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First, thanks to Big Mike for setting up the forum. I, myself have been on the trading journey since 2006. I have never been able to dedicate full-time hours to this business, and am finding it slow going in terms of my progress. I also have set up a blog two years ago to document my progress (or lack thereof) for my own use. It is quite funny and sometimes, simply embarrassing reading some of my posts. Well, I've purposely laid everything out for the world to see, in order to help myself, and hopefully help others.
Some background on me
From 2006-2007 I decided to quit my job and try and trade for a living. Looking back now that was utterly foolish as I had no plan, and no experience. I did have a decent starting capital stake, though. I took part in the following trading "education":
A UK based scammer called "Trading Mentor" $750
TradeTheMarkets.com trading room, plus DVD course $1500
Forex Muse news trading software $500
Leroy Rushing personal one-one mentoring $250
Books $500
Platforms/data $2000
None of it seemed to work, I began to feel I was making progress and certainly learned a lot during this period, but my trading results showed me that I just hadn't got it yet. I took a $10K account to $500 and a large forex account lost 50% before I closed it to stem the damage. I studied
None of it seemed to work consistently for me. I got very depressed about it and went crawling back to the world of 9-5 work. I shutdown my charts and didn't look at them again for two and a half YEARS. It was too painful. I've always been very successful in everything I've done, and become respected in my industry, I've even co-authored and published a book, but trading absolutely floored me.
After the break
During the latter part of 2009, my boss was being a complete dick at work (to put it bluntly) and I thought to myself that I must get out of working for other people. I absolutely hate it. All I want to do is work for myself and I am a very hard worker and not afraid to put in 14 hour days to achieve my goals and support my family. So, towards the end of 2009 I decided to start researching trading methods again.
I came to the conclusion that price action methods were the way forward. I wanted to UNDERSTAND the market and not simply follow a set of rigid rules that could not bend with the market. At this point I started off with Phil Newton at https://www.trading-strategies.info/. He seemed to understand the market and had been doing it a long time, but his methods did not work on the larger timeframes that I wanted to trade. As I was in full-time work, I could only trade the 4 hour or daily charts. He was trading tick charts, so I gave up with that.
I then fell for the Jacko scam on forex factory and lost $750 there and I felt like a complete idiot (again). Jacko had no system, he couldn't even trade, but somehow managed to build up a huge reputation on Forex Factory, and has since been banned with people still trying to track him down and get their money back.
After Jacko, I started looking at the James16 thread on FF and spent pretty much eight hours a day just reading forex factory. Perhaps that was my error, but I found some things in james16 that resonated with me. I think it was around this time, that Big Mike's forum was created, but I never stumbled across it. As 2010 went on, I started to spend more and more time reading books, researching and spending less time with my family. It was hard work, although I did enjoy it. My wife fully supports me bless her.
In the summer of 2010 I went down a major dead-end, down the rabbit hole as it were and got stuck researching a system for months upon months called the Max Trading System. I spent a fortune on that and it got me precisely nowhere. If you saw a Max chart you would laugh your head off, it has 15-20 indicators on it, it's a complete joke and causes the trader to be paralysed with information overload. Anyway, I tried to make this system work from around July 2010 through to August 2011. An enormous, and I mean totally ridiculously large waste of time and money. Thinking about it now makes me cringe.
I started to get depressed again, because the Max people told me the system was fine, and it was all ME. Maybe they're right. I then had a look at fxKnight system and decided not to pursue that. I decided again, to return to the no-indicator approach and sought a mentor. I found a very nice guy called Trader_Dante from the Trade2Win forums. I gave him $1500 and had 17 one-on-one two hour sessions. These are all documented on my blog, but I learned a lot from him. Dante trades primarily S/R levels on an hourly timeframe and it suited me well because I was in full time work. Entries and exits were all with limit orders and I found it great. After six weeks I had grown my account by 50% and I thought I had finally made it. From October 2011 through to early 2012 I gave back all my profits and 50% of my original balance on top, just for good measure. Again, I couldn't believe it. After the thousands of hours I had spent, the thousands of dollars I had spent and lost, I still could not trade my way out of a wet paper bag. I decided to look again. My resolve deepened and I vowed to NEVER give up my quest to become a profitable trader.
I joined the James16 forum and spend $500 on that. Very nice people, and there's probably enough stuff on there to make anyone profitable, but it didn't help me and I thought I wasn't getting good value for money. In Jan 2012 I lost my job and decided to focus my efforts on becoming profitable whilst looking for a new job. As of today I am still looking for a job, but I am working 14 hour days on trading and researching trading.
In February I discovered Don Miller and really liked his style. I bought the Jellie webinars for $1000 and I really really liked it. I still would like to use elements of Don Miller's style in my trading today. I think Don has a lot to offer any serious student of the markets.
And very recently came across Big Mike Trading and spent $50 on that. This is a great forum and hope to meet, share and learn a lot here.
About a month ago I discovered Al Brooks and bought the March 2012 webinars for $50 as Al is a pure price action trader. I really believe now that I am almost there regarding my education. Trouble with Al Brooks, is that he doesn't make the learning process easy. His language style is opaque and reading the books makes your eyes bleed. I am persevering with Al Brooks though to this day. One thing that did trouble me with Al, is that he didn't seem to use volume. I found myself constantly wondering that there was a very important piece of market information that Al was simply ignoring, and I couldn't understand why. I've noticed double tops in price in the past where the second top is on much lower volume, and the market just drops like a stone. Volume, for me, is an essential piece of information when trading futures.
This then led me very recently (like, last week), to discover Wyckoff and VSA. I am reading though Wyckoff's course at the moment and as of today, am halfway through it. I love it, I feel like I am having an epiphany reading Wyckoff's work. Why the hell didn't I discover this back in 2006?
So, there's my long-winded trading journey. It has been very tiring, stressful, frustrating, depressing, expensive, time consuming and maddening. On the other hand I spring out of bed in the morning at 6:30am UK time eager to get to my trading room and do more research and study charts. My wife doesn't understand it, but I really love it, despite the huge number of setbacks I've had. I sometimes feel like giving up, but I know deep down inside that I CAN'T give up. I am ensnared by the market, and I will find a way to be successful, it's just a case of when.
Thanks for reading this far, I have a couple of questions. I want to construct my own trading system based on price and volume only, perhaps an MA and some hand-drawn lines on my chart.
Does anyone here use Wyckoff's methods daily and are CONSISTENTLY profitable?
Should I take Wyckoff's methods and blend them with others? Like say, Don Miller or Al Brooks?
I really want this to work, and I think I'm nearly there (gosh I've been saying that for years), and would appreciate any help from the veterans among you. And may this post be a warning to the newbies that come to the forum thinking that they can make a mint with no education. It's not going to work, don't kid yourself. The thread that Mike tweeted today comes to mind
Hi Keymoo. Al Brook's material turned my trading around. I was lucky to find him only after a few months of starting to try futures trading. However like many on his website say it's very hard to trade exactly like Al does on the ES. However I've found using his principles along with a good entry system like say Perry's method entry and working off of s/r levels, it can help a lot. There are a few journals which just use price action alone on crude except for one moving average and maybe an indicator. Crude is very popular. There are like 7 or more active journals on crude in both the basic and elite area. Check out the free stuff on Your Trading Coach | Home also. Also CJBooth's thread. His method did work but requires a lot of constant waiting. My major problem is psychological and stop management. I also need work on identifying bad trading periods and staying out of bad noise. Also this youtube page mentioned here has almost daily videos on price action.
There are interesting videos and lessons on price action without indicators at this youtube URL: clickme (
I found this site by accident looking for something else but i wanted to share the link as i consider the information presented about P.A. valuable …
I just found out about VSA and Wyckoff in the last week too! Just reading about it. There was a webinar recently by Dr. Gary Dayton here on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT). However what he shows is after the fact. I've found it's a lot harder watching a live market than what he showed , so far... I heard from another member to stay away from the tradeguider software and their products.
Wow, nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) surprises me again. Just saw an older thread on VSA. Shortcomings of vsa are discussed outside of a vendor perspective:
I'm working on converting the NinjaTrader VPA indicator (found in the downloads section) to ThinkorSwim. I'm still at the beginning stages right now and I'm starting this thread so the readers here can keep me honest :)
Thanks Cloudy, I'm studying Wyckoff and Al Brooks heavily at the moment. Once I've learned the technical side, got my money management, discipline and emotions under control, there will be no holding me back....