Shroomheads Scalping Log

Beginner Questions
41

More fantastic results Desmond, I’m pleased this strategy is progressing so well. Next week I’ll make sure I’m awake before GMT open (which is 4 hours ahead of you, so 12AM as you said) and I’ll see if I can come up with the same results as you. :smiley:

5.4% in half an hour, simply increddible.

I would also like to know how much sucess others are having trading like this, has anyone else been trying this out?

edit:
By the way I’ve uploaded an edited version of the GRab Candles indicator to work with a 20pt SMA rather than 34pt EMA, which is a more standardly used MA for measuring a trend. If you want to try it out: 20SMA Grab Candles.zip (3.41 KB) :slight_smile:

42

Much appreciated, downloaded it! Though I’m scared to mess with something that seems to be working…

…on the other hand, might simply waiting for a solid trend be the magic here? Not all my bright, indicatory goodness with lots of lines and colors? Food for thought; it seems to be the common wisdom that clean charts are the thing. I won’t trade in anything less than really good conditions; perhaps that is the key. Though it’s the lines and colors that help me identify that. Without them, for me it’s like having a car speedometer with no marks on it. Useful… sort of.

Almost any strategy might work if the chart is going the right way… perhaps it might be worth trying a few other strategies during really good trends to see how much is strategy and how much is trend. One thought that has occurred to me is simply ‘get in early with a scalper’s small stop, but then stay in until things might be turning sour.’ That’s as far as the thought developed, unfortunately.

In the short term, if this is working I’m going to stick with what seems to be working fairly closely; I’m afraid to change it much. I want a ridiculously huge amount of data to show that it’s actually trading skill, not luck ~ or even vice versa, so I’m not simply fooling myself. What is really helpful, and what is just ritual? I don’t know. Though, I may experiment with a few less pins stuck in the Ben Bernanke doll just prior to trading next time.

43

Yea its definatly about scalping with a strong trend/movement. You could probably spot them with your eye, but I wouldn’t say “I’ll use clean charts just because everyone else does”. If an MA helps then stick with it.

I don’t know if trying to hold trades all the way is a good idea when sclaping, in my opinion you are better off locking in pips and the re-entering after a little pull back to grab a few more. You’re keeping your risk small and locking in pips all the way down. By holding on you add in the complication of deciding when the movement is over or if its just retracing before going to continue down.

I think you are right to want to stick with what’s working and waiting to see if it continues to work longer term. Bring on Monday. :smiley:

(Sent from my x10)

44

Yo Desmond, great job Bud, and Im even more estatic to see you started the demo with less then 4 zeros’.

Thats how you do it…

I perfer to start with like $10, because thats actually my allowance of funds,LOL…

Why is this important to me? Well, its really allllllllllll about money management in the end. When you have little firepower, and grow that by leaps and bounds, then we’re talking, right?

To me, the most important aspect of trading, is digging out that little hole, with your little spoon, and eventually, turning it intoa bulldozer.

I trade Oanda also, But I also started with $3.00, CHA-CHING,lol.

25 lots per trade, ( around 25% of allowable lots ) Do this consistantly, and adjust after you have " secured" 25%.

So, if i have 100 units available, each trade is 25 units. If Im wrong on my first shot, I will add another trade, and another, but never more then 3,
because that will leave me 25% to let run, because I was REALLLY wrong. Which, to be honest, is bad trading, and bad practices to get into, but it works for me, till I lose focus, and the SHTF…

So, when I get to 125 availble units, I then take 125 divided by 4, and adjust my units per trade. So now, Im trading with 31 units per trade, till I " secure another 31 units.

Then, 38, 48, and so on. I made 30% this Friday doing this system…

Actually, I start every day with $3.00, then bank to get back to $3.00 for the next day.

You dont practice driving in a Lambo, do you?!

This works great, and its high risk, but not really when your entry and exit is on point. Consistantcy reduces risk, anyway you look at it.

Besides, if its risky to begin with, why even trade the signal?!

Shroom, sorry for the Thread Jack, just wanted to throw this Money Management thing out there for anyone reading…

45

Yeah Shroom, Scalping is scalping. 2-4 pips should be goal per trade. The object is to Stick and move, thats my theory anyways.
I want to lock in pips, as soon as possible.

I tryed Long term, or short term trading, 20-50 pip range, and it just dont work for me…

But I also look at it like this, The biggest thing with Forex is, UNPREDICATIBILITY.

La la la, your trading, you have 15 pips in the bank, you look away to catcha glimps of Swuak on the street, then look back at the screen, only to be in the red by 10 pips.

Scalping makes sense, as long as you have an idea of the trend, of where it begins, and where it has potenctial to end.

Find the trend, the TRU Trend… Then trade with it, every time the inside bar appears,

RVI is a very good indicator to get a general idea of when the Inside could be near…

Just my 2 Dinars, Great Profits to ya, and keep rockin it

46

Thanks MNVRS for the heads up on money management, I think that is really the last piece of the puzzle I need to get sorted. I appologise for the lack of updates but I’ve been tweaking my technique hard this past week and a bit, but I’m very very close to finalising everything. I should have a full plan written up sometime this week most likey, in preparation for live trading very very soon. So I’ll share the .pdf with anyone who cares to read it.

Exciting times ahead :smiley:

47

Indeed I would be very interested in reading your pdf, once you are ready! No rush of course.

I have tried both strategies, yours Shroomhead and also MoneyNVRSleeps, in fact MoneyNVRSleeps has just an incredible success rate ~ in spite of duplicating his indicators and following the plan my trading psychology does not seem to work well with it. Just taking one or two pips, so hard to do! laughs…

Fair’s fair though, I am not all 5 and 15%'s per night, this is still a highly experimental time for me. Last night was 1.6% and another night, 3%. And some other nights, well, you see I am not yet in “building the account” mode I am in “what works?” mode. Meaning that I have tried to see just how lousy a trend is tradeable (answer: really depends on volatility + stuff I don’t understand yet) ~ I’ve tried trading other currencies, I’ve tried watching AUD to see if it clues into what EUR is doing (sort of?) and all that kind of thing.

Real trading is solidly into 2012 for me; there’s no way I’m embarking upon that mission without really practising up first. Of course penny trades on maybe a 100 dollar account will be necessary to see if it all holds up with live order timing.

Keep it up guys! I’m watching with extreme interest.

48

I just had to post the easiest 50 pips I’ve ever made. I’d been eyeing DR1 and the 5 day high all day long and finally took my trade when it got there (thank you MT4 alerts.)

Now back to typing up my rules!

edit:

Try comparing EUR/JPY to EUR/USD to trade movements in the euro :wink:

49

Hey guys. Sorry for the absence of posts (if anyone was following), I’ve been tweaking and testing my method a bit in preparation for some live trading (I’ve decided on only 10p a pip for now, still need to work on that consistency). I’ve done away with all the additional crap I cluttered up my charts with and I’ve gone back to what was working for me so well a few weeks ago. I’m going to post up as many live trades as I can and a weekly account summary to see how I’m doing, so if peeps want to give me some feedback I would much appreaciate it.

I’m also going to post the trading rules up here, mostly for myself but also so that I/we can analyse my trades to stop where I’m not sticking to the plan or making any mistakes.

First off, the general money management rules:
Starting Balance: £100
Spread: 1.5 pips
Risk: At most 1% of my account per trade
Profit target: 2:1
Trading Times: 6am to 11am GMT
Currency Pairs: EUR/USD only (for now)
Stop Loss: Placed at the swing high or low

B.E is locked in once 1:1 is reached
Stop trading after two loosing trades in a row on any single day
Stop trading once my target of 6% gain is reached in any single day (3x 2:1 winning trades)


And of course the trading method:

CCI “hooks” only
Time frame: M1 chart
50SMA used to identify the trend
20 pt, 2nd Dev BBands are used to identify likley profit targets
Trades are taken with the trend only

If the MA is showing no strong bias look to the CCI trend indicator combined with high lows / lower highs to find a bias. Keep an eye on the BBand 20SMA, if it is also flat then just stay out!

To confirm a “hook” the CCI 6 must close within the +/- 50 range, the CCI must have hooked down within the +/- 100 range (the closer to 0 or oversold/brought the better but this depends on the strength of the trend and pullback).

Candles do not have to close if the entry candles follows a doji, hammer or inside bar, or if it creates an englufing candle.

Profits are taken on wicks formed near BBands (candles do not have to close).
Early exits occur only if the price stalls and falls back very quickly (for example big wicks followed by a big green candle)

NOTE TO SELF: If you’re not sure, stay out. There are plenty of oppertunities everyday, you only need to take a few.

Trending Example:

Ranging Example:

Those are with hindsight, live testing proably yield poorer results but you get the idea. I only need 3 winners in 5 hours to reach my daily target, that should be easy lol. The account goes live next Wednesday but I’ve typed this up in advance as I’m very busy the next few days. Wish me luck :smiley:

50

Best of luck with it!

I’m still staying with fairly strong trends, for which I ‘calibrated’ my charts… fixed scale, and if the chart isn’t trending about 1 pip per minute on average and going strong on a 34 EMA, I stay out. Nothing special about the EMA, just sort of a ‘how cold is the water’ sort of thing. I’m also finding myself trading in the London Open as it seems to strongly trend fairly ‘reliably’ then… and if not, I go do something else like try to figure out why I’m a complete disaster at swing trading… laughs

Even at 10p a pip that is very brave, once I get going it’s going to be penny~a~pip until I am comfortable with lag, slippage, spread issues, stupid chart glitch issues and all the rest. The ‘dumb technical stuff’ can really do damage at high leverage…

Which reminds me, what sort of leverage are you using? My Uncle Sam says I can use 50:1 at most… plenty enough for my skill level at the moment but I know someone who trades successfully, consistently and profitably scalping at 500:1 and has done so quietly for years.

51

It’s 100:1 (I have a 1% margin), let me calculate this with a quick example just to double check:
I know from experience that my margin requirement is £13.76 (rounded) if I bet 10p a pip (a mini lot with my broker) when the EUR/USD is trading at 1.37580.

If I trade a mini lot (0.1) I would be purchasing £13,758 if I was unleveraged. Leveraged at 100:1 would leave my putting down only £13.578 as a margin with the broker fronting the rest.

So yes, 100:1 lol.

52

Des, Shroom, Im by far not a Pro, but collectivly thru the recent past, many say 50:1 should be the leverage you should use.

Dont be afraid… If you are placing your trades in high probability areas, the fear should be gone.

53

I’m fine with 100:1, honestly I wouldn’t notice a difference if my leverage was 50:1 or 200:1. The only difference would be the number of trades I could have open (free margin), 50:1 would only let me have open half as many trades as 100:1 where as 200:1 would let me open double the number of trades for the same margin. But since I’m not having more than 1 trade open at any one time so it doesn’t matter. :slight_smile:

The main thing with spread betting is the bet per pip, 10p a pip with typically a 5 pip stop loss is 50p max risk, only a 0.5% risk on my £100 account. Combine that with £13 margin requirement per trade I’m at no risk of getting a margin call or blowing my account in a hurry.

By the way I hope you guys were up scalping this morning, there was a gold mine of trading chances using CCI (or any other trend following technique). I was sleeping off my aches and pains from the other night so I missed it all, (Rise Against put on one hell of a show on Monday, I’m still sore lol).

As a side note, I know I said I’d be posting my trades but honestly I don’t think I can be bothered lol. Very few people read this thread or probably want to critique my trading style anyway so I’d be just wasting my time. The bottom line is whether my account grows or shrinks and I might post up my progress every once in a while but that’s it. Anyone interesting in learning this technique can always skype me (see my profile) for tips, I’m happy to help.

It’s time to focus on the pips, see ya’ll around.

54

I was up! Things got really good about 1am my time but by then I was really sleepy… made nearly 5% last night (my time), even before the monster got rolling. Would have been more than that, but flubbed a few trades on stupid mistakes.

Currently it has been quite enjoyable… I’m in ‘preparing to go live’ testing phase now, and definitely see trading working out at this stage. It’s been good day after day for a long time now, and doesn’t feel like work. My trading is often mixed with something else; if the CCI cross alert is on, I hardly even need to look at it for ten minutes at a time and am reading the news or something. And the zero line crosses themselves are generally so slow that there’s plenty of time to get a good read on them before taking a trade or not. I miss an occasional setup, but… so what.

Another thing that seems to help, is the deltastock feed on MT4 instead of oanda’s for analysis… it’s delayed ever so slightly it seems, maybe a fraction of a second behind but that’s close enough. Most importantly it doesn’t ‘gap’ or freeze like the oanda feed does, which could be a local thing, I don’t really know.

It’s funny, I never expected consistency and solid trading to come out of fast trading like this. One minute charts, just the basics, and a good view of momentum, it’s been enough. Someday I’ll learn to trade slow, but so far the rapid feedback from being able to trade anywhere from maybe two to twenty legitimate trade setups a night has really helped the learning experience. Nothing quite like chart time, and lots of it!

Keep up the good stuff!

55

Hmmm you know there might be something to using the CCI with Fibs & Pivots. The fibs are drawn from the big Asian session bull run last night.


It’s certainly usefull to have price levels to plan trades at, rather than being totally reactionary all the time. I’ll have to do a little more research I think. :smiley:

As for my live account update; it’s sitting on £99.17 currently (down 83p from £100 startup). The problem is definatley my disciplin, for example I made about 7% the other day and then lost it by overtrading. Also I’m not taking all the trades I see (still second guessing myself) and I’ve taken one or two trades outside of my system which I lost and will not be doing again.

This is taking a bloody long time to get consistent at! :56:

edit: Don’t you just love it when you are testing something out and it works perfectly. Such an easy 8pip scalp, so that’s the account back to BE pretty much, £99.97.

56

Hey Shroomhead, just found this thread.

Looks interesting, I’m starting to get involved more into scalping techniques, I would interested in talking about your system if you’re up to it. Perhaps share scalping ideas.

You can contact me via Skype, just PM me if you want.

Regards,
Clark

57

I think these fibs might have to become a part of the strategy, although this could just be luck I guess.

Unfortunatley I wasn’t up early enough to catch the first two moves on my chart, but I woke up and drew the fib just in time to take the last hook and the oversold DR1 bounce for 10pips each. In fact I’m quite proud of my last trade, so confident was I in DR1 and the possible hook forming on M3 that I placed a buy order 1 pip above DR1, SL 5 pips below, TP 11.5pips above (10pip profit minus spread). I went to make a cup of tea and came back to find myself within a pip or two of my TP :smiley:

Good luck for the rest of the day y’all.

58

Hey Shroom,

I just found your thread today after watching an old Sam Seiden video from 2008 on fx street about CCI. This indicator is a gem and I can’t believe that more traders don’t use it (or at least talk about it… Or maybe they want to keep it a secret haha). I have been trading a demo account for the last few months and have been using PA and S/D strategies and I haven’t been able to profit consistently (and I have been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why). Looking back at historical price charts at the cci I see the consistency that it provides and am so stoked! Anyways I look forward to more posts and happy pippin!

P.s. I hope to post some of my successful trades using this strategy as well!

59

Nice to see another CCI trader, we are quite a rare group on this forum. :stuck_out_tongue: A word of warning though, the CCI looks great (like most indicators) with hindsight. Reading a setup in real time is more difficult and you should definatly get familiar with an easy setup trading with the trend (like the zero line rejection I use) to understand uow the CCI plots and reacts to price.

Sam Seiden suggests using CCI in quite an easy way, look for oversold/overbrought levels and trade only with the trend. An easy and profitable technique, providing you have patients.

Personally I find those trades to be the most profitable, but also relativley rare. The zero line rejection with the turbo CCI going overbrought/oversold is very common and still offers a good risk/reward.

Im starting to see that the CCI is a great tool if used with additional confirmation to filter out some bad trades. Going with the trend is rule 1 for most setups; pivots, fibs and S/R are good important if you want to look for confirmation or reversals.

If this thread gains a couple more readers I might post up some trades again and perhaps some broader trading ideas than just the ZLR.

60

Good stuff Shroom, CCi is great, I too use it, along with stoch and RVI, Those are my main varibles…

Im sure you have found that CCi can be over-rated during certain times of the day, which we shouldnt be trading in anyways…

So whats the balance lookin like these days Shroom?