My Game Plan

I am NOT a professional trader.
Reasons for me creating this thread is to give me some form of direction.
And personal commitment.
My biggest wish is for consistency.

1. Personal Traits & Goals

a) Why Are You Trading?
I started trading because I am passionate about statistics and emotional behaviour.
At first, I was under the illusion that trading is all about making lots and lots of money.
I was so wrong!!
Trading is a very psychological game and require a lot of skill.
I am currently trading to get a better understanding of myself and to become a more independent type of trader.
Knowing myself and constantly overcoming the challenges that trading provide.
A dream without a goal is just a wish.

b) Your Outlook In Life
I currently staying in South Africa, Johannesburg.
I am a family man. Married with a beautiful wife, two children. A daughter and a son.
I am currently fulltime employed
The income is good, but it is a rat race.
My dream is to provide my family with a more relaxed lifestyle.

c) Your Personal Strengths And Weaknesses - How Does This Translate To Trading?
My biggest weakness is time. I just can't trade at certain times of the day.
I used to take trades at work from my smart phone - guaranteed losers.
These days I plan my weekly swing trades over a weekend and only execute them on mondays.
If no setup on monday, I do not swing trade for rest of the week.
I love to take risk, but very calculated. My personal strength is to accept the outcome of each trade.
I do not risk money that I can NOT afford to LOOSE!!
Another weakness I have is emotional-capital. Not sure what my threshold is.
Currently testing my emotional-capital with a high risk money management account. Pure scalping.

d) What Kind Of Trader Are You?
I used to be a trend trader. Not anymore.
I am currently a reversal trader or a counter trend trader.
I am a weekly swing trader and also a scalp trader.
I have different trading accounts for different trading styles.
On my weekly swing trades, I only risk 1% of my total account size.
My general scalp trades, I only risk 3% of my total account size.
Most recently I am testing a high risk scalp strategy. I risk 25% of my total account size.

e) What Is Your Edge Over Most Other Traders?
I am fast at cutting losses.
Have a very good understanding about probabilities and expected value.
Good emotional self control.
Outstanding self-reflection.
I can hold trades for a long time.

f) Quarterly, Monthly, Weekly and Daily Non-Monetary Trading Goals
Daily: I will follow my checklist and my trading plan.
Weekly: I will have entered all trades into Edgewonk and made my analysis before the next week starts.
Monthly: I will have managed to keep my Tiltmeter green for the whole month.
Quarterly: I will have a profitable (non-losing) quarter and avoid major trading mistakes.

2. General Trading Rules - The Framework

a) The most essential rule - Use Your Checklist
#1 The setup meets all my entry criteria
#2 The trade is in my trading plan
#3 No news announcements ahead
#4 The trade is in the direction of the trend
#5 The risk/reward is acceptable (Only applicable to swing trades)
#6 I feel good emotionally and physically
#7 I accept to lose

b) General Money Management
On my weekly swing trades, I only risk 1% of my account balance per trade.

If I am scalping, I only risk 3% per trade.

If I am scalping aggressively with hedging strategy, I would risk 25%

I use different accounts for different trading styles.

I do not need a income from trading to support my lifestyle.
My goal is not to make money, It is to be a success!!!!

c) Total Risk And Exposure
Weekly swing trades, If more than one setup, I will not risk more than 4% on all trades of my account balance.

d) Emergency Stops - When To Step Back
If I am experiencing a lot of stress at work or in my private life, I stop trading.
If I feel sick, like having the flue, I stop trading.

e) Pre-Trading Routine For The Trading Week / Day
I will look at the economic calendar.
I will also be watching YouTube, Tradeciety.com and Forex.Today

f) When To Enter Trades Into Your Trading Journal
Once I am done trading, just before I would go to bed.

g) When To Do Your Analysis, Performance Review & Trade Plan Revision
After 50 trades - A complete and thorough trades analysis.
During the weekend - Review all trades of the past week.
At the end of each trading day - A short review of all you're trades of the day.
After every trade - Perform a quick sanity check to avoid revenge and over trading.

h) What To Do After A Winning Trade / Losing Trade
Did you follow all your rules and adhered to the checklist?
If it was a losing trade, were all the entry criteria given or did you break the rules?
Could you have extracted more from a winning trade?
Don’t focus on the outcome too much, but adopt a process-oriented mindset.
Often, stepping away after a losing trade and entering the trade into your trading journal
can already make a huge difference and calm you.

j) Improvement Loop: Learning and Education
How much time per week do you assign to improving and working on your skills?
Learning by doing doesn't work in trading and the best traders understand that it is
the work they do away from their charts that make the difference in their trading.
Reviewing the trades in your trading journal, studying trading books and pro-actively
learning is very important on your path to becoming a better trader.

k) Punishments
If I break one of my rules, I will not drink any red wine over the weekend.

l) How To Keep Emotions Out Of Business – Know Your Numbers & Probabilities
Write down the hallmark numbers of your strategies.
Always know where you are at the moment.
Are you currently in the middle of a winning streak?
Then, don't become overconfident.
Did you just lose 5 trades in a row?
Then stay away from revenge-trading or trying to make it up faster.
Always ask yourself: Did you cause the losses or did you follow all your rules?

Something might have happened that messed with your strategy and/or your performance.
Don’t just blame the markets and look for a new strategy – losing streaks often provide great learning opportunities.

m) The Rule To Change All Rules
When are you allowed to change the rules of your trading? - If it works, I will never change.
When can you change your risk management? - As soon as I am not comfortable with it anymore.

3. Strategy Specific Rules

Weekly swing trade strategy:
I use Wayne McDonell methods.
A very simple and stress free strategy

Use Weekly Pivots
Only enter trades on Monday - Start of a new week.
Pre-requisites for this strategy is getting you're bias right.
Are you a BULL or a BEAR!!!! Explain why!!

If you are a BEAR and the market opens near or at WM3
You're target for the week will be WM1

If you are a BULL and the market opens near or at WM2
You're target for the week will be WR1

Examples from this week:





For some more clarity watch this:



Scalp trade strategy:
I have tried numerous scalp strategies over the years.
The one that most definitely stick with me and my personality is THV.
I am using THV V3.
Many thanks to Cobraforex and his team.
For more info about the rules about this strategy : http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=127271
Many thanks to Stratman on his YouTube Videos:




Extreme High Risk Scalp trade strategy:
For this strategy I have included a trade explorer.
Starting with 200 USD
I was influenced by this idea for a very long time now.
I read an article from Moritz about "Ideas For Growing A Small Trading Account: Paradoxical Intervention"
I also stumbled upon http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...27#post8529527
Made me think...
For this strategy I will be using Steve Hopwood's Multi purpose trade manager.
A EA with hedge functionality build into it.
I see this as a personal challenge, if all fails this account will go bust in no time.

Risk 25% per trade using no stop loss.
If trade goes against me, at 10 pips the EA will enter a hedge trade.
This hedge trade will be @ 120% value of original trade.
If trade goes against this hedge trade, at 10 pips the EA will enter a hedge trade.
This hedge trade will be @ 130% value of previous hedge.

If my original trade is not hedged an it goes for me.
The EA will enter a stop at break even +1 pip, only if it goes +5 pips in the profit.
Will activate a jump stop of 5 pips.

I will attempt to do 3 trades like this per day.
Using THV V3.
My target per trade is 12% profit.
This will most definitely test my emotional capital.

Best Regards
Wim

Good on you for putting real money up and putting your strategies to the test against the market.

I like 2(k).

I do not need a income from trading to support my lifestyle.
My goal is not to make money, It is to be a success!!!!


Wow its awesome statement

Just to test this High Risk MM,
I decided on Friday to enter a trade 1hour 30min before NFP event.
Maybe I was just lucky, not sure.
Worked out fine.
You can see how the hedge trade kicked in.
Also the hedge of the hedge trade.

I just like to quote Steve Hopwood - friendly warning
Before you use them there are a few points you MUST understand, grasp and learn to live by:
1) There is an unbreakable, unshakable and unavoidable rule of retail forex trading and it is this: if it can happen and it is bad for you, then it will happen, and probably sooner rather than later.
2) You will have losing days.
3) You will have losing weeks.
4) You will have losing months.
5) The only thing that matters is that the equity curve rises over a longer period of time than most of you possess the ability to concentrate for.
6) You need balls of steel to trade Forex. 2), 3) and 4) will sort you out rapidly if you are a wimp.
7) Never trade with funds you cannot afford to lose. You will be desperate to succeed and fear will cloud your judgement. Guess how I know? Guess why I am so relaxed about trading these days. Only a cretin trades with the pension pot or remortgages the house in order to do so.

Attached Image (click to enlarge)

Attached Image (click to enlarge)

My Weekly Swing Trade's




High Risk Scalping:
Had one entry and closed it manually at +2 pips
Need to get to work first. Till later.

Well, I guess that today was not my day.
Everything that possible could go wrong did.
25% risk is way to much and the hedging setting I need to revise.
I closed my weekly USDJPY trade, went 60+ pips against me.
Keeping my GBPNZD trade open.

I decided to drop my risk per trade to 10%.
Time out for me.

A very important lesson I learned last night.
Past and present performance is not a indication of future results!!!

I am taking the rest of the week of from trading.
Need to clear my mind first.

Enjoy!!

I am not trading for the rest of this week!!!!
I am learning and studding from my mistakes.
Last night I stumbled upon a thread that show great wisdom and insight.
I have been following http://www.forexfactory.com/cigarguy from day one.
I do know that he is or maybe was a big fan of THV.
I landed on the thread of THA. http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=540706
PVSRA. Decided to go thru most of the posts.
What an eye opener.

Only way to shape up my scalping skills over the weekend while the market is close,
I use a simulator EA. Was posted by CobraForex http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...74#post2191874
Only problem, it only work on certain broker platforms.
Work great with Peperstone
Does not work on XM.

Thanks dude!!!

I am in Pretoria

i testing my skills now too

Been doing a lot of reading lately.
The bottom line is to practice, practice and practice!!!
I also realized that I can NOT scalp trade if my wife and kids are awake.
Need to be very focused, no distractions.
Guess I'll have to trade Asian Session.
Some very good reading material from Robert Borowski.

 
 
for me I find the london sesson the best... as u see my screen shot above, I use GraB candles with MA's, MACD Alert, and scotch with Rsi. I resently added VolumeMA.
 
I use Fibo for retracments.
 
I made myself a trade report file that one needs to fill before entering a trade, 1st check economic calamderr, see whats happening during ur trading session, check the charts and create a technical analysis on currencies or stocks u wanna trade, then once entering trade make notes as to whats happening. 
 
once u fill the trading area on form, STOP with feather trades......  the exit strategy is my trailing stop loss... its trails winning trAdes. stoping allows u to create a discipline for oneself, preventing loss after successful trades.
 
here is my sheet:

Thanks Akamaro, I also prefer London session.
Unfortunately for me, I have to quit my day job to get exposure to the London session.
For this reason I can only focus on weekly and scalp setups.
I tried end of day setups, and carry trade setups. Require a lot of attention.
I do realize that there is a world's difference between all these trading styles.
Still need to sharpen up my skills level on scalp trading.
High Risk - Fast IN Fast OUT.
There are a lot of different trading strategies and methods here in FF.
I just try to keep it as simple as possible for now.
Key factor for me is to get consistency.
Another Sunday - Time to review this weeks trades and plan for next weeks trades.

Just read another great e-book on 'guide-to-fibonacci-trading' by Simon.

 
 
I will share with you my tailing stop EA with settings tomorrow. thanks for the fibo pdf.
 
watch this video, its on a different topic but this guy is a real inspiration for me.
 

 
I have ordered a book about him from takealot its on special after I ordered it.
 
 
http://www.takealot.com/jack-ma-s-li...s/PLID42013803
 
and watch this one, its the same principle from jack ma advice.
 

 

Thanks Akamaro,
Just watched the two video clips.

Like I try to change some of the mind sets at my work.
I am constantly trying to promote skills development programs.
Knowledge + skill = wisdom
Guess the majority of people are pre-programmed to accept their fate.
And technology is putting most at a disadvantage. People today do not want to think anymore.

Enjoy have a great weekend

 
 
I feel the same, but the main thing I have found is that less is more when it comes to trading.
 
have a great sunday! till tomorrow.

Thanks to this Forum, here is a collection of to me the BEST indicators and EA. you will see the default template is the one i setup for me to use, and currencydash is here is check for opportunities within the forex market.

i use investing.com for pre-analysis and to see the news of whats happening.
i use this news channel

please bear in mind, i have been making lots of mistakes so all i am sharing with you is with the hope that it will give you more confidence into the training world.

buy using this setup (which is a basic one) i have managed to make profit now where as i always used to do well then end up losing everything and more that i made.

i see you have $36 so my suggestion is this...

$36 x 2% = $0.72 so $0.72 / 5 (5 being the allowed trades for the day) that would be around $0.15 per trade. only go in with one trade. adjust the stoploss that the EA makes to suit the risk that you can take, but allow space to trend incase you know for sure the trend direction.

the EA on the template will trail every 25pipes but you can change the trail pipes... i sometimes use 10pipes trailing and today with a 0.10 lot i made $19.70 i know not much, but i only did 3 trades with no loss and stooped for the day. Dont worry about the take profit as the trail stop will sort that out for you!

this will allow you to place ur order and play then with ur kids while the EA will secure your profits...


hope that this will help you!

PS the market ours colors are based on this:

Thanks a mil.
Not having a very good trading day today.
Have to make a personal note, Not to trade when a banking holiday show.
Time to get some sleep.
Will take a look at you're indi's later.
Take care,
Enjoy!

Hi there!

I hope u will enjoy the system.
just overwrite the MQL and template folder u have and open the template in ur mt4 platform.
I have been testing different brokers and I like FXPro.com the most.
I have done bad before, but have been disciplining myself big time and changing my mindset about success itself.

to me success is just about being able to live a life of joy love and happiness without much worries, while achieving desired goals.
there are lots of trading systems out there, but to find the "right one" is like trying to find a needle in the haystack.

so how I setup my template is based on successful people strategy. Mr. Bollinger, Mrs Honer, Mr Guppy, and of cause Mr and Mss Williams.
the indicators are basic indicators with just little modifications. the settings within the indicators are based on Fibonacci values. so giving you more leverage on any chart.

you will notice MACD Scotch price on top, this just allows you to see different timeframe before finally entering a trade. settings within that indicator are based on the window indicator below. I hope u and ur colleges find it useful and helpful.
it looks like this now:



the green dotted line you see is the Fourier extrapolation of averages.ex4 which is a prediction of the trend based on the moving averages. i dont based all my decision on that. just nice to have to my opinion
ps, can't pm u due to some settings u have set on ur profile.

too
many
indicators