Spend less time sitting in front of screen? my system requires lots of waiting for signals

FOREX.com 2017-09-13 21:13:58 UTC #12

Many trading platforms can send alerts to your phone/email when your conditions are met. If you receive such a signal when you're away from your desk, then you could use a mobile trading app or web-based platform to enter trades. A lot of forex brokers will even allow you to place orders over the phone.

If your entry rules can be programmed, then you might want to consider automating the entire strategy. This would allow you to take advantage of trading opportunities 24 hours a day even when you don't have time to check your alerts.

tommor 2017-09-13 21:24:00 UTC #13

I used to enjoy that when I worked in the Civil Service.

_bob 2017-09-13 22:34:09 UTC #14

You extraordinary knowledge of what works and what doesn't and how diverse the speculating spectrum is truly amazes me. Sometimes to think outside the box means thinking inside the box but you won't have a clue to what I'm talking about there.

So go back to you bulk posting bro. Sometimes I see glimpses of original thought but then most of the time its generic marketing crap. The kind of shite that will blow anyones account in 3 months as you put it.

And golf, well I don't care, play second life or world of warcraft for all I care. Hell kick the cat if it rocks your jolly

TradeViper 2017-09-13 23:10:08 UTC #15

I think _bob solved the "sitting in front of the screen" deal. his trained Wallaby does all of his trading for him, he just sits back eating shrimp and drinking Fosters.

The Ever Wanting A Trained Wallaby VIPER

Trendswithbenefits 2017-09-13 23:54:49 UTC #16

Exactly, your trading system is somewhat dependant on which timezone you live in and which timezone you prefer to trade in. The FX markets have been so choppy of late, great for experienced traders, diabolical for beginners.....

DT with micro lots is a good way to learn the markets. You get to see the ebb and flow of price action along with the spikes and hopefully develop your strategy to cope with both. When I'm bored.... I occasionally trade the T10 Chart on EURUSD, XAUUSD with a modified MA Slope strategy (similar to Pip Wizard). Normally good for 20 - 50 pips per hour.

Ahhh Bob... they still haven't worked out that Fosters is a Girls Party Drink.... Will WallaB there....

TradeViper 2017-09-14 00:17:30 UTC #17

Yeah ok, here then, XXXX Gold, OK, is that better

My Preferance
Weissbierbrauerei G. Schneider & Sohn Aventinus Weizen-Eisbock

As far as time zones, in OZ, you trade Asian, In Humuhumunukunukuapuaa land, is a bit more complex, 2am Hawaii is 7 am est. If you have a day job, kind of hard to trade that. Swing trading would be the ticket. Check out
Dennis here https://forums.babypips.com/t/trading-the-trend-with-strong-weak-analysis/77959/856

The Ever Germanic VIPER

Trendswithbenefits 2017-09-14 00:35:20 UTC #18

Hey Viper, XXXX Gold..... Top end only (NT & QLD)..... Victoria Bitter (VB) is the most common Aussie mouth wash.... with Carlton Draught probably a close second these days.....

Weissbierbrauerei G. Schneider & Sohn Aventinus Weizen-Eisbock.... Christ... had to Google that.. Wouldn't sell here... too hard to say.. probably the same to drink.

The problem is the Asian session is very muted so it's a great TZ to learn in but not for making large pip movements.
I trade the Mid Euro session and Mid US sessions which is mid evening and early AM here (UTC+10), although I have been having a lot of success at the Tokyo, Singapore open of late.

I rely on an EA to open positions when conditions are favorable. I spend more time fine tuning the logic on Indicators and EA strategies that I use these days than actually trading. They are more patient and don't procrastinate like me...... So very little screen time (other than research) these days. It can mess you up psychologically......in a great many ways.

Humuhumunukunukuapuaa land??? Dare you to point to it on a map.....Sounds like the UK post Brexit...

_bob 2017-09-14 04:14:38 UTC #19

VB translates very bad beer. XXXX well that's just lolly water. No wonder those queenslanders drink it. We prefer the good old wife basher in the west, emu export although personally haven't participated in fire water for years.

Back to the subject at hand. There is just no substitute for quality screen time. We're at +8 gmt in the west. So at 6pm I start watching and waiting for NY open. Sometimes I get a signal in the first hour. Sometimes it will be 6hrs of flatness. Its just what we do bro. @tommor would like you to believe there are other ways. But this is what we do. Just have to find ways to entertain yourself in th mean time.

tommor 2017-09-14 07:18:41 UTC #20

The only thing I can say is I post what I believe to be true, and these things are derived from what I have personally seen and experienced and what I have seen others experience. I'm certainly not involved in marketing in any way.

Call it bulk posting if you will but if a lot of people are posting who it looks like are going to make very damaging decisions in their trading, I'm going to post as often as I can manage what I believe to be good advice as to better ways of doing it.

What I say is that most inexperienced traders will not get past the 3 month anniversary in their trading if they take it that trading means day-trading. They will start their career day-trading and day-trading will end their career.

BUT - I could be wrong and maybe you can show how. So post some details and let's discuss and learn about them.

togr 2017-09-14 07:55:06 UTC #21

@forextrex
Do you have well defined trading system?
If you dont then dont trade
If you do then why dont you write an EA which will execute trading for you.
I run many EAs and they do trade even when I sleep.
Thus I can diversify risk trading different time frames, broker, strategies, pairs...

LauChoKun 2017-09-14 11:23:49 UTC #22

I am not a hobby trader, Forex trading is my profession, so I like to spend here more than 8 hours in a day! In addition, my trading strategy is Price Action, which one works in all kind of trading instrument.

Manxx 2017-09-14 11:41:53 UTC #23

tommor:

The only thing I can say is I post what I believe to be true, and these things are derived from what I have personally seen and experienced and what I have seen others experience. I'm certainly not involved in marketing in any way.

Call it bulk posting if you will but if a lot of people are posting who it looks like are going to make very damaging decisions in their trading, I'm going to post as often as I can manage what I believe to be good advice as to better ways of doing it.

What I say is that most inexperienced traders will not get past the 3 month anniversary in their trading if they take it that trading means day-trading. They will start their career day-trading and day-trading will end their career.

BUT - I could be wrong and maybe you can show how. So post some details and let's discuss and learn about them.

Hi Tommor!
Thanks for the post!
This question of day-trading v. multiday/week trading would indeed be a useful topic for discussion, and I think there have been threads about this before, but whether it belongs here or not, I don't know

Whilst I wouldn't be surprised if many starters did fail after just a few months of day-trading, I am not so sure that it is inevitable or simply due to being "daytrading" per se. Personally, I think day-trading is very intensive and demands a strict discipline, sharp concentration, and an ability not to rationalise moves! The benefit, of course, is that one is trading when one wants to and is flat whenever not trading. Day trading does not need to mean all day. I tend to ignore Mondays and Fridays, and even on Tues -Thurs I only regularly focus on 3-4 hours of NY time, unless there is something special happening at other times.

Perhaps the biggest difficulty with day-trading is knowing when not to trade! The tolerance regarding entry and exit is very tight and there is a strong benefit from pre-empting the next move rather than reactively chasing the market. Either way, I agree that it can be fraught with danger and an inexperienced beginner can lose a lot very quickly - and destroy confidence.

On the other hand, I could imagine there are also difficulties of a different kind for a beginner setting out to trade, say, daily charts. Would you not agree that, for example, sensible stop positions can inevitably mean big potential losses which may be difficult to justify with a very small equity and I am not sure how much education one would get from watching just one position for many days?

I realise that there is a lot more to be said about daytrading, swingtrading and positioning. There are pros and cons with all of them. But maybe the common denominator with all three approaches is that success is more likely to depend on one's own dedication and willingness to study and learn as well as a readiness to devote at least the same degree of time and effort to it as one would to any other profession?

tommor 2017-09-14 12:17:04 UTC #24

Granted there are many styles of day-trading. But that emphasises the distinction that I say exists between day-trading and trading, and that new day-traders don't see. Day-trading isn't simply multi-day trading speeded up or with the over-night or weekend gap risks taken out.

It does happen that long-term traders are often too under-capitalised to make it work, so they end up over-leveraged and with way too deep risks from their initial stop-losses, so they get wiped out too. But this is just another way that day-trading sucks in the under-prepared.

The industry amplifies this issue by emphasising day-trading for new traders. As an experiment I have just Googled "want to trade forex" to test whether this bias exists. The first entry bar the ads is from Nasdaq of all people! They say "True 24-hour access is a major advantage that the Forex market has over equities and futures—it eliminates weekday overnight risk for traders". They then go on to talk about the % price moves per day that can be profitable for leveraged traders. None of this excludes multi-day trading, but almost everyone would take it as an endorsement of day-trading - probably the hardest way to make money in the markets.

New day-traders may indeed have the personality to learn the job. But most don't and few survive long enough anyway. The best health warning ever for new traders must be don't day-trade until you can trade.

_bob 2017-09-14 12:52:06 UTC #25

Bob day trading

_bob 2017-09-14 13:15:43 UTC #26

Now @tommor

one should get stuck right into your generic bull that has placed no value to the OP question. But indeed the wise and articulate words of @Manxx call for calm. Plus I have mellowed out and can't be bother.

It is grossly naive to assign "failure" to a particular style and change the individuals trading plan to a format that you may be more comfortable with. People fail in this game because they are lazy, greedy, incapable of original thought and not accepting responsibility for their trade decisions. Got nothing to do with what style they wish to adapt.

@forextrex has indicated he/she has developed a style that works for them and looking for advice on how to face the challenges he/she has.

These are the kind of advice the OP needs to hear that can help solve his/her challenges.

This bull does not help in any form or manner'

I think you need to reassess your use of drugs as a form of artistic expression.

As I said early bro, sometimes to think outside the box means thinking inside the box. You certainly don't have a clue to what I'm talking about.

And one final thought, I wish no-one to trade like me, it's crazy and insane but it works for me!

Trendswithbenefits 2017-09-14 13:18:18 UTC #27

When newbies ask about Day Trading they are generally referring to scalping.

Some of you experienced traders have to remember your mindset when you started FX. This is the main reason as a newbie I stayed away from the 4 hour and Daily TF's. Estimating market direction was a major challenge, so getting it wrong was a huge amount of pips and time wasted.
Whereas 15min, 5min even 1min TF scalping, although not hugely profitable is a great way to learn the flow of the markets using micro lots and small TP and SL positions.

Swing trading is possibly the next discipline after scalping. But it does require reasonable knowledge of support and resistance or reliance on Indicators such as the CCI or RSI (amongst others). It's more profitable than scalping but with all the whipsawing and choppiness in price action these days a winning position can turn into a losing one within a matter of a few candles. Perfect example is the USD Crosses in the last few hours, huge retracements in a very short time. I think a lot of newbies get scorched a few times ST and resort back to scalping.

Micro lot Day Trading is also the only real way to test your emotions under financial duress. Demo trading while great for understanding trading strategies, risk management and your platform behaviour are very useful, for most traders, it doesn't test your emotional behaviour when a position goes against you.

Back to the OP, use the RSI indicator (5 -15min Chart) set to Period 14 (or 20 for smoothing), High 72, Low 28 and buy when the RSI crosses up through (from below) the 28 or down (from above) through the 72. It's probably 75%-80% effective in getting into a trade when the price has exhausted its momentum in a particular direction. No secret, all over YouTube......
(I coded an EA that opens trades with this criteria and an alarm that yells "Show me the Money" so crass.........)

Set the indicator up and look back through your charts and watch future price movements when the above conditions occur. Simple but can be very effective on all time frames.

I only scalp for 2-3 hour sessions due to the strict discipline & sharp concentration that is required.

tommor 2017-09-14 13:44:31 UTC #28

Really good fun read, cheers _bob.

I think you'd better stop reading my posts if they cause you distress. I don't mean to but I've got a feeling I'm going to.

Manxx 2017-09-14 14:08:43 UTC #29

But surely, Tommor, this is emphasising the benefit of retaining positions overnight on weekdays? since there is a continuous market and little chance of gaps over stop levels? Isn't this then encouraging considering trades on longer than an intraday basis?

FOREX.com 2017-09-14 14:13:50 UTC #30

Enough comments have already been made about Fosters compared to other Aussie beers, so we'll only point out that they're called prawns, not shrimp, in Australia.

FOREX > XXXX

forextrex 2017-09-14 14:31:48 UTC #31

Wow, quite a spirited debate.

@_bob
Thanks for your constructive advice. Also you are correct I'm now testing a strategy that I feel has some promise(consistent profits) , being a "Beginner Questions" thread I feel that it is appropriate here. Everybody has their own strategy and I wanted to explore my approach.

@FOREX.com, @togr,

After manually verifying and refining my strategy. I am now ready to partially automate the process.I'm using MT4 and trying different EAs with push notifications to my phone via the app. But the issue with the EAs I've used is that they are pretty buggy. ie getting the alerts late or when the signal has already passed and continually getting alerts after signal was triggered. Being a newbie I am still getting familiar on how to get these various programs to work. So when I refine my system to a point that I'm satisfied with, I could potentially work on developing my own EA. But at this point I still would like to assess the charts before entering the trade but with partial automation.