That’s midnight to 3 am GMT ? - That’s Asia Hours ! - Are you looking to trade that interval, or discuss pending entries and exits on larger time frames ?
I’d quite like to play - but am on GMT and by midnight - I’ll either be Pssst or asleep !
Best to all
F
Yep, that’s the only hours I can trade given my work schedule. I might do the odd Friday or Sunday afternoon (1600 to 1900 UTC - 6) once in a while, but not reliably. Of course, if enough people want a Discord server to hang out on it doesn’t matter if I am there or not.
Productive night tonight. So far, banked 10.9 pips on the AUDUSD pair, and looking at one more potential trade setting up right now. Fingers crossed that I don’t give those 10 pips back 
I haven’t figured out yet how to export chart images from fxTrade platform yet. I might yet be forced into MT 4. And I got in on a double top play for the last trade of the night. The goal of this trade is 10 pips with a 5 pip stop loss.
The first trade was a short entry at 0.7587 (19:33 UTC -5) for 1,000 units. Closed 500 units at 0.7575 and closed other 500 units at 0.7578. First 500 units net 12 pips, and second 500 units net 9 pips. Overall profit 10.5 pips (assuming averaging the two positions together is proper). Overall profit in USD is $0.78 cents.
The second trade was a long entry at 0.7581 at 20:14. Closed entire position at 0.7584. Net profit of 3 pips. So far up 13.5 pips for the night. Net USD profit on this trade was $0.31 for a total of $1.09 overall.
Double top trade entered short at 0.7586 (20:30). This trade was a test of nerves as price came up to a hair away from my stop loss, stopped, and then started moving back towards break even. Now with 8 minutes left in my trading session, this trade is at -$0.37. Right now I will be happy with break even within the next 8 minutes. This trade hasn’t been in the green since I put the position on and in 7 minutes that will be two whole bars of the trade moving against me. On these short trades, I like to see at least a move into profit within the first three bars.
And the trade is stopped out 2:01 minutes before the buzzer for a loss of 6 pips, or -$0.63. Net profit for the night is actually a profit! Net profit of $0.46.
So yes, it turns out I can make money in the markets. I got a long way to go yet, but this is definitely a positive step in the right direction.
I snuck in a trade today at work. I wanted to experiment with higher time frame charts to see if that would allow me to take advantage of some of the market volatility from the New York and London sessions without actually being present during those sessions because of corporate slavery and all.
I found a range trade on USD/CAD 4 hour chart. I entered short at 1.29002 (top of range, and psychological number) at 12:32 PM (UTC -6). My stop is at 1.29280 and my profit target is at 1.27000 (200 pip move if I catch it all) but I have alerts set at each structure level on the way down to check for loss of momentum in the move. This trade is currently 6.7 pips in profit.
Good lad
It’s in the nature of these things that we keep trying something different. The more we trade - the more we get accustomed to trading.
[edit - after a while, we learn the types of trade and timescale which work best for our own personality. ]
If you are still in at this point, “We are not worthy”
The Ever Unworthy VIPER
@TradeViper, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
Update on USD/CAD - in short, nailed it! First, the chart, then, the analysis.
I shorted this trade around 12:30 PM (UTC -6) yesterday. At that time, price action was at the top of a range from 1.2900 to 1.2700. 1.2900 had been tested twice, as well as 1.2700 so it was a solid range. In addition, CCI was over 200 and Stochastic was over 80 on the 4-hour chart. Fill price was 1.2900 for 1,000 units.
When I went to bed, the trade was around 15-20 pips in profit. My phone woke me up this morning as I had an alert from trading view that this trade was a lot farther in the money. By the time I logged in price had fallen to 1.27951. CCI was approaching the zero line, and Stochastics was between 50 and 20. I thought that momentum might be slowing down (not to mention that was also the mean level of the range), so I closed out 500 units and moved my stop loss to about 10 pips below break even (so if I got stopped out, my second position would still be +10 pips.
A few hours later as my dad, brother, and I were making venison summer sausage and bratwurst my phone goes off. A quick glance shows me that my take profit was hit at around 1.2700. At this point I am flat with price hovering near the bottom of the range. If I could get logged into Oanda I would be looking for either a range breakout trade or a long opportunity depending on what the momentum looks like.
Summary of trade:
1st 500 units - 100 pips profit
2nd 500 units - 200 pips profit
I could have made more money had I not closed half my position the 100 pip mark, but had the market turned around and stopped me out I would have lost on all 1,000 units. Closing out half my position allowed me to bank some profit and eliminate the risk in allowing the second half of my position to run. Better yet, my trade account is now in the green after 2 straight negative weeks.
I think your strategy was correct - lock in a decent profit and hope to gain the full result ! 
CAd went a bit “Wappy” Friday, but I still say your strategy was right !
Last week was a hell of a week for me. My account is in the green by a few dollars, and the first two weeks of losing trades has been erased, at least financially. This means that I am not going to be in any rush to give that money back, so I am not taking trades this week. Instead, I have a few other goals related to trading that I am going to work on:
Create a trade review worksheet where I can mark down the specifics of each trade, save a picture of the chart, and keep notes while the trade is active.
Fill out my trade review worksheet for all past trades
Work on my range trades in demo. This trade setup seems to work well for me, based on the limited data I have. I need more data to evaluate, but I don’t want to spend money to get that data
Video record my market analysis sessions this week and post to my YouTube channel. Doing it publicly this way makes me more accountable to actually doing the analysis even though I am not taking trades. I am basically using this as a way to get free reps in answering the questions “What has happened?”, “What is happening?”, and “What do I think is going to happen next?”
Yeah making Youtube videos or running trading journal is best way for self-control. Doing this way I greatly improved my money management skill.
This will most likely be my last update of the year. With the holiday season going, I am going to be taking the next 4 weeks to get my back office functions all setup - trade journal, trade log, money management system, etc…
Even live trading this last month I have been doing it on the fly as they say. Now, I am going to take the trades that I have been looking for, writing down the setups, creating checklists, and capturing trading performance data. I am going to make this a serious business before I get too far down the rabbit hole.
As such, I won’t be doing much trading over the next four weeks so I won’t have anything to post here. I’ll be popping in and out to answer private messages however.
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
Ok guys, I know I said I wasn’t going to trade, but last night I spotted a nice setup on GBP/USD so I got long. The trade is currently 38 pips in profit, with a stop loss 2 pips over my entry price, so worst case scenario is that I break even on the trade pretty much. My target is around 200 pips depending on how today’s news plays out.
So far, not counting this open position, my return for 2017 is 5.32%. It’s better than leaving the money in a savings account, but not super impressive enough to say hey, let’s crank it up. However, it’s encouraging enough to not think about quitting
Hey J how did you figure 200 ???
The Ever Wondering VIPER
I read the market context as a bullish trend on the four-hour chart starting around Nov 3. I entered at 1.33137 and if I was right about the bullish trend continuing then price would have had to climb to at least 1.35148. I didn’t consider the spike in the pullback as a potential bearish reversal but today I would read the chart as a bearish trend on the four-hour right now.
The idea that I had was to get long at 1.33137 as it held for several candles before price starting pushing back up. I trailed my stop up and the spike down on 12/13/2017 16:00 (UTC -6) hit my trail stop and got me out at 91 pips of profit. So my trading year ends at +12.9% return, which is dangerous I think.
Hey, look at the lower peaks, if you draw a trendline from the beginning of December, down to the next high, around the 7th - 8th you can see the weakness, and limited upside. So you can look at that as a way to see, unless there is a news event, more or less how far it will run. In other words it would have to break and base over that trendline to go higher. Also as far as dangerous, well you just completed a very successful counter trend trade. You were really on the wrong side, but the smart thing was to trail it, some would have held into a loss. You stole another good one.
You just need to identify what side you should be on, this will lead to consistency, I don’t think any profit is dangerous, but, and I know you understand this, relying on random circumstances is not productive over the long run. The key to this was the second peak, no surprises from the Fed, and the expectation of CPI, the EURO is weakening at this point, the bottom of the 4hr range about a 30% retrace off of the December peak.
To me, I would say putting on our shorts would be the way to go, but we will see.
The Ever Opining VIPER
By dangerous, I meant that it could overinflate my ego and because of that my trading wouldn’t be as methodical.
I think right now I am at a spot where I have an idea of what I need to do, I just need time on the charts making decisions and getting experience now. My wife gave me permission to set up our attic space as a dedicated trading office rather than trading in the living room so I can limit distractions and really buckle down over the holidays to get my “back office” setup.
I definitely want to start keeping a journal of my trades, and I need to set up a spreadsheet where I can keep a trading log and look at the objective data on my performance to make sure I am not slipping backward. I have a paper planner setup to mark down news events and trades that are developing but not quite ready for me to get involved (sort of like a watch list of sorts).
On the GBP-USD, I am bearish on it too. I would like to see price push up a bit higher to reduce risk before I get short with a target at a retest of the previous low. At this point, if I miss this one because I don’t like the risk/reward profile, I’m ok with that. No one is paying me to put trades on, ie, I don’t get paid when I hit a certain number of trades. No sense in putting on a trade that I am not super comfortable with. Here is the chart of what I am looking for.
Hey, wakeup and smell the cofefveee
The Ever Back VIPER
I’m here I haven’t taken any trades lately, just sort of watching how the markets move these first few days back after the holidays. My wife also bought me a few trading books for Christmas, Forex Trading for Dummies and Technical Analysis for Dummies, so I have been reading those. Surprisingly helpful being that they are For Dummies books.
How were your holidays?
First trade of the year is on… found a range on the cable 5 minute chart betwen 1.35542 and 1.35358. Market put in what looked like a false break and then re-entered the range so I shorted at 1.35525 with a target at 1.35358. If it turns out that the break has more strength than it looks I will get stopped out at 1.35600. Risk reward on this trade is 2:1 so looked like a good intraday trade to me.
Well… that didn’t work…
