My Trading Plan - Feedback Welcome

Beginner Questions
1

Hi all,

I’ve been reading BP from the sidelines for the last few years and even contributed a few times. I’m not at the point where I’m trading for a living but I wanted to run my trading plan passed you to see what you think. My main job’s work hours vary every day so I have a number of strategies that I tend to use depending on the time of day that I’m free. I’m been trading this since Christmas and so far I’m making steady gains.

I only risk 2-5% of my account based on how strong a signal I’ve got.

Method 1

End of Day Pin bars, on majors
Has to be a clear pin bar, if its on a BB or pivot point then I take it when it closes, if not I use a pending order for when it retrace to 50%. Stop loss is always a few pips beyond the tail. Take profit depends on the situation, it can be 25pips, or I may just let it run and manually move the stop loss up every day.

Method 2
London Breakout gbp/usd
http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/29863-london-breakout-1-a.html
With a few tweaks, basically I look at the long term trend and only go that way.

Method 3
30min pin bars on eur/usd and gbp/usd
I use pivot points and a MA to determine if it’s a buy or sell, normally only looking for a 10pip profit, stop lost is normally the other side of the pivot point.

Method 4 (if I get up in time) eur/usd
I rarely trade this but when I have its been successful.
http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/37192-mrspreadbetting-price-action.html
Again a pivot point system.

So what do you think? Positive and negative feedback welcome.

ale

2

With three years in I’m not about to tell you what fits, you already know. Sounds like you have a pretty good idea of what your strat is and have confidence in it. My only concern might be your faith in Pivots across multiple strats. They tend to look good on whatever TF your looking at in that time period. Trouble is they repaint on the next bar… so what looked like a good entry might no longer. Other than that its a tick in the yes box from me… good hunting!

3

My only slight concern is the 2-5% of account risked. Say, that you risked 5% of account and had 5 losing trades in a row (which is very very possible even with the best of strategies!) then the draw down would be very significant.
Personally I never risk over 2% and very rarely over 1%.

Just some food for thought!

4

Hi guys,

Thanks for your thoughts,

To be fair 90% of the time I do trade at up to 2%, its only in the most perfect of perfect signals that I up the risk. When I say up to 2% its a case of sometimes I dont need to or want to risk all of it, if the BB or PP shows that I only need to take 1% then thats what I’ll take.

You right as well about relying on PP’s, I might look into an additional tool to confirm my entry but what I want to avoid is having loads of stuff on my charts. Keep it simple is the moto.

Thanks again.
a

5

I just use the Daily Pivot for intraday trading on lower time frame charts, helps me out on exits.