and over and above just about everything,
I will trade only through WOS Wide Open Spaces
Monday Morning!
Not inspiring, although I have opened one small trade
Cross of MACD and ADX.
Looks like it might be returning to upper trendline
but price has breached Daily Pivot which usually signifies direction
for the day, but better, has retested Pivot level and resumed the
upward direction from that level.
All this well below bands, have targeted Distal Band in the R2 region.
If price decides to breach Daily Pivot to the downside I will consider
set up null and void
I am not overly excited by this trade, but its the best I can see on H4
and Iâm not desperately looking at other TFs.
Gold looked promising on H4, a perfect AutoFib to Bands trade. Clearly
price always returns to Bands
Not in this case I doubt
Look at Daily and Weekly charts, you would have to be very shortsighted,
or obsessed with your system, to not notice the Strong Bullish bias on
the higher time frames. My guess is that trading an H4 reversal here
would be suicidal
Finally, I almost took this trade, actually I did take it and closed for a small
profit.
Too bleary eyed to notice the prior double bottom, now likely to turn to
double resistance.
Its possible that price might move through that level to hit the bands
but we can hardly say we have WOS here, this is a classic case of
total absence of WOS!
Whenever we have a great set up but no WOS, we have an opportunity
to take a punt, or gamble. it might pay off, sometimes does, but pure
gambling nonetheless
Have placed Buy PO on USDJPY
Pretty self explantory.
has hovered above Pivot all day
Impulsive up move retraced down 61.8
then tarried up at 50.0
now hovering just above 38.2
has been respecting trendline
If PO triggered it should hit R2
1 Like
One Winner so far today
Opened some good trades.
One mistake, GBPNZD, It will very likely keep moving down from trendline
and hit the Bands. thats not even relevant
After opening the position I looked left and noticed the 22 bars of congestion.
that is a serious level of congestion that is likely to re offend
I quickly closed the position for a 7 pip loss.
Perhaps looking left before might be the smarter thing to do!
That said, my results for february have been very good. unlike
last September with my âlegendaryâ 100% win rate, ( if you donât
have a stop loss you can theoretically never lose )
I now have a very realistic 50% win rate and my Stops were
only hit twice in 17 trades. excluding one trailing stop which closed
in profit.
but there were many trades I evidently pulled out of for a small
loss, average around 10 pips or so
high win rate is not desireable, many pros have a win rate below
50% but a very high RR
I hope I am on the right track, I seem to be settling in to H4 ok
trades will no longer be dragging on for four months. I donât
need that.
the major advantage of not having a stop is that TP will usually
be hit eventually,
the downside is that Lot size must be very small, trades can really
drag on, and on Majors especially. you can fall foul of stop hunting
At the moment I have a stop for safety, which permits a reasonable
Position size, but I usually close manually if the trade doesnât appear
to be working out.
If I find Iâm getting a problem with stop hunting, I may review the situation.
One important factor from my previous success with the bands is
trendlines. I had forgotten about them
If there is a break of trendline, and WOS to the bands, there is usually
money to be made
Just about all the money I have lost has been self sabotage, not due
to a faulty strategy.
I seem to be far more balanced in my trading these days.
The pain of 35% DD is a marvellous teacher
I did very well to climb my way out of that, but its not an experience
I want to have again.
Keep Lot size manageable, and you are not fazed by the odd loser, or even
a run of losers, should that happen.
WOS is everything!
In the screenshot below, no sane trader would try to break through that
upper level of congestion, it stands out as a danger zone
but by failing to look left, you miss exactly the same thing lurking below,
you sometimes get a feeling you will be lucky, and you might be, like
horse racing punters sometimes win on a lucky hunch
but the odds are always stacked against the gambler, we need everything
on our side
Although TP was easily hit on USDJPY above, I lost due to SL hit,
pure and simple.
In the two potential set ups forming below, likewise what do I do?
In both cases price is far from bands and should return to them.
I have isolated the prime WOS that I will be targetting
but look at the indicator windows - they are obviously pointing
in direction price has been moving ie away from bands. by the
time they suss that price has reversed, it will probably be too
late to enter
there may be a conflict here
using Bands as a gauge, a tool, is very helpful, price should
return to them, especially when accompanied by reversal
candlestick pattern.
and in such situation, price should certainly move through WOS
if I can get indicator confirmation, this is probably as good as its
going to get.
To use stops or not is a thorny issue, of course its far better
not to use stops providing Lots size is extremely small
it does build up with a high win rate its true
my main bugbear was trades dragging on for moths, and without a stop
that did happen on D1
but H4 may be far more workable
Its just getting the right psychological balance
I donât like losers!
I donât like trades dragging!
I like to see my account growing steadily, not a few cents a month
I may not be able to have it all
I went Long the EURGBP
It was far below Bands and price always reverts to Bands!
How do I know? because I devised a system that says so.
Has the system been profitable?
No, its caused nothing but stress and DD
nevertheless I saw the Harmonic pattern so I was in like a shot.
I closed for 68 pip loss because I increasingly believed I had
chosen the wrong direction.
So what made me decide to go short when I was already way below Bands?
Everything!
Currency Strength for one, break of key Support and break of Fractal - the
list goes on and on
Whether its Bands, Divergence, or Harmonic Patterns ( which has now
conveniently disappeared ) you can get too blinkered
if everything is screaming out âShort!â, it may be worth hesitating before
going Long
That said, if my new position does now return to Bands for an even bigger
loss I will be somewhat demoralised to say the least
It is possible, as it could still respect that solid Support level.
This is a tough game
I thought EURGBP was returning up to Bands from a key level
but it moved down instead, I jumped out for -68 pip loss
Then I saw price was clearly moving down so I went short
Almost immediately price started moving up to Bands
I got the feeling I was never going to win
but the truth is, quite likely, both assessments were correct,
price does go up and down mostly.
So, looking at H4, D1 and W1 bearish trend strength is over 80% on
each TF
On H4 price has bounced down off 200SMA . crossed down over 50EMA,
then retested and bounced down off that key level
It has also totally broken key prior support level
So the EU is down against the Pound overall, but price does nonetheless
return to Bands, in this case up.
So I believe my original trade was correct, price will at least hit Proximal
Band at around 50% Fib, before continuing its overriding Bearish descent.
So I am short with an extra Sell PO at break of next Fractal, two short
positions with TP at next major key level.
In the meantime, either now or at some point soon, price will likely return
up to Bands before resuming the prevailing downtrend
This seems to me to be the most likely scenario, so I have put my money where my mouth is.
and most importantly, just accept I could be wrong, a victim of Brexit madness
and numerous other unknown Fundamental factors that I wouldnât even
understand even if they were known.
If I make such analysis regularly, I should have an edge and come out ahead,
but I am definitely going to lose trades along the way.
I need to detach from certainty and read up some Mark Douglas.
Panic Sets In!
Looking at the trade above, I called it perfectly right. Price went
up exactly to that key level of prior Support turned Resistance,
then went down, exactly according to plan.
But leave a trade over the weekend, and how often there is
mischief afoot!
The trade has gone horribly against me, on a Live account, Iâm
losing a lot of money!!
Price has reversed to the Upside! It was 84% Trend Strength down
on Friday, now its 91.6% Trend Strength to the upside!!!
Iâm finished!!
In a state of absolute panic I need to reverse my position, close
the trade and go Long!
Thats what I always do, thats what most traders do when they
panic
The adage is true, âcut your losses short and let your winners runâ
but that isnât the same as continually reversing your positions
everytime you panic
The solution, first and foremost is to stop panicking
So lets look at this âtragicâ trade, just how bad is it?
Looking at the red shaded areas we can see how dire the situation
is - we see a Double Bottom and the price has duly reversed against me,
and we see the ominous Trend Strength confirming just how âwrongâ
the trade was. - and I was so sure this pair was bearish on H4 D1 and W1!
So now I have lost all confidence in my trading analysis
This is what usually happens in these situations. I just despair that I
will ever be consistently profitable, that charts will only ever be
psychologists ink blots to me, and I only ever read imaginary
patterns that donât exist in reality
Sometimes it seems like that.
but after I calmed down, I didnât close the trade
and I made another calm analysis of the current situation
What we see from this screenshot is that price was respecting the 200 SMA
on the way up, and seems to be respecting it on the way down
so all is by no means lost
and what about the current price action?
Firstly we note a very nice cross down over CCI, and just as promising
is that we have what looks like an Bearish Engulfing Pattern forming
Of course, if all this was happening at the 200 SMA level that would
be even more encouraging, but the present moment, it looks like
price is not planning to breach that highly significant MA
Maybe it will, but in the meantime I see no reason to panic, in fact,
panic is the very thing that blinds you to what might be really happening
Unfortunately this trade has dragged on for 12 days now, far longer than
most. but still far short of the 4 month touch I was getting trading the Dailies
In fact you can work it out - if 4 months is possible on D1, then 21 days must
be proportionally possible on H4
and I can probably cope with that, and it is preferable to dropping to H1.
If we do get a convincing close above 200SMA, that is surely the time
to âcut losing trades shortâ, but at the moment, there is nothing to suggest
that this is a losing trade
In trading, a clear head is the prime thing, when panic sets in, there
is nothing that can save you, you will be acting in blind desperation
Again, Isnât this why is it so easy to double your demo account, but so hard
to avoid DD on your Live account?
21 days on H4 eventually became 24 days, but still
better than 4 months on daily
the trade went completely against me
I previously said that only a close above 200 SMA
would cause me to âcut losing trades shortâ
I didnât do that
as rrram2 reminds us, that adage is BS
Iâd forgotten
There are two provisos to never closing a 'losingâ
trade
-
You are able to read the charts sufficiently well to see
the overall trend on the higher time frames -
Most importantly, you trade with very small Lot sizes
that enable you to add on, where others are getting stopped
out
Invariably things do work out, but it can take much longer
than you would like
A stop loss does ensure the trade doesnât drag on
No stop loss gives the trade all the freedom and time that
it needs before going your way
This is not what I want but it is the reality of the situation
Unfortunately I like big winnings and small or no losers
A mature trader readily accepts the impossibilty of that
mentality
risk is always in some proportion to reward
For me, I still need to develop patience
If I go in small with no stop, profits will be small
and delayed
but they will build up over time, if I am patient
With my current trade I went 400.00+ DD but now
am about to close around 300.00 up. it took 24 days
I donât desperately need to improve my trading skills,
that isnât really the problem
its everything else thatâs the problem
even this trade was starting to get stressful with
the DD
All the while the DD is stressing me, scared money
will always lose
This is probably the most profound truth I need to
focus on
I have dug up my old prosperity consciousness self
hypnosis tapes, brilliant, using different metaphor
stories in each ear very powerful!
not specifically Forex related but that may not matter
I need to change my emotions toward money and
prosperity at the deepest level. If I succeed in that
I believe success in forex will be attainable
if I donât, there is no system or fancy indicator that
will save me
a new week with three trades
and I hope the very big difference isâŚ
I really donât care what happens
I donât have that much to lose
If I win it will slowly help to build my account
What system and indicators am I using? that is so secondary
Iâm not even going to discuss it, although screenshots should
be self explanatory
The first two trades do actually have a tight stop and may reverse
on me but thats ok because I have a 1:4 RR and I can easily cope
with any number of minor losses eg around 20.00loss in my local
currency profit around 80.00
I wouldnât be adding on in the event of reversal because the higher trend
does not support such a decision
the third trade is gold and has no stop because the trend is up right
up to the weekly
if it reverses I will add on rather than close the trade
So cutting âlosingâ trades short is BS if the higher trend is with you,
because being in DD in itself does not in itself mean you are in a
losing trade
but if higher trend is against you it would not be wise to stubbornly
kick against the goads
Ultimately you can trade any system, with trend or counter trend
and make money on both, but trading reversals is fine, but if it
resumes the overall trend instead of hitting your TPâŚ
there is no basis for assuming your target must be hit
This may be stating the obvious, but some of us are very
slow learners:)
and finally Gold with trend
If you really want to enjoy trading, and likely be
profitable eventually
Iâm thinking, you need to trade very small with the higher trend with no stops
and even if it goes a long way against you, you add on when it does eventually
decide to resume the higher trend
I got a little reminder of this yesterday. my two counter trend trades
were stopped almost immediately.
They were both 1:4 RR so Iâm not saying they were bad trades, but if
you have a stop this is always very likely to happen, and if you
donât have a stop it will likely continue against you for a very long time
if you are opposing the trend
so Iâm thinking now about the wisdom of trading only in the direction
of the higher trend, mainly because I find it far less stressful, in fact not
stressful at all
my with trend gold trade retraced almost immediately. I was totally unfazed
and today, it looks like it might now be resuming the higher trend
Also today, I opened a with trend position on GBPCAD with won very
quickly.
I have removed EURGBP from my market watch as there is so much
upheaval with Brexit, you just donât know what might happen
Back to Bands!
How could I resist this one!
On AUDNZD a great spike way above bands just like
so many previous trades ⌠with one big difference!
Yes, the trend is down all the way to Monthly TF
so call me a wishful thinker, but I donât see the price
going against the higher TF for too long
it should revert to Bands, and whether Bands shift or not,
I will close manually at Proximal Band
but supposing it goes back up instead? I hope it does!
rrram2 gets that completely, I will just add on modestly
for extra gain.
Finally, some winners are emerging
Am I doing something right?
I had a whole spate of consecutive winners in the past
The only time this happens is when I donât use a stop
So how did I manage to break my flow of winners
previously?
Self Sabotage and Greed!
I just couldnât keep positions really small, and when things
went wrong I would trade the reversal with massive
position sizes, resulting in 35% DD finally.
Stops are designed to keep traders losing, rrrm2 was right
about that, despite his banned status
but if you donât ever use stops you should only record winners
but lot sizes must be so small that price can do more or less
whatever it wants before hitting target
systems and indicators are not very important
At the moment if a pair is bearish from H4 to Monthly it should
be able to move down through WOS for a modest 50 pips
sometimes it reverses a lot before it does that, but eventually
it should come down.
Without very small lot sizes trading is too stressful
The account will build up, it just takes patience.
a patient trader without a system will win whereas an
impatient trader will lose regardless of his system
I believe I proved that last October conclusively
with my sc of consecutive winners ⌠before I became
greedy and impatient
1 Like
Two Points worth notingâŚ
( otherwise why am I keeping a journal?)
and btw some 21K views? assuming each viewer
wasted just a couple of minutes on a post, just how much
time has been spent reading this thread?
42k minutes is 700 hours! Unfortunately 21k views from
someone as consistent as me is very impressive, might
even give the implication I have some clue what I am
doing.
I donât really have any clue what Iâm doing at all. Some
points may be valid, other points are more theoretical,
and a work in progress. If it gets anyone thinking in a
different way thatâs great. If you completely disagree
youâre probably wise
That said, two things Iâve just noted that should be painfully
obvious
My AUDNZD is now doing very well. it started off as a big spike
on H4 way above Bands, and as we all know price âalways
returns to Bandsâ
Who actually says that price always returns to Bands/ apart from me?
In hindsight it always looks like that, but that can be very misleading
as Bands can shift to meet price
Case in point ⌠AUDNZD never did return to Bands!
It just kept moving up, so I closed for a very small loss and reversed
on D1 for, so far 10x the amount I lost.
am I pleased about that trading decision? extremely.
Even though it completely contradicts my last post. yes, its possible
that AUDNZD may eventually drop but I could see it was
currently moving up. I was completely wrong in taking my
short trade, but completely right in quickly taking remedial action
This leads into the second point
and this is so obvious its embarrassing, in fact its something
Iâve always known but have largely chosen to ignore
There are effectively only three indicators
Now anyone who has read this thread might be thinking,
âDonât you mean 3,000 essential indicators?â
Ok, I have flitted around the indicator circuit somewhat.
I actually enjoy doing that, but it hasnât been profitable
frankly.
Because lining up 10 indicators that all agree isnât
necessarily confluence
The three basic indicators can be summed up in the
acronym MTV
Momentum, Trend and Volatility.
Divergence is a derivative that is identified using one
of the above indicators such as MACD.
So in other words, lining up MACD, RSI, Stochastic,
CCI et al, and noting the decisive cross on each
should hardly come as a big surprise as three of
those indicators were totally superfluous.
At the moment I am trialing Bollinger Bands, RSI,
ADX and OBV and have retained the Bands.
There is still likely some repetition
Bollingers are solid for both Trend and Volatility
RSI for Momentum
ADX also for trend
OBV is Volume based, and whilst similar to RSI
it might be useful where RSI isnât actually crossing
but I wouldnât be too dogmatic about that
The Bands I suppose also indicate trend and may
well be completely superfluous, if they are helpful
I would say when price is reversing from outer BB
and is far away from Bands, that might reinforce
the idea that price is returning to Bands
Again, I wouldnât get too fixated on that.
What I have retained from my last post, is try to
keep it small, and not use Stops.
Instead I use price level alerts and close manually if
everything seems to be telling me things are not
going my way.
I still like my % Trend Strength indicator, even if
duplicated by the above
When you see the strength rise above 90% it
is a very sure sign a reversal is due, especially
when the above indicators agree.
and what is fantastic about RSI
is when it is horizontal, completely flat, like all but
two of my pairs are todayâŚ
there is no point trying to read something into the market
that isnât there!
it means the market is flat, so pass until it picks up
This makes monitoring the market very quick and simple,
you really only need to check the RSI, if flat you really
donât need to check the price chart, price isnât going
anywhere.
Just to pick up on a point made above about OBV
Looking at the screenshot below, it is very unclear why I entered
when I did.
The obvious place to enter would be the candle identified by
the vertical line
price has powered past the central Bollinger backed up by
both cross of ADX and a nice incline on OBV
Now, without OBV and relying entirely on RSI, should
theoretically be all thatâs needed, and usually is, but here
there is no decisive cross of RSI, but the OBV does give
a far more compelling reading, confluent with ADX
Looks like I called the exit about right, it didnât go much higher,
I thought it might continue to climb up outer BB, but we had
reached a significant level.
The principle of MTV indicators is solid
the principle of WOS is solid
The principle of Stop Loss Entrapment is solid
I also have a 100% winning reversal system
mentioned in this thread
Simply, look for Divergence and Missed Weekly pivots
and enter at break of trendline. Without a Stop
it has 75% success rate, BUT, even then, you haven;t
lost, just close the trade after 400 pips DD and re enter
at the next valid set up for 10x the original Lot size
Obviously the first trade Lot size must be microscopic,
and most the money is made on the second recoup trade,
which might only be risking 1% or 2%
I like the system and I did trade it for a few months
with no losers
but I donât like the Lot sizing
I also donât like stops
I think there may be a way to keep close to the
original system, without the clutter of superfluous
indicators
I donât particularly want to wait months for the 400 pip DD
to be hit
Iâve already established that isnât my style of trading
but still go in quite small for the 75% winners
for the losing 25% close manually at my discretion
Re enter at new set up or even re enter original set up
if still valid
My latest template is quite pretty, and if Iâve made
any progress lately, its not confusing matters with
a plethora of totally superfluous indicators
1 Like
btw, I have been persevering with my prosperity consciousness
hypnosis tapes. The last time I used them was around 2003
and I went from minimum wage driver to highly paid legal
professional within months - no exaggeration
It will be very interesting to see how it affects me this time
round
Previously, I succeeded with incredible self confidence,
boosted self esteem, which clients picked up on. they
in turn had trust and confidence in me.
I didnât actually have much technical knowledge, but
that wasnât especially necessary as it was all largely pro forma
A million miles from Forex trading?
On the surface yes
but I was in business, Forex is just a business like
any other, and success in Forex and any business
is at least 80% Psychology
so I am expecting more focus and clarity of vision
That process may already have started
Any idea how one can get a soft copy? I like stuff like that⌠I Always have some Dark piano music playing in the background when I trade.
I genuinely still have the original Wealth, Money and Prosperity
program on cassette tape, Also Weight Loss that I never used
but still need to, and if WM&P program works as well this
time as it did last time I will move on to weight loss next.
Some easily torrent all 13 of his programs by searching
Lloyd Glauberman
but any problems I can let you have a free âDemoâ version on
MP3 which curiously is identical to the full program.
1 Like