COT is a help if your scalps are in line with it… but it’s not needed.
Trades over a period of days and weeks are better suited for these tools.
USDX (US Dollar Index) is useful on all levels of trading.
Hope that helps.
[B]GLGT [/B]
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The high of the day formed off of the OTE made at the London Open. We look for the high or low of the day to be made in the first early hours of the london session.
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Over the last week, price has pushed higher, closing at the very top of the candles. Once price begins to close at the very top of the bar/candle, we can reasonably expect buying pressure to stall out, and a retrace to commence.
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During a large range day, we look for price to close at the opposite extreme of where it opened.
Hi RC,
Agree price was in sell zone and LO kill zone but all the market flows were bullish. So why would you go short ? Thanks for the post and sharing.
ICT in the chat room 
FX280,
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You have your kill zone times wrong according to the way I work it. 10:05am is no longer in my NY Open zone but into London Close zone. You have missed the move at NY Open, and the only way you are going to trade in London Close is by either seeing a ‘Z’ day set-up, or watching price go to ADR and then looking for a retrace. Neither of these things happened.
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If you want to trade NY Open then look at some of the things AK and I have been talking about these last few days. 8:20am/8:30am is a better time to be looking for an entry. In this case you would be looking for an entry short because London Open dicatated a direction based on S&R which trumps market flow. This direction was short.
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What happened leading up to 8:30am NY time? Price came under the Central Pivot Point in London session and bounced off it two or three times. Looking at the zone of time from 7am NY - this is when the big flows start to come into the market - price bounced off CPP at 7:50am and came under the 1.6500 figure slightly. Right as we come to the magical 8:20 candle on the 5M chart, price pulls up a little. Place your Fib on that last CPP bounce at 7:50am, pull it down to the 8:20 candle, and look at your retracement levels. No, it didn’t pull back to OTE, but what are other good retracements levels? 50%, right? What level is the 50% retracement at? Bang on 1.6500. What time did it hit that level? 8:30am.
I may be mistaken, but I believe that is how you take a NY scalp, which then has the likelihood of becoming a full-on NY session trade. If you enter at NY like this, and then see price trade down to London Close ADR, that is your signal to get out. If London Close then sets up a counter trend trade, then you have the option of taking it back in the other direction. For conservative beginners like you and I, we would be best to bank the gains and not jump in again for an LC scalp. If you were more aggressive and wanting to go for a million dollar challenge, you might take them both!
I hope this helps.
Look at the post directly before yours, 3 reasons that I overlooked
I still don’t think it would have been a bad trade had I got my entry, because there were enough supporting reasons to take it, but there were just as many reasons to go short. Looking back on it, with my level of experience, no trade was the best trade.
After some advice from ICT last night in the chat room, I may need to look at opening an account with another broker. He suggested that I cut down my trading capital, and move to micro lots rather than mini lots.
Can anyone suggest a broker that I can trade in micro lots ($1000/lot) with? Looking for people who have actual experience with the broker rather than just word of mouth. Preferably with MT4 so I can use the ICT tools.
Still going to keep my TradeStation account open as the platform really is great, but just need to build my stake a little bit before I can trade in mini lots 
I won’t be able to make it tonight, gotta be up early for work, but that’s not a bad idea at all, I’ll try to plan on it for tomorrow night.
Hud, well done. You made alot of sense in areas… It’s a hard topic to understand. If you have time, put tonights perspectives up with a link. You know we all get blown out alot. Thank you sir.
Date: May 30, 2011
Time (GMT): May 31, 2011 5:54 AM
Live
[B]Pre-Trade:[/B]
Currency Pair: GBP/USD
Market Bias (Long Term): Bullish
Market Flow (Daily, 4H, 1H): Bullish
Position Taken (Long/Short): Long
Trade Style (Swing, Scalp, etc): London Open Swing
Risked Percentage (%): 0.5%
Stop Loss (in pips): 30
Take Profit (in pips): 86.4
Entry Price: 1.65236
Notes & Comments:
Pulling a fib of the most recent upswing, and entering at the 79%. Keeping it simple this trade, nothing fancy, do not want to over analyze like last week. SL was placed quite a ways away from any major support areas as well. TP is slightly above ADR, but will be adjusting SL accordingly if price moves in favour.
Entry Screenshot:
[B]Post Trade:[/B]
Exit Date: May 31, 2011
Exit Time: 9:30 AM GMT
Exit Price: 1.6494
Net Pips (in pips): -30
Net Income (% growth): -0.5%
Notes & Comments:
The markets were showing an overall bullish sentiment at the time of analysis, but I did notice resistance at the 1.6550 level. Price could not break through. I will refrain from using pending orders in the future, as the majority of my losses resulted from them. At the same time, even though analysis may signal a bullish bias, always keep mind open and think of other possible options. Looking back now, had I kept my mind open, and thought of a bearish reversal, and also was staring at the charts instead of setting a pending order; I may have caught the downward move.
Closing Screenshot:
Hopefully some people will learn from my mistakes! Have a good night!
Regards,
Clark.
Hey RC,
It’s nice to see you on this thread.
Anyways, I have that problem too. Once I do my analysis just prior to London Open or London Close, I can never be flexible mentally to think of any other opportunities or perhaps changes in market flow that I need to be aware of. Last night’s trade is a perfect example. Price had formed a near perfect OTE in the reverse direction of my analysis and I didn’t take it…
But I’m learned through all my mistakes. Hopefully we can overcome that through experience!
Regards,
Clark.
Hi all Itc followers,don’t know if you are all in the chat room with Itc?if so can anyone give me directions to get there as I have no idea how to find it
Many thanks
Jeff
I took the same trade as you did hehe Read the comments to my last post on page 195 and you could even get some more infos
Greetings
ICT said awhile ago, that you can focus on the best opportunities by simple Buying in the buy zone (below the central pivot) and Selling in the sell zone (above the central pivot). If the higher TFs are telling you to seek out Buy signals, and price action is bouncing around ABOVE the pivot in the Sell Zone, you would either not trade, or wait for price to make its way below the CPP and present a setup (assuming you’re still in the kill zone).
this isn’t to say you can’t take trades off the CPP, or even buy in the sell zone, but following that simple rule will limit you to the trades with very good risk:reward.
Yes thats great thanks very much. Things are that little bit clearer now.
are you sh*tting me??? I’m truly in between scared and overjoyed. Voodoo or magic?? 
this is an OTE, in case it wasn’t clear, somehow
Haha, did you manage to catch that one AK? I took the tweezer, OTE setup on the Cable. Finally broke my losing streak of 5, phew. Currently up around 60 pips, I’m watching the 1.6500 level, seeing if I can see any signs of weakness that would make me cut losses. I have my SL set at 31 pips in profit, so I’m guaranteed at 1:1 reward to risk right now. Just hoping for the best now.
Regards,
Clark.
Thanks for digging that out for us AK!
The thing I have troubles with is that you don’t find many setups where the pivot zones line up with market flow. And I generally place a greater emphasis on market flow. I mean, if I can find say one trade a week where price is aligned with market flow and pivot zones then I wouldn’t trade until I see that weekly set up.
That’s why I was pretty confident taking tonight’s LO trade because it was in the buy zone as well as market flow on the daily and hourly were up, although 4H wasn’t up…
I’ll be posting tonights and the trade I’m in right now as soon as I get the chance.
Looking forward to the London Close course!!
Regards,
Clark.
Was prepared for this one too, but missed it because I went away from my screen just 5 minutes hehe. Had the same target 1.6500 and 50% off at 30 pips + SL of the remaining portion to 30 pips. Would have made 30 pips because it made a huge drop within 10 or 15 minutes by about 80 pips just at newstime.
Greetings
I’d went in long on EUR/USD during the NY session.
Imageshack - 31052011secondtrade.png
The following candles seemed to me as a struggle between buyers and sellers because of the shadows that were created, this i interpreted as the market was being indecisive to the direction of price…
However they closed above or just at the support level…
It got me to wonder then if it’d be like this all the time and the price wouldn’t hit my TP ( it did eventually), what would happen when Asia opened? Would Asia perhaps determine that price was too high and sell everything, thoughts like that were going through my head.
What happens when a trade enters a different session? Something to be thinking about or just follow the strategy?