I think the Long from 1.2790 is a good trade (provided a tight SL was used). We still have quite a bit of divergence between USDX and Fiber, 1st April lows on the Fiber still intact, but we blew through the highs on the USDX. You can see this on the hourly quite nicely. We’ve grabbed all the stops on the USDX, perhaps we’re in for the seasonal sell off that peterma mentioned? It would not surprise me if we rallied back up to 1.2880+ over the course of today and tomorrow… Definitely enough volatility from the news to prompt that…
Dont forget to pay yourself! (20-30 pips TP ALWAYS, then let it run when you cant lose).
Thank you for all the replies!
Jonnycab, your post was especially helpful!
To clarify: I have lost between 10-15% in the last 6 months (dont have last years journal handy right now)
but most of that loss was eating away prior profits. Currently my account is 1.5% in the red (from my starting account)
While I do regard my Money and Risk Management to be very strong, -10 to -15 % obviously still hurt;)
MY fixed sets of “tools” are
SRs (color coded Horizontal lines with emphasis to W1,and D1 S/R, and I use trend lines for S/Rs at H1 and M15 - I do not use the H4 very often).
I use OTE (and sometimes reflection)
Killzones (most focus on LO, and NYO)
SMT divergences
USDX divergences (lately I seem to struggle to see them sometimes)
to a lesser extent I also use Stochastic divergencies.
I use Daily Pivots and to a lesser extent weekly pivots, but I use them only as additional S/Rs and not for bias.
I do check COT at the beginning of every week.
and I just started (again) paying more attention to the bonds/yields.
a few months ago I started to pay more attention to Market structure and Candles.
Occationally I add another tool to my analysis to play with it and try it out.
Before my String of losses started I honestly did not worry much about bias at all, didnt care about MS, just traded off of H1 and entered at OTEs at SRs in addition with as many other confluences I could spot… I did fairly well this way, but then I started to lose a couple of trades and I told myself that I need to learn Marketstructure and trade accordingly if I want to make this work in the long run - and thats what I did…
I started to focus mostly on D1 MS and tried as much as possible to limit my trades to be in sync with it… I guess the problem is, at least in the recent market environment (when everybody seems to be crazy nervous and the slightest of news will get the monkeyhammering started with crazy moves…) the D1 MS might not be that suitable for Intraday trading (I still regard D1 MS very highly for my newly started Swing and Position trading approach)
Also, Since I started to pay alot more detailed attention to PriceAction, I felt the need to drill in some more and have a clear nice view to each candle - so I started to use the M15 chart more often during KZ. I did, for a short time drill down even more to M5 charts… but that just doesnt seem to work for me… As you might guessed, I started to question my trading more and more the longer I made loss after loss, and I am considering to go back up and focus on H1 and not below…
So strangely and Interestingly, the more I focus on Bias and MS, the worse my trading seems to be;)
As I have mentioned in earlier posts, My biggest problem in general is execution, while my analysis often is quite well. I did realize the past 2 weeks or so even my analysis sucks…
Another thing that is good and bad at the same time: I tend to stick to my rule religiously and only trade during LO and NYO Killzones… I regard my LO Killzone as 7-9 + often extend it to 10am GMT, while I keep my NYO to the hour before and after the actual opening in NY. Back in the good old days when I still had some winning trades, I would normally exit the positions at around 3pm GMT. Today I normally get stopped out quickly or wont even find an entry, so I normally turn off the screens at 9 am NY time…
While its a good thing to stick to ones rules, I also noticed more and more often big moves seem to occur at somewhat odd hours…
Anyways. I am amazed how some of you are make a killing, sometimes with stoplosses of less than 10 pips, and I do hope my execution will eventually reach a similar level of accuracy!
I cannot really nail down exactly what I am doing wrong, and if its a technical, a psychological, or an executional issue… All I know is that I need to get over it and eventually start accumulating money on my account.
(I do have the very rare nice win that makes up for many losses…and I sure wouldnt mind another one of those soon… but I need some consistency)
I feel that I have put way too much time and energy in this to give up at this point. But if I cant see some mayor improments in my trading within this year, then I will probably start paying more and more attention to longer term trading off of the Daily chart with stoplosses between 50-200 pips - as this could help resolve my “execution and timing problems” - as mentioned I just recently started looking into that on a demo, but its way too early to draw any conclusions… I just want to do both (ICT and longer term trading) next to each other and then see at the end of the year which one was more profitable… if all fails I might even start looking into commodity futures trading, and hell - maybe even stocks… but I dont see giving up trading that easily unless I really dont have another choice.
I appreciate you guys reading my posts and I always appreciate advice and feedbacks
I’m just started to get to grips with bonds and how they fit into all this. Right now, the 10 year is going up breaking through highs at 132.50ish, USDX is going down, fibre is stuck at around 1.2820.
I’ve taken about 80% off my trade so will leave the rest to see what happens, but am I right in thinking that something is a little fishy with USDX going lower while the 10 year is breaking through yesterdays highs?
everyone short from 1.2830 or what lined up so perfectly. sweet sweet symmetrie. 50% off at 80 pips. and sorry, i don’t want to stomp anyone on their feet, after some of you talking about having some hard time lately but i just need to post this. maybe you can see it as inspiration, to what can be possible (with some luck of course, cant pull that of everyday, but still)
my day:
closed short fiber from late yesterday, from 1.2860 => 50 pips.
long cable 1.5048, 3rd off at +40, another 3rd off at +70, last 3rd stopped out at +65
long fiber 1.2794, out at 1.2820
short fiber 1.2830 => 50% off at 1.2750, will hold the rest until the end of the day with SL at BE.
Pfftttt. I can’t believe I’ve been avoiding looking at bonds all this time because it just seemed like another tool that would confuse me. But you guys (peterma and jonnycab, in particular) made it sound to good to ignore and now I finally see that the 10 year T-note can predict the future!
haha, well, this is the thing, the timing issue peterma mentioned in a previous post. When do we get in? We had an almost instant response this afternoon, but over the course of this week, its been a day behind… as always, caution required! dont just leap in!
As mentioned above - some great opportunities today if you’re inclined to trade these big event risks (I do but only smalls till the dust settles). Bonds led the way as they have all week and a great bounce up on Fibre from 12750 key support after the sell off. Is it now heading back to 12800 for the 10am NY options strike (apparently a big 1bn + options expiry today)?
Plus we had the USDx coming back off the 83.50 key resistance - sometimes makes you wonder why we are all not rolling the the green stuff eh! Only kidding - if only it were that easy.
Thanks for the advice. Do you find that bonds are usually right though? Like if the 10 year is going up but USDX is going down, at some point USDX will get back in sync with bonds? Or can they just be doing their own thing for days or weeks on end?
Obviously I’m not looking for a definitive answer, but just from what you’ve seen while you’ve been using bonds.
Thats true timing will be an issue. However, it definitely helps in determining market structure. For me, the euro was in a MS to imply longs except for the most recent high which didn’t break. That rise in bond (which we saw beforehand) could allow us to prepare for a shift in MS and consider an ideal short, which is what just happened.
Definitely something to add to the arsenal.
Edit: Looks like i’m wrong. Created new lows and highs. Going to watch and see…
crazy fiber. if i had to guess whats going on: major positioning going on for tomorrow nfp. take some blabla talk of bernanke as a reason to smash price down, so it can be bought at a cheap price. now highs taken out. a little bit of a big search and destory day. if you look at the past 7days, fiber has been ranging. 50% equilibrium would be around 1.2815. might return there by the end of the day. maybe not, just speculating and not trading it. out of the day for +6%
Peterma would be the one to ask about this, hes been studying it for a lot longer than I have, but yes, Bonds tend to lead the way, in one way or another. As for duration, if we knew that, we’d all be millionaires (from what I’ve seen a days worth of “lag” isnt uncommon).
I mean, check out the Fiber now, massive rally, look what happened prior to that… Big drop in the 10Yr…
high of the range now taken out as well. lets see if this will be the high of today. also note the bonds not following lower, as fiber was making the new high, indicating afalse rally backing up my view of search adn destroy. i actually opened a micro position with 10 pip sl, 35 pip target at 1.2874. lets bend my luck until it breaks!
lined up so perfectly. sweet sweet symmetrie. 50% off at 80 pips. and sorry, i don’t want to stomp anyone on their feet, after some of you talking about having some hard time lately but i just need to post this. maybe you can see it as inspiration, to what can be possible (with some luck of course, cant pull that of everyday, but still)