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I'm a little confused on what the difference is between a couple of your points. My main goal is to become a full time trader. Becoming profitable and consistent is the obvious goal, it doesn't necessarily have to be with my own strategies. If I find something that some one else has created and it works for me I have no problem using it. I guess the answer to your question is a mix of 1 and 4. I'm not really sure what point 3 is saying. Thanks
I trade price action and about 99% of my trades come from an engufling candle signal, I use them for longs and shorts and my method is basically the same for longs/shorts. I trade a tick chart and use HTF's for an overall market direction. I trade mainly with 1 ema and have 2 more for overall trend direction. The only other indicators I use are tick counter and a indicator showing open/close/high/low. I believe that reading charts with little to no indicators is a pure art form.
Like the big man said start a journal and go from there, I'm active about 50-70% of the day depending on the weather outside if its nice then I'll be on here less.
If you need help just ask.
I would caution you though that you will get lots of opinions and they won't all be correct including mine. It all comes down to how you want to trade and what makes sense to you. I personally am a very visual person and see patterns pretty well so reading charts fits my style. If you are more of a numbers person then maybe look at order flow. I personally couldn't read what an ice berg order is to save my life so that's not my area.
I guess being a system trader would be easier if the system works. Knowing you have an edge and if x happens you do y seems good. That's mostly how I tried to trade, using 5 min charts and trading trend pullbacks. I think being a momentum trader is what I would like to try and be. Again I'm used to trying to trade with the trend.
Do you have any more information on your last point about 5 min charts and turning points. I was thinking of using my key areas (SR levels, trendlines or SD) and then looking at the DOM/order flow when we are at a key level. I don't know if that's a way people use order flow or not. That's just what I thought of when I first saw the foot print charts and DOM. Thanks
I've never heard of that book so I'll give it a look. I like the way your trading sounds, do you have any examples of your trades. I know in your profile it shows a journal thread but it's Elite and I'm not Elite yet, but I'm planning on joining just not 100% sure yet.
One of the first threads I was active in on a forex forum was trading patterns on the low time frame charts and that sort of developed into my current strategy of trading short term charts with trend pullbacks. I usually try to look for pin bars. I also have some MA's and currently that's all that's on my chart. I'd like to keep trading this way but so far it hasn't been successful, so any more tips are appreciated.
I'm not going to lie the first time I saw a footprint chart I thought, wow that looks cool, I should learn how to use that. Then I found about the DOM and order flow and it seems cool and informative but I just don't know if it will be helpful to me or not. I guess that's just something I need to look at and find out for myself.
My current plan is to keep trading forex for now since I don't have enough money for a futures account, at least not any money I can afford to use for trading. If I can have some consistency with forex then my plan was to open a small futures account.
I'm rambling again so sorry about that. I'm just trying to put some of my thoughts out there and hopefully that will help in some way. Thanks for the reply and I'm sure we'll talk some more in the near future.
Alright, so now that you defined that you prefer to be a system trader, what if your system fails? What if your system failed for 1 year but does well the next? Or it fails forever?
This isn't to bash system trading but as a system trader when I started out, I had to figure these out the hard way. So if you can answer the questions above and how you would readjust then you will be able to pull money in year in year out. That's the discretionary part of system trading.
Well for me, it became more of a discretionary trading for me. Well to be honest it's more of your knowledge of how the market works and what works for you. So in the end it may be part systematic and part discretionary.
So these are just sort of experiences I had when I started out.
So to answer your question. To be honest, it's no secret, I can give you an example tonight when I get home. But practise is key. And this is only a small component of it, trade management and risk management is still the most important factor in profitability.
Well I guess being part system and part discretionary is the goal then. I mean I've definitely not taken setups because they just didn't feel right and I wasn't sure about them. If you mean like automated trading or using an EA as a system trader I've never done that. I've not necessarily against that it's just not something I've ever done.
I guess it comes down to how you'd define a system trader. I have specific things I'm looking for and if those conditions are met I"ll enter a trade. At least that's how I think of it in my head, once I'm entering a trade it's a different story some times. Having some discretion is always good, at least that's what I've always thought because the market does change and sometimes you need to change and adapt as well.
I'm looking forward to your example when you get home. I know it's not a huge secret but I'm curious now and it's been a long time since I've really talked about trading to anyone so I'm feeling extra curious tonight haha.
How about this, just as a way to practise, I think this will help you develop a way to get a good feel for price action. Go set up a demo Forex account, so there's no Dom to look at, plus your not stacking real money. That is if you have the free time.
The setup will be this, at London open today, take your daily chart and hourly chart and 5mins chart out. Check for daily and hourly for direction if there is any strong trend, then look at 5m to see price action once it gets to a significant area, support or resistance. Then just observe what price does when it reaches near those areas.
I'll give it a try at New York open. I'm just about to get off for the night. London open is 2 AM my time so I won't be awake then. I'll look at some charts at New York open though and see what I see. Thanks for the suggestion.
Hmm, you gotta pick a good pair then, the timing matters alot. For Forex, eurusd and gbpusd has the best flows at London open, next is New York, but sometimes New York open isn't that great, with the current US debacle.
If that's the case you may have to look at the us index.
Well, sort of like. Think about it this way, as an intraday trader, your sort of opening a shop, to be successful, you have to be there when your customers come in, so if your not there when flows are good, then you missed a good chunk of your profits.
So specifically for intraday trading timing and pair choice is extremely important, not so much if your swing trading.
And by timing I meant the actual hours like London open or us open. Just in case it gets confused with timing of the trade using price action.
a candlestick contains much less information than, for example, footprint. you don't know what happened during that time, except where it opened & where it closed. it could have closed on a pullback, for instance. but you wouldn't know that from the candle.
it's not compressed information, it's discarded information, which is important for understanding the behaviour of the market at that time.
is there some sort of order flow protest group in this forum?