How do you pick trend direction?

Looks like you are on the right track now. You may decide to use either the daily or H4 time frame for direction; say if price is under your favoured SMA or EMA which is sloping downwards, the trend is down but if the SMA/EMA is sloping upwards and price is above it, then the trend is up. You then go to your favoured entry/trigger time frame (a lower time frame) to look to trade in the direction of the higher time frame. Nevertheless, this approach requires some patience and discipline for consistent profitability.

Trade safe and prosper.

Looks legit, but have you backtested this pattern yourself? Frankly, I consider price in itself is insufficient source of information or decision making, that’s why traders should keep tab on economic and political events to avoid mistakes. Take french elections. Macron victory was a favorable scenario for Euro and that’s why we’ve seen its sharp rise today. I think pre-election price action contained no clear signs of that outcome.

Previous key swing points help me a lot on this issue! In other words, I use horizontal lines for determining support and resistant levels! Basically, I have 7 years trading experience that’s way, now I can trade in key swing points as well as support and resistant levels on high time frame’s so confidently! Besides, I count the status of market trend according to the position of support and resistant levels!

Oh is that so? :wink:

Well it is meant to be the driest/sunniest side of Scotland here in Grampian…

Do not believe a word of it haha (unless you live in Glasgow)!

Yes agreed, cos we hv our own trading style n strategy we kn when in n out. But for new trader they don’t kn. Cos most of them still searching for their own style n strategy. It really Important for them to hv a strategy of their own. N keep trying on the strategy n fine tune till it perfect for them to track price reverse

I identify the trend with big timeframes with the help of the MA indicator. To be more exact, I set several MA with different periods.

No deffo Ayrshire, Taps aff weather here just now (My taps oan) lol

[QUOTE=TURBONero;813665]basicly you are asking “how to forecast the future?”

thats whats it all about. thats what is trading. you asked the most basic question a trader can ask.

How do you decide if market is falling or climbing?
thats what has to be learned to become a trader.

here, read this 3 times each year for as long as you trade:

https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/unsorted2/Stock%20books%20029/John%20J%20Murphy%20

Thank you for the link. I have found it a great help and it has given me some clarity on a few things I was looking at but struggling to see what I was looking at.

you are welcome. continue reading the book in depth. you cant be done with it after so little time. it has over 600 pages.

every single page has knowledge and explanations that really matters.

North of Hadrian’s Wall I just think it is like plastic sunshine: it looks good on tourist brochures but

unless you have Viking or Celtic blood it just bounces off the body and leaves you looking at those

topless folk in disbelief, while you clutch your scarf around your neck.

:35::35::59:

[quote=“TURBONero,post:36,topic:84685”]

Thanks TUrbo, I too looked through this book, although more as a skim read - just like people

looking through an instructions manual trying to get to the bits they are interested in.

As a teacher I never follow instruction/teaching books from cover to cover, preferring to mix and

match different teaching books, and every teacher does this: every book has something to offer,

but depending on students’ needs and learning styles you have to take what is useful from each

book and not treat them like bibles where each page is sacred.

Even a ‘complete methodology’ type of book, as Murphy’s, is only useful in parts, and each

learner or trader will find from it sections that are more relevant than others. Every person’s

teaching book is a sum of THEIR trading, so if your trading is different you will find some parts

useful but, if you have acquired a different approach to trading than theirs, other parts should

indeed seem irrelevant if not contradictory to your approach.

That was just a small point, not a criticism.

I should add, MissPipa, that Turbo is successful in his trading and Murphy’s book fits with his

style of trading, so a recommendation from Turbo is worth looking at; however, having listened

to (probably close to) one hundred trading podcasts from people like the Market Wizards traders

to other (unknown) traders, I have come to the conclusion that many successful traders could

not agree on much, because they recommend very different materials or methodologies, and even

when they have similarities they will sometimes have very strong opinions about what works and

what does not.

Some of them even recommend books that you may hear others describe as useless, so again

I would not feel bad NOT to read Murphy’s in depth and opt to make your own reading list.

At the end of it, trading is as much about practice as reading: if you read a hundred books

on trading, would that make you a good trader?

I ask myself these questions and I have (sort of) stopped reading trading books: that does not

mean that the learning is over. Students that have stopped taking music lessons from me and

who have kept in touch tell me about their progress on their musical journey, which then takes

the shape of actually being practising musicians… Similarly, one could say that once you have digested

some good reading materials and become more involved with the actual practice of trading,

there will be plenty of learning to be done, in fact you could argue that too much reading is

counter-productive as it could lead to information overload.

:slight_smile:

[quote=“PipMeHappy,post:38,topic:84685”]

no critique taken at all,

partially i agree with you. but in every field there are books that are a “mile stone”, this is one of those milestone books of technical analysis. the entire babypips school is a copy/paste of the textes in the book, some parts have been removed and some parts altered. bp school is some sort of light version of this book just with way less information and no hints of what is really inportant. in this book the important parts are marked as important and stressed onto which points someone must focus.

as a teacher you are right, but as a teacher you know what is important to guide a student to the goal that you/he/she wants to achive, but as a retailer you do not have a teacher who tells you what is right or wrong and whats important or not important. you have to figure it out by yourself and that is why it is so hard for retailers.

every field has his own ground creating theory onto which other theories are builded up on. psychology has freud and all the work after freud is based on freud.

it is simlar in music aswell. someone who can write a symphony aswell can do any other music, he does not need to learn every instrument but knows how to use these instruments to create something that people enjoy. on the other hand, someone who learned only to play a instrument can never create a symphony, and todays western culture music is based mostly on symphonies a hundret years old and older. learning the symphonies and how to create one will not damage you, it will give you an advantage. Jay-Z and James Blunt or whoever are only sellers of this music, the marrionette, but the creators of the music are behind the scene or died long ago. you yourself as a musician know how many plagiats of classic music is in the radio and people making millions with only copying someone who made music years decades and centuries ago. it is a extremely rare case that a new music arrives nowadays. same is in trading, everythingthat is beeing practiced today is just a copy/remake of old practices simply because they work good. people then wrap it up in new books and new titles but in fact they only sell little parts of what they have learned of teahings based on the theories published in this book 40 years ago.

I addressed the issue raised; discussing fundamentals is another matter. I don’t back-test, I trade live accounts but my results are private to me.

Trade safe and prosper.

Great post, Turbo, thank you!

Happy Trading

I am no where near finished yet turbo, Think I am about 3/4 way through but I will need to keep going back and reading it again and again.
What I was talking about in particular was the first about dow theory.
Ive been looking at the end of trends and finding break out points, Some work some don’t but what I read about Dow has helped give some better understanding about what I have been finding on my own.
I spent a lot of time reading external material based on Dow theory after I read it in that book, Unfortunately as I have progressed I have forgot most of it hence why I will need to read it more than once as its a lot to take in.

Hello, not sure why I woke up and felt the need to check Babypips forums…Fomo? Maybe!

One thing that you can read about in Emerald’s volume thread is how Forex traders can cope with limited order flow and volume information, as this is what people like Levermore used to spot fake versus real moves in price.

Just looking at a chart for daily breakout trading will give you less options if you have no clue whether a forming move is backed by volume or whether it will collapse and be a fakeout. Of course there are stops, but for short-term trading just relying on being stopped out as the only true confirmation of a fakeout can be expensive based on the number of trades potentially building up each day.

This is why successful traders like Lexy, who sadly had to leave these forums recently, decided to switch from spot forex to currency futures: in the latter you have centralised volume, allowing to see positioning of the bigger players - for this, again, see the volume.thread that I already mentioned.

Happy trading and good night - I am going back to sleep!

Hey PipMeHappy. Do you still live in Aberdeen. I just recently moved here. Been trading forex part time for a year now and looking for a small network to meet up and bounce ideas off of., Let me know. Cheers. Brent.

Sent you a private message…

Have you got a link as I cant find it? :slight_smile:

I am not sure why but the message I sent you privately is not there: did you receive it?

Anyway, yes I would meet you if you wanted.

I am not sure but I think you need a certain number of posts (fifty?) in your account before you can send private messages… So, get posting! Then we can make private arrangements away from here!

Cheers.

PipMe