Rate my trading plan

Beginner Questions
1

While I am still trying to work out my system, I have come up with my trading plan. Of course this will be a living document, used as my guide. Anyway, I would appreciate any constructive feedback that you may have.

Thanks for the comments!

Trading System

*  Charts
      o H1 for trade setup
      o M15, H4 for confirmation of direction.
      o M5/15 to monitor current movement to recognize possible moves of the TP range
* Trade on Price movement. Utilizing the Shi Channel, Linear Regression Channel, Barry's Support and Resistance and Fibonacci.
* Trade after retracement starts and looks like its almost complete. 
* Make sure that current levels are not close to your top (Buys) or low (sells) channels
* Looking for (re)entrance in the .382 or .500 range.
* Utilize SL on a previous resistance level (ex, if entrance at .382 use .500 as SL)
* Trade in the direction of the market only. I can get in and ride the wave, even if a trade got stopped out.
* Trade only on EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY and USDCHF. Main focus on EURUSD, especially for GBP setups.
* Never risk more than 3% of account on the SL, if I need more pips then I will reduce my lot size.
* Never move SL to a further negative position.
* Know what the TP point is, you have to plan you trade an make sure the risk (SL) is less than the expected gains.
* Protect profits with a trailing stop, even if your not past your TP point. You can always reenter.

Trading Routine

* Primarily look for setups around 9am, and through the rest of the US day. A lot happens around 7:45,  I need to start watching this too.
* Never trade Sunday nights or Friday after noon.
* Never trade around news.
* Never trade on Holidays.
* Check daily news release times before setting up.

*Please keep in mind that I have job and I am demoing right now so my trading times may not be the best in the world, but they are what I have to work with right now

Mindset

* I will see what is on the charts and not what I want to see.
* No matter how biased I am towards a direction, I will make sure to trade only what my eyes see and not what my feelings tell me.
* I will not get �revenge� on the market if I lose on a trade.
* I will not trade when there are no setups. I will be weary when the trends are not being followed.
* I will not beat myself up if I make a losing trade. Instead I will take it as a learning experience and move on.

Weakness

* Finding trades when they are not there.
* Trading outside of my normal style.
* Watching the market too much and second guessing/Hedging myself.
* Testing new systems on �live account�.
* EA�s

Goals

* Initial goal is to trade for 2 months with demo account and have positive equity.
* Learn how to trade on price action, being able to understand where the market may go.
* I will shoot for at least 25% monthly return.
* Devise EA and test. Never allow too big of draw downs.
* Read Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques, Second Edition (Hardcover)
* 80% weekly success rate.
1 Like
2

Hi
I have just started reading about Forex education. Looks like you have learned a lot. I cannot tell if your plan is good, but sure enough you wrote like a professional. It will take me a while before I know what you are talking about and what all these abbreviations mean. Looks like you are an intelligent person with a promising future.
Best wishes,
Roger

3

I’m sure you’re on the right way!

Reading and learning together with practicing will bring you to your goals.

Good luck fellow trader

4

Don’t worry to much about someone rating your trading strategy. They can’t account for all factors or how you execute by looking at your plan.

What you need to do is:

A: Execute your plan exactly as planned and don’t let past trades or what you think might happen effect execution.

B: Trade enough on a demo or live, for a sample size to determine win to loss ratio. A good sample size is about 20 trades. If trading live trade very small on micro account, so you don’t wipe your account with mistakes while learning to trade and trying to develop your edge.

C: Once you’ve done your sample size you can determine more accurately where you should cut losses and where you could have let winners run more, and how much breathing room trades need before they are likely to go positive.

After you’ve done that a few times it should be refined. It’s important that when you trade that you do it consistantly the same way so that your win/loss ratio is accurate. If you learn something and improve on the set up or the way you trade, then you need to start the sample over again. Enough times around with this and you will start to develop an edge that, if you execute it properly, you will have probability in your favor of trades going positive more often.

You will learn quick and things will occur to you that you can use to improve your edge and your trading. I’ve been doing this the past two weeks in conjunction with my trade journal and have made vast improvement.

5

It looks good to me, I like your trading routine, I want to write mine too, maybe someday. I hope you can make it.

6

Thanks Everyone,
Phoenix, good idea about going back and analyzing my trades.

7

very good, I find it very interesting

8

I am currently putting my trading plan together to be honest the more I have learned the harder I have found it to trade. Iguess because I am trying to make use of and implement ever new big of information I come across.
I wish you all the best with your plan happy trading my friend.

9

For most potential trading methods I’ve ever investigated or researched, an appropriate sample-size is about 300 trades, and occasionally 400.

But here’s the thing: [I]it isn’t possible[/I] to determine what a “good sample-size” is, in abstract, without knowing the win-rate and some other factors. In general, the closer the win-rate is to 50% (on either side of it), the smaller the sample-size one needs, for it to be statistically significant to an acceptable level of probability.

10

Hello husky,

may i change something if you would like my opionon (look differences in quote)

your plan is really good i just find it a bit too complicated. you have a lot of rules that make you react very slow on changing conditions (late) and you have a lot of rules which provokes you to take profits too early.

11

only bad trading plan is no trading plan. I like the no trading Sunday night and Friday afternoon rule. It is very difficult to simulate real life trading on a demo account as your emotions will not be in play, conquering ones emotions is the hardest part of trading

12

Hey, I’m new to this game too. I barley finished the Kindergarden here. I’m just looking to see finish up as soon as possible.

13

Perhaps the most interesting thing here is that the plan in question was actually posted here almost 8 years ago in 2008. What makes this interesting is that the core content is clearly just as relevant today as it was then, and surely for a long time even before that.

And, again, interesting is that this poster only continued this thread for 2 days (but apparently continued posting til 2011). Did his plan work? Did it fail from following it/not following it? What happened after such an enthusiastic and considered start? I haven’t read his other posts to find out… but there are many good and relevant points raised in the OP and there is clearly a great need for education and training in how to develop a trading plan alongside one’s trading method and money management. (are these not typical key issues for ANY business!).

But no matter how much these three core areas are discussed, new traders come and go through this site like water through a sieve - is this because they learn and leave to go on to become great traders or because everything goes wrong before they have even really got started?

Even though there is so much information and educational material all over the internet, perhaps more than for any other business start-up, it still comes down to how the individual actually behaves when actually trading. Is this actual trader/market interface so very different from the theoretical plans that we build beforehand that the theory simply flies out the window as soon as we click the button?

What actually goes wrong for so many and what can be done to help prevent it?

14

i didnt even see its from 2008, idiot me.

in my theory what goes wrong for people is simple, they get all wrong expectations from forex brokers advertisements on TV and internet thinking its a easy business.

30% realize its a lot work and stop after a month or two of learning/little losses get bored and forget about it
60% get broke after a year
5% get broke after 2 years
3% get broke after 4 years
2% succeed and trade

nothing can be done, this is how the world functions, the fittest stay. in fact its the only way to make money in forex, by having more loosers then winners. theres nothing that can be done about it, in fact we should enhance and speed up the process of adding money to the market by always getting more and more new people in who get broke even faster.

The more im realizing this the more im keeping my posts on BP to a slight “yes” or “no” instead of going all over explaining stuff to people who i know will never utilize anything i can/could explain to them. seeing repeating questions asked over and over again.

But one thing ive realize in the change of years from 7 years ago and today is that new traders have become even more lazy then the new traders of 7 years ago looking for short cuts and easy ways to make money in trading. and if you want my honest opinion, im glad the market punnishes such mentalities with big “fees”.

its nature, especially the nature of the markets. why fight the nature? rather learn to live with (or from) it.

15

It is a great trading plan, if you hold on to your system, if its profitable, then you can surely make some good pips each month.

16

I think that it is good to have a good plan before trading. But do you wonder if it would be more interesting sometimes to trade other currency pairs instead of some spotlight pair as you listed. The less concerned pairs can sometime gain you more than you expect. And I think after trading for a period of time, you can use some tools to rate your trading ability. I think after trade in forex, you can improve your skill day by day. but a ranking tool can help you to recognize what the strength and weakness in your trade, and you can start to build you risk management plan too.

17

Interesting. I contend that laziness and apathy keep people from success in all venues of life, including trading.

18

Although I am a beginner, I am rating your plan. Nevertheless, it seems good to me.