Quite a choppy week, but no surprises given a thorough Top Down analysis of the USDX.
Wishing everyone success for the week starting Monday,
Ali
Hi All,
Possibly the previous post by Ali touches on this subject but I am still a newbie when it comes to all of this so I would like to offer up a losing trade that I made yesterday for some critical analysis.
Basically from the COT report I have taken the view to be bullish on USD and Bearish on the Euro so I have been looking for some good shorts on EUR/USD.
Yesterday I made a trade to short EU. based on the 15min chart I looked for a good entry and thought that I had found one, only be hammered within 5mins.
As I am a firm believer that I will learn more from the trades that fail as opposed to the ones that rake in the cash I would like to share this with you to determine if I made a mistake in placing this trade or whether I was just unlucky. The points as I have reviewed them myself are below.
Positive points about trade.
- Trade entry was placed between the 62% and 79% retracement levels so I was looking for the OTE
- Resistance line from three highs disected the OTE area giving some degree of confluence
- I am bearing on EUR/USD
- The trend for the day appeared to be going down.
- Trade was taken in NYO kill zone (I think I might need to learn more about this KZ)
Negatives about the trend (hindsight is a wonderful thing)
- I traded during the time of a news release (US CPI) which I believe was the reason for the bullish rally up?
- I should probably have looked for more confluence. E.G. I did not put the Pivot points up
- I traded in the New York Kill Zone (Yes both positive and negative because I am not sure of the characteristics of price action around this time)
- Mentally I wanted to place a trade. And maybe I was searching for a trade when there was not one to be had.
So there it is that is the trade I made and my bit of self critique upon the situation. I would be really interested in what others have to say about this trade. Was I unlucky or was it a stupid trade to make? (donāt worry I take criticism well 
)
Iāve got a hole in my pocket from this trade and I would like to at least get some value of out this trade by learning from it.
Iāll hand it over to you guys now
thanks
DT
HMMM Iām not very good at this image attachment thing as you can see. Basically my Sel was the middle white bit of text you can just about see, and my stop and Take Profit are the other two white bits of text that you can see.
Iām in process of changing jobs so donāt have my laptop to be able to do my chart of results for the week.
Kinda tough week.
-2.2%
My two cents on your trade, keep in mind that Iām by no means an expert here.
I did however trade at about the same time you did, but I bought and got it right.
COTā¦ Take this as long term bias, there are plenty of good trades that go against the COT bias. Some other people can probably expand on that.
You need to have your Pivots upā¦ I donāt have all of ICTās tools in use, but I feel that the daily pivots are a must. Iām also looking at weekly and monthly pivots. They give you buy sell areas and are implied resistance levels where price responds quite well. When your OTE occurred price had crossed over the CPP and made a small retrace back to itā¦ CPP had now become support and I was looking for a bounce upward. Also, you have to keep the hard Sup/Res levels in mind. They have to be drawn prior to trading. In this case the 1.3065 level was key, and after price crossed above it, it retested it and became resistance once againā¦ as it had a few times earlier in the day. This level was at about the same level as the CPP. Basically your trade went against these levels (CPP and 1.3065 level). Keep in mind also, that hard levels where price has previously reacted to trump pivot levelsā¦ in this case there was confluence of both and and support was to be expected.
Also, the 4H chart was showing bullishā¦this is the key time frame for market flow. Itās a bit riskier to trade only based on that, because confirming it with the 1H or Daily is the ideal situation. Nevertheless, its not recommended to trade against the 4H flow.
There was a 4H OTE at the 62% retracement level that had confluence with the 1.3065 level mentioned. It was for a buy, not a sell.
You should also look at your Smart Money Tool for divergence. In this case, the EU failed to make lower lows and the GU did. Since they were heading down, it was another sign for a possible reversal.
There is probably much more, but these are the things i noticed.
My suggestion would beā¦ Work on Market flow analysis, Get proficient with your pivots, make sure you note Sup/Res levels and try and figure out SMT divergence. I know itās a lot, but it is the basic knowledge you should try and achieve. Itās takes practice, I still feel overwhelmed. Itās all about increasing the probabilities of your trade, none of these tools are 100%.
Itās good to post as you did and to analyze your tradesā¦ it will make the learning process a little easier.
Hope that helped a littleā¦
Cheers
Thanks abrsive and dafttrader, these kind of posts and peer analysis makes the learning process better not just for the poster, but for everyone
Happy to report now my 2nd month live trading results: +5.9% (4 trades so far)
I am aiming for 6-8% monthly returns (6% monthly will double your account per year). As I had previously mentioned, I will move forward and add funds to the account for the next month if I am happy with my results and stick to my plan. The trading account next month also is being moved over to a corporate trading account.
During this month, I sat on my hands and did not take a trade for almost the first 2 weeks until setups I look for came around. A real lesson in patience 
Good stuff, After months of patient trading with a demo account, this was my first week live. I lost 2% on my first trade, and made 4 more in the same day to try and recoup. Ridiculous, as Iāve never acted that way in the months of demo trading. End of the first week and Iām down 3.2%.
Iām thinking of a new rule now, performing a maximum of ONE trade a day. I mean, 4-5 opportunities in a week to find a setup to make 20 pips seems very plausible (20 pips a week at 2% risk comes out to 6% a month).
Gah, I behaved so differently this past week compared to the months before! Just goes to show how different the emotional parameters are in live trading compared to demo. Live and learn, and Iām here to learn.
This is an excellent post, thank you.
I have reviewed the trade again and have picked up on all your points and applied everything to the trade again and I can quite clearly see where I went wrong an mis-interpreted the signals if I had applied everything that you had said then I wouldnāt have placed a trade and would have saved myself some Ā£Ā£ās (I probably wouldnāt have put in a buy trade as I was definatley looking for shorts at the time)
At least I can kid myself into believing that I gave my money to you and not some large non-comercial. Youāll just have to buy me a beers sometime to make up for it congratulations to you on a good trade.
DT.
Sorry DTā¦ Iām still on Demo so your $$ went elsewhere.
Glad you found it helpful, itās also good for me to write down my analysisā¦ Iām not so good at keeping up with my trading journal.
I was looking for shorts most of the week, but it turns out that the best trades were longs (at least the days and times I traded). Sometimes you have to be flexible and let the market dictateā¦ Iāve noticed that I can find reasons to trade in my predetermined directionā¦ Not good!
Cheers and Good Trading
I did the exact same thing as you during my 1st month trading live and did things I should have never done:
- Traded a second pair when I was supposed to only focus on 1
- Took a trade on a pure candle pattern alone
- Overtraded ā¦
I set myself a rule where I will not take a second trade within the same kill zone after a losing trade. This will force me re-focus and look for a setup in the next kill zone or the following days.
Damn! I was looking forward to that beer!
I was reviewing a ICT video called āTrading the full figureā as I had noticed many times how price would consistently react when hitting a full figure. I then decided to use a few simple trading guidelines and ran 6 months worth of historical trades for the cable. If anyone has free time on there hands, try and review the month of February 2012 for trading opportunities as per the following guidelines:
- Kill Zones
- 4hr market flow (bullish or bearish)
- Trade entry when price hitting a full figure (ie: 1.5600) to keep it simple ā¦ no OTEs required (short or long based on 4hr market flow alone)
- Pivot zone (buy / sell) or within 30 pips max in opposite zone
- 30 pips SL (2%), +30 pips (2%) to end the complete trade
Based on my analysis, February would have netted over 150 pips alone. I reviewed 6 months of historical data using these basic parameters which netted about 5.7% monthly on average. This is just one example of a simple trading pattern that IMO may provide steady gains.
Well said !
I still donāt believe we all have our hands on this massive amount of wealth in knowledge and information ICT provided. Can someone pinch me ?
pinch 
Whatās everyone looking at this week?
Cable & Fiber
Iāll be looking to hold my position long till tomorrow. With my data feed USDX havenāt taken out its previous low by few pips. I might be a judas swing lower today and rally up from that point (iām talking about USDX), which would tank fiber but dunno. Seems like fiber should go a little higher for some reason
Monday should be a small range day:
- Asian high and low have a small range;
- We have a big move previous day.
Maybe a possible bull flag.
Edit. Will be adding one more long position from 13120 level. We have:
- Trinity level;
- Previous R1;
- Institutional level;
- Previous lows/highs/asain lows/highs.
- I beleave we are back in sync with the long trend.
Edit: I have entered at 50lvl when it wasnt going lower for some time. So got myself another 100pips. Holding both positions. Gonna see how end of today looks and decided if want to let go of it.
I entered a short on the aussie using these same concepts I learned on here and man did it work like a champ. Had stop at 100+ pips when I came to work and cant see charts but price does seem to be going down today I hope lol
Took 2 trades today both on the cable using the same guidelines:
-1hr OTE
-4hr market flow bullish
-Pivot buy zone
-Kill Zone
-1st Trade entry (LO kill zone) - 1.5851 (institutional) and ended trade at 1.5863
-2nd Trade entry (NYO kill zone) - 1.5851 (institutional) and ended trade at 1.5868
Both trades ended earlier than usual due to how the market was trading. Decided to scalp as best I could.
here was the trade I took last night on the aussie. We were in the sell zone of traders trinity and pivots (right on mid pivot). Had just ran the stops at the 1.0600 institutional level. and if you run fibs from the previous swing we are on OTE. Not to mention smt divergance with the NU. Just had the wife check on it for me so I can watch price on yahoo. Currently sitting at +130 pips. Though price seems to be stalling but I hope to hold to 1.0400 but seems I might not get it. Oh well it stops me I make money it dont stop me I make more money all smiles today and for this week. My week was over before it began.
