Hi Bones, heres mine word for word and also my trading plan to boot!
I only trade the NYO so bear that in mind…
ICT presented us with the tools but, yeah, ultimately your gonna have to put something together that works for you and fits in with your current life style/trading style.
With regards to the tools contradicting each other, they always will to an extent. You just need to wait for trades to come along with enough tools lined up to put the odds in your favour. Dosnt have to be the same tools every time, just a solid combination of at least three, preferably trading in the direction of the four hour/long term market flow.
Hope that helps
Check list:
News
USDX monthly weekly and daily chart noting probable direction and key SR levels
SMT Lower Lows, Higher Lows Divergence = UP, take the lower lows currency
Lower Highs Higher Highs Divergence = DOWN, take the higher highs currency
Traders Trinity
Daily ohlc small or large range day and long term market structure (OTE’s)
Directional probability for daily, 4 hour and 1 hour
Plot Asain range highs n lows
SR levels on monthly, weekly daily charts closest to the current market price
Check monthly and weekly pivots
Daily pivots the market is respecting
Buy/sell zone
Kill zones noted
Buys or sells based on intraday direction after HL has formed for the day
Has ADR been filled?
Weekly COT
NYO Trading plan:
Should really have OTE
Must have confluence of at least three tools
Only trade in direction of LO HL
RRR of at least 2:1
Trading 1% equity
Weekly target of 1-2% account balance
If I win the first trade im done for the day
Stop after two trades win or lose
Stop trading if I lose a maximum of 5% equity in a week
I too am dying of the Black Plague like Jaroon so I’ll keep it short.
Fibs, Pivots, traders matrix, institutional levels, ect are all “implied” levels of S&R. Where market stucture, flow levels and normal S&R are actual present levels on the charts that everyone from Toyko to Minsk can see all at the same time so these have more weight to them than implied levels. (Although smaller TF OTE’s within higher TF OTE’s are awesome)
My checklist is:
Daily charts: Look for previous small/large ranging days, overall trend, market structure, S&R and Fibs.
4H : market structure, Flow, S&R, fibs and Monthly pivots.
1H : market structure, S&R, patterns, fibs and Weekly pivots also now Traders trinity.
15m : S&R, previous interday H&L’s, patterns, Daily pivots, session H&L’s, KZ’s, OTE’s ect.
5m : Patterns and SMT at levels or KZ to enter.
Thanks for the info Shaunnd, initially I’m just going to try and have it set up for NY Midnight Pivots.
I’m on a demo from a strange broker so it’s confusing me a bit. I think it’s russian, and I should probably change.
The time on the charts is set to russian time, so 1 hr ahead of my swiss time. Then, when I manually calculate the pivots, it seems to be spot on with the Macros.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, exactly, thats how this beast works…S/R level, rally, pullback, go…
The rest is just money and risk management.
lol, 1101.6 pips in three days says everything. OK, with very low leverage, but there is no reason to be greedy. The point is to survive and make money in longterm period.
Just read a short article on the longer-term correlation between the S&P (used as a proxy for all stock indices) and its positive correlation to the GU. As fine country that is Great Britain’s GDP is so heavily made up of financial institutes, compared to say Germany’s, which is a manufacturing society…/???
Also - you ought to read the babypips school on this - look for the risk on/risk off sentiment of most traders. When everyone thinks the futures bright, they’ll buy shares and other risk assets to cash in, when every one’s shaken up, they dump shares and buy back into the USD. It means the dollar goes up when there’s a risk off sentiment but it also bit more complicated … aarghh…
How’s everyone’s trading going? I’ve been busy with other stuff and missed a few sessions… Clarkfx! How’s it going?
Just to make things clear:
GMT is GMT time, currently as I’m typing, it’s 18:00 GMT
BST is London time, which is 1 hour ahead of GMT, currently at 19:00 BST.
If Alpari is GMT+1, it would be also at 19:00, but it’s currently 21:00. Doesn’t that make it GMT+3
My mistake, I’m using Alpari (US) not UK.
My pivots, killzones, trader’s trinity indicators are all lining up perfectly… everything except the ADR… =/
Sorry autodidact, that I picked your post, it has nothing to do with you. Im just trying to help, because other people helped me before in my trading. Im really looking forward ICT is back with his videos, teaching and hints, he is really able to explain and describe things much better than any other “guru”…
but why I write this stuff…In my humble opinion if I go through the posts in this thread I see one major problem I was fighting with as well some time ago…guys, you are trying to predict and analyze the market. This is not a trader job, this is TV analyst job and they dont trade. Trader has to trade: you have your plan, you are absolutely sure it works in longterm, you see your pattern, you take a trade…you win, ok, nothing exciting, you lose, ok, nothing exciting. Next hour, next day another opportunity comes and the whole loop repeats. This is trader job in my opinion. Not to analyze or predict what is going to happen in the future.
I like this:
[B]“Back in 1994, early in my trading career… I read a successful trader’s remark concerning trading systems and methods. This trader mentioned the ideal Trading Plan and or method can be written on the cover of a matchbook. Think about the size of a matchbook cover and it’s limitations in space. The point is short and sweet is possibly the best approach.”[/B]
EDIT: sorry, maybe I drank too many beers today, but I had to write this post
I’m doing well thanks. Just moved into residence for university a couple weeks ago, been living off of beer, pizza, burgers, fries and more beer for the last little while. Trying to manage my trading schedule with classes and studying as well as my precious sleep. Haha, I just need to get used to it up here and then I should be good.
Something similar to ask along these lines. I have the PivotDailyMacro set for -8 hrs (as I’m on PDT) and the MT4 I’m running is on GMT. The pivots completely change when I adjust to -5 (EDT).
I have been watching video’s over and over again and I noticed that in video “ICT Pro Trade Review: 03/14/11 Video” and I believe 03/15/11, ICT talked about having a webinar for going over how to setup your day and what steps he takes each day. He said he recorded it and was going to post it but I haven’t found it.
Also in video 04/02/11 at the end he announces that on 04/24/11 i believe he was going to show the London Close trade setup. I don’t see a video for this either.
He has awhile back when i was reading the thread stated something about him having a webinar on how to make 20 pips daily. Not sure if anyone has any insight on this.
It would be greatly appreciate if anyone can help me out with these missing links.
Also is ICT still planning on doing the Asian and London Open trades like he did for the NY open when he gets back.
If I may step in here, and say the way I see it. We have our technical tools, we have seen them work over and over again, we know that we don’t require any more. Like you said, it becomes boring and routine, just as it should be. I know that I can’t predict the future, and that it would be foolish to do so. It is all about probabilities, and not prediction.
So then where do we go? Well I for one am interested in the macro-economic picture and how all of the markets are relating to each other in the world today. I don’t want to use this information to tweak my trading plan - why mess with something that is working? It just adds a bit of colour to the overall picture. If you can maintain a ‘separation of church and state’ so to speak, then I say go for it!
This thread is all about the ICT technicals, however, so maybe we should take our other interests elsewhere.
You asked all of the questions on everyone’s lips… none of us know the answer!
I believe he briefly went through a routine in one of the earlier videos, but at that stage we still had limited tools in the toolbox.
The London Close teaching segment was never released in the full capacity it was promised. We only have the teachings that were given in one of the first PTC videos.
I can’t remember a specific webinar on how to make 20 pips a day, but there have been references throughout the videos on how one could possibly pull 20 pips out of an asian session trade, or a NYO trade. Again, no teaching segment that I can remember that deals with this and this alone.
In short, I think you can piece together how he trades all of the sessions with references to trades that are in the PTC videos, whether any more videos dedicated to individual sessions appears…only time and patience will tell.
I’ve been lurking the last few months and reading through all the great material that ICT has put on this website, and watching the videos…I’m still not caught up to the present day material (I’m in March '11 as far as the thread is concerned), but I finally feel like I have enough understanding of the terminology and basics of forex to open a demo account and start really getting into “hands on learning.” I opened a MT4 demo account and just have a few questions about how to set up my trading station.
How can I adjust my times on the software. I’ve clicked around for a while and can’t seem to do that. I’m on mountain time and just want to make sure everything is set up correct. I know ICT talks about setting up our pivots based on NY (EST) midnight to midnight…what does that specifically mean for me in my mountain time zone?
I have prices displayed to the 5th decimal point currently and would like to change it to only show price to 4 decimal places. I’ve only seen 4 in all the videos I’ve been watching and would like my screen to look the same.
I installed the daily pivot macro and it seems to work, except I get a dotted line instead of a solid one. When I click on a pivot line and go to properties, it seems to show a solid line as being selected. Anyone else have this issue?
Any other tips/comments/advice on things that would be good to do as far as software setup would be greatly appreciated.
As a side note, when I first started reading this thread, you guys were all talking gibberish …since then, I’ve gone through the school on babypips and have been reading and re-reading all the stuff from Michael and I gotta say I’m super excited that I’m to the point that I feel like I have a decent grasp of most of what is going on (or at least as much as a novice such as myself can have at this point). Just wanna say thanks again to you Michael. I feel so lucky to have come across your threads at the beginning of my forex adventures, and I feel confident that if I can learn to be even 10% as good a trader as you are, I’ll consider that a great success! Thanks again and looking forward to learning even more.
No Problem, I was just responding to the query someone had regarding forex correlations with other asset classes as I had read an interesting article on it that morning. Compared to alot of the other bumpf that gets posted on here, I considered relevant as its a SMT but with different securities.
which is like a long term SMT of the GU vs S&P and thought it might be beneficial for long term trades. And the reason behind the correlation was the major component of the UK’s GDP being made of financial sector companies. Just as the reason for GU and EU correlations, and why that SMT works is that there are large trading partners. Bumpf over… phew…
hey Clark - good to hear you’re enjoying Uni! Good work, have a beer for me… Let me know how your trading goes too.
It doesn’t matter what time zone you live in,you just need to know the time difference between your charting server and the time zone of the markets you’re interested in.
If your chart is on GMT then London midnight is 2300 hrs and NY midnight is 0400hrs on your chart.London is on BST at present,which is GMT+1.
So if you set the ‘Shift Hours’ on the PivotDailyMacro to +1 for London,and -4 for NY,that should be correct.
Hope that helps.
…since then, I’ve gone through the school on babypips and have been reading and re-reading all the stuff from Michael and I gotta say I’m super excited that I’m to the point that I feel like I have a decent grasp of most of what is going on (or at least as much as a novice such as myself can have at this point). Just wanna say thanks again to you Michael. I feel so lucky to have come across your threads at the beginning of my forex adventures, and I feel confident that if I can learn to be even 10% as good a trader as you are, I’ll consider that a great success! Thanks again and looking forward to learning even more.