NickB's 4H Scalping Method

[phil838]

Originally Posted by ThePhoenix

What I was getting at with saying, if you only ever trade the perfect storm or A+ set up, is that most new traders that think like that are looking for a perfect formula of indicators or candlestick patterns or whatever. They think if they all line up just right, like written in some book, that will guarantee a win.....because that is the A+ set up.

They want to rely on an A+ set up to make all the decisions and take all personal discretion out of the trade. It just doesn't work like that. There is no A+ forumula that always lines up exactly the same way and doesn't take some amount of personal descrection and judgement.

You and I both know by now, there is no such thing as A+ set ups.

Even on nickB's system there is much personal discretion and judgment allowed and even implied in the instruction, as far as how many candles to count for reversals or between scalp lines and things of that nature.

Even you yourself have taken lines successfully that nickB has not considered valid.

That is true, there's plenty of room for personal judgment when it comes to placing scalp lines. But I do still say there are A+ setups. An A+ setup is a line that's so good that it would be a scalp line based on anyone's judgment.

Anyone can see that 154.04 is a perfect scalp line setup. It exceeded, by far, all the criteria needed to define a scalp line. There's not one NickB scalp line trader around that wouldn't agree that's a good scalp line, so it's an A+ setup

Does being an A+ setup mean it will be a winner... Of course not! But a line like that has the best chance of winning, so it is the "perfect" setup.

[ThePhoenix]

Originally Posted by phil838

That is true, there's plenty of room for personal judgment when it comes to placing scalp lines. But I do still say there are A+ setups. An A+ setup is a line that's so good that it would be a scalp line based on anyone's judgment.

Anyone can see that 154.04 is a perfect scalp line setup. It exceeded, by far, all the criteria needed to define a scalp line. There's not one NickB scalp line trader around that wouldn't agree that's a good scalp line, so it's an A+ setup

Does being an A+ setup mean it will be a winner... Of course not! But a line like that has the best chance of winning, so it is the "perfect" setup.

Yes, of course, but that is not the only set up you would ever trade.

The, "only A+ setups," type of traders would wait for that AND ONLY that set up. They would end up missing out on a lot of winning trades that were not A+ but had a high probability in their favor. As a result, they would rarely trade and rarely make money.

See what I'm saying?

[phil838]

Originally Posted by ThePhoenix

Yes, of course, but that is not the only set up you would ever trade.

The, "only A+ setups," type of traders would wait for that AND ONLY that set up. They would end up missing out on a lot of winning trades that were not A+ but had a high probability in their favor. As a result, they would rarely trade and rarely make money.

See what I'm saying?

Yep! I see what you mean.

I do agree you would rarely make money, but it's not how often you make the money, it's how much you make. If you traded one scalp per month at 2% risk and won 70% of the time you could still make about 10% per year.

That's a low number in the forex world but still a good return on an investment. Really good considering it only takes a few minutes per month to do!

[Pukey]

+50 on both of the last 2 scalp lines! 156.62 and 154.04

Finally some luck!

[MattW2009]

Originally Posted by cjgranfl

Matt,

What was your entry price for the short? Mine was not triggered. I have a big cushion on USD/CAD; 9 pips + half of the spread (I'm on Oanda, so the average of bid and ask is graphed). This pair has a tendency to poke beyond scalp lines pretty frequently.

Cody

Cody,

Please tell me you got stopped out on USDCAD today! I even managed to place my order 9 pips + spread ::sigh::

[cjgranfl]

Yeah, I would have been stopped out on this one. I did not set a pending order for this one mainly because I'm having a look at using a support & resistance zone on the USD/CAD instead of defined scalp lines, since it seems that there's a range of where candles hit and reverse.

I'm sorry to hear that you lost out on this one. I'm looking at putting together Nick's S&R and scalp line trading that I've been doing and incorporating trend lines the way Phil has been doing. I'm seeing that some of the times that I've lost out on false breaks I could look back and see it was more of a S&R zone than a defined line that the false break stopped in, and other times where price has seemed to reverse for no particular reason I've been able to find a bounce along a trend on the 4hr charts. Hopefully a bit more visibility that way will help out, and I'm planning a few trial trades this week based upon this expanded method.

Did you get in on either of the scalp breaks on GBP/JPY last evening?

Cody

[MattW2009]

Yeah, took the lower GY scalp happily. Wasn't confident of the upper scalp line because I felt the trends weren't clearly defined, although Nick himself went for it I believe. If I had I'd be in profit instead of B/E for the day - nevermind that's just how it goes

[cjgranfl]

Actually, I didn't take 154.00 because I neglected to set a limit order. I'm not certain why, but I guess I can't count it as a loss so it's not too bad.

At least we're early in the week. You could certainly still come out ahead before all is said and done on Friday.

Cody

[Pukey]

Originally Posted by Pukey

+50 on both of the last 2 scalp lines! 156.62 and 154.04

Finally some luck!

Woot! Quality reversal as well! I got in at 154.37 and got out with 58 more pips. It could have been 90 pips, and still going, but 158 pips is a good day for me. I'm closing the charts.

[nutrader]

Hi all,
I am keen to try out this method, i understand the main points of the method ie trade the break of a previous swing high or low with a 50 pip tp & sl, however my main concern is that most of my trades will be taken with pending orders as i have a busy day job.

i am interested to know what the success rate is for those of you who use pending orders, I understand that there has been a bit of a losing run recently but over the longterm how does it fare, on reading nicks ebook i get the impression there is a lot more analysis that goes into his trades rather than set & forget

also on setting the pending order do you set it to trigger when price makes a clear break of the scalp line by a few pips & then the tp & stop will also have to factor in the spread therefore with an 8 pip spread on gy my 50 pip trade could easily become a 40 or 38 pip trade on the profit side but on the losing side the 50 pip sl could lose 60 pips.

Im interested to know how you guys deal this