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That sounds good. Have you got the chart for the gold trade? Can you mark it up with your entry? It would be great to see the trading time frame chart and the lower time frame chart.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
a couple of questions about trading 4 hour charts: if that is your trading time frame, what is your lower time frame? Also, when do you look at your charts? The bars on my platform complete at 02:00, 06:00, 10:00, 14:00, 18:00 and 22:00. Is that what you use? So for instance on the Euro/USD today (see chart) there was a classic break-out, pull-back and continuation. When would you have placed your orders? Stops or market entries? And what about the S/R levels - is it just bad luck that I found 3 so close together there? Which one would you use?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Hello, Adamus, the S/R levels - I would not take it as three but either consider the most recent the most important or take it as a range of prices...
I am currently still unclear about my strategy as I was not able to trade successfully the 5M charts according to YTC on live account. So I look at 4H and if I need some confirmation I look at 1 H or even 30 M to see what the price did when it came to the pivot level price.
I am also not clear as to what time I should open and watch the charts etc. - still under construction. I am pretty tired of it this week so I did not make much progress.
I am quite new here and it does not let me attach my EURUSD chart of today...
OK, got the emails. Great. I find it easier to manage conversations in a forum thread than via email, so I'm uploading your images here - if you object, tell me, I can delete them if you let me know before the 24 hour limit expires.
Gold trade looks good. That was a Test setup, right? Where was your stop?
I get your point on the Euro S/R levels. Makes sense, although looks like you prefer Pivot Points. Do they work historically? Did you go through a lot of testing with them?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Hi, Adamus, yes, it was a TST setup. The SL was just below the lowest low of the two candles. I do not have enough capital for large stops so I have to look for setups on the 4H chart to be able to find a reasonable SL.
This week I got a lesson what it means that Mr. Bernanke speaks. I did not expect anything and on the gold trade I could have some 250 more pips if I would simply close the position before the news. It was pretty emotional for me even I was only on demo.
I realised that my main problem right now is fear of losing money, so I will work on that on the weekend.
Got only little sleep, had to put my kid back to bed multiple times as she's just learnt to get up in the middle of the night and wonder around the flat. So I blew out the morning session since I couldn't concentrate, which is a shame since looking back on the big move this morning, I would like to have traded it. I'm not saying I would have nailed the move at all, but I could have learnt from no doubt.
I used the time after a quick sleep to go over some of the earlier days this week looking at the setups I missed. It makes disappointing practice - I am even more convinced I should be taking and succeeding with a lot of the setups I miss. Not quite sure what more I can do that just go over and over the setups in hindsight when I miss them in real time.
So after getting rested and well-prepared for the afternoon session, I was disappointed again to have a bad day, losing 3 trades and getting only B/E on another move that offered at least 20 pips.
I didn't miss any moves - just got in late or went the wrong way. Lots to go over.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
My philosophy with news releases is to avoid putting on positions before news events but on the 3min chart, you can see that the market goes to sleep - most of the time - for thirty minutes or sometimes hours before the news release (e.g. non-farm payrolls). But I too didn't think that Bernanke's speech would have much effect, I didn't note as one of the news releases although the forexfactory calendar flagged it up as 'high impact'.
But there are plenty of examples of unscheduled news events causing the same effect. Sometimes it might go your way.
I'll be doing some hindsight trading over the weekend to try to learn how to get in on these setups better in real time. That, and reversing into positions when I'm already in the wrong way!
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Forgot the news release at 15:00 today. Should put an alarm on for it.
It was classified as "high impact" on forexfactory.com and the bid/ask spread widened so much alone without any directional move that it almost took out my stop.
Business-wise, a bad day. Started late, took a long break at lunchtime, forgot about a news event, essentially didn't deserve to win but came away with 1 B/E and 1 winner.
The setups I missed were because I physically wasn't trading so I missed a few learning opportunities there, and again as last week, the entries I did get were later than necessary.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
I wish I could say I'm getting better at selecting my trades, but it's not quite true - I'm trading less because my trading sessions tend to be shorter at the moment for various reasons currently beyond my control it seems.
First trade was a full stop, trying to get short trailing an entry stop up beneath the market as it pulled back. I had my stop 3 1/2 pips away from the market which was probably not enough - price jumped down to my level by 4 pips, halted for 5 seconds and then jumped 5 pips up straight into the automatic stop. Over and out within the blink of an eye. Guess it happens.
Fortunately I maintained composure and tried the same entry, except trailing the stop a little further behind - 5 pips.
Despite that quick lesson, I still put my exit stop too close and got stopped out on the first half of the trade to the very tick. The 2nd half went on to hit the target but it didn't quite cover losses & commission.
I keep thinking every day when I'm trading that it takes me an hour to get into the zone (if I dare say that's where I get to). For the last few days it seems that I've sat staring at the market for an hour or more and am just beginning to think that my trading abilities are hopeless when something happens and I start seeing what's happening. Maybe it's me - but then maybe it's just what happens in the EUR/USD at the US open.
Stupid question really - if I got my sh*t together and reviewed the session properly I'd see whether it was me or the market. So that's my goal for the review today - although I'm running out of time already.
The big consolidation phases around S/R levels are still causing me problems even in hindsight. Today between 10 and 12:30, the market consolidated around 1.3140 - the S/R from the weekend gap unfilled from 2 weeks ago. Like I mention in the mark-up on the chart, there were at least 4 possible entries according to the textbook but of course only the last one worked. Surprisingly the strong bearish bias meant nothing. I can't see anything in the price action so I normally end up missing out on the final trade. I guess at least today I should have taken the short entry after the bounce off the S/R and the MA, which failed and then I should have reversed. Can't see how I could have been anything other than clueless before that.
Overall, main criticism is that I'm still missing setups. Today it took me until the 3rd setup to get short on a bear move.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
I modified my trading to be more decisive taking entries. This was a good thing, but I'd be stupid to expect instant results from it - I obviously need more practice at the entries since most of them were either too early or too late.
I feel I'm doing the right thing trying to get in on more setups, but I realise I have to improve my exits as well as my entries. Due to late exits and hesitation in the same way that I previously hesitated at entries, I guess I paid about 10 to 12 pips I needn't have, letting the market run onto my full stop.
I've made these mistakes before, I realise now, back in January or December so I'll look up my notes on those days.
The crux of the matter is that I only vaguely distinguished between entries where I was expecting an immediate follow-thro in my direction, and entries where I was happy to suffer a bit of heat in situations where I wasn't sure that price was out of the consolidation or not. I did remember a couple of times to make that mental check first, but since trying to swing the trades more over the last couple of weeks I've generally always just been happy to leave my stop to get hit.
That's not a problem when the setup calls for it, but I had a few setups where I was expecting immediate action but for no reason I let the market stop me out instead of bailing. Once I just wasn't watching - stupid! - but most of the time, I made the fundamental error of "just waiting a couple of seconds to see which way it goes now" - almost as stupid but not quite.
It's obvious when I think about it that "just wait & see" is not a plan. Price can and will do its worst to be unpredictable and I can only succeed by sticking to the plan and reacting without hesitation.
So I'm going to use highlighter pen to make the "exit management - scalp or swing?" stand out on the checklist.
Still haven't really internalised that checklist completely - just checking the checklist tomorrow at every setup will be my main task - along with less hesitation at both entries and exits..
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.