Hi everybody, im relatively new to trading and am still on demo.
Have finished the school course and have been at it for a few months but my account doesnt see any real growth, it will fluctuate up and down by 100 dollars here and there but thats it. i cant seem to keep consistent.
After lots of reading ive decided to take a similar approach to pipcrawler and his technical framework set up.
Here is a trade i just executed 5 minutes ago, reasons for the trade are;
Potential gartley pattern? (probably wrong but i had a go at trying to understand it)
EUR to me seems to be dropping (lower highs)
.618% retracement of previous large swing
price seems to be respecting the Previous days high and could potentially bounce?
Ive set my target just below the next major phsyc level
my stop is set just above the PDH
as the trade hasnt fully played out yet and im still watching, im just curious as to two things;
Is this a solid technical approach to trading?
is that a proper gartley pattern or have i just made it up?
You didnt answer either of my questions, seeing a weakness in the price is shown by the stochastic showing overbought conditions and heading down, the fact that a bearish gartley pattern has just completed its D leg giving a short signal. and the bounce of the PDH.
I dont use indicators … you have lost before you start if you need indicators to trade , try to use you brain start to think , will market push though 125 or not what are you seeing first puch north was a failure first indication for maybe price go south …A fake breakout …
Question is can we expect one more puch north before south or not was sign you see …i would take a short one next pull back north if it comes
Ps we have sidewaves condition first break north fail ,back to side waves price trying out south looking for one more puch North if that fail then go south.
Im not using heaps of indicators or solely basing my trading decisions of them, all i use are fib ratios, trendlines and possible harmonic patterns if price action shows a pattern. stochastic is only used to confirm sentiment.
and yes i asked myself that question too "can we expect another push up before a return the original downtrend, while i may have gotten in early my problem is that if i sit on the sidelines and wait for one more “punch” north i generally miss the move down entering too late.
the price hasnt changed much, pull up the chart and if your telling me to use my brain, you use yours and show me a technical approach other than mine to the EUR as im all ears, i did ask this question to learn.
Can anyone help me please? I did make 28 pips taking a short on this trade, but it seems the eur didnt continue down after my target and made another few dips up and down
Is this an effective strategy to base my trades off? Whats a better way to define retracements or reversals? (Picking the best entry)
No one can answer that but you. You hold the key points: entry trigger and exit trigger. Do you enter on a limit order? Do you wait for a certain candle pattern? Does this pattern have to appear in a certain setting on a larger time frame? Is it “valid” to enter before the gartley has finished? What’s the window to enter? What if pattern A is still unfolding or beginning to release?
You’re asking the right questions but if you really want to approach fx in the most technical manner possible, you would actually already possess the answers (having done the work). I’ll give you a slightly more in depth answer.
I don’t use Fibonacci numbers anymore because I don’t understand their proper use. 61.8? Why? Why not 60? or 62.5? or 65? If there exists a “better way” it must be as such in a complete manner, otherwise it wouldn’t matter. For example, in an arbitrary past 1000 Fibonacci retracements(or gartley patterns), how many trades were triggered at 61.8 but not at 60.0? What is the win ratio of both of these? Does the 61.8 [I]technically[/I] (and statistically) provide better entry? These are questions that have feasible answers, and in my work I have not seen any proof of concept that the 61.8 is better than the 60 (or many other numbers).
Thanks for such an in-depth reply, i try to make my entries based on fib levels which was taught in the first few lessons. Although i do understand your point on whether 61 matters more than 60 or not. Im just trying to follow the lessons for now.
The gartley pattern i drew was a very poor attemp at trying to understand the pattern and how ro draw it and based on where price has gone since then obviously i was wrong.
My biggest problem i think is that i can grasp the concept of patterns and waves when looking at someones drawn up chart, but when it comes to actually applying this to a naked chart i just dont know where to start, how do i know when to begin the count and when to end it if you understand what im trying to say, then the whole waves within waves within waves concept makes me want to headbutt a brickwall…
Everytime i plot a trendline and lets say for example i set a buy order just off the bounce of trending support , the trend breaks. And vice versa for a down trend.
Every time i try to play the bounce of a fib retracement it ends up being a overall reversal and blows past all levels leaving me trading the wrong way.
The concepts i understand… putting them into practise is a whole different story.
Yes that was the problem I faced too. I am a very logical, analytical, and at times stubborn. Therefore, unless there is a cut and dry method to drawing lines, I find it all too plausible that everyone has different lines on their chart. And if such is the case then it doesn’t really matter where the lines are does it? How do you know where the correct lines are? Do you draw S/R lines based on highs and lows or closes? Is there a definite answer? I think not. I found that everyone else’s charts and lines seemed to be correct and mine were always wrong. They were also finding reasons to not trade in areas that I did (and saw reason to) that led to loss. They said drawing the correct lines comes with experience, but I saw the problem of “putting it into practice” to be too great for me. I became frustrated and sought out a method which didn’t require any guesswork.
You sound alot like me, especially the stubborn part ha.
What you described is pretty much how im feeling and the problems in facing down to a tee…
Do you care to share the way you trade to eliminate guesswork?
Completelt understood if you dont wish too, maybe just a nudge in the right direction so i dont sit here pulling my hair out lol.
I’m a fib trader on occasion. Instead of trying to pick 60.1, or 62.8 or 63, pick profit areas. If price goes between 50% and 60% wait for it to go higher or lower. If it’s higher that’s a good indication that the current leg is over and price is either going sideways or reversing. If price goes into the area but comes down, that’ a good indication the price is continuing in the current trend.
OP sorry I don’t trade candle patterns, so I can’t answer your pattern question. Hope that helps
Gp
It’s more of an on going process but I became a complete mechanical trader. It’s my opinion (emphasis on my) that any good discretionary trader is nothing more than a mechanical trader who hasn’t figured out all his own rules. Everything you see in the market is measureable, but sometimes not easy. A spike in the middle of the 1hr chart is a movement in the lower time frame. “fighting” is nothing more than tick movements in a range across a time duration. (Obviously the tick chart is very hard to obtain, but in my opinion is not as necessary unless you are a scalper or a highly advanced trader who requires the utmost precision)
To eliminate the guess work, I only work with indicators that have strict yes/no variables and inputs. I should clarify now that when I use the word indicator I mean it in the literal sense: something that tells you another piece of information about the market. Anyway, everything is defined either by change in time or price. Most of my work takes place in the “wave” framework, meaning I view movements in terms of waves (as opposed to market accumulation/distribution, market maker activity, fundamental levels, etc).
The wave concept is very simple. Connecting high points and low points such that you only have the information that you need. The excess noise is removed. I did this because once I enter a position I only care about two things: if it will hit my TP or my SL. The movements in the middle don’t matter to me. I use to think “well the market is constantly moving and making decisions, it seems unreasonable to have a ‘set and forget’ mentality. There could be something that occurs in the middle that shows up as a warning sign to get out before the movement reverses and kills your trade”. This might still be true but I view it as an advanced concept, and not necessary to create an edge when you work with smaller movements as I do.
I’ve found that if you really want to get rid of the guesswork, everything must be grounded in math and time. I have a set of criteria to create my waves. When they are met, a potential top or bottom swing will be created. As time or price moves(in a limited duration), that swing point will either be complete or nulled. I mark all the completed swings and to me, that is the market. Price point to price point along the axis of time and nothing else. From here I analyze the points and try to find a statistical edge.
No problem. I don’t spend much time on the forums these days (most of my time is spent developing my system) but I do I try to help out people who ask intelligent questions when I can. I also decided to take an off day today. Most successful traders have been in your shoes and wondered similar things. Eventually they took a path similar to mine, or were able to come up with their own solutions.
Some of the things I’ve spoke about may seem a bit complex but if you spend enough time trading and learning I think you will understand with no problem.
My last bit of advice here is that as you progress, try to be mindful, specific, technical, and intelligent with the issues you have. Even if you fail, you want to know WHY you failed.
Example: I use to trade a strategy that was based on using CCI divergence as it’s entry point. (I didn’t know how it actually worked in the formula, but I knew how to read it). It eventually proved unprofitable. Sometimes the signal was perfect and I would win, sometimes it would fail. However as I kept trading it and trading it, I noticed that when I took losing trades I often took them in a row. At times it seemed like my short signal was more like a long signal. I tried a lot of things, such as creating rules that I would only take a max of 3 losing trades in a row in a day, or only if 2 MAs were in a certain position, etc etc. I tried a lot. After about 2-3 months though, I found the real culprit: CCI divergence worked great when the market was mostly ranging but was terrible when the market was trending. This is the answer you want at the end of a failed strategy. Or rather, to be able to say something like: “I found that a CCI based strategy does not work well unless there is a way to distinguish ranging and trending markets apart”. Try to not say x doesn’t work. Try to say that you could not get x to work because y.
As a side note, If you google search for CCI divergence, you can find a site (investopia maybe? its one of the popular ones) that says the exact thing I found. I could have saved myself that work by just reading what someone else had done! Darnit.
The road to hell is paved with traders who have thrown away time and money ,
even suicide in an attempt to make money with cci indicators …
Ken wood has defrauded hopeful traders over a lifetime so far none earned money on cci, . It evolved a culture of blind followers on his forum, whose purpose was to buy expensive Woodie varieties of cci indicators. …
Ironically Ken Wood slogan " traders helping traders "
As a beginner for x years ago, it took me a week before I found out it was waste of time …
Hayden 147 [B]You want to learn , a little homework for you from me.[/B]
[U]Wednesday / Thursday Eur / USD those days you will find a lot of good classic price action patterns where all traders with normal knowledge about trading would earned money …
[/U]
[B]Task 1. Find trendlines or other Wednesday and Thursday you would traded after …[/B]
[B]Task 2. Find a minor trend line as the market ignored on Wednesday with that had great significance on Thursday …[/B]
This weekend I will give my master of master solution to you homework , which is based on all gurus divine insight based on hindsight.:22::22::22::22:
Good luck
[B]
ps, I forget the same trendline " more correctly pricelevel " have significant influence today too[/B]
