Nobody said it was a Nick B line buddy, it’s simply a line that I was watching.
And I already traded the line, actually I traded the head and shoulders too bud!
Later.
You did infer that it was a possible NickB line by putting it in this thread…buddy ;)
Are you trying to say that posts in a specific thread should stick to the subject of that thread and not mislead people?? Preposterous, buddy!!
Just so people interested in nickb’s method don’t get misled.
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It’s only a, “nickB line,” if it’s posted on his blog.
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Some members here who have been using nickB’s method post their scalp lines here, which are not his official scalp lines from the blog. Scalp lines depend on a judgment call. Just because it is or isn’t a nickb line is no guarantee you are going to win the trade. And just because nickb didn’t pick the line first doesn’t mean it isn’t valid.
[B]Use your own brain, read the e-book, the method is very easy to follow.[/B] Nick is only giving out lines as a teaching aid, not as a signal service.
The idea is that you follow him for a while and then you will be able to do it without assistance.
Like Phoenix said, scalp line are a judgment call so there’s not a right or wrong answer, but personally I don’t like this line and didn’t traded it because of the exact reason you mentioned.
OK, so I’ve been making some assumptions in an attempt to come up with some rough numbers:
1 to 3 trades per week = average of 2.
Trading only scalp lines on GBP/JPY with a TP/SL of 50 pips.
70% win rate = approx. 7 wins and 3 losses in 10 trades = 200 pips in 10 trades = average of 20 pips per trade = average of 40 pips per week.
Is this enough to make a living trading? It would seem one would have to trade with pretty big lot sizes.
Pukey,
For me, the answer is yes, eventually. You’re right; you would have to have a sizable margin account. All the same, a single 50 pip trade minus the spread will still be, with my money management rules, 2% of my equity account. Deciding what you consider your desired weekly income to be, adding for income taxes, and dividing that value by .02 will give you an idea of what kind of margin account you would need.
It’s a journey, and I’m only at the beginning myself. But I can see that in several years, it is definately possible to live off of my trading on a single trade per week and even simultaneously continue to slowly grow my margin account once I’m trading large enough positions that 2% of my account equals a sizeable quantity of money.
Cody
Quoting Phil on compounding:
"It’s just the power of compounding. If you compound your winnings into every new trade your money goes up quick.
If you start with $1000 dollars and make just 2% per week your money will grow like this:
After 1 year: $2800
2 years: $7800
3 years: $22000
4 years: $61000
5 years: $172000
6 years: $482000
7 years: $1.3 million"
Depends on you account size…
Assuming 2 trades per week, and assuming a win rate of 67% (it’s easier for me to spreadsheet 1/3 than 70%), if you risked 2% per trade then you would come just short of doubling your account every year.
So if $30,000 is a good living for you then you’d need a $30,000 account. 
Don’t have a $30,000 account?? No problem! Even if you’re flat broke you can still be a successful. If you open a forex account with $10, and add an additional $10 into it per week, you’ll have your $30,000 in a bit over 6 years!!
Thanks guys. You make good sense. Although, it also seems like traders who make >200 pips per week are relatively commonplace around here. I guess I could always trade more pairs.
You also have to take into account the stops of those 200pip/week traders. Is that with at least a 1:1 risk/reward?
Also, you can have a positive pip count and actually have lost money.
A pip is just a unit of distance on your chart, not a measure of success. You need the pip count and the RR ratio to tell how much profit a certain number of pips will actually give you.
I use a 5 pip buffer past the actual scalp line on my pending orders.
I don’t really worry about fakeouts too much, because if you do get caught in one then later when the actual break happens you make your lost money back.
If your scalp line formed on a chart using an average price then I don’t believe you’d need to factor the spread in at all.
Most charts base the price on the bid price, so you have to factor in spread on the long trades but not the shorts because the charts is drawn on the bid and your entering on the bid. If your chart is drawn on the average price and you’re entering on the average price you shouldn’t have to worry about the spread.
I could be wrong about this though. Can anyone else confirm my reasoning??
heres what I think…
if you think you want to make more money (pips) than nick b’s approach offers than simply trade another “system” or whatever at the same time.
Now if you are not sure what to trade than figure it out on demo. I think alot of people following nicks style are price action players, so if this is true maybe try fetor’s way of trading the market, just do this on demo while you are learing.
imagine that 7 years might get cut in half as long as your trading is moving foward and not backwards!!!
if you have a total of 4 trades a week and no matter what the pip range is you are risking 2% per trade than you are looking at 8% a week - 2.5 -3% losers than you are at a solid 5% a week;
5% of a $1000 = $50
20% a month or $200
so month 2 = $1200
20% = $240
month 3 = $1450
20% = $290
month 4 = $1740
20% = $348
month 5= $2088
20% = $416
month 6 = $2504
20% = $500
month 7 = $3004
20% = $600
month 8 = $3600
20% = $720
month 9 = $4320
20% = $864
month 10 = $5184
20% = $1036
month 11 = $6048
20% = $1208
month 12 = $7256
20% = $1450
month 13 = $8706
20% $1740
month 14 = $10 446
20% = $2089
month 15 = $12 535
20% = $2507
month 16 = $15 042
20% = $3008
month 17 m= $18 050
20% = $3610
month 18 = $21 660
20% = $4332
month 19 = $25 992
20% = $5200
month 20 = $31 190
20% = $6238
month 21 = $37 428
20% = $7486
month 22 = $44 914
20% = $8963
mointh 23 = $53 897
20% = $10 779
month 24 = $64 676
…
It’s not really a new scalp line, it’s the old one moved up a pip or two.
A fakeout is not a true break of a line, it’s a bounce that went a few pips over the line, triggered the trade, and then reversed.
If your trade moves up to +5 pips or more and then reverses to your SL then that’s a loss, not a fakeout. And you won’t be getting a 100% with rate with those.
Exactly. It drives me absolutely nuts how virtually everyone only talks of how many pips they made. The only thing meaningful to me is “I made 2R this week” or 2x my risk or whatever. Pips don’t even need to be mentioned in discussing profit, only in the rules of the system itself.
Pips don’t even need to be mentioned in discussing profit
honestly rthis statement is absurd to me. your pip value can be anything so depending on your account size and risk tollerance than you can make a pip be anything at all. so if you were able to earn say 50 pips a week to me that might be $50 but to you it could be $5000. but how do you measure the success of the system by how many pips it earns + success rate. All though I suppose you could say no matter what ill risk 2% to earn 2% and if your system earns only 10 pips than you would adjust your pip value accordingly.
but how would you calculate your risk???
how do you know where to place your stop
how do you know to place your tp
you need pips plain and simple.
Like I said, you use pips in terms of system rules – entries, exits, TP, SL, and from those, position size.
But in terms of talking about how successful a system it is or how well you are doing, R-multiple is the only meaningful measure. As you said, pip value can be anything.
If I get 10 trades with the Nickb method in a month at 70% success, then I can say my profit for the month was 4R (7 wins at 1R minus 3 losses at 1R). That tells you what you need to know about how profitable the system is. If I stuck with 2% per trade, I made 8% that month. If I was more aggressive and risked 5% per trade, I made 20% that month. Whereas someone just saying “I made 60% on my account this month!!!” (i.e., all the scammers and dopes) tells you nothing – they could simply have risked 60% of their account on a single trade and gotten lucky. Saying they made 1R would be far more truthful, far more informative – but much less impressive to those who don’t know any better.
If I tell you I made 1000 pips this month, that is utterly meaningless. If that was a single trade with a 2000 pip stop, then I only made .5R, or 1% if I were risking 2% per trade. If that was ten trades with a 100% success rate and 100 pip TP and 300 pip SL, then I made 3.3R or 6.6% (thus less MONEY than in the Nickb example despite having a 100% success rate and “grabbing way more pips”.)
As phil838 pointed out, it is even possible that ending the month at +1000 pips means you lost money. Say I won four trades at +300 pips a piece (+1200 pips) but had a 450 pip SL for those trades, then lost 3 trades that had 66 pip SLs (-200 pips, for a final total of +1000 for the month). I lost my full risk on all the losers (2% x 3, or -6%). But my winners were only worth 1.33% each, so my total for the month was roughly -.66%R – a loss for the month of -1.33% on my account.
So it looks like 155.0 will be a scalp line? Right? 2 4 hours candles hit it. Now 3 candles are moving up. If another 3 candles move up will it be a valid scalp.
How do you back test for other pairs? I see a few scalp line, but the 4h bar that hits it goes +/- 50. So how do I know if that would have been a profit or a loss?
Is there an automated way to check or do I then have to look at the 1h bars or less to see where it hit?