I know this is wildly off topic, but: I’m looking forward so much to this movie I lack the words to describe it.
The man who gave us Terminator, Terminator 2, Titanic, The Abyss, Aliens etc has wanted to make this movie for years but computers and technology weren’t powerful enough. Until now.
Here’s a weekly view of the EURUSD. Notice the beautiful two bar reversal at a swing high, shying away from the major 1.50 PPZ. That’s short for: great setup (that I missed):
Do you think there was any LITS money to be made?
How many entries are represented by those red arrows?
Answer: 10
Dreamy math again:
0.3% x 10 = 3% total risk (2.7% loss before it starts running)
Take profit, let’s say we just got 200 out of the 300 pips:
0.1% per pip x 200 = 20%
20% - 2.7% = 17.3% account growth from this setup.
Feasible?, doable?, realistic? You decide. I know what my opinion is.
Just ordered Martin Pring on Price Patterns, won’t get it before Christmas so it’ll have to be a New Year’s gift from me to me. 
Found this link over at the J16 thread. Haven’t watched all of it myself yet, but it seems well worth the time, so I will:
https://admin.na5.acrobat.com/_a51591369/p77721057/
Almost Christmas and market behavior to go with it.
I watched the Martin Pring video tonight and I’m looking forward to getting his book!
I’m spending the week at the hospital as a part of a course I’m taking, so there’s no access to Internet whatsoever during the day. I have to say I’m glad I chose dentistry and not medicine. The surgery part is nice, but the rest I can do without.
Anyway, I’m looking at ways to place orders for setups I can’t babysit LITS style. I’m looking at some pretty aggressive methods that will allow for a better risk/reward ratio, one of the few concepts that the J16 people could benefit from discussing a bit more.
Hey been following your blog on and off over the past year or so (as has my trading) - glad I’m not the only one being a bit of a system/technique tourist trying to juggle scalping with channels (haven’t used mp’s LRC method but started off doing something similar), J16’s IB/OB and pin bars, NickB & Phil’s S/R basic candlestick & trendlines, longer term horizontal S/R stuff with tess & co’s material, london breakouts/retraces etc. Also spent almost every weekday for a good month or so cramming whatever trading books I could get my hands on at Borders derisively lurking in a well-concealed seat without actually buying them between uni semesters. Not to mention inadvertantly ‘testing’ each of the methods with a live account as they came (i.e. mulling myself into a false sense of confidence thinking I could apply each method having just read it as a completely working system before deviating completely after 1 or 2 losses and resorting to equity-destructive breakout/retrace revenge scalping. Then there’s the risk averse cooldown period, missing entries that are actually viable, then the desperately impatient/frustrated scalping, then finding a new system/method to complete the current one rinse and repeat).
Anyway the reason I mentioned all that was to point out that despite all that random scavenging for course-work so to speak I rarely ever encountered books or material that engaged in fundamental macroeconomics, initially because I didn’t want to but eventually because there simply didn’t seem to be much on it in the first place in the books & guides I’d read (& I had no idea it was called macroeconomics so I was at a loss of where to start). Eventually I got lucky with one book and by the time I got the fundamental side of things relatively intact (somewhat late given that I’d started lighting up the bank account 10 months earlier) I noticed I was getting alot more kick out of my trades by actually coming to terms with the factors involved and understanding the main drivers to determine a bias as Tess and co. mentioned every now and then but that I had kinda skipped over (watching - and occassionally losing trades the correlation with commodities/futures was about as far as I got).
Think I’ve gotten a bit carried away with this post, a part of me probably took “My Trading Log” out of context 
To get to the point I coincidentally haven’t noticed alot of fundamental material on your blog, so I thought I’d suggest looking into that side of things to increase the edge with your trading system - assuming you haven’t already done that of course
Aha I guess I was more honing in on the whole time factor - it’s been a year or so and we’re still on the prowl
At the moment I’m more comfortable than I’ve been for a while scalping between technical levels (past s/r zones with more weight on daily/weekly open high low fib & whole number bounces etc) in the direction of sentiment based on scheduled news release forecasts (and impact of recent releases), equity futures & commodities (with the occasional news punt using a 1k lot for kicks) although trading opportunities are few and far between since I won’t feel too comfortable about it unless everything seems to line up (e.g. everything trading above the open but not too far & mostly bullish with a forecasted positive news sentiment for the pair for long). So it’s pretty much an Alternative Technical Templates sort of play, at least my interpretation of it. As of yet I still have difficulty sticking to it due to the signal specificity required, I’ve had days of profits wiped out in one impatient scalping brawl after a loss due to a <A grade setup. So I’m still on the look out for a more adaptable method and one that is effective in direction for longer than 10-20 pips lol. Been playing around with that london retrace method in the free trading systems section (uses 15 min divergence with stoch/macd to find a reversal following the breakout) but I’m still a little hesitant to trust technical indicators.
Totally agree fundamentals are an artsy kind of call since they’re rarely too specific about price level and they do have the potential to completely mess things up if you’re reading things upside down (same thing with technical indicators) but in general I’ve found that they tend to help cut a clearer picture with bias, knowing what direction the trend is going to play out particularly with nearby new events (given that technical trend lines can leave way too much room for error). Then again if you back-date news events historic reactions & sentiment to/toward certain ones they can prove to be fairly reliable based on the deviation between actual forecast and previous results, resultant pip move following the event and thus whether it was priced in prior and how early before. It’s a bit of a touch and go of course, sometimes there just isn’t any uniform movement or something else is going on. But usually it gives an idea of what to expect, how long you’d expect the 50 pip rise to stick around and whether its the type to cause a long term effect or not and whether you’d expect chunks of profit taking in between etc.
Anyway apart from the tiny Fundamental Trading sections in random books (can’t remember them sorry) Kathy Lien’s Day Trading and Swing Trading the Currency Market really dedicated a lot to pair economic characteristics and essentially the basics of macroeconomic interactions particularly between central bank policy, reports and investor/speculator reaction. Learning to understand market dynamics down to news event (cause) and sentiment (effect) really did it for me. Not to mention being able to actually read an economic article without getting lost in jargon and unfamiliar concepts (okay so I only really came to terms with things like the significance of interest rate differentials, risk aversion & appetite a few months ago :o)
You could say its more helpful for the news trader than anything but to a certain extent price action is going to be primarily moved by reactions to ‘events’ from news reports to equity future/commodity cycles etc.
You could also say it’s only helpful to someone that is completely clueless about economics, having never touched a subject vaguely related to it even back in secondary school I’d agree completely
Yes, been there, done that. Most likely almost all traders have been through that stage. Most disappear somewhere inside that jungle never to be heard from again. Others with more stamina and stubbornness find their way out into the light.
I finally found my happy place with the J16 material as my foundation, tweaking it to fit me. That, along with the right mentality, is working out for me.
I’m still testing new stuff and having a look at things that seem interesting but I’m finding nowadays that most or actually almost all of it pales when compared to the simplest forms of technical trading such as chart patterns, S/R and reversal formations.
One thing I’ve learned is that being a fundamental trader is probably a great thing, but it’s an all or nothing subject. Lacking the time and the “inside” resources I’ve chosen to heed the J16 people’s advice: ignore it completely - a chart is a chart is a chart - never mind what the constant chatter and flow of news says. The actual collective psychology, the result of the news/chatter/etc, of the traders is there for all to see, in the bars or candles.
It seems to work for me, much better actually than when I did try to figure out what the market was going to do based on this or that piece of fundy data.
Being a technical trader means that we’re watching what the other traders’ are doing and reacting to that. That’s a pretty easy way of doing things, sort of like that lazy guy in school who never did a thing in any group projects, but got the same grade as the rest of the group anyway.
I was always the opposite guy in school, doing all the work… I’m trying to unlearn that in trading. 
hi.
where do you get the james16 information? everybody talks about it but i can find his treath in the forum
Well, here on BP there’s this thread: 301 Moved Permanently
The original thread however is here: james16 Chart Thread @ Forex Factory
ok thanks.
and can you tell me what is a pin bar??
i don´t thing i´ve understand what is in the treath. so a pin bar is like a candlestick pattern?? a engulfing or a shotting star??
so pin bars are shoting stars or hamers… in candle patterns. short body big shadow. thanks the mistery was solve:D
can you tell me in which TF do you use it most and you find this more reliable??
During early stages of the game I would have never thought it’d take close to a year to get even just the footwork right, somewhat glad to see its not abnormal lol
I finally found my happy place with the J16 material as my foundation, tweaking it to fit me. That, along with the right mentality, is working out for me.
I’m still testing new stuff and having a look at things that seem interesting but I’m finding nowadays that most or actually almost all of it pales when compared to the simplest forms of technical trading such as chart patterns, S/R and reversal formations.One thing I’ve learned is that being a fundamental trader is probably a great thing, but it’s an all or nothing subject. Lacking the time and the “inside” resources I’ve chosen to heed the J16 people’s advice: ignore it completely - a chart is a chart is a chart - never mind what the constant chatter and flow of news says. The actual collective psychology, the result of the news/chatter/etc, of the traders is there for all to see, in the bars or candles.
It seems to work for me, much better actually than when I did try to figure out what the market was going to do based on this or that piece of fundy data.
Being a technical trader means that we’re watching what the other traders’ are doing and reacting to that. That’s a pretty easy way of doing things, sort of like that lazy guy in school who never did a thing in any group projects, but got the same grade as the rest of the group anyway.
I was always the opposite guy in school, doing all the work… I’m trying to unlearn that in trading.
Definitely finding that I miss a whole lot of moves being too hestitant/tentative to enter until I can be sure about what the actual drivers before realising that the moves all play out in the price action anyway, I guess somewhere in between would work the best. My experience with J16 seemed to produce a rather low efficiency but that’s probably because I never really spent enough time learning more than just the pin/ob/ib anatomy and trading bare of them alone, might try to learn a bit more about it if it works that well for you
I listened to about 35 minutes of Martin Prings price action seminar.I can see he is more of a barman than candlestick maker. Interesting I am more of a trend trader or breakout trader reading you and Matts approach your more of a pivot , retracement,countertrend traders based on pins looking at reversals.I know that is a over simplfication of your trading process but i know now who is on the otherside of the trade.:pI would think there would be a low percentage, but a very good risk/reward ratio when it happens. I really dont look at your blog to see your strategy but more to see how you and Matt are doing and from what i read you both are starting to turn the corner,which is good news for the New Year!!!
I see what you are saying,let me ask you would the end of the pin be the definite stoploss for you and would you wait for the close of the candle for your entry or one or two candles later for confirmation.Also would the steepness of the trend lead to more of a confirmation of the pin?The reason i asked about steepness is i look at one method for simple average crossovers and notice when it is a steep crossover like 90 to 180 degress(straight up) on multiple candles the move consolidates on me but a more subtle crossover less than 45 degree as more of a steady trend.I would think the opposite would be true with a pin placement.The more dramatic the better?
Ah so much for taking the easy way out, I vaguely remember skimming the whole business of sl/tp positioning based on body/wick but never really took the exact distances seriously and just gave up to use it as a kicker to line up with the signals - in practice have you found them to be reliable in gauging target and lee-way distances at all?
Thanks saved me digging up that thousand page long thread on ff lol, although I remember an easy to read pdf hanging around somewhere…
What would your choice of action be on the 1015 GMT+0 15 min bearish reversal pin bar/shooting star near the 1.6338 fib level? I took that trade with reduced-lot 1.5 pip trail stop just to test it out (because you can do alot with +17 cents), however given the bullish momentum from those incredible Claimont Unemployment Change Figures I didn’t feel too comfortable about it - that and the fact that it was green with no confirmation at the time of course
hi mattew.
the 4h candles are different for differnt time zones. do you look for those pin bars in differen brokers or there´s one that is more reliable than the others?
I have it already as an e-book and I’m planning on reading it when time allows.
I’ve read the new posts on the thread today and I’m officially deputizing you - you’ve answered those posts brilliantly!
Consider yourself vice MacGyver now