Let the Winners Run - Trend Hunting

[jony_5_fingers]

Hi everyone, welcome to my journal here.

A Little About Me

I have been trading FOREX on and off for about 13 years now, wow time flies. Believe it or not, I am yet to find a good strategy, and yet to be profitable!

Sounds crazy I know, to be unprofitable for so long, but the truth is, I study and observe the markets far more than I actually trade, and often get distracted with other things in life. Win a little, lose a little, strategy hop.

But man there is just something that fascinates me about FOREX, and it always draws me back in. I feel like I … just gotta know if it can be done

I have watched countless videos, been on courses, used trade signals, studied myfxbook accounts, read thousands upon thousands of forum posts , attended programming courses for coding EA’s … martingales … honestly I have tried what feels like everything.

Except one thing, which is to knuckle down and actually try hard with my own trading.

A Little About Trading

This is all just my opinion, your mileage may vary.

On this journal I will talk about what I have learned about trading.

Here is a list of what I feel are the challenges I have faced up till now, I bet some of you have faced the same challenges, or are facing the same challenges right now whether you know it or not

• Trying to use someone else’s strategy that I didnt understand/agree with, or trust
• Hanging on to losing trades
• Placing too much importance on indicators
• Placing too much importance on entries
• Not trading due to fear of losing/being wrong
• Being lazy
• +others

These are some of the issues I feel have caused my trading problems in the past, and I am sure many of you have experienced them too. New traders reading this may be yet to experience, so read carefully what I will say, and maybe you can save yourself thousands of hours and 13 years

In future posts I will discuss these challenges in more detail, and provide some solutions, leading to a strategy.

My strategy must be logical to me, I need to understand it and trust it in order to trade it. I cant just lift it from someone else, I have to trade what makes sense to me, so that I trust my actions.

We Must Let Winners Run

For me, this is the only way to trade and be profitable in the long run.

I have of course tried the opposite, holding on to losing trades and looking at my balance while ignoring my equity (what a joke ), martingaling, averaging down into losers.

While these strategies can work at times, I believe in the long run they do not, and I will not trade them. At the very least its just difficult psychologically to be in big drawdowns, praying for price to come back.

Its better to use sensible stops and get a good nights sleep

We must lose, and we must lose small

We can never predict the future, and every trade has 5 possible outcomes:

1. Big win
2. Small win
3. Break even
4. Small loss
5. Big loss

By simply using a sensible stop loss, we have eliminated 5. Big loss from our possible outcomes, We are only left with desirable outcomes.

All trading strategies will have losers and losing streaks, therefore it is essential that we never take big losses.

My trade strategy will aim for big winners, with the hope that the small winners and small losers cancel each other out. Lets wait and see.

[jony_5_fingers]

Good Morning

My strategy will seek to identify trends, and try to get on board.

The strategy is not complete, but the basics are to view higher TF charts to identify longer term trends, and then seek to enter those trends via low risk entries.

The DXY is trending upwards, therefore I want to be buying the USD at the moment

The JPY is showing weakness across the board also, with the GBPJPY at multi-year highs

The USDJPY will be my focus today because of the USD strength and general JPY weakness

It looks as though the recent buying has run out of steam a little and we are consolidating, but its early in the week. After such a strong run up a pullback is to be expected at some point, perhaps we will see a drop into recent support, a bearish fakeout before another push for the highs?

Alternatively, we may break out again above last weeks high, at which point I will look to buy a pullback into support.

A more bearish scenario could see us sell off significantly down towards the 200MA, at which point I will again, be looking for a buy, should the 200MA hold.

If we sell off below the 200MA, and start making lower lows, I will stop looking for buys, and consider a trend reversal.

Above is my analysis and basis of my trading plan. The USDJPY is uptrending, I want to buy it.

The next step will be to watch what happens and look for a low risk buy, I may find one, I may not. I may trade this live, I may not. I will watch what happens.

It is at this point a person might ask “well, what is your buy trigger? what indicator will you use”.

Mostly I like to look for candle patterns at important points of the chart, a pin bar at a round number, an engulfing bar, an inside bar after a sell off. Things like this. Anything that will give me a low risk entry is fine. I want to emphasise that this is not the important part of the trade, the important part is my analysis, that I want to buy the USDJPY, and join the trend.

The answer is really whatever you like to use. RSI, trendline, S+R, its all fine. These are just tools to aid your entry, to take the gamble on your analysis. I believe strongly that the obsession with indicators and entry are what holds many traders, including myself, back.

You can waste a very long time searching for the perfect indicator or combination of ideas that will predict the future greater than 50% of the time. But you will waste your time, no such indicator exists, and no such system exists.

[jony_5_fingers]

Good Morning

Yesterday’s trade idea worked out OK, it did indeed push down for a fake before heading to new highs.

I did not take the trade as I was out, and it did not push down quite as far as I was looking for anyway.

I often find there is a fake move before the real move, so its best to not always follow the price swings too closely, I try to build a picture in my mind of what the currencies might do, and imagine where the fakes might be.

Today

I do not see many trades as many currencies are at a bit of a turning point, and there is some indecision in the market. The only thing really running is the Aussie, and straight into the 75 BRN above, so I dont want to chase that.

The EURUSD has been on a bit of an upwards move recently, correction or reversal I am not sure yet, but its still bearish to me.

I am going to watch the hourly price action on the EURUSD, and if we start to get some indecision candles, or bearish candles, I will look for a sell opportunity.

The recent bearish move in the EURUSD has not shown up in the EURCAD, which looks even more bearish to me. The price action is grinding upwards forming a channel, but I see no buying here. And a possible short should the channel/trendline break.

In summary, I am going to observe the EURUSD price action, but maybe take the short on the EURCAD, if there is one.

[jony_5_fingers]

Good morning

Yesterday

I took the trade short on the EURCAD, as the price was turning around on the EURUSD, at the same time it popped below the trendline. My stop was at the 87, and it came back to 88 to take me out

In hindsight the price action here is pretty erratic.

I dont really like to trade crosses like this, but if my analysis tells me this is the trade, then I have to follow it.

Today

Nothing has changed since yesterday, Aussie and Cad remain strong, despite their pullback

AUDJPY is now above its 200 month MA, 200 week MA, 200 day MA …

I am going to see if we get a sell off into this area, then look for a long AUDJPY

I am still bearish EURCAD despite being stopped out, I will look for a short if it gets back to where I sold yesterday (its marked on the first chart above as fakeout?)

[jony_5_fingers]

Good morning

Yesterday

I didnt take any trades.

The AUDJPY did sell off into the 200 month MA area, as predicted by my crystal ball.

Today

The double bottom looks suspicious to me, obviously there are stops under there, so I am reluctant to enter yet. If it had come down to my white line, I might have taken it (at the 80).

I would expect one more fake out below the double bottom before we head upwards again.

Commodity prices are still rising after all, inflation is here, so I will expect AUD and CAD to rise further.

Similar story on the AUDUSD, a further drop to fill the hourly gap? then a push back upwards.

I dont like personification of the market for trading ideas, but I cant help notice that these gaps do often get filled.

Lastly the USDJPY to complete this setup idea, it too has a gap at 112.50. But this is 150 pips below, so we would need a much larger sell off to get near this one.

I will look to trade the AUDUSD or the AUDJPY long, if we get a further push down.

Its friday so we might be in for a slow day, maybe this idea will have to wait until Monday to play out.

[fyon26]

14 years ,profitable here ,i wish you best of luck buddy