could someone with more experience please explain what happened during LO session today?
I really thought we are looking at a Catapult or at least a judas…Plus I was intrigued by the opening prices of this week… cable being below it and fiber above… either way I entered short at 1.2927 during LO kill zone, SL at 1.29577… was looking good, but then a big bullish push broke through several S+R levels and stopped me out. for some reason price didn’t seem to care too much about all those bearish divergences along the way…?!
The main problem is, I don’t really understand what I did wrong… not sure what kind of lesson I can learn from this today as long as I don’t know what went wrong;) could someone enlighten me?
I only risked 0.5% on it… no big deal by itself… but I’ve lost 4 out of 5 trades the past 2 weeks, and this even I believe to understand the principles practiced in here… although I am a newbie with as good as zero experience in forex, and I know it takes time… but i just hope I will eventually win a trade or two… especially as ICTs teachings seem to make so much sense… I believe to follow them strictly but I still seem to loose?!
What am I missing? please someone give me some pointers;)
I need an enlightenment;)
Sundays are very tricky. If you are new avoid them. You recently discovered why Tues Wed Thur are my favored trading days so live there early in your career.
Today we gapped lower on new start of the week as I feared and pleased with the 1.5575 Cable exit on Friday’s long… Soooo sweet.
We pressed lower into LO and the downward pressure from Sunday’s open into London was the Judas. The trap was to suck bears in again and then run up to fill Sundays Gap in Cable… Fibers trap was to catch bears selling the gap fill… Toasty! Both camps are zapped.
You have to understand the higher timeframe environment to anticipate these scenerios or your goose is cooked.
Scrap your bias for the day, look at a clean chart of cable price action.
Draw in your opening price line and Asian session high and low, look at the Judas down on cable (away from the opening price) hunting the stops below the low at Central Pivot
Then zoom in on a 5 min chart and look at OTE on Cable at 9.15 GMT candle
Look at the bullish SMT divergence,
I was SHORT Fiber at 2933 on the initial test of the central pivot (8.30GMT candle) , we traded lower, tested AR high on Fiber (Not quiet but if you were watching the USDX we found resistance at AR low).
On the way back up to the CP on Fiber,I said to a friend "Cable looks like a perfect Judas down,hunted those stops, smt bullish divergence and up she goes"
I closed my short at B/E and while I know some people will say that is not good trade management, that is fine, but when Fiber knocked on the CP door for a good 2 hours, + the above factors,I realized I was wrong and jumped ship,
I may be wrong, but just my opinion: The higher timeframe bias is bullish without doubt; the fiber and cable opened the week below the Friday close, setting up a perfect opportunity to buy the gap, but it requires an appropriate entry. What happens during LO when the higher TF trend is long? The price pushes lower (below Asian range) to catch anyone trying to go long, and to fool others into thinking its a short. The rest of what happens is plain to see, with price blasting higher as expected.
I appreciate your post.
on cable the judas swing was indeed very nice! If you look at your Asian Session Notes, you should find a note about “catapult” which, in my understanding, is a swing after the Sunday Gap has closed. And it was what I believed to take place at LO on fiber. At the same time it seemed like a perfectly valid judas swing up and then the additional slamming of price down. as we were at a bearish OTE from the most recent swing, I have chosen to enter short. My SL was 30 pips above with at least 6 S+L levels in between price and my SL, which gave me comfort, and I believed that this should provide me with enough resistance to break my SL, which it did for the LO kill zone, but was later stopped out;)
at the time when I was entering, cable didn’t do too much. But I noticed that possible Bullish Judas forming… at a time when I believed to be in a bearish Judas in Fiber… Now which one should I believe?
As my weekly bias for now is bullish, I was looking for fiber to tank down below weeks opening price, to be at par with cable and to provide a nice setup below the weekly open price to enter long tomorrow, if the weekly low is created tomorrow… I also noted that we are in TTs sell zone and crossed central pivot into sell zone, and fiber never really took out asian range low’s stops to notice a bullish judas… with this in mind I decided to stick to my trade. and I was obviously proven wrong;)
unfortunately I still don’t really understand which factors determined the move we have seen…
I need to admit that I didn’t focus on USDX during the trade (but I certainly did before my trade, during my analysis).
And I start to see the need for more screen estate to keep more things in my focus at the same time… I don’t want to blame the lack of a better trade station for my failing trade;) but 1-2 additional screens might be helpful in the future hahaha.
What is bugging me is the following:
I am a complete newbie and just started out demo trading… so I more than deserve to get my share of hard lessons;)
But before starting demo trading full time 2 weeks ago, I did soak in all of ICTs material, as much as possible… And I believe to have grasped the main concepts. It might be arrogant to some extent, but when I read through other forum threads, reading some other traders comments about their indicator based systems and such, I quietly feel to have superior knowledge about this whole forex thing, even compared to traders who have been trading a lot long than me…
The past two weeks I tried to use everything Ive learned on this thread since late november 2011 (when I found this thread and started studying ICTs approach…), and even dough I have no doubt that ICTs tools work, I can’t seem to get them to work for me just yet;)
arguably we are currently in a strange time to start trading;) so maybe last week simply was a b*tch for everyone;)
But in my psychology I start to wonder If maybe I’m wrong and I didn’t grasp some major points of ICTs method, or is it just my lack of experience? or maybe its just another one of those weeks? or maybe it is something else?
I’m absolutely fine, yes even happy, for every losing trade I have, and every mistake I make during Demo, AS LONG as I always understand what went wrong, in order for me to learn from it and improve…
But currently I don’t understand my lesson, which is driving my nuts currently;)
one of my last weeks trade was commented on the Skype group by one of our kind, more experienced, colleagues as: " a perfect trade, except the loosing part" (or something to that extent) because I entered in an OTE in confluence with several SR levels during killzone, and so on… but still lost the trade as price moved against my bias…
and then today basically a similar thing happened, with my Catapult trade which wasn’t a catapult trade looking back to it;)
What am I missing?
Maybe I simply fail to connect the dots…
But I am very happy for any kind of pointers, feedbacks or even reality checks;)
Realize it was the begining of Asia that I was looking at when I for all these factors.
Also this is a little drawing I made up from ICT test a little while ago to remind myself about what a trap looks like.
I just couldn’t see anything that was a trap today.
Keep at it - don’t let losing trades discourage you.
Remember to apply and understand as best you can the most basic concepts before delving into newer material. Those who were lucky enough to be here at the onset of the thread didn’t have a choice but to wait for the release of new materials slowly, one after another. This is highly advantageous because it allowed them to spend ample amount of chart time applying the fundamental concepts before gaining access to newer ones.
Those members new to this thread have full access to all of the information which, if not studied and applied slowly - from the very basics - may not be as effective as intended. I recall one of the earlier lessons taught was to mark S/R levels of the prior week, and the previous 3 days. When price reached one of those levels, demo/paper trade shorts/longs with a 20pip SL and 20 pip TP. Do this for a month was the lesson, I believe. By performing this, you gain a better understanding of the concepts of Support & Resistance. It seems elementary at this stage, but the point is to create a strong foundation and build upon that.
Remember the story of the Jade Master. It takes time – a lot of it.
Wally thanks so much for this. Are we allowed to draw the line the way you did on the Stoch? Your line isn’t tangent throughout. It cuts into the stoch in the middle, so i was wondering if this is still a valid type 2 divergence?
Nice trade Wally. Are you aiming for the 200% exp?
Did you go with the Type 2 divergence because it hadn’t fully played out from Friday ie. reached oversold region?
I don’t know i’m not an expert. lol.
But seriously I was looking at this at the begining of Asia so it looked a lot better at the time and at an ote, pivot zone buy and a gap to close it all looked good. It was just 1 little factor for a trade.
I must say I too was a bit concerned with all the divergance pics on the weekend because I know from bitter experience how hard stoch divergences can be to trade. Just concertrate on the one ICT has given us and try to forget all the others.
Ok Wally, thanks. Today was confusing for me, to say the least. EU had judas swing up, GU had judas swing down, I was just scratching my head the entire time, but i ultimately decided to stay on the sidelines and not trade. ICT did say that Sundays/Mondays can be confusing at times tho
Actually I first used the fib Ext tool on a 1h to get the 2 levels then saw that they both coincided with higher time frame areas and settled on 1.3060 as a good place.
But it might be abit too high, I can see nice 1.3040 s&r, it’s an expiement I’m trying out, I’ll just wait and see.
As for the type2 I just added it to the equation for the affirmitive ( I debate with myself both sides of the trade and then see which has the most points at the end or a draw and become a chicken).
I seem to have become more of a bomb disposal than sniper with my trading at the moment, I’m always looking for the boobytrap but some times it just is the red wire you cut.
