I’ve decided to start my own journal. As I’ve read and probably many others have read “teaching is one of the best ways of learning”. The teaching part is for me personally. I plan to write everything here so that I can put what’s in my head into words and allow anyone here to add or subtract from what I share.My trading method is about as simple as I can get it from about 7 years of trading. I’ve spent thousands and thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands of dollars on courses, systems, platforms, books, articles etc and of course trading accounts. I’ve spent time and money at lectures with so called experts and professionals and even a trading psychologist (that was actually very interesting).
The method I use today has incredible potential. No doubt most of us here have heard that at least a dozen times.
Just so I’m clear, I’m writing this solely for myself, I don’t expect anyone else to read it or add to it but you are welcome, it is open for all.
I trade mainly daily and 4 hour charts, sometimes down to 1 hour and even 30 minutes BUT the lower timeframes are only to pinpoint a finer entry point IF (big if) the potential trade on the higher timeframes allows for the correlation of multiple Timeframes. By trading the daily charts using the close of day in New York I can scan 20, 30 or more pairs in literally minutes. If there’s a trade, it stands out like the proverbial dogs ----!! I usually wait for an hour or maybe an hour and a half after the Sydney open before entering. There is good obvious reason for this
Nothing I do is new, nothing at all. I have picked bits and pieces from various courses and methods and moulded things to suit me. My charts are clean and uncluttered, my method is about 90% based on candlesticks, I use MT4
My money management (in my opinion) is as good as it can get. It really works for me. I can have 10 loss’s in a row or more and not be to fazed “about” the account dropping. Don’t get me wrong, it does a number on my head but by going back to the numbers and percentages I use helps with the psychology. I don’t expect anyone else to agree with it, but as I said, it works.
I’ll be posting charts from Friday (hopefully) if and when I see something. Why Friday, because my computer tech’ can’t get to me before then and I’m having a problem with the software I prefer to use. Charts as far as explanations are just the bee’s knee’s to me. They tell all
I probably over trade at times but when I do it is always tiny tiny trades to test a theory here or there. ALL IS ON A LIVE ACCOUNT.
I’ll add more here in a while. I need to write out the actual method. It’s almost completely based on someone elses that you can get for free or pay for on the internet, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to mention names so I won’t. I get nothing from anyone as far as kick backs go
As far as success goes, I’ve had pretty good and really bad. July this year (2013) I took the account north by 236%, that was actually in about 3 weeks, not the entire month.
Months since that July have not been good “at all”. Not one month has been positive. My point for saying this is to tell myself that it does work, and work very successfully. But when it doesn’t and the account starts heading south I have to question myself “not the method”. What am I doing differently? Has the market changed since July (I have almost no doubt it has changed in the last few weeks, being September/October). It’s as if everything in forex is waiting to see what happens in the states with the Obama economy and because of this I feel markets (markets being the currency pairs) are NOT acting in their usual way.
OK, my method. Like I said earlier, it’s very simple and based almost entirely on someone else’s. You may or may not have heard of him.
To me personally, the key to making money in the markets, whether it be trading forex or shares or anything that can use candlesticks, is all in the reading of what the candlesticks are saying. Very similar to being able to read weather patterns in my opinion. You understand what is happening VISUALLY and it’s like seeing the matrix.
[B]I use 12 candlestick patterns and of those 12 I’ve found a few work with really good consistency. This is all about having confidence in what you see and believe in.
The 12 patterns can be found anywhere on the net, Bearish and Bullish Harami’s, shooting stars, Bearish and Bullish engulfings, dark cloud, piercing patterns and my 2 favourites the Hanging man and inverted hammer. Those last 2 are fav’s because when they’re in the right spot the stop/loss (I never ever ever trade without a stop) the bang for buck is usually really high
I know that’s not 12 but they’re the usual ones I trade.
I use an 8EMA and a 180EMA and a stochastic of either 8,3,3 or 10,3,3.
When the candlestick pattern presents and is stretched away from the 8EMA and the stochastic is in the extreme zone either 80 to 95 or 20 down to 5 it’s a very high probability of success, very high!![/B]
The explanation will be clearer when I can post a snapshot of a chart.
Charts are incredibly important to me. The colour and layout must be gentle on the eye. I spent years in a past profession studying colour. A black background is much better to your eyes than a white one, I use “Burleywood” with green and red candlesticks.
I can spent hours going back over history hunting or fishing for signals and when I see them they just make me shake my head in amazement.
I’ve found a few things that seem to recur on a regular basis that I’ll put on here once I can post a chart. I hope I can, I’ll check on that. At the time of writing I haven’t seen anything that stands out or is worth risking money on. There was a short trade on the EURGBP but I would have only given it 2 stars out of a max’ of 4.
It came off a bearish harami that was confirmed the next day because of a close below the 180ema and 8ema and the stoch’s was in the overbought zone and turning down.
BUT, I didn’t trade it because I feel the markets are just not running smoothly at the moment. I guess I’m spooked because of what I’ve lost lately and I put that down to everything hinging on what’s been happening in the states with their economy on stall status right now. But apart from that, I see no trades on the daily charts, so now I drop down to the 4 hour and the 1 hour and look for anything really obvious.
The beauty of the lower timeFrames is the bang for buck, I only need “usually” a smaller stop. The stops are a visual of the most recent high or the most recent low. usually the last candle
Believe me, don’t thrill too much on this journaling thing. It is a waste of time. Market is an everchanging enviroment and finding patterns is just stupid. I 've made dozens of journals and ended up with enedless sheets with useless data because everytime I’ve found a recurrent pattern on winning trades, markets chaaaaanges and my sytem became useless.
I appreciate your input, very much. Yeah, I guess recurring patterns was the wrong thing to say. What I should have said was “just patterns” meaning, once you start to see what buyers and sellers are doing via the candlesticks then one begins to understand what’s going on. Like fishing, it’s always the same thing you’re after but the conditions change constantly, tides change, moons change, wind, sun going down later. It’s all relevant. I’m not going to waste to much time here. I’ve done the forum thing, it kills me. I trade so much better on my own
Again, thanks
Yeah, like war there is no recurrent pattern bust great strtategists find a particular an unique pattern and somehow they can outsmart the enemy. Like George Meade did in Gettysburg or Chester Nimitz in Midway.
Hi Timc,
I just introduced myself to this forum. Are you still having success with your trades? I would like to know more.
David
I wouldn’t say that. Journaling is great, and is a good way to look back on performance. I made dozens of systems. Most of them are useless now. For every long term profitable system out there, there are millions of systems that simply do not work. The only way to improve is to constantly dive deeper into the “matrix” constantly pushing your conceptual and mental capacity to its limits. The top .5% who trade currency profitably long term do not think like a novice nor do they follow the crowd. I could put a million that the elite traders have spent thousands of unpaid hours researching and additional capital in losses testing out new systems. And on top of that, Thousands of failures. It takes persistence, I haven’t given up and I have lost grands of profit and more than a grand of my own money.
On the bright side, I have never traded this well in the past year since up until a few weeks ago. Its all about smart adaptations. Good luck