I’m finding the exact same thing. All the good price action occurs while I’m either asleep or at work. Last week for example, on the GBPUSD there were a few trade signals that I could have played, but I was asleep :(.
With that retracement trading plan, you’re most likely going to fall victim to a lot of continuation patterns, with very few actually being substantial retraces.
Last night on the euro was a prime example. A drop followed by a flag followed by a drop, and over again. Looking for retracements on nights like that are dicey trades in the best of times.
Leaving a trade open with stop loss intact at the original point will beat you up.
If your trades initially get you a few pips in profit, take them. Immediately.
Do it by automatically moving up your stop lost upon a move into positive territory.
Moving your stop loss up to spread + 1 pip will slow down the hemorrhaging, at least until you can identify continuation patterns better than you do now.
Getting 1 pip is better than getting drained losing stop loss after stop loss right?
Look at where price is, and how far it has moved. You’ll get a better clue as to when the right time is to jump in rather than hoping it’s finally at the bottom.
Don’t rue the ones that stop you out at +1, and then take off like a rocket. It’s never a bad trade if you’re out with a profit, no matter how small, and every once in a while, you’ll get one that runs, and never looks back
Study price action concerning flags, and pennants, and pay attention to the daily range of the pair you are trading. You’ll see things a bit clearer.
Cheers!
If you are sick of losing money stop scalping for peanuts.
You have to beat the spread every trade, so if you are scalping, which you are, the spread stacks odds against you making profit. That compounds on every trade, because you are scalping.
To make lots of money scalping and do it consistly, over years, you’d have to be Godlyke at scalping, be up on the news and its effects at all times and want to work your ass off at trading… and you could still make more money long term trading with less effort.
If you scalp and do an average of 10 trades a day with a 4 pip spread, that’s a 40 pips already stacked against you as a loss you have to beat to even break even.
I’ve been down the same road as you. I’ve tried scalping and 15m, 1H, 4H strategies. IMO, TA on anything less than daily just does not hold up well enough to be consistently profitable.
I know scalping and or trading short term time frames is enticing, when you look at the charts it makes it look like you are leaving behind pips you could have if you could catch the moves consistently in the right direction. Guess what, you can’t. My guess is almost no one can, that’s why we have all these people on boards like these complaining about losses and wondering how to make real money in forex.
Well, IMO, IME, the real money is made with longer term trading from the daily charts and up.
Since sticking with daily and up and trend trading when a trend is available I have been consistently profitable.
I recommend this book: forex patterns and probabilities, by ED Ponsi. Pay particular attention to the chapter, “Fed Ex trend technique,” it will teach you how to identify a trend, filter it, enter it and set stops, and trails stops. The results being potentially huge winners that far outstrip the small losers.
(Thats is the real trick to trading, to trade in way where your winners are consistently much much larger than your losers)
I also filter trend direction with ichi moku.
although scalping somes with larger cost/spread to pay, it can be done very profitable, though might not be for everyone.
but to say it cant, IME i have to differ 
today EURUSD is a good example.
while my friend try to position trade it, and kind a get stucked from 1.3130, i did a few rounds of scalping, with slightly larger lots…and am flat now, with around 6% gains for the day! ( for examle, not for bragging).
however i am looking to take a swing trade from this point on the long side…
i think trading doesnt have to be balck or white. it is colourful.
the point isnt the timeframe you trade. the point that you learn what you need to, and do it right.
Yes, EU is a a good example. As a trend trader you could be up over a 1000 pips on that pair now instead of scalping peanuts off it.
Sure scalping can be done, but it’s harder than longer term trading, and is probably the #1 type of trading that wrecks new traders accounts. Why would you want to work harder and take more risk for less profit?
I have to ask how long have you actually been trading live? I’m not a pro, but have been live for a few years now. I’m giveing out advice from experience that has taken me to the point of being able to make a living off of trading. Are you just defending scalping because a few wins you are excited about?
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I am seeing your point Phoenix. I’m trying to at least be on the 4 hour, but it’s not looking so good. Maybe it’s just my perspective.
I stayed up last night as long as I could waiting for the tiniest confirmation to enter short on the EURUSD, but nothing rock solid even though it seemed very reasonable to do so. Morning comes and the move has already taken place. I don’t want my trading to be a bunch of missed opportunities.
I also scanned many pairs last night looking for my entry signals over a period of a couple of weeks, and I saw very few that met any kind of rules I have. Although, I guess I should relax a bit since most of my trades yesterday didn’t follow a single rule.
Seems like very little opportunity when when you remove the 15M chart. I couldn’t imagine trading off of daily and weekly. I’d be lucky to enter one or two trades a year.
I will be optimistic though. No trades is better than my day yesterday.
So you’re a programmer…cool. Just some thoughts…Have you programmed your system to run on your platform? I found when I programmed a promising manual system and backtested it, the EA found a lot of entries I didn’t see at first. Also I could get a lot of statistics from the results…stats that if you knew them could either increase your confidence in the system so that you could manage the trade without so much hoping and fearing, or tell you it was crap and save you from wasting your time & money.
I had thought about using those EAs to trade for me …then I wouldn’t miss the opportunities, and it would be less emotional. But unfortunatley I didn’t know the language of my platform when I went live so that was that. However, I am now with a live MT4 broker, so I could, but now I don’t think I could code it anymore with what I’m working on now …lol…figures!; )
I think I see part of your problem, you are trying to enter as you see momentum and catch moves right as they happen. Price moves and zigs and zags, so even a 50 pip move doesn’t really mean much as far as the overall trend and strenght of it…this is the real problem with scalping the whip of any pair is going to kill you and almost always hit your SL if i’ts 50 pips and under… at least IME.
It can be done, but again, thats working very hard at trading. And as you’ve found you have to be glued to the screen to catch it as it happens.
If you want to trade S&R and momentum check out nickb’s method. I dont care for it, but it’s kind of like what you described. He, draws historically strong S&R on the 4H and when it is broke by x pips he enters with a 50 pip stop, I believe.
A better way, [U]which is decribed in the book in more detail[/U], to catch a potential move is to set up a stop order above or below potential movment.
Say you think price is going to go down/short because of a continuation pattern. ( Price previously was trending down, then maybe a flag formed sideways) Don’t just jump in as you see price moving. Wait for price to move up/long past your entry, then put in a pending/stop order below price and the continuation pattern (flag).
What this does is if price keeps moving up you never enter and know the pattern didn’t mean much. If price breaks down, the trade enters and you dont have to endure much drawdown for the moment.
I really urge you to get the book I recommended I believe it will help you a lot.
You really are working to hard at trading. You are smart enough, and it isn’t that you dont have some special knowledge or indicator. I’ve done exactly what you are describing, I can tell you scalping and trying to make money with small TP’s and SL, IE scalping is your whole problem.
Let me give you an example of how I trade. My trades routinely lose 50-100 pips or win 100 - x1000 pips. Yes, you read that right, several thousand pips. When I winning trade keeps going for a month or more I’m up a few thousand pips on one pair with one entry. I do it with very little stress and very little work. I enter and check my trades once a day and move the stop. Sure I look at the charts but when i’m around but I dont agonize over the trades and second guess it.
Anyway:
I use the trend technique from the book most of the time, I like trading trending pairs because of the huge profit potential.
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I look at the pairs I like at the start of the daily candle, which is 6-7 in the evening in my time zone.
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I filter the daily trend with 200,50,20 10 moving averages. If all the averages are lined up and price has been above/below the 10 average for 10 candles or more that indicates a possible strong trend. **** see the P.S.
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I dont enter until price has retraced back to the 10 moving average or if I see a continuation pattern. Once it retraces back to the 10 I enter.
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The stop is 50% the atr away from the 10 moving average.
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The TP? There is no TP, you either close the trade when you’ve feel you have enough profit or you move the SL 50% the atr of the current closing candle every day. This can result in huge wins.
IME, you’ll kick yourself if you just close when in profit because if you just trailed every day, in a month you could be up 1000 pips. Also, there will be losses, and the huge wins dwarf the losses.
As you can see I didn’t look for instant big moves, that maybe happened at 2 AM or 11PM. I just found a way to indentify the trend and found a decent entry and trailed the stop at the close of every day. I dont have to worry about momentum or noise driving me crazy.
Lets just assume that what you are doing is profitable. Lets compare how you trade to how I trade.
You are in front of the screen all the time watching price like a hawk and trying to catch moves at all hours, and trying to guess when it will happen and how much it will happen.
I only really have to look at my screens once a day, decide to enter or not, and if I’m already entered move my stop once for that day. Even if both made the same profit, which one would you rather do? Which one sounds like it has a larger margin of human error?
P.S. the best thing I got from this book was to look for a, “tendancy in the market.” What a tendancy for something to happen tells you (on the daily charts) is where the big money is entering and taking profit. If you line up those MA’s, on most pairs you’ll see a tendancy to bounce off and return to the 10 MA, (or another one depending on how volatile and choppy the market is)
P.P.S. Even on daily pairs there are plenty of opportunities for good entries. No, you dont get them every day. But, more trades doesn’t = more profit, it’s actually the opposite. That is why you watch more than one pair. I only watch 4 pairs right now and usually get a good entry out of at least one of them once a week.
hi phoenix
just a short answer, as it is a bit offtopic, being personal the question
i am trading forex about 1.5 yrs now, live of course, and has more experience with stocks before.
i dont just defend scalping, indeed, i mentioned that i incorporate position trading often when the price and indicators permit, maybe you skipped that line. ie. in EURUSD right now i holding a long trade, finally the set up permits for me accourding to my rules. but no, i wont hold it for 200 pips for sure.
for the other part: i am profitable enough to make a living from trading, though currently i have a job for that.
Hi Phoenix,
Thanks for your thoughtful post. I wanted to thank you, but I had to walk away from it all for a bit.
You mention a book, but you don’t mention the book. What’s the book?
I didn’t really like Nick’s method either, but I do take with me some of what he mentions.
I have been watching daily pairs, and find it ok. In the evening, like you mentioned, I check all the pairs. If something looks good, I’ll make a note for the morning. The only problem I have now, is I’m not a morning person, so I’ve missed out on a lot of easy ones. Actually all the easy ones, because I’m late to the gate. I always hope it will still be ok when I get home from work, but by then it’s gone. So I don’t know what’s worse. Hangin on the edge or bumbling along.
If I’m ever going to do this, I’ll have to quit my day job. There is no such thing as doing this part time. It’s impossible on any time frame.
I trade for a few years and I actually found myself in the same situation (just like everybody, sooner or later). I did all the stuff, from lines up,down, left, right sideways…, I tried one system (holy grail) then another…, I did MN W D H charts with and without all of the additional above…, and got nowhere.
I heard people telling 1000pips in one week and all that good stuff and so I started thinking.
- 1000pips is 200pips a day.
- are they just bragging or is it real (still don’t know, but unimportant since bragging or not, it won’t help me).
- How are charts created.
- How would I like to trade.
So I came to a few conclusions. Charts are created from the tick and the least compressed chart is M1.
I want to expose my money as short as possible.
I want the least amount of “clutter” on my charts.
So my conclusion is M1 and 2 BB’s and that’s it.
Now I am trading for 30mins to 3Hrs a day and make pips every day.
What is the secret? No secret I found “my style”, it clicked with me.
I think this is the secret, you have to find your [B]“style of trading”[/B] and you can trade any chart you want.
Learn/read as much as you want, it will not help. You have to find your way of trading, a process that can’t be taught.
Happy Trading
Hello [B]edacsac[/B].
You will probably remember me - I remember you struggling along a few years ago.
I thought you had long disappeared.
But I am wrong - you are still here.
And that is your first step to winning, in fact you have won already by sticking it out for such long time and never saying die.
[B]I have seen no one else on this forum with your extreme power of persistance.[/B] 
And it is this very persistence of yours that is going to give you the final breakthro…then you will be on the way to collecting pips on a regular basis.
I congratulate you.
Soldier on.
If you wish to join us to get [U]support like no other[/U] then do three things…
- Go to my thread…
http://forums.babypips.com/newbie-island/32400-finest-trend-trading.html
- Go to our powerful chat room - we have traders of over 20 years experience leading the newbies!!..
Bollinger Band DNA - FOREX Trading using the Tymen Bollinger Band Strategy
- Login to our whiteboard for [U]live instruction…[/U]
People from all over the planet are listening to this [U]spoken live instruction[/U]!!
Your trading questions are answered immediately thro audio (spoken word).
The hyperlink to the whiteboard is easily found as you enter the chatroom.
Persistence and some more persistence and then after you’ve run out, you need to regroup and have some more persistence, or is it? I’d say it’s more perspective, I know I keep going on about it, but in this country it takes 3 years and around £30k I believe to get a degree so you can have the chance to get work in a high pressured job.
I think what you need is something that does what it says on the tin 301 Moved Permanently
And even then its… but read the thread, there are successful traders trading this kind of approach before I even considered starting the thread!!!
If you want to learn to read the markets, clearly see the price movements and its direction and even predict price movement, check MP6140’s thread here and over some other forums. You can’t get better that this, believe me.
It’s called ‘‘MP: Some of my non-secret secrets’’
Do not let the “lure of big pips” get you. Do not over trade. Do not over leverage. Only trade one pair. Only trade one method. Do the 10 trade experiment and only trade 0.1 minilot. You must execute according to your entry/exit rules for 10 trades in a row. See how many trades you have won. See what your profit/loss is. If you lost money, check to see the reason(s) why you lost. If you made money, use 0.2 minilots. Repeat the experiment.
If you can consistently make 2 or more net pips per trade, you can do fine. Keep you stop loss at 10 pips max. After you enter the trade, if the price stops moving after going in your direction for 2 or more pips, exit. In the ONE TRADE A DAY thread, you can see how trading at the 00 lines gives you chances to hit a reasonable daily pip goal.
Where is MP6140?
Yeah… or not…
talk about optimism…
After trading for over 2 years, I pretty much came to this conclusion. I felt like I knew what I was doing, but didn’t have the physical/emotional energy to tackle it after a day at work (or sometimes before). I noticed that when I took some time off, I got the trading results I felt I was capable of.
It started to make sense. If this market is competitive (and my god is it ever), then how can I expect to take money from people doing this full-time? Maybe I can pull myself together a few days, but by wed/thur I’m starting to wear down, battling markets and a job I don’t particularly like.
So I’m ditching the job and going at the markets with what I managed to save up in that time. It’s a gamble but if it’s the answer to my inconsistency then I have to at least try it out. Lucky for me my living expenses are rather modest, so I shouldn’t have too much trouble covering that.
and I’m trading 5 min charts. I watch the longer TFs for setups, but 5min chart for the triggers. Ideally I enter on the 5min and let it run on a move occurring in the 1H+. I used to trade the higher TF’s because of my job, but I realized I’m more geared for the fast pace when it comes right down to it.
do be warned with those 5min charts however, overtrading will kill you. My Oanda spreads are pretty good, but still, taking crap trades to fill the time will stack those spreads costs real high, real fast. So watching for hours and hours without getting into the market requires a truly Zen state of mind. But it’s all worth it in the end when that perfect opportunity shows up on your radar! 
Let’s keep this classy guys I know MP is a controversial subject around here. I only wish to help this guy see the market from a new perspective.
OP, MP has made a LOT of threads around the net, just here and at ForexFactory you have tons of posts that will keep you reading for weeks.