Are you guys plotting any weekly pivots to target setups later in the week and as possible confluence with daily pivots? I’m still not 100% sure I’m calculating all my pivots correctly, but I seem to be pretty close to what show up on most of the charts on the ICT blog.
Anyway, I plotted pivots for last week’s gbp/usd tonight. I think I see a couple of interesting areas this week. I have last week’s high at 1.5391, weekly RM1 at 1.5383 and a KSR (March high prior to last week and today) at 1.5380. I also have the CPP for last week at 1.5299 (basically the 1.53 area that seemed to trigger last week’s rise).
I decided to set a buy order (demo only at this point) at 1.5380 with a s/l at 1.5340 and a T/P at 1.5470 (which is the weekly R1). My reason for targeting the trade is recently daily bullish bias, confluence mentioned above and one of the institutional (80) mentioned by ICT in today’s blog.
I’m not calculating weekly pivots no. I think some are and if you do then that’s ok…the more confluences the better but I don’t believe ICT mentioned them much in his original thread.
So you’re waiting for a pullback down to 1.5380. That would be nice cause I’m short from 1.5470, R2, and that would be a nice area to exit…
That was a nice entry. The 1.5470 R2 that you entered on from your daily pivots actually lined up exactly with 1.5470 R1 that I had calculated as weekly level.
Looks like I had a decent entry point this morning - Price retraced to around 1.5420, and is currently retesting today’s low and moving closer to my s/l. I possibly set my initial Take profit too high at 55 pips. I have normally been using a 30 pip s/l and t/p but decided that I wanted to try an entry that if triggered, I would possibly have to hold a while. This will definitely be a good learning trade for me.
I have been following your thread on Robert Miner, I have read and re read his book. Also been paper trading the Euro suing his method on a weekly and daily chart. I stumbled on your thread by accident. Just finished reading it though. Have you had success with Miner’s work, are you still using it.
Glad to hear you are focusing on one method…lol…unlike me. I am, and am not, using miners method. I stopped counting waves cause I found it annoying, and overall it still just felt like something was missing. However, I still like and use the tools… fibs, confluences, multi time frames and gartley patterns. I had mixed success using the tools in Miners way, but again I’m just not feeling it.
So while I’m probably considered somewhat of a system chaser…lol… I however don’t feel that way. Each new method I try brings me a little more knowledge and understanding, and a little bit closer to settling on one way. I’m still focusing on the same tools and principles, but yet to decide on a plan of attack so to speak. Each time I learn a new thing I seem to feel a little more sense of relief rather than disappointment that the new thing didn’t bring me any further success than the last one. Each thing learned is just a more focused piece of the whole is how I feel.
I really hope this is an Accumulation phase and that we’re in a bit of a consolidation range of which I entered short at the top of…lol
There’s basically a tweezer top formation right at the center pivot. I’m using Murray Math Lines at the moment for dynamic support & resistance, and the blue line is it’s center pivot.
What I don’t like is that I’m not going with the flow, so this is a counter trend/flow trade but I’m watching the volume which on the 5m seems to favor bear bars. My entry price was in the prices ending in 80s, and my target price ended in 50.
I have a 40 pip target, and a 15 pip trailing stop…so far was up to +20 and have +5 locked in…
UPDATE - Got stopped out for +14 which was tripped by 1 pip and then carried on down to hit t/p…arrgh! I was up to +30, so next time if I set a t/p for 30, then I’ll use a 15 trailing, but when going for 40, 20 seems to have been the more appropriate trail.
I’m with you in this one, plenty of confluences, the ones that you mentioned plus the 80 level. I have set a 30 pips profit target though, I’m not that confident enough to let the price run yet, I’m still new at this strategy.
SMT was also present, but I have to be honest I couldn’t confirm it at the moment of the entry, so by SMT standards it was a risky trade for me.
Also I think I should stop looking at oscillators, at least with this strategy, confusing signals all over the place.
Anyway my key levels for today were the central pivot for short, which apparently made the daily high, and 1.5320, for longs, which also have many confluences and could work as a retest of the daily low.
Central pivot was reached first and in time so that was the choice for me.
I still find market flow tricky, since although easy idenfitiable, many many times it’s hard to follow.
Two days in a row with good set ups, I’m loving the stats, but still need some testing and some skills polishing.
As you already know I’m pretty new at this. But today I was re reading this part on Master the Markets where it talks about testing support/resistance areas.
It seemed to be the case for today and yesterday set ups. (Those are the ones I’ve been taking a look at since reading the book).
It looks like in order to complete accumulation/distribution, sometimes a low volume re-test needs to be done so remaining order could jump in/out.
A practice that I use with Miner’s strategy is to move stop loss at break even once price has reached 30 pips. This has shown to be enough room to let these moves happen (Now I know what I’m looking at) and when the pattern holds true it just bounces back a little bit before continuing in my direction. Then I can trail stops at fractals, fib levels, or whatever take profit strategy that I decide to use in that particular trade.
Looks to me that this kind of money management could work with this strategy too. I’ve been taking a look at past set ups and this principle seems to hold true in many cases. That way you can let price fill the numbers while risk free with wider trail stops.
As I said in the last post, 30 pips is my goal for now, but I’m going to start paper trading this kind of money management.
I missed checking the SMT too. I do understand divergence, but I can’t quite sync the divergences with the correct place to trade. A few that I did try, failed, so I’m not quite getting it.
I feel I am understanding the volumes in relation to the range (or spread) & direction of the bars , and although I referred to this as an accumulation phase, I don’t think I called that correctly. Maybe a re-accumulation phase, or just a mark down phase… lol.
ICT did say just to go for 20-30 pips a day in the beginning, so that’s what I’m striving to do even tho tonight was only 14. Perhaps in the morning will be another opp
Lol, I don’t know either, accumulation of the other pair maybe? accumulation but to the other side? Not sure if the intrinsec mean of distribution applies to Forex, or just to instruments where you can profit only by buying.
I did the same as you SweetPip
I sold into the retest of the pivot (which is higher than yours ?) because even though H4 flow was showing higher I thought the volume on the first test was too low and showed no interest from the players to join in. Unfortunately I was expirementing with 3 lots and instead of taking the first lot off at 20 pips I took it at 10 pips in all the excitment, moved stop to BE and then got caught by the spread by 1 pip. lol. otherwise it was going all to plan.
I’ve marked the 1.5350 that I was watching as a possible target, taking note of the 00,20,50,80’s.
I figured mine was a countertrend trade due to the higher timeframe flows being up. I’m thinking the more “harmonic” (in tune with the flows) trade would have been a Long at 1.5350 but that doesn’t mean much now in hindsight.
I had seen the term “Smart Money” used here and there but thought is was just a term for traders who knew where to make good entries. Then when ICT mentioned it, I finally had to ask, and it wasn’t what I thought…lol.
Whether one uses VSA, ICT’s methods, and probably a few others that consciously, or even unconsciously, trade in harmony with these traders, then it puts the odds of success on your side that much more.
I have been fortunate to have been mentored by someone that actually trades forex for a living. He used a bit of everything form Gann to simple moving averages. I could not get a feel for his methods though. I have also studied and read widely on forex and technical analysis. I like the pratical application of Miner’s simplistic approach to Elliot wave and could get a wave count working from the higher time frames (I have ful time job)… If are you not an Elloit wave fan, Miner’s dual time frame momentum analysis can be combined with Goodman’s wave count, Larry Pesavento patterns or even with Walt123’s pattern wave theories etc. Before Miner, I have had some succes with the Floor Traders method ie 10&20EMA on 4H and Daily chart. I have realised though that the Holy Grail is a method designed by the individual and should be as simplistic as possible. The key is having the psycological fortitude to stick to your money management rules in terms of profit taking and exiting to protect your capital.
Here’s a long trade I took tonight (PST). I placed a pending order at 1.5380 (80) which was also at the PDL. Now I probably should have taken it at S1 a little further down, but prior to that really long pink bar, price had already almost touched and bounced up from the PDL, so I thought maybe it wouldn’t quite reach S1 the 2nd time. I also had a bullish divergence with the oscillator.
Well done SweetPip
I got in by buying into the test of the previous Low (PDL) after what i thought was a raid on the stops but I got out at 1.5424 after hitting resistance from yesterdays support, I’m a bit gun shy after yesterday’s cluelessness.
but I don’t believe ICT mentioned them much in his original thread.
lol.
Not sure if the intrinsec mean of distribution applies to Forex, or just to instruments where you can profit only by buying.
