Way More Available Than I Took

This morning was just a lot harder to trade than yesterday. The movement just wasn't there. Don't get me wrong - there was plenty for the taking, but in comparison to yesterday it wasn't quite as good. I actually only took two trades today, 1 par, and 1 win. There was a couple great trades in the EURUSD after I quit but I finally got my domain name and hosting set up last night so i'm swamped with development right now and am taking the rest of the day to work on that before I go to the Country Club.


In other news, yesterday was my first day back at my old job. And I gotta be honest... I had a blast. I got paid to bullshit with some nice gentleman, drive around in golf carts on a beautiful evening and hang out with some of my best friends. It got me out of the house and doing something social. A good thing any way you slice it.

Trade Results:

Forex: +15 Pips

2 Hours, 76 Pips, Done Deal

Today I was by no means infallible. I took losses, pars, and wins over the 10 trades I placed from 8:50 CST to 11:00 CST. But it was an excellent day to trade and I feel gave very real world results. Days like today really cement home the need for proper risk:reward. So this is how the trades broke down: 5 Wins, 2 Pars, 3 Losses, or a 70% win rate. But here is the really cool part, my losses were: -5, -6, and -7 pips respectively. In some cases, they were simply the spread minus my entry price. My wins on the other hand went like this: +12, +16, +17, +19, +30. As you can see the wins are clearly much much larger than the losses i'm taking. Its the kind of stats that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Here are some of the trades... I tried to include the charts with the most trades (wins and losses) on them.




Now i'm off to eat some lunch, watch some Wimbledon, and then go to work. Cheers!

Trade Results:

Forex: +76 Pips

10% Account Growth in 40 minutes? Yup.

Ok, so its easy to do when you've got a 90.00 account I suppose, and you don't have to factor in the psychology of a 90,000 account, but still... growth is growth. Not to mention I reigned in my sizing to 2,000 rather than 3,000. So the profits are even smaller. I haven't posted in awhile since my last price action presentation and I wanted to share what i've been up to. I've been working feverishly on perfecting my price action indicator "Synergy". I've also been working on improving a couple of the setups to make them even higher odds, primarily focused on taking trades that can achieve a 2X target rather than just getting to par. The best part is I think I came up with some really cool stuff.

And I should get this out in the open right now - I am planning on launching a web site offering my indicator and method for sale within a few months. I know, i'm a douchebag right? The simple fact is this - I posted my webinar content a couple different places and got swamped with emails and messages wanting to know where they could get the indicator from and more information on the approach. I feel that there is a market for it, and i'm not going to charge what I feel is an outrageous price, but a reasonable amount even a cheap ass like myself has paid for other indicators before. I see no reason why I should feel guilty about trying to make a little profit off the work i've put into it. And before you honest and trustworthy followers mutiny on me - massive discounts if not outright giveaways to all of you who have been posting comments on this blog all along. You guys are the reason i'm still around and I see no reason why that shouldn't be rewarded with everything I have to give.

But lets get another thing crystal clear - I am a trader first and foremost now and always. My primary goal has been and continues to be becoming a consistently profitable trader. I can make exponentially more trading than I can selling a few indicators a month and I recognize this. Furthermore, i've no aspirations of helping others learn to trade if I myself am useless at it. But this has only forced me to step up my game even more. Yesterday I made a paltry 1.5% on my account - BUT it was growth via textbook trade setups. Today i'm up 10% so far. What I have spoken about before is becoming all the more apparent - this stuff works with my application and i've only just begun. Its too soon to pop champagne but i'm happy with what i'm seeing thus far. But enough boring life aspirations...

Three simple setups today, two winners, one par, +52 pips. The first was a GBP short off my new IB Fakeout Trend signal for +22, and then a long in the GBP off a Synergy setup on the double bottom it formed. The last was a inside bar reversal short in the EUR that got taken out at par. Simple.



*Edit* - Make that 15% by lunchtime!!! the GBP is being too easy this morning!!! Pinbar S at prior highs. Simple +20 pips. Net +73 thus far today.

Busy Day Pre-FOMC

Setups have never been so plentiful, so powerful, or so profitable. You know that giddy feeling you get in your stomach when you really feel like you can make money trading? Typically that feeling is followed by massive losses in my accounts. Hasn't been the case with this price action nonesense just yet. Why?

I think it is a combination of a lot of things, but primarily: Taking trades at decision points in the market (i.e. S/R), using proper risk:reward for the first time in my life, NEVER fighting the trend, letting actual price action tell me their is something amiss at these decision points before I jump in, and getting in MUCH MUCH SOONER!!!

More sim trading today... the Oanda platform really isn't too ideal for placing buy/sell stops accuratly. Open E Cry is far superior but for the time being, i'm with Oanda. I had TONS of trades today and really got my pure price action goggles cemented into my head even moreso.

I continue to be staggered by the amount of good trades offered. And when I think about where I would be getting into trades using my old methodologies it isn't suprising I lost money constantly.

Heres a new video I made going over a live trade I took as I was making it and then explaining more of the trades I took this morning. I've spent the last night trying to tweak camtasia so I can give you all high quality, high resolution videos. So many trading videos on youtube and other sites may have good information, but if you can't tell whats in the videos because its too small and blurry whats the point? Especially when we are dealing with small price action signals, clarity is important. I haven't perfected it just yet, but I think you'll find its a vast improvement over even last nights presentation.

Video Down. Making a UBER webinar to be released in a bit.

And after receiving some questions on pinbars I thought I would do a quick video on the mechanics behind pinbars and how and where to use them on your charts.

Video Down. Making a UBER webinar to be released in a bit.

Thats all for today... Its FOMC as we all know so things are bound to get a little nutzo in the next hour. I'm planning on going live with this on my tiny Oanda account next week. Until then its just practice, practice, practice!!!

A Video Update Outlining New Setups

I wish I would've blown out my account months ago because i've learned more in the past 48 hours than I have in the past 48 months.

I've been working crazy amounts of time developing an all inclusive Show Me indicator that could cut down on backtesting and make it very easy to not only scan markets but visually see at a glance potential trade setups. As I mentioned previously i'm focusing on pure price action entries around areas of support and resistance or pure trend entries. I'm putting a definitive effort on truly getting 2X reward on every trade - something i've never done before in my life.

The craziest thing about trading pure price action for me is how simple it really is. I had avoided it like the plague because I never wanted to put in the time to learn the setups and how and why they work. I was content to complicate my life with indicators.

But once you make that initial effort they are simple, they are everywhere, and i'm really able to get into trades with less risk than ever before. I used to wait for price to do X, Y, and Z on the indicators to get me into a trade. By the time the move was "confirmed" and I got in price had typically already made one hell of a move. This usually meant I was caught on the wrong side of the market once again and stopped for a loss. The best signals are the ones that occur right after the rejection where you can get in as the move builds from its point of origination. If you aren't in there - you aren't in soon enough.

It truly is a completely different mindset to anything and everything i've ever done before. But its so simple. I think the biggest difference in this approach is the avoidance of counter trend setups and the reliance on using prior S/R areas to define and qualify price action setups. I don't fight the trend anymore. I took so many great little IB Fakeout moves today with the trend it was crazy. I had 1 of 7 that didn't work. As far as the prior S/R is concerned with double bottoms and double tops i'm amazed at how often they coincide with price action setups together at turning points.

One of the other big things that I feel makes a huge difference in the approach is the idea of being the contrarian with these setups. I don't mean contrarian in the sense of shorting a rising market or randomly trying to catch tops or bottoms, but the idea of waiting for the market to fake people into doing just that, and then taking that group of traders money. I've never done that before. I did it a shit ton today and it easy as hell. Except I had always been on the other side of that equation. One of the things i've always heard is that the pros are always the contrarian point of view. I just never knew what it really meant or how to apply it.

The video is 10 minutes long but its well worth it. I feel like this is the most substance and profitable advice i've ever presented anywhere to anyone. I'm trying a new video host that should avoid the bandwidth issues I was having as well as being fast, free, and able to show HD quality.

Here's a new better quality video link as of 4:45PM.

Video Down. Making a UBER webinar to be released in a bit.

I thought I was going to have to hold off and only trade 60min/240min/Daily time frames but its just not the case. I think I can be just as effective and profitable trading the lower timeframes as well. For now, i'm doing it more for exercise getting used to the setups and can see myself drifting towards longer timeframes for bigger setups but i'm content to trade small and fast for the time being.

The Focus

Small update. Just wanted to mention that the real stock trade that I went with (DRI) is still active with a long position from 33.54 in my demo account. The other play KIM was off a speculative idea I was messing around with but ended up scrapping. DRI is off of that intraswing S/R test idea i've been working on, with the trend.

My focus is on trading pure price action setups. I feel that's where I need to develop my skills and kill my reliance all together on indicators (save for maybe 1 MA). So i'm focusing on inside bar fakeouts, pin bars, and my fakeout signals for potential trades. The other thing is that i'm going to be slowing down the action. 1 HR, 4HR, and Daily charts for me for the time being. I stumbled onto http://www.learntotradethemarket.com which focuses on trading pure price action in the forex markets and ironically enough he uses the same idea i've been developing (he calls them fakey setups). But the main thing is that his setups and trades are the kind of stuff I want to exploit. I am planning on signing up for the course as its relativily inexpensive and its building on concepts and ideas that seem sound. Check out his youtube channel here for some of his trade ideas... I really think they have merit. http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=OzTrader&view=videos

So, other than that, i'm just in rebuild and relearn mode for the time being. I'm not live in any markets (including Forex) and won't be until I can cement a method down without relying on indicators.

If you guys know of any other good price action trading resources let me know!

In other news, there were no valid trades based off the scans tonight for equities tomorrow.

Positions:

DRI @ 33.54, Stop 32.25, Target 36.81

What i've been working on...

Ok, so as you can well imagine i've been a busy little kid planning my next moves. I want to get a lot of this stuff nailed down and finalized before I start work in July which gives me one more week to do just that. But before I go into any of that - THANK YOU TO EACH AND EVERYONE OF YOU WHO LEFT A COMMENT ON MY PREVIOUS POST!!! The comments were heartfelt and sincere and went a long way towards reinforcing the positive aspects of my current situation rather than dwelling on the self-perceived negatives. This is a new opportunity for me plain and simple. And it sounds like a lot of you have been at these kind of spots in your lives and the key is to just keep pushing forward. So onto the broker debacles.

Last week I took all of my money out of TradeStation and they called back promptly wanting to close out my account. I told them I had already paid them hundreds in commissions this month and the next months data and platform fees should be waived regardless. So it gave me a month to migrate to a new platform. Putting 99.00/month towards their platform (no matter how accustomed i've come to it) is ridiculous for someone in my situation. But I have a copy of Multicharts and its almost the same thing. Furthermore I found out that I can open up a Mini-FX account (250.00 minimums) with Open E Cry and get free data (Including tick and volume) for all the currency pairs and nearly every futures contract you can dream up all for free and no platform fees!!!

Best part? Multicharts can use the data stream from Open E Cry which means I can essentially keep the same charting and workspaces and simply feed them data from elsewhere for free. Also, I can use their "Free Quotes" for charting daily and weekly timeframes for stocks as I pursue swing trading equities.

On that note i've been searching high and low for good low-commission equity brokers that have low account minimums. I have an account with TD Ameritrade but at 9.99 a side its too expensive when you consider the size of the trades i'll be putting on. I stumbled onto SogoTrade which offers 3.00 flat fee commissions on trades, 500.00 account minimums to open and all the features I need. Since i'll probably only be putting 500.00 or so into the positions i'll be buying the 6.00/rt isn't too ridiculous. This is more to get my feet wet and mess around for the time being. So what strategies am I pursuing?

Well I do plan on using the ChannelingStocks.com site for a 1 month trial run and see if I can't find a simple way to utilize their picks and my analysis but for the time being i'm not starting that service yet.

I've been focuses HEAVILY the past week on developing the "intraswing support/resistance" idea I was talking about. I really feel that my best bet for success is to keep my risk parameters low and aim for 2:1 returns. The only way I can realistically do that in my mind is to try and find swing highs and lows so I can have a defined stop and risk.

So I put on my EasyLanguage pants and started coding up my ideas. I came up with some really cool stuff and the best part was yesterday I figured out how to modify the code so I can just pull up a list of 500-1000 stocks every night in the scanner and be alerted to the 10 that put up potential trade signals that day. I am also going to cross apply this to the forex markets and use big scanning windows on different pairs and timeframes to search for trades.

My big idea is trying to find essentially candlestick patterns that identify areas within a swing where buyers or sellers are interacting and one side has clearly tried to push lower or higher and failed to do so.


Heres my scanner window right now with the stocks that fired off one of the two signals i'm looking for on Friday. Now this scan is of the entire S&P 500 and these were the only ones with signals. So its fairly selective to begin with. But added to the mix is that fact that i'm only taking signals that are following trends (H, HL, L, LL, or DB/DT's) and I look for one more secondary indicator to confirm they swings are at extremes and I just generally check that the swing is fairly smooth and concise. Of these 20 that fired off potential entries, only 2 ended up to be valid trades.

Trades for Monday:
Long DRI @ 33.54

These prices are at the close on Friday, so technically I would just be buying them at the opening prices on Monday.

I'm using this same strategy for the Forex markets intraday as well and i'll be posting up outcomes in those markets starting Monday.

So to recap, i've been a busy little beaver. I've put my ideas into code, expanded on them, backtested further, and created a rule set around them. I'm focusing on these types of trades only and not anything else I have used prior.