Although ICT is an excellent teacher, watching the videos in your thread really cleared up a lot in my mind about what potential levels to watch out for. Knowing to look at levels that previous price jumped right through, and levels where it traded for time really will be useful in setting profit targets.
Adding the supply/demand levels as another tool to trade off of should only help me to be successful in the long run. And the set-and-forget orders are perfect since I am working full time.
Either you set your close lots percentage to 100 or your broker doesnāt support partial closing of a position. The partial close EA works perfectly fine on Oanda and Ibfx though.
The other option being you are trying to split a 0.1 lot! LOL!
Well, Iām using IBFX, and no, iām not closing 100%ā¦so neither of those is the issue. Now, I realized I WAS trying to close a really small lot size (just to see if the EA was working) and thought that might be the problem, so I was just now in a current short in the NYO (3.3 lots) and was at about a 17 pip profit. Set the 1st pip target at 30 pips and set it to close 50%. However, when I clicked āOKā, it instantly closed my trade at the 17 pip target, ironically enough, right after which price dropped another 15 pips in about 30 secs : (. Anywaysā¦I donāt get it. The only other thing I can think of is that perhaps it has to do with IBFX measuring price to the 5th decimal (pipette)? But that seems weird that the EA wouldnāt account for that considering its an IBFX based EA???
The EA accounts for the 5th decimal so itās not that
I"ve even tried deleting the EA from IBFx, and reinstalling the one you just recently posted, and it still does the same thing. I would LOVE to have this work for me as I have to go to work shortly after I place my morning NYO trade, and I then just get stuck putting my TP at 30 pips and miss out on anything over that.
At least make your TP 60 pips, that would give you 2:1 with a 30 pip stop
Hi all, I just wanted to say a big thank you for this thread. I am still new to this whole world but Im hoping to learn and practise patiently. Im still not perfectly comfortable with my charting software (FXCM) but Im currently looking for one that suits me better.
I like reading the informed opinions on this site (the fakes are starting to jump out at me like long term S/R levels!!) and I look forward to getting to a level where I can contribute productive feedback regarding my own thoughts on the markets.
Anyway, as the man says Good Luck and Good Trading 
EDITā¦After posting this, some of the pics are hard to read due to resizingā¦Iāll look at trying to get better pictures updated here to make it easier to read. Although, I think the important thing is how I went through the gyrations to form a bias for this trade.
EDIT 2: Updating rationale for declining to be short in the market yesterdayā¦there was a key point regarding the ADR that I forgot to document. It was a factor I considered, but neglected to document.
OKā¦this will be a long post, but I wanted to document a thought process I went through this morning and also my daily checklist to trading as it evolves. This is intended to be a development exercise for me to be able to reference back to as I mature as a trader to see where Iāve improved and use as a reference point. Additionally, it should also provide others an opportunity to comment and share dialog in what I hope will result in some meaningful discussions through replies and dialog among traders learning the ICT approach to the markets.
The ICT is like Hooters with a slight twistā¦the restaurantā¦not what youāre thinkingā¦āSimpleā¦yet refinedā whereas Hooters is ādelightfully tacky yet unrefinedā (Hey ICTā¦after I make my first million, Iāll take you to Hooters at the Inner Harbor to celebrate. 
)
I know this will take a long time to write and will have many pictures at various steps through the process. Hopefully the community likes it.
OKā¦hereās the chart when I first started getting grounded for the day at around 6:30am this morning.
What to make of thisā¦A rapid swing higher, some consolidation, followed by an equally fast retracement. How do I get a daily bias to be long or short.
To answer that, thereās 3 places I look to get get a bias.
Fundamentals
Here is a link to the perf chart for US Treasuries
PerfCharts - StockCharts.com - Free Charts
What I notice from this link is that the 2 and 5 year broke to a higher high yesterday and the 10 and 30 year did not. Also, in general, it appears to me that a bottom is forming looking at the recent trand and this chart could be positioning for a move higher. I have divergence on 2 of the treasuries making a higher high and 2 not. Could be a change in sentiment resulting is a ārisk onā sentiment. A change in sentiment would mean bearish for the Euro-USD (risk on meaning a desire to own dollars, so selling the euro as a result).
Noteā¦not sure Iām fully using this chart correctly so feedback is appreciated. I found this thread a week ago and have been reading the posts and watching videos as well as conducting my own analysis of the charts in real time. So and other insights people have on this is appreaciated. Even though that is my analysis from aboveā¦I havenāt been looking at this enough to trust myself to actually use it in analysis.
Next, I looked at the dollar chart.
$USD - SharpCharts Workbench - StockCharts.com
What I notice on this chart is the dollar has been ranging the past few days. We are retesting highs on the dollar from last week were we had the upper wick hit the same level on Thu/Friday last week. I also note on Thu/Friday last weekā¦we established short term resistance and both days were down days for the dollar retracing a strong up day on Wed. My bias is the dollar seems to be in indecision if it wants to move higher from the āgolden crossā that formed on October 12th or continue down. (golden cross being 50SMA crossing over the 200 SMA)ā¦noteā¦since the US stock market run up that started on October 4th (a weaker dollar results in a higher equities market)ā¦the golden cross formed early in this most recent stock run upā¦just find that interesting.
But anyway, but to the E/U analysis from looking at the dollar. It appears to me the dollar is consistently retsting the 50 SMA on the bottom side and could be bound to the upside by resistance formed last week. When this chart goes higher, it means bearish for the E-U. My bias from looking at this is we are in consolidation and waiting for direction. Until direction is established, should expect a reach down to the 50 SMA and look for resistance to hold. Translating that to the Euro/dollarā¦expecting downward retesting of the 50 SMA means bearish dollar or bullish Euro.
Another interesting observation I have as I learn how to tie fundamentals to trading biasā¦the past 2 days have been strong down days for the Euro-USDā¦but the USD index isnāt trending. There seems to be little correlation to the movement in the EurUSD compared to the USD index. So againā¦as I learn to use the information these charts tell me, Iām not trusting my analysis of them in my trading biasā¦but simply starting to incorporate looking at them to see how the information here can be utilized in the future.
Zero Hedge
I also read zerohedge.com to get some fundamental analysis to get insights to the rumors and headlines that is moving the market. Recently, they have been giving a lot of attention to the overall situation in Europe (Greece, Italy) to give some ideas of the news coming out and what you donāt get from a basic forex news feed. Overall, zerohedge was indicating today was a quiet day and not a lot going on.
Market Flow
Donāt feel the need to post the market flow charts. Everyone should know the market flow from the daily, 4 hour, and hourly is bearish. The most recent fractal high is at the same level as the previous fractal high.
So my bias from market flow is Bearish.
Pivots and using a bias that the daily high/low is established between 00:00 - 05:00GMT
OKā¦now to start dressing up my naked chartā¦
First, the pivot calculatorā¦
On the pivot calculatorā¦I see an bias to trade between MS1 and MR2 for a range.
One question I have on this calculatorā¦there are separate fields for open and close. I know for close I enter the prior day close, but for openā¦do I enter the open for today which almost always should be the same as the close (at least within a pip or 2). Or do you enter the prior day open. It makes more sense to me to enter todayās opening price and Iām wondering if this calculator has you enter open as a separate entry to account for potential Sunday gaps from the weekend. Anyone that can respond to confirm which open price to enter into the caluclator. I used the 5am GMT (NY midnight) opening price which was the same as the closing price.
And now, my first 15 minute chart.
OKā¦I put some information on the chart to make some sense of it. I added the period separators and daily pivot macro indicators. I also drew in the midpoint horizontal lines (the white dashed lines) to highlight mid point levels. I also use the āisessionsā indicator to highlight my kill zones for trades. I also added the ICT Trader Trinity indicator to get the prior week high/low plotted. In addition, I also plotted a line for the high of the asian session range body of the candles (the short/short/long dashed horizontal line)
Here are my thoughts.
Price has just broken below the prior week low (the line indicated by the dashed green line from the TT indicator). It also appears to have formed some turtle soup on this breakout and the turtle soup is right on top of yesterdays DS2 level.
Todays MR1 level is pretty much right on top of the DS2 level from yesterday. Given the bias from the pivot tool being MS1 to MR2, I could be biased to the upside since we are trading right at MS1.
We are in the buy zone of pivots
For the London open timeframe, we saw a significant price move up a little consolidation, then a reach higher for a 157 pips up move for the open and hour after open. We are now retracing back down and the first 30 minutes of the NYO is down.
The retrace down is in a OTE for the move upā¦but the pace of the move has me nervous. Thatās a pretty fast up move and down move.
The price is trading right at the Asian session high of the range that was established.
The move up moved back into the range of last weeks weekly candle and this retrace down just moved back below last weeks low.
UPDATE: - The ADR for the EU is about 165 right now. We had a 157 pip up move, so an extended down move is not likely. Doesnāt mean it canāt happenā¦but playing probability.
Assessment
I decided to do nothing. I felt like I had a lot of conflicting signals and not enough confluence to take a position for the following reasons:
Given the mixed signalsā¦i do nothing.
My plan for the rest of the NYO session is as follows:
Nowā¦fast forward to the 8:30 15 minute chart for my analysis here.
Wowā¦I canāt believe it. We got an upmove and retrace back to the OTE during the NYO session. As I said aboveā¦if price continued lower, I was going to stay on the sidelines for this session. The only scennario I would have entered is if NY saw an upmove and retrace.
Hereās the diffeneces that I considered to make a trade from having a bias now versus before when I saw conflicting signals.
With the moves up and retracingā¦I see today as a ranging day, not a trending day. So I give more weight to my pivot trade bias even though market flow is down on all timeframes
Knowing the structure of the markets, a retrace is reasonable after 2 strong down days.
I had just listened to one of ICTās feedback videosā¦the 3/9/11 one. In the video, had had a monologue that seemed very appropriate for this specific session. He highlighted you donāt have to have a bias for where the market is going for the entire day or out in the futureā¦only the next couple hours. With 2 up moves and retraces into OTE zones it seemed reasonable to expect an upmove for the next couple hours.
The asian session range from last night is now tested support in addition to prior resistance becoming support.
Itās reasonable to expect some bouncing back into the weekly range because we have recently brokwn lower.
So I decided to take a long position. I entered a buy limit at the top end of the Asian session range. Even though this represents more tahn a 78% retrace, I had a feeling the price would reach back to this level for an entry. This allowed my to tighten the stop a little bit.
I entered a market order buy and got filled at 1.34649. I set an initial stop loss at 1.34336. (some slippage on entering the market order is why itās not an exact 30 pip stop loss). I actually entered this order on my mobile phone as I was commuting on the train to work. I realize I made a mistake in my lot sizing stop loss placement here.
Here is a chart showing the trade and after the pic, Iāll walk through my trade management for this one.
I closed the trade in 3 parts. The first part was manual after a 50% retracement move up and moving back down. I waas still a little unsure if the trade would work out, so I closed 30% after it looked like the trade might fail after an initial move up in my favor. It went 25 pips in my favor, and didnāt want to have a failed trade just because it didnāt reach 30 pips for me to close out 30%. So I took 30% off the table and moved my stop loss to break even.
Then I closed another 30% at the 138% extension level and MR1 confluence.
I was holding out for R1, but the trade moved back down and closed as a 15 minute candle closed below the pivot.
Overallā¦feel it was a great trade. Made 4% of my equity. And was a good exercise on forming a bias for the day that proved to be a winner.
The candle may end up down for the day with this most recent move downā¦but I made money in the hours I was trading to the upside because your bias has to be where is the market going the next few hours. Was difficult to go against all 3 higher timeframes showing bearish market flow. But this one worked out.
I appreciate this analysis, and think you are moving in the right direction. This helps me out because of my own mistakes in interpretation and I keep thinking the stuff ICT has yet to release will only help with this understanding. If some kind of āteamā is formed, I hope this is the stuff we talk about and gain instant feedback. If a team is not formed in that sense, at least you and the others posting more frequently are acting as a āteamā together on this thread.
I know Akeakamai asked once before if anyone has been having success with ICTs methods, but I will ask again and hopefully people can respond in the thread so we can create a sort of pecking order for the most important things to focus on. Some may be reluctant to pass on information but I dont think there is anything to lose.
Studying for a management class yesterday I was reading over complexity theory as it pertains to strategy and it struck a cord. It states a person cannot have all of the knowledge and it is something that emerges through interaction. We get things wrong when:
-We interpret the external environment incorrectly
-We fail to see relevant signals
Given that context I see interpreting the external environment as where is the bias and what direction are we moving. While the signals are what we use to get in a trade. I think most understand market flow by looking at higher timeframes and reading COT or looking at treasuries and USD, but being able to see the relevant signals while factoring out the noise or knowing which signals take precedence is the hard part.
Feel free to share your experience :D.
Nice example of how the fib extentions of the Traders Trinity are targeted following a breach to the downside.
Good Trading. The first must have been tough to hold if you were watching the screen the whole time. The other two were nice pickups. Pop some GMT pivots on your chart, they are being respected more than the NY pivots.
Nice Jaroon, going back through the materials this is exactly what I am trying to work on; finding the higher TF targets. Aside from using the Traderās Trinity i can see the exercise is just taking advantage of daily swing highs and lows. ICT definitely put his important concepts first. MM clearly so you dont blow yourself up. But s&r and higher timeframe analysis this will give you your anticipatory needs. SWAT doesnt bust in the door blindly they have objectives and it may get messy in the middle but there is a target.
I may sound a little cheesy but I like analogies. When we post trades lets post up where it is taking place on higher time frame analysis and see if it is meeting swing objectives. MF seems to be cased here, but if price is going higher/lower, where is it going to? Understandably some of these trades are scalps and no need to scare ourselves out of trades just because we canāt figure out every detail, but this one is a powerful one i can tell.
I have not read every page of the thread just due to length, but I have read 200 pages and have not seen much posting of swing objectives. If we are using technical analysis to make trades we are using historical data and as ICT said understand that swing highs and lows are attached to previous swing highs and lows. This may even help with meeting profit targets, but this is something worthy of being comfortable with.
Of course I could be wrong and I am very green but this is helping me understand. Once this week is over I will try to start posting some charts with this kind of info and we can work this out together.
p.s. when posting charts please leave the option to view it larger, my small laptop screen cant always see the fine details. Thx
Dylan
A couple comments on your postā¦
Please take this as simply feedbackā¦itās not being critical or condesending.
Firstā¦IMHO, I believe ICT has released enough info in order to be a successful trader. I like how he addressed risk management first. If your strugglingā¦you should be demo account trading and using less risk. ICT has released the material to be successfulā¦now comes the difficult part to absorb the information, practice trading to build experience and find ways to make it your own.
Secondā¦In regard to pecking orderā¦My opinion is reading the thread, you can decide which traders to follow the opinions of as those who are more experienced. Iām not sure a āformalā pecking order would be appropriate. I think itās informal and the thread provides a community for sharing of analysis and opportunity for feedback. An important aspect is to really study why trades went wrong and see what you might have missed. In some casesā¦you may not miss anything and the trade just didnāt work. In other cases, there may be an error in the analysis. It takes experience and time and personal efforts to learn. Although I am new to posting to baby pips (as evidence by my post count), I registered back in 2008 and have spent a lot of time the past 3 years learningā¦but never got a disciplined system to follow. I struggled finding a group that wasnāt trying to follow/build a mechanical system to follow. Iāve really gravitated to this approach because itās not mechanical and thereās room to build thoughts/ideas and opportunity to make it your own. The approaches trying to do mechanical trading, IMHO, are terying to get the market to fit their desire, instead of repurposing your desire to adapt to the market. Just my opinion.
I like your comment on complexity theory. Obviously, no trader has all the information. I think it can be expanded more beyond what you wrote. You can also be right and have the same 2 symptoms of error that you mentioned. Trading is probability. Theoreticallyā¦even if a trader had all the relavant information and entered the perfect tradeā¦other traders donāt and a lot of markets is emotionā¦greed and fear. other traders making trades based on emotion can override all of the fundmental/technical information out there. (this is mainly applying to scalping mainly) Just my thoughts on it.
IMHOā¦if your looking for a 30 pip scalpā¦fundamentals play less of a role. If I was to speculateā¦ICT has hinted at the 25 days of christmas and also that there are setups for explosive large profits coming. I can only speculate this is going to be geared towards longer trends and longer terms trades. Thatās where the fundamentals will play in more. For a pivot tradeā¦scalpā¦movement between recent fractals on the 4 hourā¦thatās such a short timeframe that fundamentals sould be a minor factor (againā¦qualifying again as my opinion)
In terms of success using ICTās methodsā¦Iāve been studying using them for about a week and a half. For trades where I have been disciplined and used an evolving approach during the NYO kill zoneā¦I have had success. I have made 4 trades over the week and a half and made abou 12% and currently 4 wins 0 losses. I still overtrade and just willy nilly enter trades on a demo that have about a 33% success rate. So Iām leaning to get rid of my overtrading and learning patience and hopefully will see the improvement.
Fascinatingā¦During the timeframe of your first 65 pip tradeā¦you were short and won, I was long and won.
Couple thingsā¦our kill zones arenāt lining up. What time GMT do you have your LO, NYO, LC timeframes?
Alsoā¦where could I find that market flow indicator that you have displayed on the lower left corner?
Lastlyā¦Can you provide some insights to your analysis? I suspect you are looking at marketflow. Also, I notice all your trades were entered just above the CPP in the āsell zoneāā¦but barely. Are you using the pivot calculator to get a bias from the ICT video in the first post? just curious if your incorporting that and how you reconciles that sugesting long, while market flow suggested short.
But I find it really cool that we were opposite directions during the same timeframe and both had winning trades.
Just shorted fiber at 1.35183. Lets see if it turns out to be a good trade. SL 1.35574, TP 30% after 25 Pips and 70% at 1.34522.
Edit: @Learningā¦ will answer you lateronā¦ and uh oh, big bullish candle coming in right now, not good!
Did you set your S/L to be about 5 pips above the confluence of R1 and yesterdayās daily high. One thing Iāve noticed is both of those levels match to the pip.
Interestinglyā¦Iām looking for longs using the bias that the low/high is set in the first 5 GMT hours of the day. Also, todays looks to be a ranging day. so the bias would be to trade between MS1 to MR2.
Iām looking for a retrace down to the 1.3505 level (which is confluence of yesterdays pivot and a 61% retrace of the most recent swing. Right now, this appears to be lining up to the London close window possibly. I will look for that to run up to test the R1/yesterday daily high. Also, this R1/yesterday high is also lining up to a 150% extension of this most recent swing Iām tracking. My guts telling me price wants to ro retest that level. Also, the hourly market flow has just turned bullish.
Overall trend is bearish (H4, D1, even W1) so im looking to short and ignore the H1 trend. Your guess about my S/L is right.
About the Killzones. Maybe they are not right. Was confused about the summer/winter time switch. Right now LC is 3pm-5pm GMT for me but i dont think 1h ealier or later is that important. Well, but i will take a look at it.
I found the market flow indicator in this thread. Search for āmantafxā, there is a website too.
Regarding the entries, im looking for the market flow to be in sync, at least H4 or H1, H4 and D1, like ICT said. Next one is taking a look at GMT/EST pivots (are we in sell or buy zone) and other possible S and R levels. I think im doing the same thing like you, but i dont trade against the D1 H4 flow. Thats why im short right now and not looking to go long.
Oh man, i dont like what i see on the chart right nowā¦ come on bears! 
Completely acceptable response. I am definitely not trying to gain free info just so I dont have to read the thread; not that you really implied i was freeloading. All I do is read the thread. The true effectiveness of a system or program is going to be in its success and I am trying to see who is being successful and why. I see alot of scalping and certain people trading some killzones but not a truly long term grasp by anyone. That is why I am sharing my thoughts and asking of others.
ICT still has info to release but as I have said and you have just stated, all the info you could need is provided here. It would be kinda nice to come together and post up something that ICT sees and was like āwell you just figured out the fifth day of christmasā because the thread is truly understanding the concepts.
