THE JOY OF CANDLESTICK TRADING - a Learning Experience

[cbarnett808]

Originally Posted by mytwopips

Maybe having a system with a good win / lose ratio and risk / reward ratio is trying to have your cake and eat it too.

Well said.

[concept]

Here is a trade I *think* I missed... looking at the pattern I am not 100% sure if I would of traded it anyways. Its on the EUR/USD 1H chart... The only reason I might of traded it is because its 1H and patterns are a little more... reliable.

Am I right to think that because the upper wick is a little long that the buyers may still be kicking about? BUT the 3rd candle in the position says to me that since there is *NO* upper wick that it was a definately a good trade to take.

Opinions?

[tymen1]

To Concept :

This is as good as you can expect really - a good trade.

These patterns do come in all shapes and sizes - just like women.

[KENNETH LEE]

I guess I'll post my thoughts about risk/reward startegies. I trade with another group in these forums. The profit targets to say the least are fairlly large as they are based on Fib levels and then near Support / Resistance or combination of both..

But in my personal trading I tend to do better with a Dollar amount goal in mind. Such as I want to break the next hundred in my account or such. Seems when I hold for those distance targets they have a greater chance of turning.

In going with this , The person I trade with is always saying it isn;t the pip
count, it is the amount of money at the end of the day that matters. You can never pay your bills with pips.

So with this system. I will be setting MY PERSONAL targets at 10 pips like Tymen ,and then adjust them up. I see I am leaving 8 pips per every trade on the table increase to 14 pip target and so forth.

I think the Risk/Reward ideas That make the most sense are the overall money management . Risk no more than 2% per trade. Other than that I think the rest are per system type setups such as should be for this system..
and since Tymen is the originator his profit taking is a great place to start.

We can make the same amount of money $10.00 at 10 Pips as $5.00 at 20, and we will be ahead of the game as everyone else trying for the greater amount ( greed ) But as our acounts grow so can our $ per pip. Hence higher gains per trade and always less stress..



Just my thoughts. Have a great weekend . Ken

[KENNETH LEE]

Sorry about the never ending paragrah. Thought I was putting breaks in..

I had one more thought,, They safest way to gain more pips with least chance of losses is a trailing stop, Which GFT has, It is a little timely to setup but works great. The Best way and quickest is to just drag your stop down to take your profits and if it continues you pickup those free pips...

Yippee.. ( HUMMM , Free PIPS )

[VulcanClassic]

Hi Tymen,

Yes, Dealbook is it! It's got MT4 beat handsdown. I'm having a much better time of it now that I can moniter more efficiently.

The setup I finally came up with is this;

2 moniters; 15inch laptop, 26 lcd external

I put the charts on the 26 inch, and undock the workspace tab bar and quote boards and put them on the 15 inch. 12 charts tile nicely on the 26 inch and I can see all the details, when a pattern appears, I magnify the 5M.

I have 6 workspaces with linked quoteboards filtered to two pairs each. Visually it's easy to navigate through 12 pairs. 1 more workspace with all 12 pairs on the 20M to watch movement. Total 7 workspaces.

It's been working nicely for me so far.


Could you please clarify for me how you trade 1 timeframe only? Do you mean you adjust your stop and lots according to the particular chart?

I don't know if this is sound strategy yet but I have been setting my stop just past the wick of the previous 5M candle. With your best entry, it should not back up that far, and if it does I consider it a failed trade. Let me know what you think.

Have a good weekend

[tymen1]

Originally Posted by KENNETH LEE

The Best way and quickest is to just drag your stop down to take your profits and if it continues you pickup those free pips...

Yippee.. ( HUMMM , Free PIPS )

Not sure what you mean here - appreciate it if you could clarify.

[tymen1]

Originally Posted by VulcanClassic

Hi Tymen,

Could you please clarify for me how you trade 1 timeframe only? Do you mean you adjust your stop and lots according to the particular chart?

I don't know if this is sound strategy yet but I have been setting my stop just past the wick of the previous 5M candle. With your best entry, it should not back up that far, and if it does I consider it a failed trade. Let me know what you think.

Have a good weekend

I see a pattern on a particular time frame and I choose to trade it. I trade one standard lot always.

The stop is set ( on an evening star) 3 pips above the high of the "star".

I let the trade run and watch the floating profit/loss on the computer. When it looks about 10 pips worth I close the trade. My close is subjective as I have a feel for the price movement. If I sense no further price movement then I close early.

This method has given me an incredibly high success rate but there are problems with it, namely it is subjective.

If the price retraces/pullback past the stop loss, it is, of course, a failed trade.

Not sure what your "5M" means ?

The aim is to get as good an entry as you can to make the pip distance from your entry to the stop loss as small as possible.

This whole method has real problems in that the risk/reward ratio is skewed the wrong way around. It is only because of the reliability of the candlestick patterns and the quick scalping that this approach works at all.

I am now researching the solution.

So far we know accurately that it is totally unreasonable to expect a 20 minute or 1 hour chart to deliver some 100 or so pips in one trade. The charts are simply too short term to do this.

It is, however, reasonable to expect at least 10 pips. With a good retracement or pullback entry, there should be plenty of clearance to allow spreads and timely exits.

To make money with this approach, sufficient lot size is needed. You will never get anywhere with micro lots.

[KENNETH LEE]

VulcanClassic : Sounds great, I haven't set mine up as of yet but will this weekend.
I have a 40" lcd tv my computor is hooked to, and I am going to tile as many , charts as possible across it .

I will place trades on my laptop , also.

I need to check with GFT they may have something like that, There is alot of options on that platform . I am always finding new stuff.

Make sure you save your layout to a disc. One thing is if you download there platform it has to be setup on any different computor. If you buy a new one you would have to reload everything..

With GFT you can color code your charts for different pairs or time frames..Helps keep it organized...

Have nice weekend Ken

[tymen1]

At this point I am researching a solution to the problem of risk/reward ratio.

It is nice to keep clipping 10 pips off every trade, but sooner or later there is a loss, and if this loss amounts to more that 10 pips because of the stoploss position, we are trading negatively.

The reward always needs to be greater than the risk - at least 1:1.

On Monday, I will post again several charts that will lead to conclusions and further learning.

As well as this, I need to show an intermediate KC entry method that will bring even better entries.
Also my take on adding to positions to maximize our entry advantage.

All this will help to lead to a conclusion to solve the risk/reward problem.

We have much more to discover!!