You said a lot of important things when comes to trading… a trader should develop a proper minset according to his trading style. We are mainly swing and position traders… in my case because I didn’t want to be glue to the screen all day plus the levels you find in the daily and weekly chart are more likely to hold when you do a proper analysis…
How did I deal with patience? First I forbid myself from opening a chart less than 1 hour, and focus mostly in the daily and weekly chart, like ST I like better EOD strategies (I still day trade but mainly for fun) they give you the time to do a good analysis. My trades are plan several hours, days or even weeks before they get filled.
Second, I began trading really small positions, nanolots… once I proved myself I could hold trades for days according to my plan then I increased my positions but still in small amounts, now days can pull about 3% to 10% of my account… 3% doesn’t look too much when you see traders doubling their accounts in one week… but the key here is CONSISTENCY… I reach my goal every month and let compounding do its magic. Please read this working paper from Richard Olsen it changed the way I trade
Once I saw a video of a self proclaimg guru… like the ones whe see every day at BP … but he said something that struck me… “In FX you make money doing NOTHING”… this means you prepare your plan and place your trades but this does not make you money… you make money when you trade is filled and you do NOTHING… you let your trade take its course, if you have an edge most of those trades will be winners…
Third. I trade around 28 pairs… this helps to spread the risk in different instruments.
Thank you for the compliment! I don’t know how long you have been trading, but it does take a lot of time to get this stuff down. Also, a lot of newer traders focus on returns and holy grail strategies, but neglect patience and psychology. The mechanics of entering a trade are not really that difficult - it’s hard work, but not difficult, as it basically boils down to find a chart you like, find a bar you like, know your Entry/Stop/TP criteria and execute. With enough practice that really isn’t the hard part. A few losers in a row, then overtrading to compensate and ‘get the money back’ - that’s the hard part. Personally, I was taught to trade, I had a coach/mentor, I saw him placing trades real time so I knew that it works, and I started very small with money I could afford to lose and then slowly built up from there. I read everything I could, lurked on fora, and spent thousands of hours in front of charts until it all began to click. Like learning a language, as much immersion as you can manage and start small would be my advice.
I am naturally a pretty patient sort - I was a surveillance officer/invesitigator in my previous career, and that was very methodical work and involved a lot of waiting around (literally - criminals are lazy and like to party!), which was an element of why my wife first suggested I try trading when I came out of that. But the specific patience needed for trading can be learned, and I am trying to learn it. I’m not there yet, but repeated behaviours are key here. If I break my rules or rush things, I tend to lose. If I stick to my rules and take my time, I tend to win. Eventually even my thick old head learned the lesson buried in there!
Now I hope I don’t offend Yunny here, by appearing to presume to critique, but his long post is SO good, and as you Taste have grouped us together somewhat (which is absolutely fine, he’s good company lol), I thought it might be more helpful if I now went through Yunny’s post highlighting the bits that I really agree with and adding a few thoughts from my own point of view. Yunny, I am NOT critiquing your post!! I just think it’s so excellent that I want to play off it rather than alongside it.
You normally talk such sense, Yunny - in fact, the rest of your post is proof of that - but I don’t know where you get this idea from. I think we both do okay from our trading, but I’m not seeing a gulf in patience and skill, or at least certainly not the way round that you suggest!
Agreed. Although these days I add in some intraday trades within the overall moves, but that just came in as my confidence stepped up a notch and I realized [I]why[/I]I was taking the trades I was taking. I am happy to expand on that but it isn’t really relevant to the question asked so will leave it out of this reponse.
Very similar to me, although I do now spend some time on the five minute chart, finding the intraday setups that I mentioned above.
That is exactly how I did it. My broker permitted a minimum stake of 50p a pip (it is less now) when I started out, so I did that, and had no Stops wider than 20 pips initially, so I could not lose more than £10. Then I upped the account a little, then increased in stages. I took some losses (not least because my Stops were too close lol) but I increased my exposure to the market only as I became used to each level. Now I don’t enjoy losses, obviously, but in context I get that they are not a disaster and overall as part of a winning strategy they will happen so you kind of learn to ride them out as part of the package. This is otherwise an overhead-free business, after all.
Good advice right there. Most of my trades are entered via orders, I don’t enter live, even the intraday ones. Today’s GBP/JPY trade was a simple Pivot bounce, I placed a orders for Entry, Stop and TP, Entry was filled overnight and TP was hit during the day today. The scan last night was ten minutes, and today I didn’t look in on it. If the underlying analysis is sound then, as Yunny says, you can get paid for doing nothing, in that case 1.4% of my account. The added benefit of not monitoring every moment of a trade is that there is no temptation to fiddle with Stops etc.
I trade 22 Pairs, I think, the thinking behind this being that I like most of my trades to be with trend, and having more Pairs increasing my chances of some trending. Last week I made money on AUD/CAD, this week GBP/JPY and EUR/GBP have been good - today’s intrday GBP/JPY trade gave me a +1.4% return - next week it will likely be something entirely different. Many Pairs means that I can find the purest setups, the ones that I really like. If a particular Pair goes a little spiky then I don’t care how much chat there is about it elsewhere, I just tune it out and look for one I like. A key element of successful trading for me is to trust one’s own analysis. Listen to other people, sure, but be prepared to think ‘you know what, I don’t agree, I prefer this over here’. Do that and you will often find yourself quietly winning while others are loudly imploding.
Yunny, I imagine that every one of your posts on this forum has helped someone.
Thanks guys for taking the time to write those posts. I have been getting daily chart time for more or less a year. I read everything I can get my hands on and then tried to use what I feel comfortable with. Though one needs to try them to know if they are comfy or not so alot of trial and error. I do not believe much in strategies and prefer to have a set of tools. I am a follower of ICT which I think you heard of and I learnt alot from him and still do. Like I said, I know my problem is not the technicals now, not that I do not have more to learn but my mindset and the demons I have inside are much more of a problem. Overtrading, the need to constantly be in the market, revenge trading…you name it…I experience it more often than I wish. I am sure most can relate to these symptoms. Unfortunately, this is not something which anyone can help me with, I need to find a way to discipine myself and control the demons. But I find it is so hard that sometimes I wonder how others manage. I demo trade only btw…will only go live (small account) if I reach a level of consistency I expect.
Two more questions for the patient duo and then I promise I will shut up and allow the thread to take its previous path.
Yunny, I read the pdf you posted and can relate to most of it. Do you ever add to an open losing position to average out and bring the break even closer once price goes again in your direction? That sounds very risky to me although I have to admit that I did it too.
ST, out of curiosly how much time you spend analysing the charts for your EOD trading? …not the intraday.
Kind of… I split my position in several tranches at different levels, so I guess I do add to a losing position but always within my trading plan. The thing here is to have a fixed risk. My stop loss is usually behind 2 resistance levels… if one is broken then I look to exit the trade at breakeven or at a small loss. My risk goes from 0.2% to 1.5% of my account for each trade. And I never have a total exposure of 3% of my account at any given time.
I would do what I always do but right at this moment (even if it was not the weekend) I would do nothing. Thats a big green candle so I would wait to get my doji (as posted on this floor somewhere). Even a pin bar but would much rather see a nice big doji
Bobmaninc is right in as much as that IS a large green candle which MAY indicate the start of an up move, however there is nothing there to indicate an instant decision.
However, if you look to the left of the chart, you will notice an even bigger green candle, which handily enough, since we are moving on to engulfing patterns, is a great example of a failed bullish engulfing pattern, since it came at the bottom of a down move and the large green candle completely engulfed the previous 11 candles of the move down, yet the rally still failed.
But that aside, dealing with the question you posed yunny, from here I would wait until price entered the support turned resistance area you have marked, then look to short that move. My stop would go just above the shaded area and my target would be somewhere at the low of the chart.
salimvp
I know you may well have said this in jest;
But that is precisely the point of this entire thread. I refer you back to part of a great post made recently by ST ,
Like I said, I know you more than likely said what you said as a joke, but I have given what I think I would do in this particular situation. Yunny, or any other experienced trader, may come on here and say, “No HoG, you’re totally wrong” and that would be fine, because at least even by being wrong it shows that I’m thinking about it, I’m trying to work it out and if I get it wrong, then I have the advantage of knowing that the guys on here will show me where I got it wrong.
I don’t mean that to sound critical, I love a bit of humour as much as the next guy, so I apologise if it sounded a bit harsh, that was not the intention.
But that is exactly what yunny is trying to get you thinking here, “what would YOU do?” get the old brain cells working, get us to recognise signs and hints the market gives.
Anyway, that’s my sermon done, apologies to all, better go now gang, there’s taxi work to be done !!
Hope you guys don’t mind me jumping in…
I have a question about this setup.
Since that resistance zone has already been tested before, will it still be as effective the second time?
(But to answer Yunny’s question, I would wait to see if it breaks resistance and maybe turns to new support. I’m curious if anybody thinks the same)
HoG… I’m really sorry for the misunderstanding. I really liked his all analysis. In that post I asked him If he will trade in that pair then give me the entry level. I believe him. I have a 12 hours day job. Very little time to watch charts and it’s risky in my office.
So that I asked through some humour to inform me. I know no one give signal. But I asked in that way.
ST is right. We need to analyse our own and find a system to work for us. But my job sucks.
(My language is not good. It always lead people to misunderstanding. Lol)
Okey gang, Back to the thread’s original business.
I think trading that zone one way or the other is what to do. You either short it if price rejects it, or go long if price breaks through and retests it as support.
Whether it will be as effective…ah…if only we knew piptronix LOL!!
I am kind of in a rush here (Responsabilities of the parenthood)
Thanks for all the answers, I hope more members chime in… Believe me this is a learning process for me too… I like to see everyone’s views…
Salimvp, don’t worry no offense taken
Bob, HoG, piptronix… I will post another chart later today and try to show how I plan my trades.
Remember I am not a mentor, guru, etc… just want to share here my strategy. Do not follow me, do not try to replicate what I am doing just take what ever makes sense to you and use it in your trading.
Yunny I like how clearly and cleanly you manage to communicate your trade thoughts. Have a question though … I do not understand your last monthly chart. What do you mean by Piercing Line? And what do the three white soldiers indicate to you? I guess I better educate myself more on candlestick patterns, I had went through the school months ago but it seems my brain did not store them!
The monthly chart shows that we are at all time lows, so no historical support to do an analysis… what is left is PA. The piercieng line and the three white soldiers tell us the rejection from 1.1604 has been sharp.
So we have to be aware that this up move could mean a multiyear bottom could have been set. [B]Always use a SL[/B]
I think when it comes to the question long or short in a chart like this, I would use my teacher’s phrase. "don’t run with the price, and if you should have been in it long ago, don’t jump in it."
So in this case, I should have been in it on the long-side, long ago, and I absolutely wouldn’t add a long now. Instead I would like to try a short.
Due to a family…how should I put it…moment…I’ll use the word “moment”, I am totally unprepared this evening.
My nephew (15) turned up at my house last night, completely drunk and with two police officers. His mum and dad were down in England visiting family, (my wife and her sister being English) and the nephew was supposed to be staying with his friend over the weekend. Shows what a great plan that was eh?
Anyway, because I’ve had the privilege of entertaining a hung over 15 year old for most of this evening until his parents got home, I’ve only now got around to turning the computer on and trying to catch up.
So nothing much will probably come from me tonight, which I’ve just discovered is a great shame because I’ve just noticed the stuff yunny has been posting and I’m dying to get involved, but such is life, such are families.
So sorry to be absent tonight gang, talk to y’all tomorrow.
