or not.... check it out

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=4494657

so for example we could see if your gu had a correlated s/r true level happening on gj or cadj

gj cj

Top down analysis with non-wick template if you don't know how to do that you simply go to properties and change both bull and bear to the same color

i'm doing my best guys


Thanks

wicks to the left...bodies to the right.... wicks to the left....price growing .price contracting price growing again...... its all very confusing isn't it....lol

thanks guys

hey Khalil i've posted a few more charts and started a thread called coder wanted... should give you all the insight you need on how i'm seeing the levels...

basically when a level confirms and then the csm turns over i'm finding that is super powerful.....

Thanks

same thing over and over and over again...day in day out all market all timeframes... how do we take full advantage.

ideas just keep on coming!

here's a post describing a great setup


http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...15#post8258115

so a lower high...then a fakeout long that breaks down and starts a new trend lower... or vice versa... who can beat that?

abr is pretty good to get back into trend with

great article and ideas may Mighty lord have mercy on us all and Jesus peace on him for all glory and well beginning amine

http://www.fxcmapps.com/wp-content/u...-UserGuide.pdf
http://www.forexpeacearmy.com/curren...tion=calculate

http://www.fxcmapps.com/trading-stat...trength-meter/

just putting here for convenience

Welcome brother orabi.

right neckline breakouts.... a good exercise for me to go through the charts identifying these.....

one of the best exercises to train my eyes that i've found is to go to the charts and just identify where i would have loved to get into a trade.....to identify great entry places.... but in a very practical way... like yes i really could have entered there because or this or that or whatever.... good entry exercises have helpe dme so i'm just sharing that in case it helps someone

Tabula Rasa.


Love being all by Ones self.

4 hour.


i was watching the au in real time felt it was close enough to target started to show signs of stalling so i got out... got a bit lucky i must admit demo but i treated it sincerely