OK, I think one of Murphys Laws should read; The market will always go your way as soon as it hits your stop. Looking back on my trades, I think 90% of them would have been a successful trade had I placed my stop right. Im literally missing the placement by 2 or 3 pips. Example from last night. @ 2200 hrs I sold GBP/USD @1.5612. Placed the stop at 1.5630, which was well above the new resistance line to give me a buffer for any fast spikes. 1.5587 was my Limit. I was going to bed and I wanted to make sure it could hit it, I would have placed it further down if I could monitor it. So, at 0100hrs and 0200hrs the two wicks for the 60M chart on each stick topped at 1.5633, right before it plummeted to 1.5576 before going into a range. 3 pips… Ive been trying to place the stop above the line of resistance or line of support, giving me a buffer too. Should I start placing it all the way back at the previous high or low? This is starting to annoy me a little. I think I have a good idea on how to read the charts, but my stop placement is losing me the money.
make wider stops, smaller lots.
or
deeper entry farther away from the action.
or even better- figure out the likely areas where price will go to in order to weed out people like you (hint: research the topic of stophunting to see where the sharks hide) GL 
The main problem is your stops are too tight, the last swing high was at 1.5655 that was your
stop loss level. Which if your entry was 1.5612 gave you a 33 pip stop loss.
At 1:1 you would then be targeting 1.5579.
On my chart I have a the daily pivot at 1.5635, which knowing that the "London squeeze"
would occur is not a great stop loss.
As jwlee7ucla stated maybe “deeper entry farther away from the action.”
I do not know your strategy. If this keep happenning several times then you entry is wrong… be patience and place your new entry just above where your SL is now…
Just enter the trade where you SL would be…what am I missing here? lol
I´d been there too, but the advice that I, in my humble opinion, will give is: trust your system. If you backtested, and it works in the past, is likely to work now. Despite those discouraging losses, that will occur to everybody in this business from time to time.
That´s the advice that I get while posting a silimar problem here, with a bad streak that I was suffering, and it works!!
Regards
hmmm I will have to look into buying stocks of a company that deals prozac. got a feeling there stocks are going to go up lol
The underlying problem is you just don’t have a decent strategy.
DOH
Seriously, probably the problem…
Also, the last 2-3 weeks, the stop hunts have been digging as deep as 60-80 pips,
If your trading properly, stops are there just for power outages,
Take for instance, the emergency brake in your car, last resort
Not being funny, but my trading went to crap as soon as I started ti imply Stops
Might be better to tell us your strategy so we can give you more productive advice bro.
If tweeked it a little. Like a previous post said im havent been patient with my entrances. I get worried im going to miss the boat and jump in over my head. Ive changed thigs around a little and uts going better. Im still up 156 pips this month and my trades are currently at a 70%win. Thanks. Maybe now i can cut some of these losses as the losing trades ive had were due to stops being too close and entrances too late. Im trading purely fundamentals and price action. No indicators. Im happy with that win percentage and profit so far. Systems fine just need to refine it and get it polished.
Sorry for the spelling. Posting from my phone and these touch screens annoy me
jalexan4, low timeframes are dangerous place because everything’s wild there. Ranging happens, buth the amplitude is high, trending happens, but acceleration is killing. And the feelings and reactions are slower than the chart.
Right now you may thing that the price always returns, but the price sometimes returns in a few minutes and sometimes you can wait for days and months… and no return happens.
I think you need to move to higher timeframe. 100,200, 300 pips are actually easier there, but you also need to control some emotions longer… and that’s not easy.
No i actually trade the daily using 60m for entries. I was just using that timeframe to illustrate what happened at what time. I dont trade anything under 60m. My attempt at scalping when i first started ended that.
Daydreamer65, could you describe what you mean by the “London Squeeze”?
Thanks,
Clark
From what I know by the term London Squeeze, is what usually happens near to, if not during London Open.
Correct me if I am wrong, although I assume it is when the institutional players who do move the market drive price higher or lower than usual expected by the usual retail clients in order to take out there stops, this then enables the volume to be released for the institutional players. They want to fill there positions at the best possible price, so by taking out stops means that the required volume is now available to them, and they then take their positions. Placing a stop too tight can result in it being taken out by this, recently common, phenomenon.
This is also an asymmetry of NYO etc…
Hi,
Well for what it’s worth this is what I use (an implementation of it anyway):
Technical Trading Systems at TechTraderCentral - A Logical Method of Stop Placement
Depending on my ‘mood’ and system being used I’ll do the following (with Swing Trades anyway):
1 - Add the spread to the high of the signal (stop) bar for a long stop.
2 - Use ATR(7) (we want it to react quickly to the current market volatility).
3 - Use ether 13% or 21% of ATR(7) to determine my stop price (added to the high or subtracted from the low).
4 - I do not subtract the spread from the low of the signal (stop) for a short stop.
Try it. No guarantees but it works for me with my Swing Index System anyway.
Why 13% or 21% of ATR(7)??? Only because they’re Fib Numbers and 10% of ATR(X) is too common a place to place stops.
These are commonly known as ‘volatility based stops’. But read the article. It may help. At least I hope it does.
Unfortunately on the shorter timeframes (my minimum is the 1-hour) those long stop orders can APPEAR REAL far away from price but don’t be fooled i.e. it’s only because of chart scaling is all.
Funny you should mention Prozac!!! LOL!!! This is the only business I know of where its a necessity to have Prozac, headache powders, coffee or energy drinks, Valium (for when the markets are about to close), and eye drops on your desk!!! LOL!!!
Regards,
Dale.
Thanks Jezzcode beat me to it.
FOREX TRADING: August 10, 2009 London Consolidation and S/R Squeeze Breaks - YouTube
Also take a look at the video.