EliteTrader defines itself as a group of financial traders who have meaningful conversations about all aspects of the business to help each other learn faster, develop new relationships, and avoid costly mistakes. But personally, I have found the greatest value offered by this website in terms of my development has been the provision of a super convenient platform for creating journals wherein I can record my thoughts and ideas regarding various trading tactics, strategies, systems and techniques—all of which can be accessed efficiently and effectively using Google search. I began with a multiple simple moving average envelope strategy which morphed into what I call Numerical Price Prediction (NPP), which spawned various offshoots, the latest of which is my Shoreline/Riverbank Touch Strategy—an approach which now uses primarily one-minute charts and capitalizes on NPP's adeptness at defining trends and price ranges in multiple timeframe's. Now that the system has been refined all the way down to the one-minute level, the development of its measurements and indicators is essentially over, and I have turned my focus to fine-tuning its implementation. This has already been started to a certain degree in applying its methodologies to trading binary option contracts, where timing is just as important as all other aspects of the system given that binary options cannot be bought and sold profitably unless the timing is flawless... In reviewing my activity over the current 24-hour market cycle, what strikes me is that there are only one or two regions on my candlestick charts where the Riverbank/Shoreline Touch System offers pronounced (perhaps obvious would be a better word) moneymaking opportunities. Consequently, I've created this journal to establish a written record of when these times occur on a daily basis with the intention of eventually limiting my activity in the markets to these times exclusively—a natural outcome of where I am seeing the most power evidenced in a body of data that continues to bless me with what I regard as clarity.
USDJPY - January 16, 2020 Note that Midnight on my OANDA charts (00:00) is 2 PM PST, which is the Time Zone I will be using for this journal. Volume picked up at 2:47 PM and kicked in strong at 4 PM. It calmed down dramatically at 6:47 PM and was essentially dead by 8 PM. (Do not trade between 2 PM and 2:45 PM.) Volume began to pick up again from 9:30 PM to Midnight. Massive liquidity registered at 12:30 AM and remained until 1:45 AM. Light activity continued until 4 AM, when it virtually died. Things began to pick up again at about 5 AM and they exploded. Massive liquidity continued until 7:15 AM. Volume was sustained until about 8:45 AM. By 9:15 AM momentum was more-or-less gone. SUMMARY The best times to trade were... Midnight to 2 AM (but be prepared to trade as early as 9:30 PM) 5 AM to 9 AM 4 PM to 6:30 PM
It's just an informal use of the language expressing how I conceptualize price action. I'm not trying to be technically correct here...just jotting down notes for my personal use.
USDCHF - January 16, 2020 Basically, this market was active from 11:57 PM (Midnight) to 10 AM (or 11:30 AM). NZDUSD was more-or-less active from 3:34 PM on, especially between 11:38 PM to 8:24 AM (or 10:40 AM). Based on what I'm seeing so far, generally speaking, there is not much reason for me to concern myself with the Australian and Tokyo markets until about 3:30 PM AUDJPY picked up significantly at 10:55 PM and AUDUSD at 11:40 PM (basically 11:00 PM).
Thursday / January 16, 2020 USDJPY has a spurt of activity at 2:55 PM... So again, the earliest you might want to begin monitoring the markets is 2:45 PM.
Thursday / January 16, 2020 At 6 PM GBPJPY has dropped down from 144.17, where it was an hour ago, roughly 30 pips, to make contact with the lower riverbank and lower inner shoreline. The pair is still bullish so I would expect it to rise to its former level some time during this market cycle. Of course, GBPUSD has done something similar. AUDJPY has been moving for the last two hours, since 4 PM, had I been paying attention (I missed out on two opportunities to make trades). AUDUSD a bit as well, but not as much. In fact, all the yen pairs I follow are pretty active right now. Too bad I was otherwise occupied. CADJPY offered a great buying opportunity, and EURAUD a nice short setup. The Kiwi pairs are also pretty active right now. In fact, if NZDUSD climbs to the region between 0.6644 to 0.6650 and then begins to fall, I'm likely to try shorting the pair, even though it has been ascending ever since Wednesday. EURAUD might still provide me with a trade opportunity, this time to buy, provided it does not change sentiment/bias in the process.
The Cable and Kiwi pairs died at around 7 PM along with USDJPY. The Euro pairs and some of the U.S. dollar pairs are still showing a little bit of life at 7:45 PM. (I finally remembered to lower my trade size back down from 0.04 to 0.01.) Fortunately for me, CADJPY dropped back down and offered a second buying opportunity, as evidenced above. Based on yesterday I am anticipating seeing the market pretty much die completely at 8 PM.