one good thing about reversals,if you buy/sell at a s/r line,you know right away,in trend following,if you get in the middle of a trend,it can pull back and shake you out before continuing
Confirmed reversals at trend lines with bullish/bearish reversals with price momentum of 1/3 daily range are higher probability trades.
If your goal is to be profitable...that should be motivation enough by itself to "get back on track" and go back to something that you said "I would be making a load of money in forex". Simply, if it ain't broke...don't fix it. Last of all, thanks for the chart that shows some "market context"...too many traders get tunnel vision on their trade signals and forget about what's really moving the markets. Thus, understanding market context is one of the few reasons behind longevity in this business. Mark
what pairs do you trade? it's 2:00amEST now and the start of my trading session. i watched 9 pairs specifically for counter-trend/reversal trades. maybe we can find something on 15mins charts that matched what you do scalping the 1mins? http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7St-VekKaoc/TavUkt_FSfI/AAAAAAAAG-Q/O5i7vvV3AQg/s1600/1.png
In the last 30 years, there have been a few books written by actual traders on how they trade, and guess what, after the book comes out, their great method takes a crap, and why? Cause the world knows the method. But what books have often given me is other ideas to test, and your testing can lead you in right directions. Almost any book written that has actual rules for enter can produce positive profits, however, much more generally has to be added in terms of money management rules to make them more profitable. The hugest problem with "general" public purchasing books and methods is they are believeing it is the end all and it never has to be "tweaked". General public buys all of this cause they do not have to ability to design methods that work, but I have uncovered maybe 2-3 methods thru the past 15 years that consistently make money off the "shelf" that make new equity highs, but all have huge drawdowns. There are constant trade-offs. Depending on method and timeframe, I don't have much patience of a trade that doesn't go in my direction rather quickly, but that is how I tested that method. My winning trades allow me to enter and go in the direction I entered, if price just sits there, after so many bars or time or speed or distance, I will lock in one tic or my new target is entry price. I trade off a 60 minute chart doing counter-trend trades, so when a trade is setting up on the 60M and I have a trade on smaller timeframe, I will reverse, but the 60M takes president and for the next hour or so much distance, I will not trade against the 60M. So between trendlines on the 60M, I will take both buys/sells on smaller timeframe. One topic that does not come up much is strength of trendline, I like to use 23 which means 23 bars before/after have lower highs for a pivot high, opposite for pivot lows. I always start a trendline from these on the 60M and preferable draw to another 23 pivot and enter on next touch of this trendline. I also use Volume in longer timeframes, want to see declining Vol as price rises and accumulation on declines. Enclosed chart are "some" examples how I use the 60M chart, strength of Trendlines, Volume, divergences. And if one notices how often prices that end on "00" often make for great bounces in themseleves. Indicators are like trendlines, just another tool, I have used them from mid 80's and they are just an easy confirmation, I don't like to buy when market is too high nor sell when market is too weak. We all have our likes and dislikes, amount of patience and years of experience. Ahh, another two weeks of manual day trading, will be ending at 26 years of looking at tiny bars, going to spend time programming and expanding my longer term trading and spreads, the good life, sipping pina coladas on the beach-like I use to think 26 years ago I could do by 10am, ROFL. Good Trading all.
I trade euro/usd , euro/gbp,gbp usd , usd /yen,eur/yen,gbp/yen,aud,yen , usd /chf,aud/usd .I also trade Dax and crude oil. I used to trade 1 min but have now moved to 15 min, the 1 min trading catches you out in noise .I really want to go back to fundamentals using daily, 4 hour and 15 min charts trading only in the direction of the fundamental trendline. I trade 15 min trendline break method , details of which I may post here. What are the boxes on your charts for and how do you use them?
I have already got 44 automated working systems simultaneously working , the problem is bad market conditions with loads of fake moves and bad news resulting in very low returns in the current financial crisis. The success you achieve manually , you won't be able to program and match the results.Rule based programs can not include current market sentiment , and the additional discretionary element of manual trades.The program rule based codes can not see what your eyes can see. I been there.
the blue boxes mark out the asian zone, from 5pmEST to 1amEST. Paris/Frankfurt opens 2amEST and London opens 3amEST. so my boxes ends just couple hours before that. 5pmEST is the usual roll-over/settlement time so i use that instead of Tokyo open. but it doesn't matter as it's just a guide to help me see where the asian zone is.
Thanks for the post , I will make the improvement and move to 1 hour charts with entries on lower time frames.There are less trend failures on the hourlies , and signals are clearer. Thanks for your help.
No, this is exactly what you do want. All you have each trading day are price gyrations represented by swings up and down. From this you can make your money (eg CL). Self made difficulties arise from wanting to see so-called trends. No one appears to be able to pin down 'trend' except in very general terms which make it irrelevant if not an actual hindrance to clear sightedness. Is it a trend you are expecting for today, yesterday, this week, last week, this month or this year? Or is it an underlying trend from 29 minutes ago or from 1929? So instead the key here psychologically is to have a neutral mindset or train yourself into a neutral mindset and accept without stress what the markets do: price gyrations day after day after day. Short answer: buy the upswings and sell the downswings. Choose a liquid and volatile market (eg CL) and then devise or adopt a reliable methodology to take net gains from the intraday swings.