Trading off 1min charts

Hi, I’ve been demo trading for about 8 months, and am anxiously waiting to get consistent enough for real account (with confidence).
I’ve had good success with 10/5/1min charts (using 30min/1hr/2hr for trends/support/resistance). I like using short time frames as I’m very impatient and don’t like to hold trades long. I also like trading many times a day. Does anyone else out there trade off 1 min charts successfully? I can make 2-15 pips/trade, but I lose most of it because of wrong stop losses, or an error in reading techs. Anyone have any tips for me?

vnmonica

I trade both long and short (1/5/15) minutes and I am able at time to pull 30-50 pips during a good session. However, I get greater results by trading the 4 hours and using the 15 min to execute and close the trade.

May I ask your trading system?

I’ve been using 1/5/10min-MAC, 12/26/9 and Slow Stoch, 15/3/3
On 30min and 1hr/2hr I use the above as well as RSI Signal, 4/9.
Most of my trades are about 8-15 pips.
I’ve tried using 15/4hr, but I hate waiting that long for the ideal setup, and I get nervous when I’m in a winning position that it’ll suddenly turn and I’ll begin losing some. I can use my system with us/jpy, eur/jpy, eur/us and gbp/us (some days), us/chf, and a few others. But mostly us/jpy lately.
Would you mind sharing your system? and when you decide to get out of the trade? How do you set your stop-loss on short time frames?

Thank you, I’ll try that later today if I get the chance. I’m always open to new ideas.

I use a system called VanessaFX.

6 EMA
13 SMA
Standard MACD
PSAR
Stochs 10,3,3

I setup the 4 hour charts and trade on that direction. When I want to work around the house I trade the 15 minute chart on the direction of the 4 hour.

If I can spend time on the computer; I trade smaller lots using the 1 minute chart in the direction of the 15m and 4 hour chart. MACD and PSAR are my signals.

I have never really traded on 1-min time frames. The lowest i ever went was 15-min and i still found that demanding.

Be very careful with short time frames, especially when you start getting below the 15-minute level. At those levels market movement represents nothing but random noise, which is why you are probably having trouble setting appropriate stop losses. Generally, a good way to place stop losses is beyond previous swing highs/lows. This way, you are placing the stop according to what the market is telling you and not some randomly located place. However, i doubt the usefulness of that stop-loss approach on the 1-min – again, because it represents random noise.

To resolve your problem, you might consider expanding your time horizon to get a bird’s eye view of the market from a longer-term perspective, at least 60-min, to help you determine support and resistance, swing highs/lows. An idea you could test would be to still time your trades based on 1-min chart but use the longer time frame to strategize your directional bias and your stop loss placement, based on support/resistance.

For instance, do you think it would be a high probability trade if you took a short trade off the 1-min chart, when the 60-min chart clearly shows the market sitting on top of significant support? Of course not!

The further you step back from the market the better perspective you will get.

I understand that you are impatient and can’t stand waiting for things to develop on longer time frames, but that mentality is likely to lead you to overtrading and other psychological traps. By waiting for the higher probability set-ups, you will filter out many losses. Just ask yourself what’d you’d rather have? More trades, more losses or less trades, more winners. At least that is the intended outcome of being more patient.

I have tryed to use the 1 min chart and did vary good with it. My only problem was I was trading eur/usd, gbp/usd. And in order to trade them I had to get up at 3:00 am when they were moving. I have moved out to a 15/4hour/1day system and have not had the luck of the gods or anything. I am going back to the 1min frame and trading usd/jpy, nzd/usd they move when Im awake. My main exit stragity was to follow the GANN grids and a 5 pip t/s. If my got 10 pips a night I quit. If I can pull out 20 I set a 15 pip t/s and then quit.
Good Luck and keep your stick on the ice.

Hi,

Yes I agree. The one minute time frames are notorously difficult to keep on top of. Like a few other posters, he lowest I go is 15 mins.

A lot of what you’ve said here sounds similar to me. I was working with 15 minute charts, and tweaking indicators. I got them set up to my liking and discovered that they were working even better on 10 minutes charts. Latley I’m looking at 5 minute charts, and some 1 minute. As with anything that you average, I suppose with more data (bigger time frames) you are less likely to see an unexpected move. That said, I don’t want to be in trades that long either, and the difference between 10 and 15 minute charts for me was enormous in terms of set up time, and trade management. Whereas 1 min charts don’t typically have enough swing in them for me to get the number of pips I’m looking for. 5-10-15 seems to be my sweet spot, with preference toward 10, but ending up at 5 many times.

Over the last week I’ve taken a beating, but it looks like most people did from what I’m reading. Very choppy, exculding the Yen pairs, which are still exploding upward as I type. So I guess I’m reserving judgement on my current methods (still demo trading), and we’ll see how next week goes. It may just be that this week was rough for shorter timeframe traders.

As my experience and knowledge grows, I find I’m taking less trades. Setups that used to look good now have caution flags of some kind or another. Which is good… but also frustrating, since I’m looking for those really good setups, and I’d also like to trade several times a day. Since 10 minute timeframes change… every ten minutes lol, it’s rough to be looking for that sweet 10 minute setup for 6 hours. That has pushed me toward developing some methods for catching and managing breakouts. Still working on that.

Best regards.

Hi using theses 1 min charts, what would be the exact point to buy. As said in the pdf file i bought/sold when the charts moved as spcified, but EVERY time i made losses. So I was thinking “there must be an exact point where the order must be placed” Is this right? If so which point?

Thanks:)

I have been trading hap-hazardly for a while now and just started putting the Cowabunga system to work for me.

My tweeks have been to look at the 1, 5, 15 minute charts along with planned announcements to determine short term momentum and whether I should plot a same day exit strategy. I use the news releases to anticipate whether there is going to be a wild swing that I should avoid like the plaugue! My normal exit strategy is between 1 and 3 days though. So I look to the daily and weekly charts to determine long wave momentum again using the scheduled news releases to steer clear of wild swings.

[QUOTE=tomydispik;21145][B]I have been trading hap-hazardly for a while now and just started putting the Cowabunga system to work for me. My tweeks have been to look at the 1, 5, 15 minute charts [/B]

Then stop! You are setting your learning back by doing this which is what virtually every new trader does. Anything below 15 mins is noise and fraught with difficulty and you have to be exceptional to trade it successfully. 1 min and 5 min can be useful at news time but again it takes a lot of practice to trade these. Everyone (especially male traders according to the literature) wants to ‘tweak’ things and they do this before having any legitimate track record in the thing they are tweaking. Your saviour is that you are now looking to the Cowabunga system. This, or any other, proven system is the perfect place to start to see if to start with you can get the same/similar/or at least acceptable results, then you can move on from there - good luck

While I appreciate your input, I also chalk it up to just one more persons opinion. And had I listened to the number of people telling me not to play the currencies I would not have produced a running average of $400/day while working.

Sometimes I right and sometimes I am wrong…then again aren’t we all.

It is not impossible to trade the 1Min and 5Min charts.

All timeframes have a certain pattern to their action. The 1Min and 5Mins are no exception.

To prove this to yourself, just put a Bollinger band on them, you’ll see what i mean…the price will usually bounce from one outer band to the next, in a ranging market this can make you alot of money…in a trending market this can kill you…as you will ALSO see that the Bollinger bands are broken frequently and that the price will continue in one direction for ages.

My opinion is to use timeframes to determine the length of time you are in any particular trade, the higher the timeframe, the longer you should be in a trade.

Many people can make money in Forex, what sets the winners apart from the losers is the ability to RETAIN the money that they make.

When you trade short timeframes your system has to be spot-on, if you don’t have at least a 65% winning average with your system, don’t even think about the lower timeframes.

The proffessionals use nothing lower than 15min timeframes, and even that is the domain of highly skilled and proven traders.

In short, 1Min and 5Min timeframes are possible, but not reccommended.

Hope this helps,

:0)

Exactly right, Maurizio77.

It takes a while for new people to believe what you say and they do the exact opposite.

But after losing all their money a few times, they wizen up and become more conservative.
They then listen to what you say with more attentive ears and are more likely to take your advice.

As a candlestick trader with a good system going which also involves scalping, I trade no lower than a 20 minute chart and only use the 1/5 minute charts with Bolinger bands for gettting the best entry.

I cannot possibly see how you can trade the noise bands with indicators.

Of course and that is your right and the purpose of a forum like this. If you are one of the rare individuals who can trade the lower timeframes and cope with the huge psychological pressures then good luck to you. For others reading the thread they need to know that it is an exceptional skill possessed by few

Sorry guys,

as a trader, I use Heikin Ashi smoothed indicator on 1 mn shart, can up to 50-70 pips profit.

If your not already using divergence, its well worth taking a look at. The best source of material is probably on the trading naked website. It works quite nicely on one minute charts.

If you want an easy life just trade hidden divergence trend re entries on the one min charts and take 1:1 targets. For the very best set ups and bigger targets think in terms of combinations of regular and reverse divergence between adjacent timeframes. Find a reverse divergence reentry on the 5, and nail the entry with regular divergence signal on the 1 min MACD (although you’ll need to use faster settings than the defaults).

Dont take any notice of the people telling you the 1 minute charts are noise, your making a perfectly acceptable trade off between noise and a higher trading frequency. Technical trading works just as well at these timeframes as it does elsewhere. Having said that, I certainly wouldnt advise anyone who couldnt commit full time to watching charts to attempt it.

Thanks for this recommendation, simbafx. Just spent a lot of time looking through the Trading Naked site and learned a lot! I’m going to demo trade using my strategies & adding divergence to try to improve risk/reward & win/loss.

FYI, I have demo traded that divergence system for a few days and it is working really well. I am going to give it a few more days to work out some execution issues (maybe all next week) and then take it live with small position size.

I am using 5 min charts because I can’t quite keep up with the 1 min. Maybe I will go to 1 min someday, but it seems like the targets I need to cover spreads are already on the small side on the 5 min charts. It seems like it would be hard to get enough pips on the 1 min to cover spreads unless your broker offers spread+commission system. I think I recall that Tradestation does that. I pay 3 pips for EURUSD & USDJPY on FxSolutions and so I want at least 12 pips profit to make it worth the cost.