Inner Circle Trader's Pro Traders Club 2012 - 2013 Series

Beginner Questions
3594

I think i’m going to start complaining, and i promise someone has to do it because too much of a good thing is not really a good thing. People use all these things, ote’s and reflections, and other things like kill zones and they are making money, and everyone is thankful about this and that, and so where is the struggle?! where is the balance? Throughout the history of humankind, and the other histories, the green skin orange-eyed little guest is gesturing, struggle lead to progress… this green bugger is annoying… now he says ‘no pain no gain’…wherever he got that from, anyways ‘m going to be upset about the killzones.

What’s the story with these. First, it takes a person between 2 hours and six months to understand when time is nice to look for a trade, so here’s a problem. Why, if this is an organized system, it takes someone between this time and that time, if it’s a system it should take everyone the same. It should be the same for everybody, and like, an even number say 4 weeks should be good. Then once you work at it ‘4 weeks’ you know what happens? You make trades and some other problem comes along. They never said there was going to be the second problem after the first, why didn’t they? It is clearly a sign for the things to come. And do not consider future consequence too fast, because this other pressing problem is that, like me, I got nothing to do today.

Did anyone consider what happens if they made a trade today, and for some “weird” reason is still open tomorrow and making money then what happens? Tomorrow they got nothing to do! Is that fair? Is that the right thing to do to somebody?? And yet it happens. If you don’t believe try this… take a trade in this so-called “kill zone” … happened to me today… and it went up, and i had a cup of tea watching, then made a phone call. Then did email, then all the talking, phoning and emails i could think of, remembered of an auntie should have called 4 months ago… went shopping, learned about gloss and dark chocolate, and even took my favourite boots to the repair shop. And after all that, dinner and count the posting time, it is barely 10. A lot of free time to use as you please, remember how definitely there was no warning of that could happen.

time and freedom… disconcerting… it’s a cause.
Are you not also sensing what this leads to??

Only one thing to say,
Comrades, let us keep up! the serious reasons for……………enjoying trading!

3595

has michael talked about this “clean levels” in on of his videos? because i think this deserves so much more attention than it has in this thread. actually i would say, recapping the last few months, these clean levels are my favorite tool. i was using them every now and then but not always. but now that i think of it, and after writing my trading plan 3 days ago, i realized how important this actually is for my trades. in hindsight, there is definitely a very high correlation between my good trades in the past and having a “clean level” to target. in the beginning of my trading journey, noobish as i was, i considered this levels as “strong s/r” levels, which i could place my SL just above/below. now i’m thinking “yummy, stops”… seriously guys, can someone tell me where michael talked about it? has he talked about it? and what are your experiences? do you use these levels?

these levels just provide so much information… not enough for just trading solely on that, but enough for me to say for example the fiber is very likely to hit at least the 1.2980 level within the next days. will be looking to target it with a possible short tomorrow.

edit: also strongly related to the inefficiencies after extreme drops/increases commented on by chris lori.

3596

Well, the fiber is only trading around 25 pips above that level right now, so it’s not a huge move needed to hit that level… But to me, market structure still looks bullish, doesn’t it…? So why do you think the fiber will drop?
Does it have something to do with the USDX bouncing of the 80 level, market maker profile, or what? :slight_smile:

3597

I believe that they are referring to is entering a trade as follows:

  1. Set an entry order with a specific TP and SL, and a lot size you are risking.
  2. Set another entry order at the [B]exact same level[/B] with the same SL, but TP above the 1st entries TP with a specific lot size. Thus allowing your second lot to realize more gains.

In a case where you a entering a trade and want to take 70% off of your trade at your first TP, you would simply put 7 lots on trade 1, and 3 lots of trade two. (assuming 10 lots just for an example). This allows you to set and forget a trade.

3598

That’s the one, fantastic, so you could use it in conjunction with OTE to place your stops.

Cool I was thinking it something else, as in MP reflection.

Thanks for that.

3599

i’m not saying i’m short. i’m already two steps of price action ahead. looking for confirmation tomorrow and a break in market structure. don’t have mt4 right now, but looking for a bounce of the 79.80 level or so in usdx, maybe 1.3050 on the fiber. htf ote and marked resistance level on my chart. will wait for confirmation though. but yeah, i’m not bearish right now, but i’m not long either because i think there could be a reversal and not exactly sure when it will start (hopefully at 1.3050).

3600

Bats@drs :60: what can i do , if i am that profitable then i don’t mind giving something back if they go crazy on taxing i will leave uk.

3601

He has mentioned it from time to time, this was something I noticed also when running an EA/backtest thing over 12 months ago, ICT probably knew about it already. But when I some tests I noticed the total loss was significantly less when taking this is into consideration, I started a thread about it.

As I write I’m thinking about something I saw tonight in one of his videos, one of the 4 that peterma and lazydogs have mentioned, it’s something like if the clean line is below or above a big figure, mmm yes, you’re right it deserves more attention, I’ll be looking into it.

3602

I LIKE IT. I was meant to join in on the fun, but i messed up my entry on e/u @1.2944. Although looking at a positive side i remained flat, which is the best thing if one gets stop out of his trade prematurely due removing risk to early SL:17: …

3603

Also take some comfort in the fact that your analysis was right too. Entry and TP levels are a little harder to manage. I’m OK at the analysis and entry but struggle letting the trade ride out.

3604

So, I reviewed the video again ( Optimal Trade Entry - Inner Circle Traders OTE Pattern ), the double tap is as PPFX describes. Either, 2 positions opened at the same price level, one that is sold in full, immediately at TP1, while the other is left on to reach for further price objectives, or 1 position, and 50% of it is closed at TP1, and the remainder is left on. It just depends how you want to manage the trade.

Sorry for the confusion :smiley:

(the description I gave is also discussed in that video as well, so I think thats why my memory is fuzzy on the subject!)

3605

USDx baby, along with fibs some intuition is what helped me get my premise correct. I got to say tough i need to stick with my entry all the way in future. I have only managed to capture 1 move from LO to which bagged me 70 to 80 pips on friday:D, i did everything like text book, entry in KZ, 30 pip SL slowly tightened my SL when price moved away from my entry by 30 pips took 100% off when we fulfilled adr, could have done better if let 20-30% run, but was just very happy to capture a move like that.
I just want 1 trade like that a week and i will be very happy. 1 trade one shot one kill. Relax and enjoy the rest of the week!
Once my account is back in green i will up my risk to maybe 0.5% at the moment its 0.1% :slight_smile:

3606

The way jonnycab said, it doesn’t make sense to do that to me, this is my logic, what if the trade moves, then you then have only half of your intended position on, if it does get back, then you’d be putting double, it might be a different technique he’s using or has in mind but we’re using the same term.

What do you think?

3607

Same here, looking for the one shot one kill type trades and looking to grow a nice account next year. I’ll also be quadrupling my capital but lowering risk to 1% per trade.

0.1% that’s some money management there all right…

Good Luck…

3608

As they say, a picture says 1000 words, probably good for someone like me!

This is what I was getting at:

We are stalking the 1.6092 OTE level, but we dont have a limit order placed:

As price approaches, we get down to the 5M chart to fine tune on any retracement that will hopefully occur (incidentally, note how accurate that 1H chart is in this case ;)). This is what I thought was known as the “double tap”. As in, we tap the noted level, then zoom down to look for another tap of the level to get our actual entry for the trade (really just another OTE as described in the video).

We drill down to the 5M to look for our entry point (in this case, 1 pip better off!):

But actually, what the double tap refers to, is how you manage your positions, so when price is at the level you’re watching (in my case yesterday, I was considering the short at 1.6093 after i zoomed down to the 5M for my entry), you can do 2 things to achieve the “double tap” (using a total of 10 lots as the position size):

Open 1 position:

Sell 10 lots @ 1.6093, closing out 50% of them when price hits TP1 (1.6060?) and leaving the remainder of the trade on until TP2, etc… are reached.

or

Open 2 positions (2 identical limit orders, one with TP1 set, the other with TP2 set):

Sell 5 lots @ 1.6093, closing the entire position at TP1.
Sell 5 lots @ 1.6093, closing the entire position at TP2 (or manage this section of the trade however you want - essentially the “free” part of the trade as stops will be at BE because TP1 will have been reached hopefully).

You only enter at one price level, not once based on the 1H and then again for the 5M (I think that was what PPFX was getting at).

So, you’ve risked the same amount on each of the different trade entry styles, but managed the TP part of it in different ways.

Hope that clears up some of the confusion!

I’ve probably made it worse :stuck_out_tongue:

3609

I thought it was another description of the turtle soup.

But I too have started to open two positions to help manage the trade.

3610

Yes, it makes a lot of sense to do it that way if you’re not able to be at the charts most of the day to manually manage a single position.

3611

Not at all.

The splitting of a single trade into sub-trades is exactly the same concept as basic money management.

Money management moves traders from focusing on single trades to maximizing return while minimizing risk for all your trades over time.

Position splitting is exactly the same concept. Even though by selling off percentages of your order you are giving up potential profit, you are locking in risk for that part of your order at 0%.

If you have two traders, one who goes all in every time on a trade versus a trader who locks partial profit with risk at 0 percent for parts of their trade is going to have a much higher percentage of profit unless the first ‘all in’ trader is unrealistically lucky or has a time machine.

Take a 100 trades and the most basic position splitting strategy of taking first profit at 20 pips. Those 100 trades will be split up into three categories:

  1. Trades that never make it 20 pips or stop out
  2. Trades that make it to more than 20 pips and you closed out the position
  3. Trades that make it to more than 20 pips and then fall back down before you close the position

Ideally 3. would never happen. But in reality it happens all the time and a trader is left wishing they had closed out when trade was +100 pips only to see it reverse and hit their stop loss because of some news or some other unforeseen reason that moves the pair.

So if one graphed all 100 trades of both traders, the split position trader and the ‘all in’ trader, the ‘all in’ trader would have a few higher peaks for the few big win trades. The split position trader would not have the same few big peaks but their over all pips/trade average would be higher.

3612

Sure does, like tomorrow, out at 6am so will need to manage as and when I can…

Although some snow has started falling so all being well, snowed in to manage my trade…

Unlikely though, just a dusting it seems.

3613

Oh you talk such rubbish sometimes, now I will explain it clearly.