What Every New & Or Aspiring Forex Trader... Still Wants To Know

Beginner Questions
2543

Here’s something to add to LC section :slight_smile: EUR/CHF reached a level of resistance right before LC KillZone and retraced 25% of it’s ADR. Moved right into OTE when LC KillZone starts, I think it’s 1500 GMT. I took off 50% at 25 pips profit and closed the remaining portion at 1800 GMT - 23 Fib!

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You can find pretty much the same setup on GBPCHF, guess it’s because of the CHF :stuck_out_tongue:

Here’s a NYO - or not… hehe, pretty annoying! But who cares :slight_smile: Entry got missed by 2.5 pips and 15 minutes. This is pretty much the same setup like a LC as I mentioned in the last post, expect that it occured in NYO. Maybe this is something we could look at NYO. I don’t know :stuck_out_tongue: Another reason to take this setup would have been the SMT divergence I mentioned in my last post. The weaker pair GU trying to catch up to EU again. I’d like to see more comments about these thoughts, don’t know if I’m right with this! :slight_smile:

There’s also strong support on the fib low, but it isn’t on the screen.

I would have taken profits off 2 times, as I wasn’t quite sure about this setup and wanted a very low risk. I would have got stopped out with the remaining portion because of that swing downwards.

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greetings

2544

Beautiful LC on cable today

1] ote on the 4h timeframe as well as the 5min

2] ADR done

3] gone through 4 zones

4] SMT

Just happend 5min to early so didnt get it. :}

2545

Nice posts, fx! You are up to 43 now so you will be able to paste IMG pictures into the thread soon…don’t forget to remove those Manta tags!

With regard to NYO, although ICT highlights some nice ‘continuation’ trades at NYO, I spent most of April looking at reversal trades in that kill zone. What would happen back in March and April would be that price would come down and pass ADR, put in a low at NYO, and that would be the swing low that you could key off for the London Close. This happened time and time again and made the LC a very reliable kill zone to trade. I also recall being frustrated on quite a few occasions because the reversal would happen at NYO, and it wouldn’t come back for OTE at LC. Therefore there is definitely potential for that kind of trade at NYO.

While we are on the subject, has anyone noticed that certain trades will set up quite reliably for a period of months and weeks, and then stop being so effective? How many trades have we seen with H4 UP in the buy zone at LO these last 6 weeks? Not too many. The LC trade that was 15 minutes before kill zone yesterday…a swing low to key off that was also previous day’s low…I used to see that a lot, but not so much in the last 6 weeks.

I have only been trading the ICT style for just over 4 months now, so I can’t say, but[B] it would be nice if ICT could make some comment on this[/B]. What I believe to be the case is that a certain phenomena will repeat over and over quite reliably for a period of months, and then be replaced by a different phenomena. This will then in turn be succeeded by another phenomena, and another, before the patterns start returning to the original set-ups that were seen. With experience, you get these ‘cycles’ lodged in your mind, and when price action starts returning to a series of time/price patterns with characteristics that you recognize, you can quickly identify them. Like I say, it would be nice if someone with more experience could comment on this…it doesn’t necessarily have to be ICT himself.

2546

WOW! Thanks ICT, your latest [I]movie[/I] has really helped :slight_smile:

2547

YEARLY pivots in action. Limited use, I know, but after ‘converting’ a few people to the wisdom of weekly/monthly pivots I thought I might as well go for the trifecta! Haha

Bonus points if you already drew yearly pivots and used them to nail that down swing from 1.4680. Didn’t ICT say something about that 4680 level in his webinar… :wink:

2548

Hey guys,

here’s todays analysis at LO :slight_smile:

Spotted a little divergence on 1h SMT and found another one on the 5min chart. I think this is a bearish one and GU(1.6080) and EU(1.4520) are approaching an area of resistance, while USDX is on it’s way to yesterdays support. They are already in the OTE area from yesterday’s LC downswing. EU already bounced, but this swing isn’t large enough to key off, I’m waiting for it to extend a little bit more and retrace or wait for a swing to form on GU resistance. I’m also looking for a break to the upside, but I’d prefer a short today. Most likely on EU because it had a small range yesterday and I hope that it will expand today.

While I was writing this the broke through the upside, makes me thinking that my understanding on SMT isn’t very well ^^ EDIT: Had the lines one the wrong resistances lol. I’m sorry for that :slight_smile:

greetings

PS: There’s a chance that you will see the 4h OTE again today :slight_smile: Maybe it’s back hehe. (on fiber) Is The upper band is right at MR2

EDIT: Decided to take GU as EU had lazy action right at the resistance & R1 while GU made a clear bounce of resistance.

2549

Hey guys

Just thought I would start sharing some NYO trades since that is the best time for me to trade and will be concentrating on that time period.

Here was lastnights (or afternoon/morning for some of you) NYO trade on the aussie.

Reason for trade:

  • Price had made a huge run up to resistance area on the higher time frame chart.

  • Price was sold down during London session so I took that as the lead to look for an OTE.

  • Used OTE from London high and low. MR1 region.

  • Only went for 30 pips which was the low of the swing which ICT said to use if trading against the trend (aud has been fairly bullish recently)

1023×575

1023×575

+34 pips

Cheers

gbl83

2550

Let’s add a picture to the tradesetup for LO. Finally I was on the right train this week with my LO setup.

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Can’t see the last target on it :confused: but loaded it up the third time because I draw wrong hehe, I guess you can see it on you charts :slight_smile:

Took of 30% at 30 pips to make the trade riskfree as news was coming out. This was also the Swinglow for the second OTE. Took another 30% off under CPP for 60 pips and now I let the remaining portion run to ADR with Stoploss above CPP. ADR is yesterday’s low, pretty good support and no need for me to look for a move further :slight_smile:

greetings

2551

Short Cable:

1023×505

Confluence:

  1. LO Killzone.
  2. 1.6080 Institutional Level
  3. Daily Sellzone
  4. MR1
  5. Daily Market Flow down.

Risk Parameters
25 pip SL, 70 pip TP.

Result
2.8R in under 45 minutes.

High probability trading = BOO-YAH! :smiley:

Chart coming later.

GLGT

2552

He said it before, but he repeated it again at the start of this very week - London open traders should look carefully at the 8am candle. The last two days on Cable have proven that time and price theory kicks ass!

2553

Hi all, it’s Canada Day here in… Canada! and that means today is one of those rare days where I get to see London [I]Close.[/I]
I finished all my trading up in london open, so just a watching session for me! But still it’s fun to see the killzone that caused all that drama a few weeks back haha

I wanted to do a lil 'narration for the Fiber today, because I thought it was a great example of 'reading the flows’
It was london open, friday morning in all of Europe, and the fiber had been making new highs all week. Now you would think that would have everyone and their dog out trading a breakout to the upside. So what would smart money do in that situation? Well looking at the fiber, I’d say they engineered a ‘dumb money’ rally to the upside, blew out buy stops on the day (traded about 14 pips above PDH) then used the stops on those failed breakouts to ride the flows south and back into the range of the week (about a 100 pip) move. Does that jive with anyone else? This is kind of like practice for me. If you’re all excited about the Cable trade…you should be, it looked pretty awesome :smiley:

anyways if you perhaps made that analysis, there was a perfect, and I do mean ‘pip perfect’ confluence of PDH, OTE, and R1 (NY Pivots) for a stunning short entry at 4537.

and better make this a picture book… :slight_smile:

Have a great weekend everyone! :41:

2555

Hey guys,

Took a long position at NYO on the GBP today, counter to the LO move. Shifted stop to +5 pips after the initial move up and was consequently stopped out on the retrace before it then headed higher.

imageshack.us/photo/my-images/14/gbpusd020711.jpg/

Reasons for long were higher trending prices on the daily (even though market flow is still down) - could easily be a retrace of the latest swing to then drop further down, and similarly 4 hr. There was also a long OTE on the 4hr/1hr. Zooming in revealed a nice OTE at NYO on the 15min/5min. Also in buy zone and support at the 1.6000 level, which happened to coincide with MS1.

2 winners and 1 loser, trading NYO this week. Winners were marginal due to moving stop just into profit and getting hit on the retrace similar to this one. First losing week for me in a little while (-20 pips). Really trying to find form and consistency, but I’ll be the first to admit that I overtraded this week and took one less than optimal entry. I paid for it accordingly. I really need to work on trade selection and management.

It’s amusing to me that at the core of becoming a successful trader is the ability to find an edge and then simply exploit that edge over and over again. It sounds so straightforward, but really it’s anything but. To anyone who isn’t seeing consistent success, I put this out there for you to ponder: clearly with the methods that ICT is teaching we have an edge, a number of them in fact, I don’t think anyone can or would dispute that. Everyone who has been following this thread for some time is posting winners (and sure, the occasional loser too), so we’re seeing the tools work time and time again, right? Why aren’t we all on our way to building a fortune? Maybe you’d argue that you haven’t seen enough of the setups yet or you still question your analysis – you just need more chart time - and that would be reasonable. For me though, and I’m assuming many others, I feel that it has little to do with the analysis and much more to do with the psychology. Now that seems fair, but the problem for me is that we continually make it about the analysis when we ask questions like “why did that trade go against me - all of the tools lined up?”, and then we proceed to analyse what happened and tailor our rules accordingly. We might even start thinking about that other thread we were reading where they’re talking about using candlestick patterns to confirm a continuation or breakout at the level we’re watching, entering when price actually turns in our direction. If we only tried that in combination with our other tools we could minimise risk further, couldn’t we? As we start to do all of this we morph our edge into something that it doesn’t need to be. The answer to the question posed above is that the market can go in either direction at any time. We have an edge and that’s all we need. From there it’s about trade selection, trade management and money management.

Now I’m not saying that trade analysis is unnecessary, anything but. In fact I believe it’s critical to long-term development, but I also believe that we place a lot of emphasis on this when most of our problems stem from trade selection, management while in a trade and general money/risk management. This weekend I’ll be working on these areas primarily. Coming into next week, I’ll be looking for a single trade to make my 50 pips at 1% risk in either NYO/LC. I’ll have clearly defined trade management rules and will only take the absolute cream of the crop.

Sorry for the long post, I’m no trading guru so take all of this with a grain of salt. Just some thoughts that will hopefully prompt discussion and/or reflection in others. I’m interested to know what everyone else will be working on over the weekend and what, if anything, you’ll be doing differently moving into next week.

  • Chris
2556

I see you going far, that is a very wise perception

2557

Yeah thanks akeakamai, appreciate it! Only time will tell.

Considering this further as I vacuum the house on Saturday afternoon (not at the top of my priority list, but great thinking time – I recommend it ;)), why would we constantly bring it back to the analysis if that is indeed what we should be worrying least about? We do tend to blame ourselves for a lack of consistency with convincing arguments like [I]“this week wasn’t great due to that one trade that turned because I missed the clear support/resistance on the daily (all in hindsight of course). Next time I need to pay more attention to the higher timeframes so that I can avoid a repeat”[/I]. Higher timeframes, directional bias, should have been looking at GMT pivots, etc., etc. All valid and there’s nothing wrong with this, right? Well, except for the fact that nothing is ever certain, so how can any of the above change our long-term success? Maybe we even look at that trade again to see why it turned at that support/resistance level, and not another one that we had noted. Inevitably we’ll find some explanation that seems reasonable, every time. Maybe this is a way of indirectly shifting responsibility for a lack of consistency, even if we’re not consciously aware of it? It’s easier to blame our analysis than to tell ourselves that it’s fundamentally our own lack of control that leads to these trades. We’re quite literally standing in the way of our own success.

Two pretty epic posts – sorry everyone. Anyway, this is getting a bit too deep for the weekend so I’ll leave it at that.

2558

Very valid points there. I think most of us can identify the set ups and know when to put on a trade. But, for me personally, i need to work on when NOT to put a trade on. Like you said trade selection is most important thing here which i guess will come with how disciplined you are. What im working on, much like you, is just trying to take the 1 trade per week that will get me 50+ pips.

Sometimes I look at a set up and just something inside me knows that it will be a winner (not with 100% certainty of course) but you’re fairly confident in it. Then instead of walking away from the charts or observing for the week, i get itchy fingers, i’ll put another trade on. This, of course, will be a poor selection and it becomes a loser. Inside it doesn’t feel right, but i still put the trade on anyways. I force too many trades.

So for this week I will try to keep it to that 1 trade, where everything lines up and it feels right, and then observe the rest of the week.

Good luck

gbl83

2559

Hello,
Selling into support, or buying into resistance is generally a bad idea and you do have to start with longer TF, so missing a level from daily is a mistake. Similar mistake would be entering just before news event. Of course in hindsight you can find **** load of other mistakes like looking only at EST pivots and ignoring GMT, but that is just looking for excuse. If you watched NYO webinar there was a good quote "You don’t have to be 100% right all the time to make money”, you can be wrong with little things, you can be wrong with bias, but still make money. A simple checklist before trade might help with entering lousy trades, also revisiting first videos could be a good idea.

PS how can vacuum the house be great thinking time then its so freaking noisy?

2560

Hi Chris,

For what it’s worth I don’t follow the methods on the thread, but in general there are some successful principles that can be applied to any system, which can only augment a trader’s ability. Here I can see that you it isn’t your trade selection or your management, but your psychology that is the problem.

Everyone here (no offense) is under pressure to try to obtain that 100 pips or X% account gain for the week and in the process, you are psychologically setting yourself to be unable to accept a loss, which is a very dangerous mindset to have. The way in which you quickly move your stop upwards to guard what little profit you have will do so much more damage to your account than simply letting your profits run. I hope you can see the catch 22, in that that you are conditionning yourself to grab X amount of profit and be satisfied for the week, which is in stark contrast to the above axiom. Many of you may not agree with me, but I find the notion of trying to box trading up as a profession where you can obtain X amount of profit and be done with it destructive both pyschologically and because it caps one’s profits. If you have an edge with positive expectancy, then you should take every trade that conforms to it, because in the long run, if you have a valid edge, you will come out ahead. Will your edge stop working because you are at X% for the week?

It’s amusing to me that at the core of becoming a successful trader is the ability to find an edge and then simply exploit that edge over and over again. It sounds so straightforward, but really it’s anything but. To anyone who isn’t seeing consistent success, I put this out there for you to ponder: clearly with the methods that ICT is teaching we have an edge, a number of them in fact, I don’t think anyone can or would dispute that.
It all depends on the edge you are exploiting. If I had to ask you to define your edge, what would it be? Can you objectively describe it? It may be a very useful exercise to try to come up with [B]concrete reasons[/B] as to why what you’re doing works.

For me though, and I’m assuming many others, I feel that it has little to do with the analysis and much more to do with the psychology. Now that seems fair, but the problem for me is that we continually make it about the analysis when we ask questions like “why did that trade go against me - all of the tools lined up?”, and then we proceed to analyse what happened and tailor our rules accordingly.
Here I tend to somewhat disagree with you. If you have an edge, you should know its ins and outs, and be able to objectively define why you lost that trade. I doubt many participants can give a concrete reason as to why they won their trades either…many of them simply happen to be in the right place ahead of news releases that coincide with the London/NY time sessions which generate a great deal of the movement. Perhaps that is your edge, I don’t know…only ICT can answer that.

However, here-in lies the subtle fallacy that it is the continued movement of ‘smart money’ from fib-fib or pivot to pivot that is generating you profits. Can you show me an example of how you are able to ascertain that ‘smart money’ is indeed at work as opposed to when it’s not? [B]akeakamai[/B] posed an explanation for the recent up and down move in EUR/USD as being due to ‘smart money’ fooling ‘dumb money’. While I will admit this happens several times on a day-to-day basis, is it really plausible that ‘smart money’ moves a nation’s currency pair 400+ pips just to trick ‘dumb money’? Are these the only reason why the pairs move?

We might even start thinking about that other thread we were reading where they’re talking about using candlestick patterns to confirm a continuation or breakout at the level we’re watching, entering when price actually turns in our direction. If we only tried that in combination with our other tools we could minimise risk further, couldn’t we? As we start to do all of this we morph our edge into something that it doesn’t need to be.
Agree with you here.

The answer to the question posed above is that the market can go in either direction at any time. We have an edge and that’s all we need. From there it’s about trade selection, trade management and money management.
I will ask you one question - if you believe the market can go in either direction at any time, are you implying that it is random?

Anyway I don’t want to take away from what ICT is presenting here or disrupt the thread…the guy is successful in his own right and has obviously devoted a lot of time to it. I just wanted to address that post.

Regards,
xXTrizzleXx

2561

Thanks for posting xXTrizzleXx, some good questions and comments in your response. I’ll just say upfront that I hope everything we’re discussing resonates with others and isn’t in any way detracting from the purpose of this thread. I personally feel that this sort of discussion is very valuable, but if other feel differently I’ll refrain from such opinionated posts in future.

100% agree that so many of us are chasing perfection, even if we don’t admit it. What else would explain so much refinement to the point where we endlessly chase the dream-run that we hope will eventually give us confidence to claim that "I’m fully ready to take this on”. I’m certainly in that boat, but I have recognised it.

That’s one of the reasons I posted what I did. Everything you’re describing here falls under trade management from my perspective, which I’m taking very seriously.

Sure, the edge for me is simple: enter off deep fib retracement looking for continuation of a swing at very specific times of the day, when a confluence of price-action and backing factors are present and directional bias is in sync. Now that’s as subjective as you’re ever going to get and I’m not going to post every nuance I use to get into a trade; it’s unique to me and is based purely off what ICT is teaching. This is discretionary trading, where the level to which you can objectively define the specifics is up to each individual. Everyone will have a slightly different level of mechanism involved depending on the way they trade, all of which can be equally successful long-term. As for concrete reasons, when you’re talking about a market that is very much driven by the sentiment of its players (whether fundamental or technical related at any level) I think you’ll find it difficult to formulate such an ideal list.

Again, all I’ll say here is that in my opinion market analysis will always be somewhat subjective. I don’t think anyone can give a concrete reason as to why they either won or lost a trade, except to say that “I followed my plan and win or lose I know that I have an edge long-term”. Saying that, I agree that it’s certainly important to understand your edge in detail. The point I’m making is that it often seems (personally talking here) that we make it too much about the analysis, when in fact it’s often psychological.

That’s a tough question. I will say that my definition of a single random event is one which has an uncertain outcome. If we can agree on that then surely can can agree that for any one trade the outcome is uncertain, right? With so many players you couldn’t possibly say with absolute certainty that it will go in one direction. Even the largest players couldn’t claim that. So then by my defintion any single movement in the market would be random. Why would that be of any consequence though? We’re not concerned with the immediate, it’s the long-term that counts, and patterns emerge over the long-run. That’s what the edge is at its core.

2562

:59: Hey Babypipsters…

Great conversations and points to ponder… I wish I had time to join in the discussion. However, I am about to ship myself and the rest of the clan to Wildwood, NJ for weekend and I will be away for two weeks from trading and posting… vacation baby!!! Woohoo. :59:

I will resume with the PTC and thread contributions two Saturdays from now. Just as a preview… I was asked in an email what a small account might see using the methods and how it “could” pan out for anyone using the methods accurately. Well I did this for them in a small account and for the month of June I hit 100% accuracy and a monthly return over 21%. I stuck to trading the session openings and closes as detailed here and the videos. I will share the trades and results in the coming PTC video for you folks pondering what consistency looks like in a live account that isn’t too large.

I want to wish you fellow Americans a safe and relaxing July 4th holiday and talk with you all soon!!!

[B]GLGT[/B] :57:

2563

Lol, I just got back from Wildwood Friday. Enjoy ICT, best part of summer right now :stuck_out_tongue: