I have it in my notes as 5/23/11
Just wondering, but Jay, and others who may consider themselves āsuccessfulā traders, how long would you say one would have to be consistently profitable to not be just lucky or āon a hot streak?ā I just started trading ICTs methods with some real cash 3 weeks ago (after 3-4 months of demoing) and have made roughly 160/wk so far, which is well over my 60 pip/wk goal. I know I have a long way to go, but I finally feel like I know what Iām doing and am hoping itās not a mirage. Iām sure some of you other traders have felt like this too, but sometimes it just feels TOO easy. Guess thatās why ICT called it his ATM method : )
My other question/observation is that I have difficulty stopping trading after I hit my goal. In each of the past 3 weeks I hit my goal on early Monday (twice) or by Tuesday (once). But I would keep seeing good set ups, so I decide to take them. Now Iām kind of worrying that i might be hurting myself because theyāve been paying off. Should I just absolutely cut myself off after I hit my goals? Should I raise my goals? I know itās good to follow rules, but I also feel like I need practice with trade managementā¦so why not take trades? I guess what Iām saying is, if Iām profitable and I donāt find myself taking stupid trades, is there any harm in taking 10-15 trades a week? Have I just been lucky and thereās no way to sustain profitability taking that many trades? I know ICT takes just a handful of trades each week but seems to make 40-100 pips per trade. Iāve been making 20-50 per tradeā¦
Okay, enough of my rambling. Thoughts?
Thanks,
Matty
Thanks Jay.
That means a lot to me given your notoriety on babypips. I appreciate the comment and gives encouragement Iām heading in the right direction.
Iāve looked at your thread a little, but really trying to avoid jumping from system to system and changing approaches (or more accurately, cluttering my mind up with so much information/approaches). One thing that is attracting me to ICTās thread is 1) the pace of trades is more condusive to my psychology and 2) the generality of the tools and ability to use discretion. Once I get the aspects of ICTās tools and my own approach, I do plan to take a look at your threadā¦but consciously and intentionally staying away from it at this point even though Iām interested in it.
Itās taken me a long time to shake the need to try to find a āholy grailā or a mechanical system that can be profitable with a set of defined rules. Iāve finally learned that they donāt exist, and discretion is a must as well as making trading your own. I think this applies to all aspects of trading whether it is risk managmenet, entry plan, or exit plan. (probably a message that was in your webinar on a trading planā¦I think it was last night). Itās not that I havenāt heard that message said before, or repeated many many times by successful traders. Itās that I didnāt listen and didnāt want to hear it. Actuallyā¦Iād say I shook the mechanical system/holy grail approach a while agoā¦but I was trying to find something/someone to emulate and do it their way. I realized that doesnāt work either and is destined to failure as much as trying to find a holy grail. Iāve learned you canāt emulate and execute another traders trade plan and be successful. There needs to be an element of making it your own.
In terms of learning ICTās methodsā¦Iām fascinated by the generality of the tools and ability to apply as you see fit. Are there things that ICT does that I do emulate. Absolutely. Are there things that I consciously choose to do something differentā¦yep. As the exit plan post below outlines, and also how I donāt tie my self to a ā30 pip stop lossā rule. Given the times of day and amount of attention I can pay to the market given my day jobā¦Iāve consciously decided that I will use stops larger than 30 pips and simply reduce my lot size to make it no more than 2% risk.
Does that mean ICT will have better R/R thn i doā¦probablyā¦but we have different lifestyles where I canāt wait for the optimal OTE every time. When Iām a full time trader, maybe I willā¦maybe not. But Iām very much approaching my education and learning in this thread as providing my ideas and guidelines to make me a trader who uses ICTās tools and methods. I am definately not approaching this to try and become a clone of ICT.
Although I directed this post to youā¦the audience is really any inexperienced trader reading this who may find themselves trying to clone/emulate ICT to a tee and give inspiration that itās OK not to try to be ICT or feel that success is measured by their ability to emulate him to a tee. Heās a mentor helping you learn to tradeā¦not an evil scientist looking to create clones. Take his ārules/guidelines/principlesā and make them your ownā¦use his as a basis to keep you in the right ball park. But feel free to customize to your personal psychology, temperment, lifestyle, and personality.
I am close to going live, and as nice as it is to bank your pips after you have met a goal why the hell would you stop? Let your winners/winning run. This does not mean chase trades; you stated you keep seeing GOOD setups well take them. The reason people have to stop themselves is because they become undisciplined. If your trading the same setups that made you money in the first place and they keep appearing, keep taking them.
The most important time to grow your money is the beginning because once you hit a certain threshold you really start banking coin. I love fishing and if I caught a 30lbs pike at the beginning of the day I sure as hell wouldnāt call it quits. It also means I wouldnt start doing retarded techniques and wasting time and gas doing things that do not catch pike. I might throw a new hook or dabble a little, but in regards to forex if you want to test new setups you can demo at no loss.
When youre on a heater youre on a heater, but donāt change your game up for no reason. I can imagine your feeling of doing better than expected, but I say keep at it and stick to your guns.
You better watch outā¦ You better not cry,
You better not poutā¦ Iām telling you why,
Santa Clause is coming to Babypips tonight!
HHBP :57:
Hi. ICT
Most members of this forum have given you all the praises even more than I could ever give. But permit me to simply say youāre great.
Found this thread a few days ago. Since then, have been trying to download files on first page of thread(still trying) but some of the file path donāt seem to be valid (like "Excel Daily Pivot Calculator for Non-MT4 users ") for example with some others file. Please. I would appreciate it if you could help.Thanks and God continue to bless you.
:20:
Well done on your consistency and profitability. As youāre relatively new to Forex trading, I would advise strongly against continuing to trade after hitting your goal. Yes, let your winners run but I wouldnāt assume additional trades.
My reasoning for saying this is because of the psychology of trading. If you get too comfortable taking on trades after surpassing or meeting your goal, it can be dangerous. Remember, youāre in it for the long-term, so itās of utmost importance to develop the right psychological mindset from the very beginning. If you develop a disciplined approach to sticking to this plan, it will surface in other aspects of trading as you continue you career in forex. This will only bring you closer to mastering the psychological aspect of trading in general.
You are consistent now, and I hope you have continued success, but God forbid you encounter a losing streak. If you havenāt developed a disciplined approach to assuming new trades, your chances of falling victim to revenge trading and habits of the like will increase.
I, like you, havenāt been trading long at all. I am far from being an experienced trader, but posting my thoughts here in hopes it may to strike a chord with you. This is the way I see it, and Iām sure others disagree, but it makes a lot of sense to me in my stage of development.
right now, I feel like my 5 yr old, only 5 more hours until Santa arrives! This thread is like the jelly of the month clubā¦the gift that keeps on giving
iyke,
welcome to the thread. PM me your email and Iāll send it to you
Kinda like this just a little more sniperish is what I am looking for
This really isnāt important information but thought others might be interested in my findingsā¦
To make this work out next year to turn $1000 into 7 Figures in 40 months you would need to make a little less then 19% return each month.
The reason I wanted to find this out is to give me a guide to try and strive for in the coming year. Not a hard rule but a guide to see where I am at with the challenge.
PIPā¦ I recommend u try something along the lines of what I"m doingā¦ even if itās not as public as my own is (though this may work to help youā¦it does for me)
anywayā¦Iām not gonna post a link to distract others from what ICT is teaching hereā¦ but u can find the thread of mine that iām talking about. check it outā¦ and you can see how I am striving to take a very similar journey myself, right now.
Jay
I found what you are talking about and agree I need to set some goals for myself to try and accomplish with trading. I donāt care that much about the 7 figures as much as I care about making my current income each year in trading. If I could just acheive that I would be very happy. Then I would look for making the 7 figuresā¦:32:
LearninToPimpPips,
Do you have a excel spreadsheet that you keep track of all your trades on?
If anyone else has an excel spreadsheet that you keep track of your trades on I wouldnāt mind taking a look at it.
I am trying to come up with a decent way of keep track of all my trades, but canāt seem to come up with anything that I like.
If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.
hmmā¦ i track mine differentlyā¦ but, i would ask Meihuaā¦he was trying to find an excel spreadsheet a few weeks ago, and I think he came up with something he was pretty happy with. u should try contacting him.
Jay
Hi Matty
Firstly, a huge congrats on your success. Enjoy it.
But my 2 pips worthā¦
Let me get this right; You have been using ICTās methods for 3 weeks, but started studying them about 3/4 months ago?
Or you only started studying this ācourseā 3 weeks ago and went live with it?
If you only started 3 weeks ago then I have to say that maybe luck is on your side, because looking at the volume of this
material, and the way its presented, Iām guessing a thorough understanding would take a very long time.
Iām not new to forex, but only got onto this thread about ten days ago, and it has totally consumed me. I donāt sleep,
I have become a forex zombie. I normally absorb new stuff pretty quickly, but I donāt think i would be comfortable trading
this after 3 weeks. Using the fib to set up an OTE is easy, but the overall analysisā¦thats going to take me some time.
On the other hand, if you got it right after 3 months, then it gives me hope but I still expect it take longer for me.
Anyway, my advice to you is this: If you hit one week where you are not profitable, then donāt trade the next week.
Go back to the books.
Thats what I would do, but then again, I donāt have much experience, but just sayingā¦
Iāll post what I came up with. Basically, I do an export of the native report from MT4, copy and past the detail report table into excel and do some math.
The reason I did this is MT4 considers each closing of an order a trade. So if I enter a trade, and scale out over 4 price points, the report from MT4 calls that 4 different trades, but I want to look at that as 1 trade and caluclate a blended R/R ratio and pips gained/risked. I have to pretty it up b/c itās in LTPP style to get something doneā¦but I can work on prettying it up and making it easier to use.
I have some ideas on it.
Thanks that would be appreciatedā¦I guess Iām just looking for something I can manually enter in since I donāt use MT4 for tradingā¦
Itās getting near that exciting time. Perhaps someone should leave a plate with some cookies and a glass of milk. A few carrots for the reindeer might also be good.
Piptronix, I started reading up on forex, babypips school, general forex info about 6 months ago. Spent some time on this forum and shortly thereafter came across ICTs material. That was back towards the end of June. So I guess I was demoing for a little more than 4 months, and then I put in real money 3 weeks back. I definitely have a long ways to go, but like ICT mentions, the stuff in the first handful of videos is enough to make anyone profitable if applied correctly. All the other goodies (like whats coming out this month) are what can take you from good to great, or at least thatās my take on things. I just do top down analysis, focus on higher time frames, and take trades in kill zones with MF and with confluence of S/R and Fibs/OTEs/SMT. I think just finding good trades based on those tools is very possible and repeatable. And honestly, not too hard to understand. What took me to somewhat consistent from consistently losing was focusing on confluences of MULTIPLE factors, with an emphasis on higher time frames. When I first started with ICTs methods I was trading every OTE that formed and not really putting in the chart time to find the RIGHT OTEs. Anyways, I am worried about my first losing streak, cause I know its gonna come. Although, I actually had 4 losing trades in a row this week, but quickly recouped my losses in the next two trades without overleveraging. But hopefully when I run into a really bad stretch, Iāll be able to fight the urge to ārevenge trade,ā as someone mentioned earlier.
Matty