it’s a leader - the only time I chase price - ever - is when I get confirmation - I went for 30 pips this evening as I was posting above because the 10yr was jumping, came out at the fig and missed the rest - story of my life 
Oh - btw just watched the video ICT posted yesterday - interesting he mentions the ote at 3320 , saying it might bounce up to there and then down - talks about 2900’s as target area.
See again the famous ‘pause’ on the way down, one thing about the ‘pause’ I’ve noticed many times - was going to mention it last time, see (15min) how price gives a little series of higher highs during the pause - as if it is trying to push higher - it’s very controlled, then rapid fall.
I’m convinced the purpose of this is to entice traders into catching the knife.
Someone else
I’ve been trying to use this for adding to my positions, especially in heavily trending conditions.
I missed the obvious one on the AR high/low retest as I was heading home from work!
I used S&R for my 2nd re-entry. Short @ 1.3140, first TP @ 1.31, final TP @ 1.3060, another noted HTF level of S&R.
I was also tempted to get in again @ 1.3120 (the nice series of ‘controlled’ higher highs, right into an institutional level), but I was already short at this point so let that current trade ride…
I just don’t understand…how did you know it was going to drop? I mean you must have seen signs but waited for some sort of confirmation from PA?
I didnt, but I figured if this level is going to hold, we’ll know about. Otherwise we’re gonna keep sliding. The classic support turned resistance. Look at the PA on the 1M TF. That was all the confirmation I needed that I should hold that position and wait for the slide.
The Euro has taken a beating all day today. Checkout the EUR/JPY. 650+ pips in 1 day! Lethal! Did anyone catch that one? 
Peter, nice catch on the “pause” and thanks for pointing it out. My first year of trading was mostly during the LC. This time last year I lost on many days trading the LC counter trend trade. Price was mostly trending, as it is right now, and the LC counter trend trade is NOT a good trade during trends. This is mainly the reason why I am very hesitant to trade the LC, unless it is with the trend, or in a ranging market. I missed the NY open entry this morning as I was not in front of my computer and really did not think price would make it up to that level so quickly, but I could have traded the LC pause. I was thinking about it but decided not to. Hopefully going forward I will feel more comfortable trading the pause
E/J trade I did. 600 pips gained I not. 100 pips gained I did. :22:
http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/3228/screenshot2602201370106.png
Entry: Limit Short @125.00, SL25, TP100
What worked in this setup:
[ul]
[li]0050
[/li][li]MS
[/li][li]Fib 50 from high of 127.7 to recent low of 122.24 (other fib levels from any of the recent highs to 122.24 concurs with the 0050 entry)
[/li][li]KSR
[/li][li]COT EURO and JPY
[/li][/ul]
Bones,
I’ve learned throughout the last 2 years, albeit short, that there is no tools in FX that will always provide clear cut indication. That’s why we need different tools.
I am pretty sure life itself does not always provide clear indications as well right?
Keep up the good trades! ;)
Are we expecting a low range day today after that massive range of a day? I’m not sure what to think because normally Tuesday’s are the big ones!
I would normally expect a small range day after such a large one, but Bernanke is speaking tomorrow, and the political scene in Italy probably won’t have a calming effect on the markets either, so who knows, tomorrow could be a continuation of today or maybe it won’t
hmm I really didnt think that my weekly move is going to happen all on monday;)
(decided to get non trading related things done yesterday, as I expected to open the charts today (tuesday) and find us nicely somewhere up at 1.3320 to enter short and hold on to it for the week… that worked out well;) hahaha)
now I need a new gameplan for this week;)
Morning all - what a day yesterday! UJ, EJ, massive reactions, not to mention the Bunga Bunga comedy show resurfacing in Italy. Interesting to see what will happen and set ups might be hard come by. My plan is to buy EU at 1.2990 dly resistance for a scalp as I see we’re coming close to the end 2012 high in US 10 yr, the 82 level on USDx and the 12980 level is in the OTE region of the major leg up in EU on the daily (Nov to end Jan.). If they all coincide a bounce up in EU should be on the cards but I’ll not hold for the day as I think that might be too risky. That said we could be in for a much bigger drop for the fibre to 1.2880 passing all support on the way such is the importance of the political situation in Italy.
EDIT - Like all best laid plans things can pan out differently - looks like we had the bounce a bit earlier than my 2990 level
tp 131200…
Keeping my eyes peeled for retrace to 1.3150 before another short for NYO…
may I share a problem I have in hopes of some advice from you guys…
I am quite good at analyzing and predicting turning points/nice moves… however, I quite frankly suck at execution!
At paper trading I feel like a little Soros, however, my Live account is far from it;) (never been in the red dough, but not raking in the profits I should)
It is really strange actually! in my professional career (non trading related) I am very good at improvising and making quick decisions… something I lack in trading!
as you can see, I am a fan of marking my planned entry levels with blue boxes (OTEs), all nice and obvious…
if entered only during the 3 times marked with blue box and yellow “here” I could have bagged up to 800 pips in less than 3 weeks… how many pips did I catch? NONE!
(did some smaller trades and actually lost overall)
now why is that? I am not completely sure actually!
I might expect a certain level within the blue box to be tagged for my entry and the last two times it actually didnt get all the way to the blue boxes be a few pips (on my feed) and I must have expected price to push higher up into the box rather then reacting to smaller timeframe OTEs setting up after the tops were made…
sometimes I expect another retest that doesnt happen, and sometimes it simply happens when Im not at my screens…
last wednesday for example I was watching cable run off in front of my nose While my mouse cursor was over the “send order” button - all it would have taken was a mouse click, and I would have bagged up to 300 pips… again I ended up with zero…
maybe Im just a better analyst than trader… but I can’t just leave it with that insight… I need to improve.
I am also not really worried about the money I potentially lose by entering a trade - as I use a tiny live account for exactly that reason… it really doesn’t hurt me to lose 2,1 or half a percent of this account - once Im better I’ll uprade my account balance to make it more worthwhile… but for now I need to tackle this problem.
I am really not sure why I dont trust my own analysis enough to actually enter…
I did have better results by using limit orders… but since focusing more and more on price action, I feel like I want to see how price is reaction at certain levels - and then I miss to act upon those reactions;)
if anyone of you went through some similar issues or has some advice on how to tackle that problem…
I’d be extremely happy to hear your insights!
I truly feel at a point where this (big) issue is the only thing that keeps me from reaping the profits I want…
sincerely
fredy
Hi FF,
I don’t know if this will help at all, and I’ve only been trading live for 2 weeks so I’m probably not experienced enough to give any great advice. But, I tried to go live about 6 months ago and lost about 8-10 trades in a row over a 2 week period. During this time I found that I would find a nice point to enter a trade (OTE to go short for example) but then as I’m watching a bullish bar enter the OTE area, I would be too scared to enter, so I’d wait a few minutes just to see what happens, then, sure enough, price would bounce off the OTE and start going down, and then, by the time I was confident that it is actually going back down, it’s not in the OTE zone anymore so I started thinking “oh well I’ll wait for it to come back up into another OTE and then I’ll short it”. Anyway, this led to me losing.
After those 2 weeks I stopped trading and went back to learning and read loads of other threads around babypips, and found that there are plenty of people who aren’t worried about getting in at OTE, and they will get in on the break of pin bars or other reversal patterns. So two weeks ago I went live again and decided that if I see price come up into an OTE and I’m not confident to sell into a “bold face bullish candle”, then I will just wait. And then I would start seeing pin bars or bearish engulfing patterns on the 15M TF, so I would enter on the break of these, as it was just gave me a bit more confidence that price was actually going back down.
This has lead to me taking trades where I would miss out on about 20 pips that I could have got had I entered in the OTE zone, but overall in the last 2 weeks I have won 4 trades, lost 3, and my account is up 3.85%. And I can only assume as I get more experience, I will start having the confidence to actually enter on the bold faced candles within the OTE zone.
Hope this helps
Hi Fredy
First thing to note is that you are not alone! I’m sure that most traders can recall going through this stage in trading - I have and would still like to be better. My take on it is boils down to the fact that in most if not all other jobs you can exert your personal ‘influence’ on the job at hand be it salesmanship, charisma, persuasion in that all the time you are working to achieve something in normal non trading jobs (there are a few exceptions I guess) you are bringing all of your social communication and intuition skills into play. In trading you can only influence yourself and this takes time to learn how to do this. So maybe when you have done your analysis which looks sound from what you show above you dont take action because you know unconsciously that once you’re committed to the trade you cant use any of your personal skills to influence it. This I think causes many of us to delay taking action when our analysis tells us to because we cant use our ‘natural’ personal skills to influence the situation should it start to deviate from the course we want it to take. Basically we are left open only to the will of external events which we cant control (barring good trade/risk management etc.). This is for most of us a very counterintuitive to most of the situations we face in life / work and therefore causes uncertainty and delyed action which causes us to miss the.
All that said I’m no pyschologist and there are I’m sure many tactics you can put in play to help address this issue - but understanding it and knowing yourself ceratinly helped me to overcome the issue you raise.
A couple of things I do is to use limit orders usually set a little below (for shorts) or above (for longs) the entry my analysis tells me so that I don’t miss the trade should it start to go in the direction I want a little earlier than I might have expected. (I was anticipating an EU long this morning and wrote above that I was going to enter at 2990 which was 15 pips higher than the daily OTE but it still missed as it didnt come down low enough. ICT mentions something similar I think when he says there is usually 10 or so pips ‘vibration’ around a certain entry point which is noise and doesnt really cancel whether the trade is a good or a bad trade. I have no evidence this is a good rule or not - its just a method I use occasionally. Another thing I tell myself time and time again is to ‘Do What I know’ not just ‘Know What To Do’. This acts as a trigger for me not to prevaricate on my analysis and take action.
I dont know if any of the above makes sense or helps at all - trading being the illusive mistress it is - but hope it triggers some thoughts that gets you moving to where you want to be.
Mark
Fred,
I think I know what you are saying. E/J rised >2000 pips from Nov 2012 to Jan 2013 and I only caught 600. Even if I don’t close my long trade in late Nov, I would have bagged at least 1500 pips.
When I look back, I realized it’s the lack of confidence in my analysis - closing out too early, switching between methods, switching between time frame, just to name a few culprit mindsets. Best thing to do for those cases is keep practicing on demo until it becomes mechanical.
Am I right to say you are not using limit orders? That’s one thing that ICT always emphasize - use limit orders unless the market entry is that good to be missed. Personally I noticed I bag more pips when I do limit orders. Maybe because I don’t chase after prices. But I still monitor the orders closely in case I want to bail out, which I did it a few times (mixed good and bad results). I would suggest you practice execution with limit orders and see how that goes. Execution is always touching on one’s nerve so limit order will keep that emotion at bay.
Oh yes, the 1st few limit orders were the most nerve wrecking ones. After that, I just do it once I see enough confluence. Nevertheless, I still have weak moments when I chase after price, only to give back some of those profits I made.
Hope this helps.
this is a problem for many many traders. The other day another trader with a pa based system called me up and described the exact same thing and the same question, and basically i asked what do you do? and he started describing his process and i noticed in his description a lot of IFs. in his words 'IF this happens on h1 THEN i look at this other thing (bonds, usdx) AND IF i see that THEN i look at m5 and IF… THEN… see what i mean. i don’t know if such is what you may be going through, if it is, then a good suggestion is to streamline decision making to bare bones procedure, and action be based strictly on evidence seen on screen. The type of, if i see price in blue box (price in box = evidence) then i push button. As opposed to if i see <evidence> then it means… whatever it may mean, and if that… then <action>. The second sequence leads to the sort of hesitation problem we’ve all been through.
the other thing is that many traders feel responsible for the outcome of the trade. Mark nicely described how people go about influence and getting outcomes done in other areas of life, and in trading we’re not responsible for the outcome. Responsible is for the execution of the plan. As long as strategy is known and tested, we should be neutral towards the outcome of any single trade, that’s in the hands of probabilities and higher powers… what we are responsible for is not winning every time, but playing the game well.
and practice, practice practice a lot, take many trades, and even take some losses because you actually want to. taking a loss is no big deal and really should not be any different than taking a profit good luck and good trading