R Carter
Since I put up my last post I have found what the HA and regression are. Just need to read up on them and start testing them out on my demo. Thanks
HoG
Apologies Hog. There are other candles that you may not be aware ofā¦ HA, GRAB, etc.
HA stands for Heiken-Ashi. Its a candle thats computed using a different mathamatical formula (check out investopeadea for an explanation). The candles colour according to the trend. I use it on 4h and 8h to good effectā¦ take a look at EU if you can pull it up on your platform. If not try a demo account with FXCM. Regression line is the fastest indi, then LWMA, etc. A 2 period regression line will defacto be āprice lineā i.e. as if you were using a price line chart. I like to put this up on a candlstick chart so I can in effect have both candle and priceline all on one chart. When using HA as well its pretty intuitive.
Just put the 2 regression on EU. has left me wondering though how it helps if all it is showing you is more or less what price is at the moment. Please excuse this for what is probably a rather basic question.
HoG
Price line shows the average move. You should see PA in real time shoot above and below it. If youāve put up HA candles as well youāll see the base of the candles in an up trend sit on itā¦ take a look at the 4h and 8h on EU. Confirmed cross long on EU 4h was at 1.4114 (four 4h candles).
EDIT: As previously stated the 2 regression line needs to be off the HA open.
What Iām attempting do demonstrate here is that by using HA with a 2 period regression line off HA open on the 4h or 8h, its really quite easy to see where PA is heading longer term. No need to try and guestimate tops and bottomsā¦ just take the pips on the cross of the 2 regression and colour change of HA (solid bodiesā¦ i.e. no wicks). Simples! 
Couldnāt work out how you were getting the things you were saying. According to my charts, top of candles in an uptrend were on 2 regression. Also, couldnāt work out how cross long was confirmed at 1.4114 as no candle changed colour at that level according to what I was looking .
Then I worked out that you had to go into the default settings of the HA in my charting platform and change the path to āopenā. All of a sudden the world was a clearer place and I could see exactly what you were talking about. ( Yāsee, some people might think I am completely stupid but every now and again I prove them wrong lol !! )
Anyway, I printed off the HA education pages on investopedia so Iāll give them a read. Iām now running the 4H charts with 2 regression and HA alongside my existing set up just to get a real time impression of how itās supposed to work. Thanks again.
HoG
Good for you HoG.
So currently on EU, which way would you be looking to enter a longer trade? If that is your not already in.
R Carter
I have been looking over the investopedia info on the HA and also looking back at your āconfirmen cross long on EU on 4H was at 1-4114ā info. So I was wondering, when using the HA to give an entry point, do you use the current candle as soon as it changes colour from preceeding move ( i.e. Last four candles were red then current one goes white so enter ).
OR, do you need to wait til current candle close a different colour therefore you are entering on the second candle. I hope you understand what Iām trying to ask.
OR do you enter when the current candle has both changed colour AND crosses the regression line.
Basically Iām asking how and when to use the HA to determine your entry.
Thanks for the help.
HoG
You can trade off HA alone (I do) but to begin with at least, its always advisable to keep a chart open with āregularā candles.
As mentioned previously, I will enter when there is a confirmed candle body i.e. excluding wicks. This will normally be the second HA candle to cross the 2 regression HA open. The first candle to cross will inevitably be in the form of a wick. The second candle opens as a ābodyā candle from the cross of 2 regression HA open to the close point of the first cross candle. That will be my entry.
What Iām looking for in an ideal trend is confirmation from the subsequent candles that its strong i.e. in an up trend no lower wicks (reverse for down trend).
100% agree
Just thought I would add this as a way of airing my thoughts. As always, this is just my take on things as far as my education has taken me thus far, so I may be right, I may be wrong.
The first thing Iād like to talk about is time. I have to go to work during the London market session so invariably I miss the majority of the volatility of the day. Obviously I would rather be sat in front of my screen while all of this is going on, especially over the last couple of days when there has been such big swings.
But the danger for newbies, and I have felt this myself over the last couple of days, is that when you do eventually come home, you try to make up for what you have missed by getting into, or being tempted to get into, trades thet you really shouldnāt.
I opened a short trade last night (EU) at around 1-4329. Price bobbed about for a while before reaching 1-4315 but for some reason something inside was telling me that I just shouldnāt be in that trade at all. Call it gut feeling, call it whatever, but I closed the trade there and then for 14 pips profit.
Unusually, ( I say unusually cos this normally happens to the bad side ) almost as soon as I closed the trade, price shot up at was at 1-4370 before I knew it. I know it has since came down again but originally it would have hit my stop. When I thought about it later I realised that I had only got into the trade through frustration at missing all of the big action during the day.
So thatās my first newbie point. As has been mentioned before, get into a trade for the right reasons, frustration aināt one of them.
Second point is time frames. When I first started I rarely looked at charts higher than the 15 min timeframe. I did wonder what the point of lokking at the Hourly charts was, and just couldnāt fathom out the reason for havinga Daily chart at all !!
Regardless of how many experienced traders advised to use 1h , 4H , Daily charts, the 1 minute chart was my best friend. But itās funny, if you can managed to survive long enough, how you begin to graduate to the higher time frames as you slowly begin to realise that THEY are the charts from which you can draw the most amount of knowledge.
So would I advise any newbie to head straight for the higher time frame charts and discount the lower ones ? Well, yes and no.
YES, because higher time frames DO give you a broader picture of market feeling. You can better tell trends, ranges, support / resistance levels.
But NO because itās only by messing around with the smaller time frames that you learn that the bigger ones are where all the information is.
However, all of that waffle aside, the volatility of the week, has somewhat scared me off of trading so far this week ( apart from the 14 pips mentioned above ). I believe this to be because I donāt think I have the experience so far to handle such volatility.
Iām looking just now at the 4H EU. Price currently around the 1-4180.
Now if I was to purely take what I am seeing on the chart, I would say we have an area of support around 1-4150, and below that the next level is 1-4050. ( pivot support is 1-4092 and 1-4006 ).
To the upside ( pivot level = 1-4246 ) and there are previous resistances at 1-4288āish and from then itās up to 1-44.
So which way to go ?
Well I guess that if you were to stick to recent range levels, Iād probably be looking to go long if 1-4150 held, and if it failed Iād either try the short down to 1-4050, or just wait til orice tested lower supports and try for a long again.
Trouble is, with all of the uncertainty around, who knows ?? But then again, if any of us DID know the answers to these questions, life would be a much, much different adventure all together wouldnāt it ??
Just to satisfy myself Iāve shorted the pair at 1-4173 in my demo looking for 1-4150 TP and 1-42 STOP.
Goodnight all.
HoG:23:
Hi HoG
I have been reading your thread for a while now and i think its very nice and good read
I agree with you about the 1min tf and i was also trading 1min tf when i had started trading. when i got more experience i realized that 1min tf is exciting and there are good opportunities there but cost of trading is more from the trading perspective.
And then latter on i realized that its actually nothing to do with the markets or trading its our depth of stability and patience which doesnāt allow us to be in the trade and not watch the 1min tf. so now i have totally removed the 1min tf from my trading platform and even if its there on other platforms i donāt look at it.
Regards
tradertalent
Interesting post.
Personally, I let the Daily chart frame my trading bias for each pair before I trade. If I donāt get a clear picture from the Daily then I wonāt even look at the lower timeframes, as Iād rather trade a pair with a clear picture from the Daily as I find it moves more predictably. I then generally enter off a lower timeframe.
For instance, I am staying out of EUR/USD this week, as the Daily is so unclear, I would need wider Stops than I would like to account for volatility, and tighter Stops help the R:R. However, I am in a EUR/CAD trade as the Daily gives a cleaner picture.
Anyway, sorry, you did not ask for responses but just wanted to say that I thought that was a good and interesting post, with which I agree.
ST
ST
No I didnāt ask for responses to the last post, but this would be a pretty poor forum sight if nobody ever responded so keep the replies and comments coming as often as you feel like my friend !!
One thing you mentioned that did really make me think however was that you said you were staying out of Euro Dollar and were in Euro Cad.
I have only ever concentrated on Euro Dollar in my brief FX career, and I have heard it said before that you should only trade a pair you are familiar with. Now Iām not suggesting for a second that you are unfamiliar with ANY pair, but I would be interested to hear your opinion, and everybody elseās opinion for that matter, on the following question which your reply has made me ponder;
Q. Should you only get involved in trading a currency pair that you have watched for a while and tried to familiarise yourself with the PA of that pair ? OR is all the information you need already there on the charts in front of you which, after looking back on the charts, would allow you to trade ANY pair as confidently as any other pair ?
I hope you all get what I mean.
Interested in all answers.
Incidentally, got my backside cained on the Euro Dollar today before price came back up above my entry. Where are all the crystal balls when you need them ?
HoG
traded a pair called EURAUD.
ahahah high spread but damn good returns and pip load.
Never say never.
Morning HoG,
Thank you for the reassurance, will be free with my opinions in future lol! I just once got a grumpy and pretty rude pm from a pretty experienced member on here (currently on sabbatical, I think, as have not seen him around recently) asking me to keep out of his thread as he saw it as āhisā territory. Which I found a little odd (itās a discussion group, at the end of the day lol!) but has made me think that some on here might get territorial. Sorry to tar you with the same brush, wonāt do it again. He remains the only person I have ever blocked on here!
Anyway, back to more important stuff, your question:
There are various debates that seem to come around in cycles in the Forex world (which is better, scalping or medium-long term trading, does paper trading make for a better trader, is Forex gambling, various others!) and one of those is - is it better to focus on one or two currency pairs, with a view to becoming very familiar with how that pair moves, reacts to news, trends etc., to enable very efficient trading of that pair, OR is trading a skill that can be learned and then applied to any number of currency pairs effectively.
Each view has its strong advocates. It is clear that both approaches work, so there is no definitive answer, it just boils down to personal preference and trading style.
From my point of view? I am basically a technical trader. I mostly trade either a clear trend or a clear range. I take fundamentals into account, but will never use them as a reason to enter a trade. I find a technical setup that fits my strategy, I check S&R levels to see whether there is room for my trade idea with a decent R:R on the chart, then I check the fundamentals to see that there are no obvious banana skins in the way of my trade. I will happily apply this approach to quite a number of currency pairs that tend to behave in a way that suits this approach. I have built up a list of these over time. I avoid pairs that just donāt seem to trend, or are prone to frequent big spikes, but I still look at some twenty or so pairs whenever I scan the markets.
I take the view that the impact of fundamentals is generally not restricted to one or two pairs - if there is bad news for USD, EUR, JPY or CHF then its impact will be felt on a number of pairs. Oil, gold, news on these affects a number of pairs. Personally, I donāt buy into the argument that each pair trends differently, so I wonāt avoid a pair through lack of familiarity, and it works for me. I have had recent and frequent wins on a number of pairs including EUR/USD, USD/CHF, CHF/JPY, SGD/USD, AUD/USD, NZD/USD, AUD/CAD, USD/CAD, GBP/CHF, EUR/JPY, just naming a few to give you an idea.
At the end of the day, I find that PA works on many different charts, a high test suggests that price will fall on most of the currencies, ranges and trends can hold reliably on a number of pairs, so I would rather scan a range of pairs and then be quite fussy about which setups I take. I have done this from day one, so personally do not buy into the notion that this is an approach best left to experienced traders. Sure, I have got better the longer I have been trading, but that is true of all traders with all approaches.
I always take my initial bias from the Daily chart, then look for confirmation elsewhere. So to take this weekās example, I have stayed out of EUR/USD as the Daily was stalled, but traded EUR/CAD as it gave me a clear picture that I felt I could trade. Iām also trading EUR/JPY today, quick intraday before the weekend, as the trend is nice.
Anyway, apologies for the extremely rambling answer. My basic view is that single pairs work, multiple pairs work, we must each find our own preference and run with that. I have a style that I prefer to apply to a number of pairs and it works for me. Others will have a different take. Basically, listen to all of us, then make your own call!
Hope that helps give you one take on it,
ST
ST
Yāknow what ? I reckon your answer to the last question just about hits it on the head. And your second last sentence, āBasically, listen to all of us, then make your own call !ā is for me, THE answer. I reckon itās probably THE most important lesson for newbies out their searching desperately for the āHoly Grailā of currency trading. So hereās my message to all my fellow newbies.
Even the most experienced currency traders in the world today, were at one point, a newbie. And if they were honest, they would probably tell you, that they too went looking for the ABC of FX, hoping to find the āHIT BUTTON A, THEN HIT BUTTON B, NOW GO BUY YOUR FIRST FERRARI,ā manual, just exactly like you, me and million others have done. But here is something you should just plain and simply accept ;
IT DOESNāT EXIST, STOP LOOKING FOR IT, NOW !!
What you need to do is learn, educate yourself. And I know many of you reading that might still be thinking to yourselves,
āto hell with that, there must be a quicker way,ā or even,ābut itās so complicated, Iāll never be able to learn that.ā
If youāre set on finding the quick way, best of luck, keep throwing the money in, the brokers just love you to bits.
If you think you could never learn the complicated world of currency trading youāre wrong. You can, look at me. I left school with no qualifications. I am a 44 year old cabbie from Glasgow, but Iām doing it ! Sure my drop from my initial deposit has been well documented in this thread so I wonāt drag you all through it again. But I brought it back up ( doubling my low point of my account balance ) to $89, before taking a spill last week through a lot of the volatility and Iām now back at $77. But Iām still here. Still learning.
To show other newbies what is possible, let me tell you what happened last night ( Sunday 14th Aug '11 ) after the market opened for another week. Now I know before I write this there may be people out there reading it saying, " Oh yeah !! Weāre all experts AFTER something has happened." But all I can do is assure that that this is true. Wether or not you believe it, well thatās up to you. Iāll tell you before I write it that I DIDNāT put a trade on, and Iām still glad I didnāt, even though my analysis was correct.
As most of you will know, the market opens at 22:00 GMT on a Sunday evening here in the UK. So by 12 oāclock last night, EUR/USD had reached around 1-4283, ( from Fridayās close of around 1-4266 ). So according to what I was looking at on the 4 hour and daily charts, price was now reaching 1-4287 ish, which had been a previous area of resistance on the 9th August, 11th August and 12th August.
So I was thinking, that according to the charts, if price broke that resistance area, there was nothing to stop it heading up towards the next resistance level, which as far as I could see, was 1-4375 ish, which it reached on the 3rd August. Then if it broke THAT level, it was on to 1-44 were it reached on the 8th, 9th and 10th of August.
So why didnāt I put the trade on ? Well, as I have mentioned before, I no longer put a trade on if I know I will have no access to a computer while that trade is on. And since I was heading down to England this morning at 6 am, I decided to get some sleep as it was late and I had a long drive ahead of me.
So sure enough, price broke through resistance levelsand as I write this is currently sitting under the NEXT resistance that I had decided on of 1-4450. Now I know price broke through that area earlier today but it has since came back down to sit around the 1-4445 area. So what now ? Am I going to buy ?
Well hereās my thinking on that. Price reached around 1-4475 today ( 15th August ). So the first hurdle would be to get back above 1-4450, and then get above 1-4475. Should it do that, then the next level of resistance I can see is the 1-4535 area. And whatās so important about that? Well 1-4535 ish is a daily high ( reached on the 27th july ) that forms part of the downward trend line of lower highs dating back to the 4th May.
( 1-4935 ish 4th May, 1-4695 ish 7th June, 1-4569 ish 4th July, 1-4535 ish 27th July )
So if price can get up to those levels, we could be looking at the downward trend from 4th May coming to an end.
BUT, should price FAIL to get up around the 1-4535 area, maybe testing 1-4450 / 1-4475 again and failing. OR failing anywhere around or below 1-45, before moving down below 1-44 again, then the downward trend would be continuing and Iād probably be looking to enter a longer term āSELLā trade. There is a meeting tomorrow between the heads of Germany and France as Europeās debt problems still havenāt been cleared up so thereās ANOTHER thing thrown into the mix. Maybe itās not a great idea to get involved in this pair AT ALL just now.
So that in turn leads us back to the previous question and answers. Maybe itās time to look at a DIFFERENT pair that DOESNāT have as much going on politically and would let us work from the charts for the most part. Itās all part of the challenge. And I wish all my fellow newbies the best of luck with it. Iām the first to admit itās not easy, but I love it. But Iām not here to prove to anybody else that I can do this, Iām here purely for me. Iāll make the calls and Iāll take the wins or losses.
So to all newbies reading this, thatās MY analysis and thatās how I see it. It may be right, it may be wrong, but as SimonTemplar said in the sentence I noted right at the start, you need to ālisten to all of us, then make your own call.ā Because even āGurusā get it wrong. Even āprofessionalsā make an arse of it sometimes. There is NO one true āget it rightā method. My analysis is just as good, relevent and believable TO ME, as anybody elseās. And the reason for that is simple. Thatās because itās MY money Iām using. Nobody else cares if Iām right or wrong as much as I do.
So do your own homework. Itās not that hard. If you read back a few replies, I noted down what āmiracles of modern analysisā I use to come up with my theories. Trust me, they aināt that complicated. As the old addage goes. " If I can use them, anybody can."
Anyway, as normal this has turned into much bigger a ramble than originally intended. You can tell Iām a cab driver eh? lol.
Another reason I didnāt get involved last night was that I was far too busy watching the bloody USPGA !! Maybe that is closer to the real reason. But then, thatās why this is The Home of Golf !
Goodnight all,
HoG
I like the part where you have it right by saying there aint no holy grails that is going to be giving u a 100%.
That would be the first realization for anyone wanting to make a few bucks here.
http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/38692-luminous-d-j-vu-14.html
Look at post 131 of this thread.
This is the guy who thought me how to trade.
Look at his statement and see how losses are part of the game.
And mind you some losses of his are close to 50 grands.
Its all part of the learning process.
Psychological issues become easier to deal with when we know what successful traders go through.
Hi.
HoG, I am with you now. I am trying to withdraw my money at my first BUCKET SHOP, lol. I have another broker still, real ecn, but that was too much last week. I tried to close a trade what went in my direction and after 20 attempts and 2 minutes, hui, it was finally liquidated. Definitely not an issue at my side. I am an experienced computer expert and bank employee for many years/decades.
I made a profit at this account, so I hope the delay of withdrawal will not be too high. Itās already going to become a hassle with them. Itās a major broker in UK and if they continue to play unfair, I will look what to do. Why I realized it is a bucket shop? Because they told me their execution times can be[U] in normal market conditions[/U] 15 seconds or longer, lol. Still, I made money. So, I am withdrawing most of it, nice profits included. But. I will left in that account a couple of bucks. And. I will grow that again. Just for fun. So, the only difference to you is that I won and not lost. So, I do not have feelings of regret. Rather the opposite, lol. Itās free money of $ 120 what I have there now to grow. Well, I grew it already. Yesterday, from $ 100 to $ 120, he he.
My plan is to let my bot still run there and to take one or another trade every now and then. If I make just 20 pips a week, thatās $ 200 in 1 month and $ 360 at the end of the year, speaking in balance. $ 20 $1 = 1 pips per week would be achievable. If I go for 10 pips a day, 4 days, 3 winners, one loss. Only high probability setups. A1 trades. Should be achievable. Maybe not that fast, because I may have off days. Just for an approximate guide.
I probably wonāt post many trades, just wanted to let you know there is another one who tries to make $ 360 til the end of the year out of $ 120. Itās in mini lots. So, BIG RISK, lol. 10% risk per trade and more. 
What seperates me from the losers? Well, I make time my friend. Patience is the top skill for traders. Plus I am in money protection mode there now. Even if itās free money to play with. But why not make a couple of grands out of free money and give a bucket shop what they deserve?
Hi Buckscoder
Sorry to hear youāve had so much trouble with your broker. But look on the bright side, youāve made some money and now youāre moving on so life aināt too bad.
Itās good to know somebody else is using roughly the same cash amount as I am somewhere. If you read Nikitafxās comment just two replies ago about yunny1ās losses could be around 50k, it puts our amount of money into perspective a little. But like Iāve said before, cash amounts are all relative and losses in a small account probably hurt me just as much psychologically as a big loss in a big account to others.
I know you probably wonāt post the details of your trades and that is fair enough. You will probably have noticed that I have posted details of my trades a couple of times in this thread. Once WildChancer made a good comment about the pitfalls of doing this could include other people talking you out of doing your intended trade altogether. So for this reason I try to post the details of my trades AFTER I have entered them.
I post the details of my trades mainly for one reason only. I am not looking for approval or for anyone to tell me that they agree with my trade set-up. I post my trades purely to let other newbies see that my thought process is probably the same as theirs. I think when people first start trading they may think that they are all alone out there and I suppose to some extent we all are. But if people can see that there are other people out there, thinking the same, having the same worries/lack of confidence about their ability, it may just help in some small way.
With that in mind I ended up entering short EUR / USD this morning at 1-44 ( I placed an entry order at that level. ) Price did drop into the 1-4356 ish area earlier and I was tempted just to close it out and take the 46 pips ( as I advised another newbie to do earlier in this thread when they spoke of their trade being up 30 pips at one point ). But I left it to run and as I write price is just back above 1-44 just now.
Iāve got my TP at 1-4250 and my stop at 1-45 just now. If price does start to go in my favour I may look to move TP lower. Iāll decide on that nearer to the time if things work out, depending on the strength of the move down and whatever else may be going on at the time.
Anyway, must dash, my youngest daughter has managed to get a lollipop tangled in her hair and it looks as though the bath tub is the only solutiion. Best of luck.
HoG
Hi HoG,
yes you are right, my glass is 140% full, lol. The reason I do not like to post trades is that I think everybody must use his own strategy and that doesnāt help anybody. I will however post my account equity from time to time. You have one advantage, the min. lot I can trade is 0.1, so 1 pip is $ 1. Iād like to have micro lots, but I havenāt. And I do not change there anything. So, I do not have many pips left for my stop settings. If it works, okay. If not, cest la vie. To me that is just playing money. However, I do anyways feel like it would be 1 million, because itās like a sport. I have the goal to grow that. Even if I see that this broker is continuing playing tricks on me. Weāll see how that goes.
Best of success to you! 