Anyone else catch the bearish 15M SMT divergence? G/U dropped like a sack 50 pips. E/U not so much though.
Damn your eyes AK, I didnāt see that. Iām short at 1.3240 after the CPP and old high from 5/3 where broken and the bounce off Monthly CPP, Iāve taken off half at 25pips and tightened my stops right up to -7pips.
Bugger I fell for it, what a noob I am.
Wally
Hmmm, I wouldnāt be so sure about it, you might just crack a massive win if the NFP data swings price downwards as is usually the caseā¦
Well itās waiting for something but weāve got āNon-Farm Employment Changeā coming out not āNon-Farm Payrollā or is that the same thing?
Wally
Oh double bugger IT is the same thing. 
ooops
I took a short on the cable at 1.58032.
Took off 80% at 20 pips and moved stop to BE.
Donāt want to be in the way when it charges upā¦
Itās weird how lately the NFP is almost certainly a dollar strengthener, regardless of the actual figures printedā¦
To be honest, I donāt pay attention to any news events, or try to understand them.
I wouldnāt have traded at all today, but just used my practice account to try to get back in the game.
Its been a tough week for me, so I needed to get my confidence back.
I have the same discipline issues as you, it took a 4% knock in my live account to realise that.
Back to studying this weekend.
Itās pretty easy to see actually. The ration between the fed balance sheet and Ecb balance sheet would mean the eu should be around 1.10. Because we are at 1.31, the market is expect the fed to increase their balance sheet or ecb to reduce theirs. Given the ecb just increased theirs, thatās not likely.
A positive nfp print means that additional printing (through quantitative easing) is more unlikely. For the fed to print, the unemployment numbers and equity market has to go down. Given the positive nfp print, easing isnāt likely to happen, so the eu goes down because the dollar strengthens based on expectations of no further weakening through easing.
Done trading for the week. Was having an up and down week mostly hovering a little above breakeven until today. I acknowledge the risk with trading on NFP Friday. I entered short on the GU with a 20 pip stop at NYO. During LO, price went below the AR, then went back up to the AR to test resistance. Price dropped back down and went below the pivot. At NYO, price traded up to the pivot, and went a little above the pivot and stalled. I noticed the TT buy bottom was located just above the pivot (buy bottom being last weeks low), so when I saw price stalling there, I entered short at 1.5794 with a 20 pip stop.
Took the entire position off at 100 pip gain, but moved my SL to BE at 20 pips in my favor. SO a nice 5:1 R:R trade today (or 10%).
Ended the week up 9.81%.
To recapā¦
reasons for entry:
- 5800 institution level, expecting prior support to be resistance.
- TT buy bottom (also last weeks low at 5799)
- OTE from yesterdays high to the low established during LO
- pivot level
final confirmation:
5) bearish divergence between EU and GU
Alsoā¦looking at price over the week, price went lower on early trading Monday breaking the low of the prior week. Price then went up through the rest of Monday. On Tue, price traded back below last weeks low and consolidated. Price then drift up on late Wed and thursday trading. Price then stopped just above last weeks low and consolidated. I was anticipating this being a retest condidtion and turtle souping just above support now resistance. I read this week as a move lower, early in the week, and the rest of the week unfolding as a move down and retest. I expected price to release lower today. Which, it did.
The 100 pip exit was selected as a confluence of the 162% extension of the TT, as well as close proximity to the 162% extension from the AR high to the LO swing low. In addition, 4 pivot fills for a daily range from MR1 down to S2. S2 lined up with the 2 162% etensions mentioned above.
And updated trading results. Pretty much solely from todayās trade.
I know, I know, its NFP and i havnāt traded it in over a year but iāve been looking at the swing trading video again lately. I saw the bearish divergence on the four hour SMT and just had to have a piece of itā¦
Went short on the Cable at 1.5793 using the smaller OTE on the fifteen minute chart. Price traded back to CPP and i missed my entry by a few pips, it was a bit sloppy, then took first profit at 30 pips, 2nd profit at 100% fib.
Then reached for the 162% TT fib extension which we hit making a total of 112 pips for the day.
Great end to the week. Unfortunately iād had a terrible week up until now so it only went to off set my losses lol
Hah!!! pretty much the same exact trade I took. Great job Hunter.
Yeah, nicely done 
I wish iād left 100% of my position on too especially as it was moving quite quick, i should have just moved my stop loss. Nevermind its all good.
How do i post higher res images? Mine always look terrible which is the main reason i dont post very often.
I save the chart out of MT4 (file, save as picture, active chart (as-is)) to my computer. Then use Postimage.org - free image hosting / image upload to upload it. Once uploaded, there will be several formats for links. I choose the first one for a format that makes the picture linkable and it say something like āThumbnail for Forums (1)ā. Thereās a button to copy the link to your clipboard.
Then all you have to do is past that in your message and it shows the image in your post, but makes it linkable to make bigger in a pop out.
This is why Iāve moved to letting my whole position ride to larger TP objectives. BUTā¦I manage my SL with the guidline to move my stop to BE once I hit a 1:1 ration (IE after 20 pips, move to BE if initial SL is 20 pipsā¦30 pips if iniital SL is 30 pips).
I take quite a few BEās. But then get some big bangers.
My analysis has shown I get greater returns this way. and psychologically, I donāt get angry if a trade goes 40 pips in my favor, then hit breakeven getting nothing when I was striving for 90 pips. But I think this depends on a traders psychology. If a BE trade after being 40 pips to the good causes you to feel like you lost something and chase the marketā¦this approach isnāt for you. If you see BE as a win pure and simple because you maintained capital. Then this might be worth a shot.
Out of curiosityā¦what was the % rate of return on this trade for you after scaling out?
Ok, thanks for the info about posting images, iāll try that next time.
Its quite an eye opener that you got almost 10% ROE from one trade.
Bear in mind i used a 30 pip stop loss because of NFP. I wanted to give it a bit more room to move and 30 pips put my stop just above the LO high.
I took 30% off at 30 pips then 60% off at 100% fib leaving 10% to reach for the 162% TT level. Would you belive i got a return of 4.6% on my trade.
I like the idea of leaving 100% of the position on. I usually only look for 20-40 pip scalps so i take 100% profit anyway on those trades. Its certainly something i will consider for my swing trades. As you say, and the evidence shows, those big bangers can be extremely lucrative!
Do you always take 100% off? I mean, if there was an extension you wanted to reach for would you reach with the full 100% or do you ever take 80% off at 100 pips for example and let rest run?
Iām still playing around with swing trading. Donāt have my mind around it yet, so just playing around with it and not counting it in my results on a different demo account.
The first week of the year, I did a great swing trade on the GU where I entered at the LC on Tue, and closed at LC on Friday. Entered within 20 pips of the high, and exited within 20 pips of the low. In the middle, I bagged about 250 pips.
This was shortly before ICT released the āexplosive forex profitsā video and brought the judas swing as a fractal over a week concept to life. Since then, Iāve been backtesting and looking into this. I think ICT said there is a high likelihood of the high or low of the week being put in by tue LO. So far, I havenāt really seen that, at least in terms of using a judas swing. Most weeks in this year have established the high/lo of the week late in the week, or established it early in the week without what we would call a judas out of the sunday range. I havenāt seen it yet as reliable enough for me to really trade it, but Iām still studying price, backtesting, and trying to make sense of it. I think thereās something there, but havenāt personalized it enough to make it tradable for me.
So right now, Iām really doing what I would call ābig scalpsā letting positions run over a couple sessions, not really swing trading over days. Once i figure out how I want to trade them, I will formulate an exit approach.
For my psychologyā¦I have found I get angrier taking (using yours and my trades today as an example), I would be angrier taking 4.6% instead of 10% and feel like I lost something. Letās say the trade went 40 pips to the good, then reversed. You would have made .6%, while I would have been at breakeven. I am VERY comfortable with that and donāt feel bad. My psychology would get more mad at the thought of ālosingā another potential 5% becasue I scaled out just to take some profit.
In my mindā¦Iād have to have a lot of .6% trade winners to make up the 5.4% gap between our returns today. But I canāt stress enough, itās about what makes you happy or angry, or how you are able to control fear and greed.
Even though GU has gone another 60 pips in the way I traded, I see I could have gotten another 6%. That doesnāt phase me. I measured my exit, traded my plan, and feel great about that.
But back to the question on swing tradingā¦What Iām thinking at this point is I would leave the full trade on the table, and move my stop to lock in profits. But not sure yet and still a work in progress.
I think iād be ok losing 40 pips paper profits if i knew that overtime my system was profitable. I guess you just keep reminding yourself that when the big wins come they more than make up for the losses and BEās. I think losses are harder to deal with until you find consistancy. Once a traders consistant its much easier to remind yourself that taking a loss is business as usual and not pilot error or a losing system.
Im interested in trading swings on the four hour and one hour charts just to increase my RRR really. 100 pip swings would be fine, easier to manage than the bigger swing trades. I love the simplicity of ICTās swing trading video. And the way it all blends with the Trinity. It makes trading really enjoyable.
Hey there guys!
Slowly, but surely getting the hang of all this stuff thanks to the videos by ICT and a lot of screen time. Could you just breafly explain what SMT is and works and the acronym āTTā?
If Iām not wrong SMT seems to be to overlayed pairs plotted as line that you use to spot divergences between pairs, right? I didnāt find anything about it in the videosā¦ Thanks in advance
Ahhh, well that explains the outstanding results. Bravo.
Do you you use the risk reduction strat ie loss = reduce to 1% on next trade then 0.5%.
Wally
Hi and welcome on board
yes, youāre correct about the SMT (āāSmart Moneyāā Tool), the important thing to remember, it has to be a closely co-related pairs, so u can easily spot a ācrackā in the correlation. classic example is EURUSD-GBPUSD or AUDUSD-NZDUSD, EURJPY-GBPJPY, etcā¦ you get the point. it also can be one pair plotted against the Dollar index (USDX) and look for divergence again (charts are mirrored in this case), best is to plot fiber-cable-USDX on same chart and you wont miss a āācrackāā 
Bear in mind this is only confirmation tool and not to be used to enter a trade on its own.
TT stands for āāTraderās Trinityāā, concept/tool developed by ICT himself. to find out what exactly is and how it works, best is to watch the video about it.
I strongly recommend to read through the thread: 301 Moved Permanently alongside watching the videos and you will have very few questions after finishing it.
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