Multi-Time Frame Trend Trading

[fartist]

Hey grav, thanks for sharing once again. Deeply appreciated by us all indefintely.

I manage to catch the short on UJ and with your multi lot strat, im up around 200 now.

I have couple qns though, first you mentioned that news usually occurs which will spike the pairs depending how heavy the news is. So just to re-iterate what you said earlier, the news is usually unlikely to cause a major change in the long term trend.

It USUALLY do 2 things only,

1. either push the price further into the long term trend favour
2. retrace a little and eventually go back into the long trend favour

3rd case would be, a new trend is born. Am i right?

And also, having usuing multi lots, am i right to say that for example i put on 1% on the inital lot, my subsequent lots will be small than my 1% say maybe 0.5%? So if it does retrace to my stops, the most i get out at BE.

So i can expect that to happen quite a number of times, and there will come a time when i get one really big win to cover up all my BEs and small losses?

Lastly, do you apply the same concept to weekly performance. For example i use 1% mm, if im up 2% for the week i will never let it become a loss?

The most i will either BE for the week or have a small gain. So im only playing with casino’s money the moment im positive for the week? This way, i have little losing weeks.

Thanks once again!

[madpipa]

Hi Grav. I have a question to ask. I have read every post of both Tymen’s BB DNA & this thread. Both are exceptional in their forthright instruction for trading forex. I have been looking for a fairly simple method to enter a trade. The BB DNA seems to help with that. And your insights into swing & position trading are very much in my comfort zone. At a later time I may look to trade shorter time frames, but for now I can’t be at my computer all the time. Hence my wish to trade daily and above. And, of course, this is where the larger pips are.

Right now I have in front of me Daily, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2 & 1 hour & 30 min charts as tabbed pages. I have the same set-up for 10 currency pairs. The daily, 4 hour & 1 hour charts have trend lines drawn on them. The daily is where I would like to be, with some of these trades making their way up to the weekly & hopefully the monthly charts. The 30 min is for getting a better entry. I even have a set of 4 charts (1hour, 30, 15 & 5 min) for ‘sniping’ the best entry. And it has even worked! But not too often.

But I am starting to think that I am making things overly complicated & probably hindering my learning by confusing myself with too many charts (that’s not too hard:p). And I just read on Tymen’s thread where you mentioned using the 4 & 1 hour charts for entry into a daily trade.

I would really appreciate your thoughts on how I could learn better. Is it better to have more charts & “see” more portrayals of the price action or is it simpler to reduce the “noise” and just focus on the more important time frames?

As always, thanks for your generosity. There are a lot of us newbies learning from your experiences.

[Graviton]

Graviton, I am also trying to get the hang of the MTTF trendline bounce/breaks. I have been experimenting since last week drawing a TL on the Daily, then dropping down to the 4H and adjusting the same line, then doing the same thing on the hourly.

I think EJ is already doing a trendline break as of today and was looking to get in on a retracement. Here are my charts, what do you think?

I’m thinking EJ looks to test the recent daily low support at 105.4. All three examples below are the same chart in different TF views to show where I ‘sharpened’ the lines.

The heavy dotted line is the recent daily high/low, the smaller dotted lines are 4H SR lines I plotted. The label “Short off TL break” is just a note I make to myself on these higher TFs charts as to what I ought be looking for.

I was actually looking to catch a retracement later today or tomorrow to get a piece of this move, which would be about 180 pips from this point to the support.

Thoughts?

I’m a little late responding due to a busy day yesterday, but yes, I took the same trade you outlined and did well. I exited that trade right before bedtime last night and was happy I did since it turned back up during the night. Watching a breakout high on lower timeframes and a 2cbl up on the H4 for ej this morning.

[Graviton]

Hi Graviton, I am also attaching H4 chart of USD/JPY .
I have drew two trend lines( blue and red). Which one line is correct? Which one are we waiting to be broken? I am enter short when blue trend line was broken, thus I’ve got cheaper SL
Yellow horizontal line is my entry level. Didnt you tell that we enter short if PA penetrates and all candle body is clear. If really I am confused now what is right way to enter?? And what would be the level to take profit for short entry?
thanks…

Good to hear from you RenaLa, It took the trade on the break of the blue trendline you marked up. I exited last night when the price failed to break through 84.00, but I am waiting for another leg down to test the all time lows.

[Graviton]

Here is my 1H U/J chart. Wished I’d been around to see the break of that trendline:(

Good to hear you are doing well. In answer to your question, I have tried to trade the 3 days in one direction and reverse on the 4th day, but I could not get consistent results off it. I’m getting much more consistent results using cbl’s, breakouts, and trendline breaks. Of course, each trader is different, so you need to do what works consistently for you. Happy trading

[Graviton]

Hey grav, thanks for sharing once again. Deeply appreciated by us all indefintely.

I manage to catch the short on UJ and with your multi lot strat, im up around 200 now.

[B]WOW! You got more pips out of it than I did.[/B]

I have couple qns though, first you mentioned that news usually occurs which will spike the pairs depending how heavy the news is. So just to re-iterate what you said earlier, the news is usually unlikely to cause a major change in the long term trend.

It USUALLY do 2 things only,

1. either push the price further into the long term trend favour
2. retrace a little and eventually go back into the long trend favour

3rd case would be, a new trend is born. Am i right?

[B]Yes. you are right. Of course, in the rare case where a new long term trend is born out of the reversal, if you have already exited with most of your profit as the spike goes against you, then your profits are not at risk. This is such a reare event that I usually do not even enter the counter trend move unless it runs a very long time. I’m really just waiting on the sidelines for the counter trend to play out so I can get a better entry. Rarely, it is the b irth of a new trend and I miss the first part of the new trend, but that’s fine. Better that than being whipsawed to death, and besides, for any really good trend, there will always be plenty more left for me. So be a little late to enter and a little early to exit, trying to get the sweet middle of trends. [/B]

And also, having usuing multi lots, am i right to say that for example i put on 1% on the inital lot, my subsequent lots will be small than my 1% say maybe 0.5%? So if it does retrace to my stops, the most i get out at BE.

[B]I like to trade these in campaign style, taking fat profits off the top and putting more lots on bottom. That way in case of a big reversal, I have locked in my profits. Always strive to take at least 1/2 profit off any trade. More is better. This is a question more of where to exit a trade, which is another discussion entirely. I’ll go over my thoughts on exits in another post.[/B]

So i can expect that to happen quite a number of times, and there will come a time when i get one really big win to cover up all my BEs and small losses?

[B]Yes, most traders tryu to trade for small wins and BE’s and minimize the small losses until the big win puts them ahead. There will be a very large number of small wins and losses ad BE’s for the very few big wins and you can’t force a big win. You have to have infinate patience and wait for it to come to you. It may be days, or even a week or two, but have faith that if you wait it will come, it always does. [/B]

Lastly, do you apply the same concept to weekly performance. For example i use 1% mm, if im up 2% for the week i will never let it become a loss?

[B]Yes, you need to have a reasonable limit on what you will allow for a weekly reversal. You would never want a good weekly win turn into a weekly loss. Stop trading and just study the rest of the week before letting that happen, or trade a separate demo until you get your mojo back.[/B]

The most i will either BE for the week or have a small gain. So im only playing with casino’s money the moment im positive for the week? This way, i have little losing weeks.

Thanks once again!

Good trading. Entries are getting easier for you. Now, focus on your exits. That’s where you avoid losses and capture profits. Very important.

[Graviton]

Hi Grav. I have a question to ask. I have read every post of both Tymen’s BB DNA & this thread. Both are exceptional in their forthright instruction for trading forex. I have been looking for a fairly simple method to enter a trade. The BB DNA seems to help with that. And your insights into swing & position trading are very much in my comfort zone. At a later time I may look to trade shorter time frames, but for now I can’t be at my computer all the time. Hence my wish to trade daily and above. And, of course, this is where the larger pips are.

Right now I have in front of me Daily, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2 & 1 hour & 30 min charts as tabbed pages. I have the same set-up for 10 currency pairs. The daily, 4 hour & 1 hour charts have trend lines drawn on them. The daily is where I would like to be, with some of these trades making their way up to the weekly & hopefully the monthly charts. The 30 min is for getting a better entry. I even have a set of 4 charts (1hour, 30, 15 & 5 min) for ‘sniping’ the best entry. And it has even worked! But not too often.

But I am starting to think that I am making things overly complicated & probably hindering my learning by confusing myself with too many charts (that’s not too hard:p). And I just read on Tymen’s thread where you mentioned using the 4 & 1 hour charts for entry into a daily trade.

I would really appreciate your thoughts on how I could learn better. Is it better to have more charts & “see” more portrayals of the price action or is it simpler to reduce the “noise” and just focus on the more important time frames?

As always, thanks for your generosity. There are a lot of us newbies learning from your experiences.

Sniping your entry does work with a lot of practice, but it requires a lot of screen time for not many additional pips. It also presents the risk of drawing your attention from the important longer timeframe events to short time frames. I’d say if you have some spare time to spend on the screen, you can practice sniping your entries and you can definately make a few pips off entering when the lower TF’s are moving well, but it’s not a requirement to trade the daily. The 15 or 20 pip better entries you will sometimes get by sniping on lower time frames are easily made up for by spending the time on better analysis of longer timeframes. It’s a balance and if you are trading the daily, in my opinion, longer timeframes should get most of your attention.

[RenaLa]

Good to hear from you RenaLa, It took the trade on the break of the blue trendline you marked up. I exited last night when the price failed to break through 84.00, but I am waiting for another leg down to test the all time lows.

thanks Graviton,
would you please take a look on aud-usd 4H chart.
There is uptrend line that have been broken. Did the big bull cnadle avoilde the downdtrend? Is it late to enter short? what is TP level for short trade?

[gasanvill]

Hey grav, how is your trading ?

i´ve been demo trading this week , making some adjustements to my system. i will be back to live trading next week.

I wanted to ask you something: when do you increase your lot size? at the beginning of every week? or at the beginning of every month?

thanks! happy trading

[Graviton]

thanks Graviton,
would you please take a look on aud-usd 4H chart.
There is uptrend line that have been broken. Did the big bull cnadle avoilde the downdtrend? Is it late to enter short? what is TP level for short trade?

Hi RenaLa, I guess I’m not seeing what you are. Usually though, the 4H moves so slow you have to wait hours or days for a set-up to make, so there’s no rush. I know you have a good eye for spoting trend lines. Could you post a marked chart of it?

[Graviton]

Hey grav, how is your trading ?

i´ve been demo trading this week , making some adjustements to my system. i will be back to live trading next week.

I wanted to ask you something: when do you increase your lot size? at the beginning of every week? or at the beginning of every month?

thanks! happy trading

I set lot size at the begining of each week and rarely change it during the week. I’ve kept lot size low for the last month and haven’t changed it because I usually trade better after the summer is over. June and July were very good months for me though, so I can’t say all of every summer is bad for me. It’s just that trading volume thins out as the summer wears on and there are long periods of low volatility and large spikes caused by the few large trades in a thin market.

[gasanvill]

I set lot size at the begining of each week and rarely change it during the week. I’ve kept lot size low for the last month and haven’t changed it because I usually trade better after the summer is over. June and July were very good months for me though, so I can’t say all of every summer is bad for me. It’s just that trading volume thins out as the summer wears on and there are long periods of low volatility and large spikes caused by the few large trades in a thin market.

Thanks Grav,
I guess i´m going to set my lot size at the begining of every week, now that the summer is about to end.
what would you consider are the best seasons to trade?

[Graviton]

Thanks Grav,
I guess i´m going to set my lot size at the begining of every week, now that the summer is about to end.
what would you consider are the best seasons to trade?

Sept 15 to Nov 15 and then Feb 1 through June 1. This avoids most of the major holidays and most of the summer. But, as I said, June and July were good for me this year, so maybe it’s just superstition :rolleyes:

[gasanvill]

Sept 15 to Nov 15 and then Feb 1 through June 1. This avoids most of the major holidays and most of the summer. But, as I said, June and July were good for me this year, so maybe it’s just superstition :rolleyes:

Actually this summer was pretty hard for me :o

Grav, i´m doing some back testing. How many trades do i have to look for to calculate a reliable win/loss ratio of a system? 25 trades? 50 trades? 100 trades?

[hachiko]

Trading is going OK actually. I 'm finding that aligning the stochastics from H4 to M5 works very well for me on the EUR/USD and AUD/USD pairs. I then use M1 for final entry points to make sure I don’t get hit with a reversal on entry.

I find that your posting on choosing a direction and staying with it works well for higher TF trends.

(Until a crazy news event like yesterdays housing figures occurs; but thankfully I was saved by the ForexLive guys who had advance warning of bad news).

Currently running ranging trades (short-long-short again) on USD/JPY as it bounces back and forth with every repitition of Japanese FinMin’s “We are watching closely” ::rolleyes:

Still finding money management the biggest challenge, but I’m confident I will get there by the end of the year. I can’t get more than 2 weeks up before a bad week at present. My current objective is to get a full positive month.

Well, here I am half way through the second positive week. Can I sustain this and make it 3 weeks positive.

I am looking at fundamentals even more. Things like month end fixing by hedge funds, news events, stock market indices, general economic conditions etc. Not so much as to predict these events but to be aware of the possible price reaction and have a strategy for dealing with a rise OR a fall.

Only time will tell. I have cut my pairs right down and am only focusing on USD/JPY, EUR/USD and AUD/USD. I want to get to know these pairs intimately (sounds a bit dodgy when you say it that way, doesn’t it ).

Why did I selct these pairs? AUD is for commdoll, EUR/USD for risk aversion (or lack thereof) and USD/JPY is all about following the antics of the Japanese Finance Ministry. (buy rumour/sell news)

I may be missing out on other pairs but my revised approach means I am making better quality trades on fewer pairs and not just jumping in because of the technicals.

[fartist]

Hi grav, thank you for your kind words and sharing your wisdom.

I have never thought of taking the profits at the top, but it sure sounds good.

What i did was in fact my lots was all placed at the same SL. Which is probably at a swing high if im going short. So if hits my SL, im out of the entire trade.

However upon you mentioned closing off the profits at the top first, sounds pretty decent to me too. Got to try that out defintely!

And one thing though, for example im looking at pairs like the eur aud and eur gbp. Their news is usually out by london session.

So would it be wise to get a swing trade on after their news or should i wait till the US news to be out too? Im not sure if the US news would affect those pairs greatly as there is no direct correlation?

Can’t wait to read your next post on the taking profit!

[gasanvill]

Well, here I am half way through the second positive week. Can I sustain this and make it 3 weeks positive.

I am looking at fundamentals even more. Things like month end fixing by hedge funds, news events, stock market indices, general economic conditions etc. Not so much as to predict these events but to be aware of the possible price reaction and have a strategy for dealing with a rise OR a fall.

Only time will tell. I have cut my pairs right down and am only focusing on USD/JPY, EUR/USD and AUD/USD. I want to get to know these pairs intimately (sounds a bit dodgy when you say it that way, doesn’t it ).

Why did I selct these pairs? AUD is for commdoll, EUR/USD for risk aversion (or lack thereof) and USD/JPY is all about following the antics of the Japanese Finance Ministry. (buy rumour/sell news)

I may be missing out on other pairs but my revised approach means I am making better quality trades on fewer pairs and not just jumping in because of the technicals.

Hey Hachiko, nice to see that you are making somegood

May i suggest something? include the GBP/USD in your list, lot of volatility there, not as easy as the EU but if you master it, it will give you very good pips

happy trading!

[hachiko]

Actually this summer was pretty hard for me :o

Grav, i´m doing some back testing. How many trades do i have to look for to calculate a reliable win/loss ratio of a system? 25 trades? 50 trades? 100 trades?

Gasanvill,
Summer is a crazy time. Thin markets and wild swings.

Don’t know if this helps but do you use mt4? If so, have a look at Sweet Pips’ tracking page. It has every stat you can imagine. If you set up something like this for yourself you can go back as far as you want. 301 Moved Permanently Click on her “Pipalicious Statement” under her user name to see an example.

[hachiko]

Hey Hachiko, nice to see that you are making somegood

May i suggest something? include the GBP/USD in your list, lot of volatility there, not as easy as the EU but if you master it, it will give you very good pips

happy trading!

You’re right. I don’t know why I didn’t include cable in my short list. Now added. :o

[Graviton]

Actually this summer was pretty hard for me :o

Grav, i´m doing some back testing. How many trades do i have to look for to calculate a reliable win/loss ratio of a system? 25 trades? 50 trades? 100 trades?

About 30 winning trades should give you a good indication.