Hi Everyone, I just finished Pip school (yeah!) and I’m in the process of experimenting with different strategies. The EMA strategies I’m working with now allow you to theoretically be in a trade all the time (minus consolidation times) and I was wondering if I were in a long position, lets say 5 lots, and I close with a short of 10 lots would I be automatically in a short position of 5 lots? I’m using a practice account now so I’m going to try it Sunday evening when the markets open. Just wanted to know if any has done this before?
I’m sure that I tried it with Oanda a good while ago & I got an error message that I couldn’t open a trade in the opposite direction so I would guess that you’d have to actually close your trade before opening one in the opposite direction. As you said, try it & see.
Congrats on completing the school too!
Edit: Also being in the market all the time isn’t the best thing to try. It’s not something that I use but when trading the cross-over of either SMA’s or EMA’s, lots of systems have other criteria that must be met before a trade is entered eg. Stoch must have both lines moving upwards & RSI must be above 50 (bullish example). This should help filter out some bad trades & is just a suggestion. You’re new to it all so go crazy & experiment, you’ll find what suits you.
Thanks Baz. I understand about not being in a trade all of the time. I like watching the price action and many times you just don’t what’s going on until the breakaway so I stay out trades during those times. I like clean charts so I’m leaning towards a couple of EMAs and then either the MACD or Stochastic (or both) as my confirmations. It feels comfortable anyway and based on everything I’ve seen and read I want to keep it simple. Now I just need to keep practicing with that strategy until I’m more confident and of course profitable.
Again, moving averages isn’t something that I trade but depending on what time frame you are trading (we’ll use 15mins for arguments sake), look at the higher time-frames (4hr or daily) & determined the bias of the market. If it is trading upwards, only trade the cross-over to the up side & ignore the others & vice-versa for a down trend.
Out of curiosity, what time frame are you planning on trading your system on?
Are the MACD & Stoch not both oscillators? They kind of do the same thing so you would only need one on your charts. Personally, I prefer the stochastic but this is your system so only apply one to your chart for a while then exchange it for the other & see which one gives you the best results.
Keeping the charts clean is a good idea, price action is the most important factor & you don’t want to have tiny candles because you have so many indicators applied that it only leaves a small window for the price.
Right now I’m working on two strategies. The first is a 1-4hr TF which I use during the day when I’m at work so I don’t have to check on my positions so often and a 15-30 min TF when I’m home at night. For now anything shorting than 15 min is too crazy for me.
I’m running both oscillators at the same time for now so I can compare them side by side to see which one I like the best. Each one tells a different story though.
I’m finishing up writing out my trading plan and I’ve put together a 3-yr financial plan based on 15 pips a day which, from what I’ve seen and read from the folks here at babypips, is conservative, but I think that’s good for now.
Nothing specific. You seem to be quite clued up: you’re making targets for yourself, you’re making them achievable, you’re thinking things through - its just a case of implementing them all & practising.
Have you signed up to myfxbook at all? I only did it the other day & it’s quite a handy tool for monitoring your performance. You can make it private so no-one but you can see it & it’ll track the number of wins/losses, average pips won/lost, average money figures won/lost, what days & pairs you are most successful on, do you have more success buying or selling etc. It does quite a lot, you can set targets etc & view things in a graph form. It’s worth checking out - its also free.
Well from my understanding of your question suppose you were long 5 lots and short 10 lots which you closed, then you would still be long with 5 lots because that isnt closed yet. Do not hedge if you are new to the forex trading.