Interesting concept to say the least. I love the simplicity.
I’ve been using a one direction approach for a while now, just on a shorter term. Although I’ll sell or buy.
Still don’t get what makes you commit to buying yet, but I can always re-read the thread;)
As for what color comes next, the buyers want a better price.
They’ll wait to see what next week’s discount will be:D
I’m guessing cynicism wasn’t either, guess I didn’t convey it too well - I don’t know is my answer, it’s times like these when bottom picking is gonna be really good or really bad
Appears the (forum) city fathers got a little uptight.
Maybe they don’t take too kindly to the traditional belief systems of their audience being challenged & confronted either huh?
Got a feeling it was probably in the best interests of readers who had decided to pop in the thread with the title in mind only to find that the majority of posts was random conversation/discussion lol
The annoying thing is that it wasn’t locked when I’d gotten around to replying until I’d finished writing it up, didn’t really think it would be appropriate to start a new thread or hijack someone’s but hopefully xtraction won’t mind too much
Looks like I’ve received my fair share in return :eek:
reliable in what way?
what’s reliable about contradictory support & resistance levels & conflicting trend representation?
As traders/aspiring ones we’re picking up whatever gives us a higher probability of getting in and out in the green, so the reliability comes from taking these levels/zones into account that give us a better likely hood of a filled target by avoiding or playing them. They have a lower probability of failing, and what’s reliable about these s/r levels is just that. The weekly fulcrum for example is essentially a s/r level, hence why I mentioned it was a little contradictory to state that you weren’t really worrying about them (or considering them to be reliable apparently). Given that I haven’t taken you out of context of course.
if I was a rookie fresh off the naïve conveyor belt & I had no idea or clue about what timeframe I was interested in looking at, how would you advise me with regard to familiarizing myself with the supposed benefits of support & resistance & trend structure?
if I then came back after a couple months & informed you that I was ambivalent about timeframes & I had no preference or favorite, what would you then suggest I do?
i also inform you I’m only interested in going long & short currency pairs & minimizing my risk at all costs. that’s all I want to do. i want to make as much profit as possible & limit my risk/exposure to a set amount.
where do you send me? & what do i study?
Fresh off the conveyor belt, is that through retail broker eyes :mad:
Strictly my opinion again being no expert I’d steer them to the groundwork of money management, emotional stability and concepts from both schools of thought before demoing systems that work (allegedly) with a bias toward advocating guidelines from my preferred model/perspective i.e. pretty much along the lines of what I regurgitated in response to crosshairs, including the pair ‘characteristics’ like who’s trading it and why, it’s average daily/weekly movement, correlations, interest rate sensitivity, all the little bits that help decisions in practice so they know what to look out for
So I’d pretty much do my version of what you did, only on a trivial note with I wouldn’t give them a template that sends the message that seems to contradictorily disregard s/r while using them but more importantly to not worry about market moving factors since the market suffers from random walk - it leaves a bit of a hole in the wall when large scale violent (volatile) but ambivalent economic announcements/conditions are impending/just occured/are in place. Because again, imho encouraging minimalism to a sub-essential level instigates the erroneous leap from simple to easy to failure (like the TA business). It’s a discrepancy between what’s essential and superfluous for a bare minimal but decently profitable system that’s at stake here I guess. Admittedly you did stress money management principles, but even a system suffering 20x2% losses against 5 wins that were cut short
because past weekly and daily price action appeared to reverse randomly isn’t really gonna help either. Essentially I’m questioning the efficiency of a system that ignores major drivers completely but as before stand corrected if you’ve used it/do use viably.
what then, in your opinion, is an accurate picture?
or rather a more accurate & simpler picture then we’re presenting here?
I’m not going disagree with the basics of a system I agree with but I will question its presentation in what it (appears to) lack and thus overall efficiency. I.e. a) true, forex is complicated, random, a simple no-frills system with sufficient money management like those you mentioned can work, granted, but there’s a point where it becomes too simple - you’re not going to be able to pull off entries that ‘let your profits run’ (more than your losses anyway) without consideration of s/r (not sure about your stance on that, seems you use weekly/daily fulcrums highs and lows for that we might be disagreeing on something we agree on here), major price rivers/economic climate. b) even though there are situations where fundamental drivers can cause market reactions of varying uncertainty to the point that it’s almost impractical to try to string everything together in complex situations/without completing a research degree or three in economics it’s probably healthier for the account balance to take their presence into account to adjust trade management accordingly. Eg. frequency of attempts after failure, initial entry in general, reduction of expectations in target profit i.e. putting a larger weight on impending s/r zones, tentatively larger ones if there’s a prominent factor that’s historically resulted in huge movement
we are encouraging folks to plot 2 horizontal lines on their charts.
a line plotting the Weekly open
a line plotting the Daily open
they can plot a series of vertical lines if they so desire to more
easily identify the key levels (open/high/low) of each period, from
17.00 est (the recognized close/open of the fx day).as an accompaniment (but not` really essential) they can also plot 2
more horizontal lines, highlighting the prior weeks high/low levels.the demarcation or fulcrum lines for the week & day are the [B]Weeks
[/B]open & the [B]Day’s[/B] openif prices are trading above the [B]Weeks[/B] open, buyers are in evidence.
If prices are also trading above the specific [B]Day’s[/B] open,
they’re still in evidence.true or false?
True, for the present time. I’m arguing (respectfully) that there are factors that reduce the probability of price continuing in that direction and one should be keeping in tune with those to increase % wins and size of them. It’s also worth taking note of the amount of times price may revisit the extreme points within a longer term candle - not accusing anyone here but retrospective bottom/top picking from longer timeframe candles to justify a system can be fairly shallow with the all too common stop knock out before reversal
logic tells me that if that’s the case, my odds of a winning trade
would probably be higher if I was to consider locating a suitable slot
to buy as long as prices remained above the [B]Weeks[/B] open?..as
opposed to considering shorts, because the evidence tells me that the
momentum is long for this current trading week.
until prices drop through this weeks open, the bias is up
true or false?
Again true, by your system’s definition of bias. Buyers may be in place but for long? Momentum is based on priced in activity, at what point will it end, and at what point would you enter? (Rhetorical apart from the last one). If the pair you’re trading happens to be trending upwards on a weekly basis, is above it’s weekly and daily open, is favoured as a carry against the us which is due to release a nfp in coming days with an expectation of greater unemployment during a climate of us instability, it’d probably be a bad idea to target very high or re-enter long in the event that you get stopped out when price retraced below your stop below the daily low or below your weekly open and continued back up to where it was before
(flip this scenario on it’s head for shorts)
what else do you suppose I’d require to assist in determining whether
I should be looking to trade long or short?what other knowledge you suppose I’d require to arrive at a trade decision?
What I mentioned above, and further down
i’ve got my fulcrum lines for considering my long v/s short play
i’ve got my risk sorted
i’ve decided on my position sizing
i know what trade management structure I’m intending usingthe only thing I’m uncertain of is how much profit I’m going to
receive if the trade goes my way.
that will be decided by the markets behavior & my reaction to it by
way of my trade management procedure.
It’s a great template, just short of s/r & economic awareness that
helps fine tune all that
phewwww, this is the hardest I’ve worked all week
If my full time job was looking for weekly opens I guess I can see why
kidding
Never mind about what they’re doing, focus on what works for you &
ensure you’re adequately prepared & sufficiently geared up to get to
work when the opportunities you’ve identified present themselves.That’s all your job entails.
If whatever they’re doing works it couldn’t hurt to get some pointers
for it; there’s always room for improvement here. What’s working for
me isn’t working as well as I’d prefer, I’m still trying to get more
efficiency on longer term setups which is why I’m so inclined to make
these points
I think you’ll find the usual teachers? all spout similar stuff.
Study s&r, trends, divergence indicators, elliot waves, bollinger
bands, channel lines, trend lines blah blah blah, the list is
endless.
Usual teachers on this thread(s) meaning the alternative technical templates threads - Tess (when she was around anyway) & co. certainly don’t advocate that sort of stuff apart from s/r
Then you got other experts insisting you’re not a complete
trader unless you’re also studying fundamentals, price flow, trade
volumes, data reports & how this months GDP will impact on last months
GDP & how next months will discount this months – oh my god – spare me
already!!
Agreed there’s probably a point where too much is too much but there’s also a point where too little is too little
Is it little wonder there are folks on this & other boards who’ve been
active for 3 or more years still wandering around chasing the next new
“technical whiz bang strategy” that gets spammed around the forum.Most of the stuff they’re hauling around on their back is way, way
more complicated & complex than they need to achieve the results
they’re seeking. But such is life & such is the ever grinding
marketing machine of the so called trading experts!!
Not to mention that their products probably sell better too! Partly due to sites like these killing those of the getting-started-with-forex books. Seems the marketing arena shifted focus from how-tos to do-it-for-me
Somehow I’m getting a rhetorical vibe but I’ll answer them anyway - because it can be easy to fool yourself silly with them (change the angle on a trend line 10 pips and a few days/weeks down the track it suddenly means an 80 pip difference in what seems to be an appropriate entry/sl), there’s too much room for error, and at the core of it self fufilling prophecies on trends and s/r don’t take precedence in net movement of the markets more than the combined sentiment of the larger players that move with their own agendas of long term profit depending on pairs of course. Don’t ask me how I know because I don’t, that’s what speculation is all about isn’t it? 
How would all that information have assisted me & positively
complimented my crude, basic trade decision making process, in
determining whether I should add to my long positional play yesterday
morning in eur/jpy or a re-load short this morning in usd/cad?
I’m not sure what timezone you’re but if this is before the NFPs & employment figures and in hypothetical if I were you with ‘all that information’ I’d recognise that they’re the types of reports observed to carry a decent amount of price influence hours before based on their forecasts and would have checked the historic reactions prior to during and after them. Peronsally E/J isn’t a pair I’m at all familiar with and their impact on E/J is something I haven’t looked into, guessing it’d depend on whether EUR or the yen are influenced more in their major USD crosses. In terms of U/C the CAD employment having a much better expectation I would have expected a bearish sentiment on the pair in the leading hours (NFP expectations were fairly neutral so no real gravity) and probably bailed out of my position after 10-20 pips at least 20-30 min before the actual release and either bailed or set a fairly close stoploss (personally, I would have bailed). If I were trading the news I would have re-entered short at market as soon as the incredibly green figures were released with a 5-10 pip trailing stop and let the trail kick me out. I would have been tentative to go long as the NFP was released since it the actual impact conflicted with the CAD news just an hour and a half ago but with enough confidence and more information the insanely green figures would have been a surefire sign to go for it (I actually scalped U/J on that, but got stopped out early at +20 with a 1.5 trail, a little too cautious
on such a huge change). Well to answer your question more directly (on the second pair anyway) factoring in their presence alone would have given someone a hint to either stay out entirely for the less aggressive traders or for the more game to be wary of current priced in movement and the potential for it to reverse dramatically, specifically to guard profits prior to and after the CAD then NFP, (evidently/ideally to have exited a short by a forward sl or tp before the nfp). A basic play on early sentiment & reaction would have helped determine or at least manage a fairly high yield trade (based on historic reactions to appropriate figures).
how would you advise that I grade this information in order to
compliment & assist in the method I currently use to decide, initiate
& manage my trades?
Like I said before I’m no expert but it doesn’t take a pro to consider that certain events such as an nfp release being amongst the strongest price movers have the potential to interfere with a system that goes by daily/weekly momentum (unless you didn’t know what it was given you interpreted advice received from a well respected forum member to mean that it wasn’t really worth learning about it in the first place). The forex factory calendar tends to give a good idea about the weight of them and I frequently rely on it. With these and equity opens/closes I use historic chart data to gauge the chances of a violent reaction if things are too rocky or aren’t clear cut then I’d tighten my stops in profit/exit early/don’t enter in the first place despite a positive signal of current price being above or below the daily & weekly open since the trade is going to be subjected to a higher level of uncertainty.
I’m not advocating that it’s an essential part of trading relies on deciphering every index and commodity correlation, large & commericial position and degree of directional sentiment impact each gdp/employment/interest rate/retail sales release has on a [time] basis, injecting arbitrary scores into a heuristic algorithm/formula in order to arrive at a % decision to go long or short more than that it’s crucial for the system’s performance or rather it can be crucial to take them into account at least qualitatively. (If someone wanted to figure out a reliable method to do that and actually got it to work I’d be keen to see how they did it)
For example talks of interventions, actual interventions, conditions of risk aversion/appetite, upcoming NFPs, insane NFP results for that matter, sharemarket dives, a crude oil or gold dive, going up the ladder to black swans. Sure, effects from the event will be priced in on the chart but price regardless of being above weekly and daily open is not only going to be driven by net sentiment & movement toward these events, but during the event and following it whether it be synergistic in direction or
contradictory (unexpected ones would obviously only have tell tale
early signs if any) causing a disruption of momentum resulting in the whole faked-out issue in the event that the effect really was contradictory and one was to be retrospectively fooled into entering with or maintaining a longer term target only to have the net movement reverse on them.
What precisely do I need to do with this info?
As mentioned earlier, I don’t know enough to determine the meaning of all mild level flucations or scenarios with conflicting impact, heavy price action stimulating events like upcoming meetings, reports, changes to monetary policy etc. other than that in the lead up to one or one that has questionable after effects based on historic reaction it would be best to take the whole weekly daily fulcrum signal (or trading signal really) with a grain of salt (or capitalise on it). Although I’m sure there are some hardcore macroeconomicists out there that can interpret reliable signals from innocently moving correlated price drivers I’m definitely a long way from it. But it’s one thing to acknowledge that the markets will react randomly and it’s another to ignore everything that causes it to do so.
Do I need to grade the info every day? twice weekly? bi-monthly?
Guessing this is a bit of an exaggerration to get the point across but at the ground level it’s not so much a grade as it is an awareness.
How do I physically factor in the % variables of the COT report? & how
do they impact on the spot pricing engines across day-day regional
finance hubs?
So far all I know is to watch out for potential flips in positions and price areas/events where the net large speculators might decide to take profit at which point there’s gonna be some serious price action volatility and even a reversal
Did I need to know how to do this (& other [I]‘rest of trading’[/I]
stuff) yesterday morning in order to compound my eur/jpy long trade or
this morning when considering a re-load short in usd/cad?
Oil suddenly jumping to a high in the CAD release, then with the NFP
gold dropping like crazy, usdx rising, indicies almost gapping up,
their correlation would have only helped build confidence from their
correlation that you enter (or rather that you get out a short during
the NFP). On that note it also may have
But the template apache described apparently didn’t need to take into account even the presence of any economic releases or S/R. If you were a trader starting to use it, decided to hop on the U/C short coincidentally during or after the CAD unemployment event (which is not factored or even obliviously occuring) thinking it was a surefire sign to enter below the daily/weekly low and set a stop loss above the current daily high with a profit target in a 1:1 ratio (~80 pips) without any regard for support or res at the time you would have gotten stopped out at a loss when it retraced with the NFP. Of course that was a rather slanted hypothetical. At any rate this is one event; it would be interesting (but a little on the pointless side) to compare real results between a system that avoids or capitalises on the occassionally clear cut large releases and one that trades them regardless. If you were to enter during a week of these you’re going to have a hard time of getting stopped out each day if the effect happens to be the latter. If I’m really that bothered I’ll go find an example. The bottom line is that these are the sorts of things that will violate the viability of a trade based on the whole daily/weekly open signal and the efficiency of the overall system would be fairly stunted. So to answer your question(s), at an elementary level it’s going to help you stay out of questionable trades. But again if you manage to pull this sort of thing off consistently without ever checking an economic calendar I rest my case, in fact I’m joining you. I’ve definitely found myself in positions where I missed out on some incredible opportunities because not everything seemed to line up (on that note I’ve also saved myself from alot of pitfalls for the same reason).
Would all of this [I]‘rest of trading stuff’[/I] not have already been factored in & discounted on the (cash) pricing ladder?
The chart shows the past not the future, the sentiment toward an event may show one thing but the results or occurence of it may do another. By avoiding, taking more caution or capitalising on trades during these scenarios the probability that trades tend to work out presumably would increase greatly and is an essential part of many systems (I’ve found anyway).
If not, when does it get aggregated?
When the event actually occurs I guess, that’s the whole idea of an increase in uncertainty. In a sense extrapolating the reaction from past similar events implies that some of the data has been factored in once before, but nowhere in the template mentioned does it really acknowledge the value of ‘worrying’ about an economic event, and much to less back referencing it’s reactions
and why would I need to be aware of it?
As mentioned earlier there are times practical application does not require an incredibly in depth theoretical understanding but arguably there’s a level at which it would suffer from lack of it. Just as the more working parts there are the more room for error analogy, additional criteria in a system can also greatly increase the reliability of one - in this case I’m suggesting it could be the difference between net positive and negative trades
Self explanatory by now, my fingers hurt
Also
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NO MORE THAN 4 SMILIES??
the difference between net positive and negative trades
Thats the real important part in all that!!
I have been trying to backtest this some and I am not showing great results. Scrolling through the charts I came to the same realization as nev that these opens could be called by another name, support and resistance. I have done some rather extensive testing on random entry trading. This does not seem that far off from that. Not necessarily a bad thing it can do wonders for the ego. The best things about this is the one way aspect and the attempt to buy at extreme lows. That may be enough to push you to profit. If there is more to this it is not being explained well.
One thing I find contradictory is the fact that a sale is a low price and signals a buying situation, but a weekly low would be a selling opportunity(if you were not following the strict buy only train of thought). Now buying when price is low on a weekly chart and starts to head back up on the daily confirmed by a price being higher than the daily open makes sense. That however would force you to acknowledge that looking at price on different time frames is a meaningful thing.
We either lose skillfully or we win lucky!
We might win small lucky or we might win huge lucky
But we definitely know we’ll lose skillfully
This is why I like reading what is printed around here. That is a good philosophy and shows some wisdom no mater how you decide to make your trade.
Unlike your brother-in-law, I believe in free choice. You, and many others, misinterpret and misunderstand my message. There are certain inescapable facts when it comes to trading. One of them is MOST TRADERS (95%) LOSE even though there is more than enough trading “education” (freely) available. The second inescapable fact is MOST FUNDS DO NOT BEAT THE INDEX. When you consider all the resources that fund managers have at their disposal their overall dismal performance should be a clue that something is amiss when it comes to trading.
One would think a smattering of common sense would make people realize most of what is being taught doesn’t work. It is obvious the lure of pretty charts overrides most traders’ common sense. Traders forget the only thing that matters in trading is profit. The lack thereof spells D-O-O-M. When a new “radical” trading idea is presented it is met with outright hostility instead of being analyzed objectively. What makes losing traders cling with unwavering dedication to their losing pretty charts? Is their belief so strong it rivals religious faith?
I have been telling people what is working for me and what isn’t working at all. The purpose of BabyPips, if I understand correctly, is to offer new traders trading education. The problem seems to be that some “educators” do not want all education to be presented. Is there something else going on that I am not aware of?
d-pip, you say you have a small account, what about weekly lines giving you the opportunity to grow your account by 10% or more per week with proper position size doesn’t work for you? Any “if everyone” argument is absurd by definition, however, if everyone follows the rules each and every time, 95% would not lose. If a trader does not follow the rules and they lose, it would be foolish to fault the system. The problem is most traders do not follow rules. Another problem is most traders have the grandiose idea they can improve systems by adding indicators to them. More likely than not, a daily or weekly chart will be posted with some indicator that is meant to improve the weekly open / daily open trade. When will traders learn that you do not have to predict what happens next to win in trading?
d-pip, you have “seen the light”. Are you going back to the “darkness”?
Wow, that was a long post. Glad you posted it. You are holding on to the myth of “support” and “resistance”. They only exist in the mind of the trader. The weekly open is the WEEKLY OPEN. You can call it by any other name but it will still be the WEEKLY OPEN. There is no opinion. It is not debatable. That is the crux of the issue.
There is no more to this.
There is no contradiction. Price at a weekly low will do the same thing as price at any other point: it will either go up or down. The daily open is the same on all time frames.
You’re welcome to stay in camp, partner.
Funny you would use that particular phrase…
[B]I’ve seen the light, been blinded, burnt and electrocuted by a fair number of them[/B], LOL! I’ve spent the last 30 years working as a commercial photographer.
[I]“Personally because of the size of my account (small) I’m not too crazy about your weekly open line…” [/I]
Sorry sloppy writing, didn’t explain myself very well. Your weekly open line strat is perfectly valid. But it also doesn’t fit with my schedule, the hours I trade and my preference to be around and monitor my trades. Just a personal thing for now… but I’m certainly open minded enough and will consider it in the future.
“As far as “everyone” and the 95%”
Again sloppy writing on my part, I agree with you, the reason 95% would still lose is exactly as you said, because as humans we start tweaking, bending and messing with the rules, can’t stop ourselves, like eating chocolate!
I guess lots of studies have been done where folks were given a proven trading strategy and still f***ed it up!
PS Dogs might be better wired for trading than humans! :eek:
(Folks, don’t get all upset, the dog thing was just a little Sunday afternoon humor!)
Your dog comment landed very close to the bulls eye. There have been many studies conducted where animals have beaten humans in trading.
Actually the dismal performance of publicly held funds has little to do with trading methods. In large part it’s because of the need to window dress a fund’s holdings to generate sales commissions and management fees. Got to have overpriced positions in AAPL, GOOG, and AMZN else nobody will buy into the fund. Take a look at Goldman’s prop desk or some of N&B’s private funds and you’ll see they do just fine against the indexes!
Not sure I can agree with your first statement. On the other hand, I can’t really disagree with it either. One could make a case either way. Yes, there are funds that do beat the index. And a few of those do it consistently.
do you work for the FED or the NFA? they’re the only ones who write trading essays these days aren’t they?
i attempted to read it twice, but it hurt my head.
damn that dreamdust!
off back to my bunk.don’t unpack all the your saddlebags just yet cowboy!
Aha I wish, I guess I just (thought) I had a bit of spare time on my hands over a home-bound caffeine inspired saturday night, probably not gonna get too overzealous with it any time soon
We all prefer to travel a whole lot lighter than that. There are a couple events I’m able to consistently control & there’s only one event I can’t. That’ll do for me.
We get a gauge, fulcrum or demarcation line on the flow/s
We prime our size & risk
We enterWe either lose skillfully or we win lucky!
We might win small lucky or we might win huge lucky
But we definitely know we’ll lose skillfully
I was more worried that it’d lead a fair amount of the less apt trading system tourists into jumping in on the first sign of a move above/below a fulcrum without the skill & experience you chums have, but come to think of it that’s their own fault really. No one said life (or trading) was fair
Wow, that was a long post. Glad you posted it. You are holding on to the myth of “support” and “resistance”. They only exist in the mind of the trader. The weekly open is the WEEKLY OPEN. You can call it by any other name but it will still be the WEEKLY OPEN. There is no opinion. It is not debatable. That is the crux of the issue.
The technical templates thread mostly revolved around a handful of the most ground-line aspects common to technical and fundamental schools, namely support and resistance. To see that there was a even more minimalist template that disregarded even that was a little weird - I wouldn’t call s/r a myth but it’s definitely a constructed/extrapolated concept built on price action.
I think we’re simply going to have to agree to disagree on the relevance & importance of the ancillary stuff you covered nev. We’ll let you studious fella’s worry about support, resistance, trends, economic influences, historical charts, degrees of correlation, all that other nonsense!
That’s what discussions are for right Well to be honest the grass is looking pretty green where you guys are, going too far down the economic fundamental road is as bad having too many technical indicators sometimes and I’ve mentioned that I’ve let many an opportunity slip amidst the confusion of some of the more news-heavy days
If basing one’s core activity in the currency market around the apparent benefits of support & resistance is such a smart move, then could you please explain (perhaps by initiating a new thread?) which of the following s&r options trumps the other in order of importance & why?
Trend line
Bollinger band
Channel
Horizontal line
Several different styles of pivot points
Several different calculations of moving averages
Fibonacci levels
Japanese cloud formations
Big figures/Round numbers
Half figures
Quarter figures
To clear up any confusion in what I meant by the S/R I was referring to in previous posts (thought I did in the second post) - they’re simply areas where there’s generally more buyers than sellers or visa versa due to relatively larger volumes of entry,take profits/stoploss orders. Personally I’m a fan of horizontal lines to mark zones where price seems to have encountered these areas such as open/close, highs/lows, round numbers, half numbers and sometimes fibs. Japanese candle formations help tell you what people were doing. Bollinger bands show you how volatile price action has been.
That’s about it. Any further extrapolations on what they represent are beyond me, or very situational.
I wasn’t advocating learning any particular one of these but I suggest horizontal lines as a bare minimum. Using these to identify key zones you’ll find that they coincide with many of the ones you listed. From the way I see it, they don’t tell price where to go (unless there’s other speculators making it self fufilling) they just suggest a higher probability of where it will appear to stall given that they have in the past, and while I’m sure there’s someone that could (or say they could) I can’t tell you which one takes precendence because again unless there’s a self fufilling factor there really isn’t any die hard rule about them other than that they represent areas of buyer/seller congestion in an uneven ratio so to speak. But this doesn’t diminish their usefulness in efficiency, even for a novice.
Surely if something apparently carries such weight & importance on the technical map, then you would logically assume there would at be a degree of uniformity to this crucial aspect of trading guidance?
Yes, and there is.
Where is the centralised focal point to be drawn from all of the above?
Areas of heavy/uneven price action - that you should set your stops, target and entries on the appropriate side of them.
Because even to my relatively untrained mind, it’s quite obvious that each of those options will throw up very differing levels, areas of apparent importance & ultimately, results?
Yes and no - you will have fifty million lines on your screen if you mark every zone where price has seemed to historically’respect’but that’s the point - if you in turn respect these zones, your entry and target are more likely to actually get filled, and your stop is less likely to get cut out early. Why? Because you’ve identified them as having a higher probability of housing a great deal of uneven price action.
If you follow the popular “teaching” threads on here & other forums, each trader places crucial importance on their respective price indications/aids of choice, so what’s the score with all that?
What’s the score with technical and fundamental development in trading? What’s the score with trying to find new or different ways to be better at what you’re doing? I know you’re not attacking their existence but on a side note it makes me throw up a little in my mouth when I run into a branch of a school of thought that reeks of elitism.
At any rate I agree there are many systems that have differentiated with their own indicators and signals of entry - that are generally all based on the same fundamental concept of price action. And I don’t think you’re going to find one of them that ignores support - at which point they will tell you is time to buy - and resistance - which they will tell you is the time to sell at. It may come in the form of an oscillator (eg. too many sellers, not enough buyers -> resistance -> time to sell) or a candle-stick (opened here, moved down quite a bit, came back up and closed higher = hammer = support from too many buyers and lack of sellers -> time to buy) but they all incorporate the price action derivative of support and resistance. That fact doesn’t in any way take away from the dare I say essential use of understanding it.
Presumably, they all qualify as bone fide support & resistance aids don’t they?
Definitely.
If the options are so fragmented, then what’s the point of going to the trouble of wasting quality time studying, observing, plotting & actually relying on any of it to assist in trading my account?
The options from these different systems or the options from keeping basic support and resistance in mind?
If you’re referring to options from different systems, because exploring different systems will help you understand price action and various areas of trading that they focus on at a greater level - indirectly even - which will come in handy when it comes down to the practical application of it. That of course is definitely an auxillary thing to be doing.
If you’re referring to what I meant by support and resistance, the answer is simple - because it’s less ‘fragmented’. 20 lines of support/resistance levels 30 pips apart may provide you with 19 perceived opportunities to take profit once you’re in a trade, but how about having no lines and just ‘up’. If you use the weekly/daily open to determine the direction of price action, where are you entering, taking profit, and putting your stoploss? Like I’ve mentioned it’s one thing to have too much of something it’s another to have too little.
What is so different between what you’re advocating I study & practice, to the simple, unmistakeable, extremely recognisable fulcrum of a Weekly open and/or Daily open line?
It’s not really a matter of so different, we’re in a bit of a square is a rectangle scenario here. The fulcrums you choose are based on the circumstance of a daily/weekly period open but more specifically that the template you follow (and most derivatives of s&r) takes to be price action. Classic definitions of support and resistance takes that price above both opens to suggest a greater number of buyers, so ‘support’ is in place by those buyers, while below the open representing a greater number of sellers. That’s awesome, it gives you a direction. But as mentioned earlier, it isn’t going to help placement of a target or stop much more than whether its going above/below.
What I’m advocating, or rather suggesting, (S/R was just 1 factor) is an economic awareness of the events around you, keeping the session times (I think apache did include that in a post) and calendar of events in mind, staying out or shrinking expectations during certain times. Because these are the sorts of things that are going to cause price to go the other way despite things beind above the daily/weekly open. Then at a more developed stage using these to aid in direction/bias.
Take today for example. EURUSD, AUDUSD and most vs USD pairs started off in the positive. You open your platform in the morning (GMT). Green light: green daily, green weekly. Where do you put your stoploss? 30-40 pips below the weekly low? Aim for 30-40 pips above entry? Then suddenly London opens, and price dives almost 100 pips and cuts you out. Again, it’s just 1 example, but shows that keeping in touch with the economic situation/awareness would help avoid jumping into what’s thrown around as a fake-out
PS: On the suggestion to start a new thread I’m not really sure it’s worth what I have to offer (all the information is in the old tech templates threads) but on the other hand I think I’ve polluted xtraction’s thread a little too much. I’ll keep my responses minimal from now given it is his forex store and all
True words and you too, I’ve found that this forum tends to attract the more level headed people out there. It’s great to appreciate the uncertainty but you don’t think that there’s a point that we’re putting too much up to it? I’ve only been in the game just under a year now but have found that those things generally prove to produce suggested reactions with a high probability. I’d disagree slightly on the last one since the market is usually gonna be moved by the larger figures who have some sort of goal /strat in mind but it’s interesting to note that some accept the ultimatum so to speak as that the markets move randomly whereas others leave it up to whoever swings the biggest bat, guess it just depends on where you want to draw the line
And yeh if there’s anything I’ve found risk management is definitely a huge if not the majority of being able to keep that bank account healthy (that and the efficiency of the system of course)
What time of day or what trading session start do you consider for your daily open?
This thread is long on ideas and short on examples. :rolleyes:
I am trying to work out a way to try this with pending orders. I am looking for recommendations from people that have actually made trades based on the ideas in this thread. Do you use the daily open as a hard line or do you put a buffer of a few pips either side? or wait an amount of time for some conformation of direction? I am trying this with trailing stops right now about 25 pips on usd/jpy. With out getting into $risk how would you handle stops. Sometimes I am able to check in on a trade and make adjustments sometimes I cant.
Trade management is down to personal choice/preference
This is the real question here as this is what will make or break a trading method like this. I have read here and I know that entering a trade is a small part of the trades success. Will any one share how they are managing these trades(stoploss ,takeprofit, trailingstops, fullmoon means stayout??) and what kind of success they are having, or is this all just a hypothetical discussion?
I have said before that I have looked at random entry methods I believe trading like this is very similar. That is one of the reasons I like it. If entering as described above is enough to tip the odds my way a little, and its only going to be a little.(it only needs to be a little) The real trick is going to be trade management.
As for buffers and such I know they are not mentioned I am just trying to figure out a good way to set up pending orders within the confines of my schedule and the limitations of my trading platform, and was looking for suggestions.
I use the D1 candles to determine the daily open. You can get cute and play with the Asian, London and NY opens if you like. The daily flow seems to hold true for each session.
Haven’t I posted enough charts? 
The daily open is a “hard line”, no buffering. I know I answered the stop loss question. STOP LOSS = RISK / POSITION SIZE. Many traders make the mistake of tailoring the stop loss to the method they are trading. Either the trade is winning or losing. I don’t need to watch price move 100 pips or more to know I am on the losing side. I prefer to keep the stops tight. I can always reenter the trade at the same or a better price after I get stopped out ( [B]THINK ABOUT THIS[/B] ).