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The W5 expectation is roughly 1400 ticks to the upside. Take this setup, lose 20 times at 30 ticks, then win one time, and you will still come out ahead 2 to 1. Nailing it on your first entry is possible.
Is gold going higher from here? Could not tell you. No one can. But the risk to reward here is worth looking at.
I wanted to take time to get back to this, because I feel my previous answer was somewhat defensive of my personal strategy. I apologize if my reply came out harsher than I intended. At the time what I posted seemed constructive. My experience has brought me to where I feel that a technical system is less important than a belief system. But re-reading some of the past few days, I now view that as having defended my belief as a priority over answering your question.
When I first posted on futures.io (formerly BMT), I was hoping to help myself through writing out what I do that seems to work for me, and also to see if that might help other traders. I have studied through multiple paid courses, and none of them really made me a trader. I did learn, and some of the information has been incredibly useful and has formed the basis on which I function today. But despite how much I paid or how hard I tried to emulate what I was taught, I really only saw how someone else approached the markets, learned how they traded, but I learned little about how I traded.
More than once I have considered stopping posting to futures.io (formerly BMT), as I sometimes find it interferes with my trading. The obvious factor is that trying to type a commentary and export / upload screen shots takes time and is a distraction to what is happening on my trades. The less obvious hindrance is that it brings in a different psychological element to my trades; that someone else is watching.
I used to be a performance musician who trained for 8-10 hours a day. But I always felt I played so much better sitting on my couch than being on stage. I played because It gave me pleasure, not because I wanted the attention, and I was actually very shy and uncomfortable playing in front of other people. I once had to audition for a top music school in front of a panel of staff members, and could barely function. I was sweating, trembling, stiff, nauseated. I supported myself as a professional for several years, but the larger the audience, the less comfortable I was. I was so much better in the studio where it was just me and and my instrument. I am ultimately a very reserved person, far more comfortable alone or with a few good friends than in a crowd.
I found more than once where I took a live trade that was partially motivated by an underlying pressure within to post something. I have found that I have passed on a good trade because it may not have followed rules that I hoped to pass along in this thread. Posting trades on futures.io (formerly BMT) brings about a lot of personal issues; What if I am wrong? What if I receive criticism? What if someone takes my trades and loses money? What if I look foolish? I am not a system trader, so if I am wrong, I can't push the responsibility on anything but me. And anyone with internet access could watch.
When I was previously ready to stop posting trades on futures.io (formerly BMT), feeling like I had shared what I knew and it was time to move on, I decided to push through it. I had uncovered a new weak area of myself and felt it would be good to have so much more perceived responsibility for my trades. And so, I had big Mike move my thread to the journal section and now consider it more of a training tool for myself than anything. Posting chart after chart, before, during and after my trades, causes me to view myself differently. Many times I go back and read my own posts and see where I could have done better, or if I did what I thought I was doing.
I may post some charts to go over why I chose long over short, but wanted to get back to you with an explanation, and a different answer;
Yes, the pink lines could be a 1-2-3, and yes, this move up could be a wave 4. If gold seems to top and reverse at an expected area of a wave 4 completion, and we can confirm it on some timeframe, it would be a solid strategy.
The start of a potential wave 4 on a minor chart can also be the start of a wave 5 on a higher timeframe. The higher timeframe gives the greater reward to risk potential, and so I tend to believe in that first, and then question myself around the potential top of the minor wave 4. Give several techincal traders the same chart, and you'll likely get many conflicting but still valid arguements. Your analysis may be more accurate than mine in this instance. Your methods may be more accurate than mine in the long run. As traders we must choose a side and run with it, and assume responsibility for our decisions.
This recent gold trade was purely driven by the fact that I had a new toy called Ichimoku. I don't trade gold, and I don't know Ichimoku trading other than what I have read over the past few days, but I took my shiny new Ichimoku chart and scrolled through the markets I keep in my instrument manager, and gold was the first I saw that gave me a chance for a test drive. Then I saw that gold was in a possible w5 position, and was going to ride that direction until it proved it wasn't, which it may still do.
As a short term trader I used to ingnore anything above a 60 minute chart. If I was only interested in what happened over the next 5-10 minute, what did that have to do with my trading? Now I think differently, even though I may still only hold for 5, 10, 15 minutes, I want to understand the background. I find it helps me to relax when I have to sit and ride out a trade. It helps me have a storyline as to why the market is going to move in my direction.
While I have not traded gold for over a year, I do often watch it. Gold was my favorite market for awhile. I moved to crude because I found gold to be whippier in it's motion, and had been extremed-ticked too many trades. When it nailed my stop in the trade the other day, I was not surprised. I think the lower relative volume causes swifter spikes.
To gain a big picture, here is the gold weekly chart. The trend is overwhelmingly up.
Now, a 60 minute chart. When gold finally reversed back up out of the support zone, that is when I was ready to watch for a trade. The chart below shows that it also came back up above it's prior trendline.
Going back to roughly where the pink lines were on a post a few days ago, here they are on the same hourly chart, zoomed in. The first thing that disqualified this, for me, was that it broke above the 786 retracement on the way up. To me, that became more of a corrective wave which ended in a minor double top. Keep in mind I do not follow Elliot wave perfectly, (actually became bored enough while studying it that I gave up. If it were right all the time, that would make more sense to me to memorize every possibility, but it is not.) So I understand the basics kind of "wing it", relying on the information on the charts above (weekly / daily) to help me make decisions on which way to bend the rules.
The yellow arrow in the chart above is where I posted a day or two ago that I expected if the market was going to find resistance, that would be the area. But, because it had made it back above the trendline, I was convinced to attempt a long trade if I could spot support.
Now finally, back to where I decided to enter long. The first pair of arrows on the 1 minute chart at around 10am shows where I was guessing support had come in. I knew in advance that the day before Thanksgiving would most likely be low volume, and therefore tougher to read, and I actually used that to my DISADVANTAGE by assuming that was as good as a signal was going to get.
I was wrong, got nailed on volume burst where I think a a few other traders thought the same thing I did and got their stops raided (2nd set of arrows around 10:48am), and then had to re-enter the trade, thich time deciding if I got stopped again below that pivot (2nd set), it was not my day.
Studying chart analysis is my favorite thing to do when it comes to setting up a trade situation. When you get symmerty in waves 2 and 4, or in waves 1 and 5, or in waves A and C, those can often be the strongest setups, as that is probably what the majority of other traders are looking for as well. A previous mentor referred to them as being "higher rated" pattern. But, lack of symmetry happens all the time, and does not necessarily invalidate a pattern, for me particularly if I am leaning in the direction of the higher timeframe trend.
I attempt to find the areas where a market will turn, and ride small runs of that move. For me, it makes the most sense. I do not like to hold overnight. When there is a well-defined area of support or resistance, whether or not it will tunrn out to be a major pivot, it is very often a minor pivot because no one ever really knows, and so they get on and off at similar chart areas.
Also, for my attention span I prefer shorter term trades. But do not like 10-20 tick trades as I feel those are a losing game, unless I want to go black box or follow an extremely rigid set of rules, like ..."when this crosses that, count to 5 and add 2 and..." That feels like I don't know what I am really doing, which makes me less comfortable.
So, I watched for the daily and weekly trends to continue, hoping that is where the major money is, and expect to ride a wave that could be a either daily wave 5 or a 30 minute wave 4. Either one moves enough for me to get what I am looking for from the market; 50-100 ticks in 1 or two entries.