Just take your time through the thread and videos… take notes and refer to them daily. Expect to spend 30-60 minutes in charts daily for reflection and study… for a few months. Then after you understand the basics… practice them on a demo account, risking paper money like I suggest… no more than 2% but if you are new… let’s be realistic and risk .5 - 1% max risk per trade. While in demo target no more than 6% return per month and be tickled with 2% while you learn. Then after 6 months of Demo trading and proven consistency on your part… then and only then consider venturing into the waters with a live account and actual funds.
Aha! The equivalent of a LC scalp for the NY session…mmmmm. Directional bias via low/high of the day made in early London session. Taking market flow as a confluence of two time frames…H4 plus one more? Key s&r, pivots etc into the mix. Nice!
But when do the Futures contracts open and close? Barchart.com shows a price for Monday, May 30th…today, which is calculated from the previous trading day, Friday? ICT said one day lag. I also know that the Wall Street Journal publishes Futures prices every morning from the previous session. That would mean the banks would be reading the prices at 7am NY time, and looking at the direction price has traded during the London session, and going along with that? Are the contract prices for all sessions calculated from NY open? I am grasping at straws now, but I believe the only Futures Market to trade CURRENCIES is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, so it is more likely the contracts start in NY than in London.
Thanks ICT! It’s starting to make a lot more sense. I have noticed that New York Open does seem to be easier to trade. Majority of my successful trades were in this killzone. Though it probably leads to less pips than a London Open trade, I’m quite happy with a few pips here and there. Honestly, 60 pips a week is a really good target for me and I think getting 3 or 4 20 pip trades a week is awesome! I have learned not to rush things and that even a small amount of pips when compounded over time will yield millions.
Because of the holiday weekend, I had some time to look in more detail at the last 3 months data. Thinking about ICT’s premise that the low or high is in the first few hours of the London market, I tried the following. What if you would take a trade at the hourly open at 6am EST/EDT. Assume you could get the direction correct from information available from ICT’s methods and then you held the position till the NY close, say 4:59 EST/EDT. You take the trades every day in E/U but you do not trade the first friday of each month. Also, a fixed stoploss would be 35 pips and that would end that day if it hit your stop. What would the results be?
For March, as crazy as it sounds you would never have had a losing day. Your total pips for the month would have been 1301 pips.
For April, you would have only three losing days and your total pips for the month would have been 572 pips.
For May, you would have eight losing days but your total pips for the month would have been 947 pips.
Ok, no one will get the direction correct 100% of the time but if at least half of the time and half those pips and this does not use any of the other pieces of info that ICT has shared with us. This is on one pair. It’s scary to think what could happen with two pairs.
I was thinking the open outcry. That’s 8:20am EDT (10 minutes before most major US releases), and that’s where I’d center my kill zone, just like centering at 3am EDT for London open. Remember that OTE that line up right at London open? Well I’ve seen similar for the 8:15am candle, but now that I’ve got the tip, 8:20am has some reason behind it and is very close to my own observations. I did notice that the best entries didn’t always line up right at New York open (8am) and I never really knew why, makes a helluva lot more sense now!
Well I am sure ICT said trade NY open after 8:30am way back at the start. That is why my kill zone has always started at 8:30am. I think he stated his reason as ‘news avoidance’, but there could be other reasons.
How would that affect price in the spot market? This is where my understanding of the correlation between Futures and Spot price is sadly lacking. The only thing I can think of is that Openoutcry finishes at 2:00pm CST, London Open traders have access to these figures and trade a direction, and then NY traders hop on the London direction along with the previous day’s Futures data. But why would spot price take off just as Futures markets open? Maybe they want to jump on that data before the news, but hold back until they have the most recent news releases.
Confused…and I will stop guessing right here so that I don’t lead anyone astray.
I dont think this is good idea to post my strategies and trading methods in this thread. It is not because I think I have discovered some super secret FX strategy or I broke the market code Im really not that stupid. [B]It is simply, because I respect ICT’s work and mainly his effort to teach other people how to trade and I’m sure it would be counter-productive for new traders to mess-up this thread with my improvements.[/B]
I think if you just follow his methods and learn the basics, then after some time you get comfortable how to use them properly and what he means with this and that. Then after some longer time you will find your own way how to change this and that to make more pips or find better entries, exits, lower risk, increase reward etc.
But just briefly what I do, it is very similar to OTE entry, simply deep retracements entry. Far below 50% retracement of the most recent breakout momentum candle (mainly on H1 timeframe)…yes, very often it is the same area like OTE. The other thing is that I try to sell above daily and weekly pivot and buy below daily and weekly pivot. I also use scaling out techniques, if price is closing against my entry (but thats a long story). Simply cut your losses if it starts closing over “the lines in the sand”. Not all at once, but fractions of the whole position.
EDIT: I was thinking to start my own thread or some website, but since I live again in my home country, my english is worse and worse. Hopefully I will be able to trade fulltime from September onwards, so I can move from Europe back to Asia this winter. Besides that Im very lazy and I really admire Michael’s endurance, that he can repeat everything over and over, prepare all that videos, spreadsheets, etc. Last but not least, I dont think I can explain properly what I do, because it comes from my own experience and different learning sources.
I dont think I can post a links to some other forums and threads here. But babypips is not the only one good learning source about FX on the internet. I learnt some goodies also at other sites, if you are interested, just PM me and I will send you some links. Or google keywords like zero lines, blind mouse strategy, mighty zones, momo, space wars. Again, as everything on the internet, you have to look at all the stuff with distance and make your own judgment what is useful for you and what is a scam.
Refresh your chart every few minutes…is the number changing? Too right it’s changing! Was it changing a few hours ago? Nope. Was the daily candle there? Nope. Did it say 8:52A[B] CST[/B] after today’s date? Nope!
Sorry Ali, I don’t understand the significance of this…
I stand by whatever times were in that link I posted, because it’s the official CME website…
as for where ICT is actually going with that info, I’m ready to throw up my hands. and to be brutally honest, I don’t care a whole lot, I’ve traded maybe 2 or 3 new york opens in the last 3 months. What ICT has given me so far, either directly or indirectly, is sufficient to build my trading career on. I will reach my goals with 30-40pips avg. per week, and the tools so far will give you that, no doubt about it.
I’m really just sitting back and enjoying the ride, trying to soak up the info in case one day I want to really push it and do my own million dollar challenge, haha!
I did my first demo trade with ICT method. I am wandering if I am on track with my learning.
My trading time is the Lodon open. Between 3h & 5h30 am eastern time.
So, I tooked the previous HI and Low, pulled a Fibonacy and found the OTE between 62 & 79. I took this trade short because I was expecting that price would retest again the Pivot point.
When I did my COT report analysis this week-end, I was expecting that the price would fall again but also, I came to the conclusion that we where comming near a bullish reversal. What was telling me this was that the large speculator where long with 57% of the contract slowly increasing there position. That was not the highest point within the year but it was enough for me to says that the reversal is comming soon.
So When I seen this opportunity, I tooked a short position with a 20 pip profit.
So, I would really appreciate your comment. I whant to know if my thinking was good.
Regards,
:mad:Grr… I cannot post the image !! There is a rule in the forum that does not allow me to post until I have 5 posts :58: Grrr…
Anyway, I short the fiber on M5 at 4:22 am price 1.4288. Sold at 1.4268 at 10:05.
So… If someone can have a look at todays M5 fiber charts… I would really appreciate your comment.
So today was an American bank holiday, and as expect the Cable and Fiber made small ranges, but then as Asian session came, both pairs moved over 70-100 pips. What exactly happened? Was it just because traders were anxious or did I miss some news release?
I looked at the fiber about half an hour ago and I also notice this brutal bullish move, 70 - 100 pip in a so small time frame! Actually it was crossing R1.
I was kind of surprise. I can’t wait to see the London opening and see how the price will move.
I haven’t been on here in a week, because of graduation, and I haven’t contributed as much as I did. It’s nice to see some new faces. =) But I’ll try to start doing my nightly (for me) analysis just prior to London Open, and post my trades live like before. Hopefully get the thread going again. Maybe Alishijo and some of the other old posters can join in as well. That might help out the newer posters here. Of course, all my losses will be posted as well! I tend to learn the most from the losers!
Hey Michael, haven’t heard from you in a while! Looking forward to the London Close package coming this Wednesday and everything else you have planned in the near future! =)
In extremely general terms, the market will travel the path of least resistance. So whenever I see a move that I can’t really explain, I just know that the move was made because it was the path of least resistance. I know this skirts your question, but instead of saying “I don’t know what the hell happened” you can at least make that statement.
Markets are kind of like kids with ADD (or any kids really). Keep them trapped in a room ( or a tight trading range) and then when you give them some freedom, they explode with energy and go wherever they couldn’t when they were trapped.
Maybe there was some fundamental factor you could slap on the move, but seeing it consolidate for a whole day, the breakout was completely to be expected, whether it be up or down. That’s my view on that anyway
Im really not that stupid. [B]It is simply, because I respect ICT’s work and mainly his effort to teach other people how to trade and I’m sure it would be counter-productive for new traders to mess-up this thread with my improvements.[/B]