As I only trade the Cable exclusively I wanted a place to list my thoughts and have some accountability for my trading. This may be boring for most but hopefully it will be useful to me in developing and learning what works and what doesn’t for me. I don’t keep a journal at home and therefore I have no “look-back” document to call upon to learn what has worked and what hasn’t in the past.
I am a purely technical trader, I do not have the time to read numerous fundamental reports and if I’m honest, even if I did, I probably wouldn’t understand them. That is NOT me saying it doesn’t work and I am currently watching a thread here on Babypips to see how people trade fundamentals to see what insights I can draw upon. I do believe fundamentals can give good insights in to the future movement of a currency but I currently believe that they are too far into the future for me to gain from then.
Therefore you will see me draw my analysis mainly from Larry Williams’ “Long Terms Secrets To Short Term Trading” centered around market structure concepts as my general bias. Once my bias has been gained I will sometimes wait for a retracement and buy on the dip or sell into the rally other times I will simply trade the breakout. I will usually trade breakouts only where I think the news will fuel any potential move but only if it is line with my previous technical assumptions. If price trades counter to my initial bias, unless there is an obvious technical change in direction, I will usually wait for the price action to settle again before re-entering.
I also pay attention to session, daily and weekly highs & lows and use these as support & resistance along with other obvious areas of past support and resistance.
My primary time-frames are the 4hr & 1hr charts, the 4hr for trend direction and the 1hr usually for intra-day highs and lows. The daily is also referenced.
What has helped me in the 10 months of live trading I have been doing is the reading of many successful traders in the Market Wizards books, Alexander Elder and Mark Douglas too.
Any other book recommendations are welcome.
I think what has also helped my trading is that I do not generally try and copy anyone’s particular style anymore but have more developed my own style based on a mix of the different styles and methods I have learnt.
If people want to post in the thread knock yourself out, I have no problem there and will happily discuss with all even if I don’t agree, as long as I follow my plan I can’t blame anyone else right? I’ll learn from anyone too so that’s why I welcome posts by other traders. All I ask is no cheesy cliches please :8:
The recent high has been breached on the 4hr chart so I will look to buy cable this week. Buying area for me will be in the 1.5200 - 1.5150 area. If price were to break much below 1.5150 then we may be looking at a change in the 4hr direction. I’d like to 1.5300 broken as that is the immediate danger of resistance as this area based on the daily chart has been a very important support level in the past and I’d like to see it broken and again return to support. Look at weekly chart attached you’ll see the obvious level I refer to.
I’m getting ready to read Jarratt Davis book. I’ll let you know if it’s worth the read. Great idea with the thread. Let me be one of your first followers.
Best Wishes & Continued Success
Gp
I don’t understand why u only trade the pound, but that’s not my problem. I can however relate to being a tech trader and I know these are great books/authors you will enjoy and gain insight out of:
“How to make a living trading foreign exchange” by Courtney D Smith - amazing insight of solid technical strategies that are time tested, as well a tons of useful other info.
“Technical analysis of the currency market” by Boris Schlossberg - a great author of many books related to currencies
And his partner, Kathy Lien author of “The little book of currency trading”
Boris and Kathy operate BK asset management and if you look up their website and subscribe to their mailing list, they send you daily updates of fundamentals and they go into detail and break it down so it’s easy to understand and relate to your trend analysis.
Took a 35 pip loss on the buy stop and cancelled the buy limit when this was triggered. In hindsight for the breakout trade I probably should have been above the 15335 high. This is the trouble with breakout trading but the use of stops means I can get out when it goes against me without too much damage.
Yes, still (just) holding my bullish expectations and looking again to buy in the new week. I could have left the buy stop open this weekend with a stop below the 15355 low but don’t like holding the negative equity over the weekend as I can then look at the past weeks price action with a clearer head.
Yes SL hit again. Disappointing week so far but the wins will return and we’ll see how important it is to stick with your method.
Price is behaving quite bearish at the minute so maybe I’ll revert to looking for sells. A concern is the large news due out in the next few days for this pair. What I need to look for is, is this an early change in trend we are seeing or a final run to trap shorts before moving price higher.
The current technicals for me appear to be short so maybe I’ll trade that way unless I see a change.
