I’ll be looking to buy either on the breakout of the days high or after a retrace. Either way I’m bullish on Eur/Usd.
Option 1: Limit Buy Eur/Usd
EP: 1.30988 SL: 1.30745 TP: 1.31233(more conservative at 1.31188)
Option 2: Limit Buy Eur/Usd
EP: 1.30755 (half) 1.30655(other half) SL: 1.30530 TP: 1.3120
Only 1 is triggering. Once one sets off, I’m canceling the other.
I’d only consider selling after price goes below 1.3050, most likely EP: 1.3045, SL: 1.3075, TP:1.3005.
First, I’ll be the first to say that the AUD/NZD trade was terrible. Hit any SL imaginable lol.
This is a fib trick I picked up a little bit ago. It’s called a fib cluster. Since there is more than 1 way to pull a correct fib, especially when a market is ranging nicely, just pull all of them and you can’t be wrong! Heh. Of course, when you pull 3+ fibs, the levels end up getting everywhere and none of the levels can be trusted. Alone that is. The idea of the fib cluster is that if you pull say, 5 fibs, the areas that show multiple fibs at the same level will act as R/S. It does NOT make a level more likely to hold, but it adds another significance level.
Here is the messy picture:
After putting in horizontal lines where clusters appear:
Of course, this helps even more when you can put a significance line where there is already some pure PA S/R (top/bottom of a swing).
I’ve been eying this chart today looking for a chart, and it needs more time. Perhaps another day, meaning having to wait until next week. Patience. I’m waiting for a retest, and hopefully an obvious PA signal to show up.
Confidence in your trade, confidence in your analysis. This has been and still is one of the hardest things for me at the moment. The fact is that Ishouldn’tbe confident in my abilities. I’ve only been doing this for not even a year and people spend way way more time trying to figure markets out. So when it comes to trades, it is very easy to start second guessing myself on whether or not I made the right call.
Here are some pictures of some of the trades I took recently. I was bullish EUR/USD (EU) and bought into it. I expected a london breakout, which didn’t exactly happen on time?
It’s tough, really tough, to be long in a position, see it dropping, and buy more. Isn’t it averaging losers, something that one should never do ever? I think there is a fine line when it comes to buy on a retracement and buying when a trade is in the wrong direction, but that is experience. Even at the point of this screenshot, it was unclear where price would head. My analysis said up and that my TPs would trigger on point, butconfidence. Did I have it?
Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t, but I forced myself to stick to the rules. I entered the trade with both TP and SL, and I promised I wouldn’t touch the trade.
The left side is showing the entry points from the first picture, and now the green circle indicating TP is also shown. Note that it also wasn’t sustained. Also notice how damn good my exit point was. Skill? Luck? No clue, but I know that rules are rules, and I’m glad I stuck to them.
Nov 25, 2012: THIS.
Now this is a set up. USD/JPY. If I’m not going to be trading the system, I’m going to try to trade the best of the best of the best of set ups. This 4 hr chart had A+ potential, and now it’s really starting to show. I’ll be looking to get short at the 4hr close.
1. Tested a long term fib level, couldn’t break.
2. Retraces, and retests the fib level. Fails (pending)
3. second 2 bar reversal pattern on bull moves, if it breaks 82.11 I’ll be looking to hold it longer term (weeks)
One of the ideas or pillars of strategic planning that I’ve been using has been “if possible, adjust, don’t change”. Coming from an RTS background, it proved to be very time saving and helpful so it is an idea I’m trying to use in my trading as well. Sometimes an idea or plan just fails. It’s just bad, it doesn’t work. Other times, a plan is on the right track, but needs some minor adjustments to become a winner. I’ve given this example before, but it’s worth recalling. If a strategy is 50/50 right/wrong, it can be a winning strategy or a losing one based on factors unrelated to price movement. Adding probes or cutting losses/holding onto winners can help. If a plan is straight bad, any of the above can’t turn it into a winning one. How can I tell the difference between what needs to be adjusted and what needs to be re-hauled? I can’t. Step 1, try adjustments, and try a lot. Step 2, if it still doesn’t work, re-haul.
There’s no end to adjustments really. When I’m on losing streaks, I just don’t feel like I know anything about trading, and truthfully it’s true. Not to be down on myself, but it’s a smart idea to realize that the idea I’m using could be one that needs to be taken back to square one, as opposed to one that needs adjustments. But we’ll see.
Strange trade. So again I was in a position where I thought the price would reverse.
Entered at 1.03102 TP at 1.03314 TP at 1.03415 SL at 1.02811.
So basically, I set my entry a little higher and got in fine. After that, I hit 2 of my stops, and a huge dip came and cut me into my stop loss because I wasn’t at the computer for the whole duration.
On the right you can see a little floating square, which is where the limit order was placed. Then a few hours later I hit 2 profit targets. Another few hours and a green candle with a bigggg downward wick takes me out on my 3rd position.
Overall it was a net profit, with roughly +21 pips on the first position, +31 on the second, and -29 on the 3rd. Overall net 7 pips, a winner.
Markets are closed and hopefully sometime this weekend I can think about any changes I want to make, but overall I’m happy with how I’m trading, even with the 2 losers I had this week which cut into my overall profit.
As long as the setups show, there’s no reason not to enter. Here’s what happened the other 2 trades
1. Good entry, got stopped out, a bit unlucky
2. Bad entry. Never should have made the trade. Got stopped out.
3. Here another good entry presents itself, and I’m in it.
Same deal. Using 4 hour charts, I saw stochastics dip under the super oversold territory, under 10. At the time I bought it, it wasn’t clear that it was under the line, but this is still ok because I’m in the right frame. Since I’m using a 4 hour chart, I feel that as long as I catch and enter the trade within the first 4 or 8 hours that it triggers, it will be fine. The trades must be smart; they don’t have to be perfect.
Entered at 1.03251. SL at 1.03100. TP at 1.03500, 1.0375, and 1.0398
I’m getting into another trade, this one a bit premature. This is based off ITT and the oversold stochastics on the 4hr chart.
The buy signal is made after 11 pips below the low of the day, since today is a Monday. The system would dictate that I let losses run up to 25-50 pips, however I’m making a judgement stop call to move it wayy up. The way I see it, price has been sitting on the oversold 10-20 for quite some time. Therefore, I’m expecting a pullback very soon, and I’m hoping to catch some profit on the rebound. The reason the system would allow for more loss is purely to give more wiggle room to bottom out, but i suspect one of the following: If price is to rebound, it will do so soon. If price is to continue down, I don’t want to loss another 10-15 pips per position. In other words, I feel that the wiggle room that the pair needs has been reached and that the time for movement is soon.
Long on 3 positions at 1.03630. SL at 1.03450. TP at 1.0388, 1.04130, 1.04445. I’ll update the excel sheet once the trade is closed out.
Still in a trade, I decided to hold it over the weekend because I think any big spike is highly unlikely (just because of the nature of the currency markets) and I have stops set.
So I did end up getting into a Aussie long, a bit later than expected. I could have held my original position for much longer, but when I think about trades, I think it’s good to think about how many pips I got, rather than how many pips Icouldhave gotten. It’s always good to see if there’s something to change and maybe get out a few more, but be happy with what you get, especially if it’s good profit to begin with.
I’d like to attribute this trade to skill, but I feel quite lucky about it, even though I didn’t get a ton of pips out of it. Here’s what I did:
I felt like there was going to be a pullback on the pair, so after 2 fairly good sized down candles, I made an entry. In my thought process, could it have gone down again? Absolutely. However, stochastics on the 4 hr charts were super close to 10, so I was expecting to grab something. I made the stop loss 5 pips below the low of the short term low (so the candle on the left of the entry candle). This turned out to be a very nicely put stop, as price ended up bottoming out rightabove the stop, by about 2 pips. The second part I feel a little lucked out by was where I took profit. I used the TT system, rounding it to the nearest 25 (set at 1.0425), which was also barely hit before coming back down.
I since then moved up my SLs to entry, so I’m guaranteed pure profit on this trade. Should price plummet and knock me out of the trade, I’ll have made about 30 pips on the first position, and 1 pip each on the 2nd and third positions. Pretty good for a Friday. I should do some thinking about if I want to change up my position sizes (instead of 33% on each one).
The excel spreadsheet is now putting me up roughly 50% from where I started, which is kind of insane to think about it.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AprF2vkMzRqZdGV6cUJuM0otRW5oOGlJRnZKM3hOcmc&pli=1#gid=3
I feel really good about these trades, however I will put in at least another 10 trades before I consider going live.
