xr86yp295m Forex Leader: June 2009

Trending back in force?

June 30, 2009

What a slow day....

This morning both platforms were about equal and then the trending one started taking over and is currently about +100 pips more than the ranging one, which isn't impressive (yet). This roller-coaster we've been having over the last 4-5 days will test your patience. But I'll tell you this (I'm sticking my neck out here) that this really feels like "the calm before the storm". I see many pairs which are just screaming to fly (example below). And as I mentioned in another post, tomorrow we're starting July and ALL my July experiences have been wild, to say the least.

Now, I don't want to predict the future (because I simply can't) AND the trending platform isn't showing all that much strenght (yet) but I just turned it on for my live account - you don't need to do the same, just continue watching your platforms until you're really comfortable with the way they look, until you're confident of what they're showing. I might be a bit impatient myself here after 5 days (my God, 5 WHOLE DAYS! of not trading, get the gun out!) so maybe I'll be sorry, so don't just go firing off your platform cause I did it, alright? If you're new to this system, WATCH what will unfold in the upcoming days. The big trending I'm anticipating might only start at mid-July - I don't have a crystal ball...

In the meantime, the last few days I've been developing a scaping method that I'm tryting to make as simple as possible (for when your bots are off, or even in between trades with the main system, if you're like me and absolutely have to trade).

I'll post more later when my system is more complete.

These are 2 pics of gbpusd and eurgbp (random choice, just because I'm in those 2 trades right now (scalping). Look where they both are based on the center of gravity. GBPUSD is in an uptrend, on the perfect retracement position. EURGBP is in a downtrend, again at the perfect place. The dailies also show confirmation of trends.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic


Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Settings for the COG are 168 (or 1 week).

Who else is sick of the sideways market?

June 29, 2009

Well, yesterday I mentioned that the platforms were almost equal, but then later, the ranging one started taking over and today has also been a ranging day with the platform ahead of the trending one.

I was reading a forum yesterday, and at some point, a poster says:

Who else is sick of the sideways market?

Well, this was posted by a member on .... feb 18, 2009.

Do you remember at the beginning of this blog I mentioned that February had been a ranging (or "sideways") market. This guy was trading a trending approach, see, so things weren't going well. At that time, the ranging platform was doing very well, thank you very much. That's why we need 2 approaches!

So currently, the ranging platform has taken over the trending one. Here are the closed trades since last Wednesday, with gbpjpy just reaching its TP a few hours ago.


For a total of +550.

And I'll also cite something else I enjoyed reading. This other guy compares trading to baseball and martial arts:

"I used to play a lot of baseball. I cannot tell you how many times I went to bat. What I can tell you is in a split second I could decide if it was a ball or a strike, if it was a curve ball or a knuckle ball. Most who have played will say the same thing. I could even see the strings on the ball as they were rotating. This would tell me what kind of pitch was thrown. This would tell me to swing early or wait a little longer to let it break and then I would swing. I was able to do all of that by doing it so many times. Trading is no different."

"Now comes practice. Demo of course till you know it in your sleep and you can actually feel the movement in the market. Martial artists will tell you after they practice so much that the opposing guy throwing a strike actually feels like it’s in slow motion. Trading is no different. You will learn to feel the rhythm and will get good at finding the best entry and exits. This comes from practice."

And I would add that this approach is no different. You will eventually "feel" when markets are turning around after watching your platforms show you a certain number of times.

Alright, let's get back to the charts, we've got a big week coming up!

Happy trading!

Sunday open

Hi all and welcome back,

Well my broker FINALLY woke up at 5 minutes before 20H !!! grrrrrrrr

I was monitoring on my other brokers' platforms and things were extremely slow the last couple of hours, usually Sunday opens don't take this long. Ah well, it's never the same, I suppose.

Both platforms show about the same as I mentioned on Friday, with the trending one a bit ahead.

I'll come back later. I wish everyone a good and profitable trading week !

Forex Abbreviations

June 27, 2009

This Saturday, I thought I'd prepare a Forex Abbreviations list. It's like a Lexicon or a keyword list and I hope it'll help you understand posts in here as well as in various Forex forums. I'll be adding words as I think of other abbreviations to add. Hope this helps.

ADR Average Daily Range
ADX Average Directional Movement Index
AUD Australian dollar
CAD Canadian dollar
CHF Swiss franc
DP Daily Pivot
EUR Euro
FIBS Fibonacci
FOREX Foreign Exchange
FX Forex
GBP Great British Pound
GTC Good Till Cancelled
JPY Japanese yen
MACD Moving Average Convergence/Divergence
MTF Multiple Time Frame
NZD New Zealand dollar
OCO Order Cancels the Other
OTC Over the Counter
PP Pivot Point
SL Stop Loss
TF Time Frame
TP Take Profit
TS Trailing Stop
TSU Trading Set-Up
USD US dollar
S/R Support and Resistance

Friday close trending resumes

June 26, 2009

Wednesday the platforms were equal, yesterday the ranging one was taking over a bit and today things reverted to trending, but not as much as in the beginning of the week. Since my broker closes at 16h on Fridays, here are where things were at 16h, 5 minutes ago.

Trending vs Ranging:



So you can see that they're both + 200 and - 200 approximately inversely equal. Of course, I can't say what next week will bring but I have a feeling things will get movin' and shakin' as we enter July, which historically is a "hold on to your shorts mama!" kinda month. So to all the followers of this blog - who are all over the world (quite amazing, truly from ALL over the globe) I say be prepared to hold on to your shorts (and your longs as well !!) as we start July next week in what might be a wild ride.

Great week-end to all!

Ranging has passed Trending

June 25, 2009

Yesterday both platforms were about equal and now the ranging one has passed ahead of the trending one, but not by enough in my opinion to fire off the ranging canons. I turned the bots off yesterday so no trades were taken since and I still have 2 open trades. Times like these are the “dead zones” and fortunately they don’t last long. You could even have traded the ranging one for the last 2 days if you are adventurous but I prefer caution and staying on the sidelines. This is the hardest part of trading !

Current status:

Trending: +14
Ranging: +53

I finally uploaded my 2 indicators related to time. The first is called “Clock” and shows your local time, your broker’s time, GMT, New York, London and Tokyo. Can come in handy. The second one is called “CandleTime” and shows the time remaining on the current bar. More useful for scalping the shorter time frames, but can be used on the 1H as well.

Let’s hope tomorrow is a jazzy Friday – at least jazzier than today!

All pairs info table

June 24, 2009

There was a lot of choppiness today on the markets, probably due to the fact that there were many important news today, namely the US interest rate:



Both platforms are relatively equal at the moment so we'll see where things are headed once things get back to normal.

I updated a table I made last year to track various things, mainly spread variance, pip worth, cost of trade and ADR (Average Daily Range). You'll see below that I've included the ADR as of July 2008 and as of today, a year later almost day to day. Most of the pairs have had their ADR increase by a lot. And (you can't see this) the spreads on at least 5 or 6 pairs have widened since then. This data is from my other broker, by the way. The table is sorted by pip worth (in USD), based on the live quotes I had about an hour ago when I updated everything:



And here's the table with only the pairs that we use for this system, sorted alphabetically in case you want to keep it as reference:

Tuesday trending

June 23, 2009

Yesterday, our recent open trades totalled +352.

Close to 24 hours later, they are now at +602 :



It just keeps on going! I LOVE trading ......

Monday trending

June 22, 2009 - Later

Here's a pic of where things are at 21:10 EST. Apart from the earlier trades which didn't close as I mentioned earlier, you can see that the more recent trades are doing well. These are the results from the trending observation platform:

Closed trades

June 22, 2009

Well the week has started off slowly and we can see that trending is still in the air. Because of my technical problems of last week (which are now ok), I've got some pairs which didn't close and some trades which weren't taken, so I'll wait for everything to get back in line, probably by tomorrow or Wednesday, to give you actual numbers, but I can still see that generally speaking the trending observation platform is performing better than the ranging one, so that's the direction I went today and here are my most recent closed trades, one from Friday and the other 3 from today:



Not totally spectacular, but I'll take +160 pips anytime. These were manually managed after the EA entered them, by the way. As you know, sometimes I manage the trades once entered, specially at times when we're in a direction which isn't extremely strong, like now. Other times, when I see "mega-trending" for instance, I let the bots do the whole work.

My only current open trade is a sell gbpchf at -15 for the moment and I've still got some pairs' bots turned off. It's a pity in the case of audusd because if you didn't turn your bots off, it should be in the vicinity of a nice and secured trade at +140 right now:

Adding sound alerts

June 20, 2009

Here is an interesting article I stumbled upon today about how to implement various types of alerts in to your indicators or EAs. This is for the ones who like to fiddle with programs ;-)

Sound Alerts in Indicators

Introduction

Though automated trading becomes more and more popular, many traders still practice manual trading. So, where an Expert Advisor needs some milliseconds to evaluate the current market situation, a human will spend much time, power and - which is most important - attention.

As a couple of years before, many traders use one or more Technical Indicators. Some strategies consider indicator values on several timeframes simultaneously.

So, how can one "catch" an important signal? There are several choices:

write an Expert Advisor that would analyze the market and alert about important events;
sit in front of the monitor and , switching between tens of charts, try to analyze the information from all of them;
add an alerting system into all indicators used.
The first choice is, in my opinion, the most proper. But it demands either programming skills or money to pay for realization. The second way is very time consuming, tiring, and inefficient. The third choice is a cross between the former two ways. One needs much fewer skills and less time to implement it, but it can really better the lot of the user trading manually.

It is the implementation of the third choice that the article is devoted to. After having read it, every trader will be able to add convenient alerts into indicators.

Types of Alerts

There are many ways to interpret indicators. People can differently understand the meaning of even MetaTrader 4 Client Terminal indicators, not to say about various custom indicators...

Somebody buys when the main line of MACD touches the signal line, another trader waits until it intersects the zero line, and somebody opens a long position when MACD is below 0 and starts moving up. I don't feel myself able to count all possible interpreting variations, so I will just describe the principles of how an alerting block can be added into an indicator. Then you will be able to add any kind of alerts into practically all indicators according to your taste.

The most possible alerts are listed below:

intersection of two lines of an indicator (lie in the example above - the main and the signal line of MACD);
intersection of the indicator line and a certain level (for example, the main line of MACD and zero line, Stoсhastic and levels of 70 and 30, CCI and levels of -100 and 100);
reversed moving of the indicator (for example, AC and AO, normal MA);
changed location towards price (Parabolic SAR);
appearing arrow above or below the price value (Fractals).

There are probably some other interpretations that are forgotten or even not known to me, so we will describe the five ones listed above.

Ways of Alerting

MetaTrader 4 and MQL4 allow implementation of several ways of both visual and audio alerting:

a usual screen message (function Comment);
a records in the log (function Print);
a message window plus a sound (function Alert);
a special sound, a file to be selected and played (function PlaySound).
Besides, there are functions for sending a file to the FTP server (function SendFTP()), displaying a message/dialog box (MessageBox()), and sending mails (SendMail()). Function SendFTP() will hardly be demanded by a regular user, function MessageBox() does not suit for being used in an indicator since it stops its operation until the message box is closed, function SendMail(), though it is good for sending SMS, is rather "dangerous" in use - having drawn a number of indicators in a chart, you will provide yourselves with an endless and uncontrolled stream of messages. The function may be used, but it would be better to use if from an EA, for instance, by sending a message when an alert occurs on several indicators simultaneously, paying much attention to it.

In this article, we will consider only audio and visual ways of alerting in the MetaTrader 4 Client Terminal.

Go here for the rest of the article:

http://articles.mql4.com/374/

Friday Close

June 15, 2009

Another trading week is behind us! The last 2 days were rather quiet and I've had some problems with both my broker disconnecting at crucial times and for much longer periods than usual, and with my internet provider disconnecting me from the WORLD on a regular basis this week in the evenings. I hope they get their act together because I don't appreciate this at all (I phoned them but they said I had some "noise" on my line and needed to have a tech come by (visit costs 50$)) but this is impossible according to a friend because noise tends to be random, and the disconnects were pretty much "on time" every night... Anyway, I'll see what happens.

In the meantime, I took a pic of my very last trade for the week, eurgbp. This one has been good since the beginning of June with a long, a short, a long and now a baby short (there's even 1 good for about +100 before that but my screen isn't wide enough to include it).

If you took these trades and managed them wisely, you raked in between 400 and 500 pips, which in reality you need to multiply by 1.65 because eurgbp's pips are worth that, so between 660 and 825 and this is one of the least volatile pairs !



I've put a trailing stop there, as you can see of 15 pips.

I turned off some pairs a fews days ago as I mentioned, but if you didn't then your last trade would be usdjpy.

Alright, that's it for now. Wishing you all a happy Friday night!

MT4 tip – MQ4 vs EX4

June 18, 2009

What a quiet day… dead, even. Nothing moved. We’re still about the same as I posted yesterday. Total yawn.

So I thought I’d share a small MT4 tip for those of you who wouldn’t know this.

Indicators and Expert Advisors (along with scripts and other things) are programmed using the MQL language (Meta Quotes Language).

Before being compiled, a program will have the extension MQ4. Once compiled (and usable) it will have the extension EX4 (Executable).

Now, let’s say you download an indicator from somewhere and save it in your Experts/indicators folder.

If the file has an MQ4 extension, you will be able to see it in your list of custom indicators but if you try to place it on a chart, it won’t work. Why? Because you need to compile it first. You can do this 2 ways:

1. shut down MT4 and restart. The file will now be compiled as an EX4.
2. if you don’t want to shut down, simply go to Tools, select MetaQuotes Language Editor, then from the right menu, under indicators, locate your file (double-click it). The code will appear in the Editor window. Now, simply click on “compile” (top menu) and you’re done. The file will now be executable (this is also useful if you want to read the code or modify it).

If the file has an EX4 extension, this means it is not readable, nor modifiable (technically). It will show up as “grayed out” in your list of indicators. You can’t do anything in MT4 to get it to work except shut down MT4 and restart. After you do this, the file will be active.

Hope this helps in clearing up some MT4 intricacies.

Now let’s hope tomorrow brings some a c t I o n !

Should you trade during news?

June 17, 2009

Today we’re seemingly seeing some pairs lose steam trending-wise and gaining ranging-wise. I wouldn’t switch just yet because we need further confirmation on more than just a few pairs. The trending is still strong at +1000 but the ranging is gaining a bit at +120. I did turn some off in my real account earlier though and these movements may not have anything to do with market direction but rather with news announcements. There were some important ones today for CHF, GBP & USD.

I mentioned earlier that I don’t include the news aspect into my trading strategy because I simply don’t clearly see the relationship all the time. Sometimes there will be huge news and no market reaction and sometimes you’ll get this WTF 1H bar like the world is coming to an end, and you search and search the news and find absolutely no justification. And of course, sometimes there are news AND a market reaction. But all this seems so random to me.

I have read articles and books on “how to trade the news” and you’ll find many threads and even whole supra-threads dedicated to all sorts of approaches based on news. A few years back, I got a few indicators that show upcoming news directly on your screen. Here’s one:



I guess this is fine if you’re only trading 1 or 2 pairs, but with 10 pairs up on your screen, things will get a bit crammed. If you’ve got 2 screens, then it might be an option, if you so choose to integrate news and trading.

You can find the calendar indicator and a template in the download link. You can place the calendar directly on a pair, it won’t affect anything. But PULL UP AN ADDITIONAL CHART if you intend to use the template (to get a screen like in my pic) because it will erase your bot and everything else you’ve got on your pair screen.

Calendar indicator: FFCal.mq4 (copy to your Experts/Indicators folder)
Calendar template: FFCal.tpl (copy to your Templates folder)

Less performing pairs

June 16, 2009

If you're new to this system, I'd advise you to wait a bit before trading the 3 less performing pairs (see post of May 30 for details) which are usdchf, usdjpy, and audusd as they tend to play the recross game more than the others (although when the do re-cross, the losses aren't as significant).

Here's a current pic of audusd. You can see it did a nice short there 3 days ago, which closed out at nice profit, but today there was a buy which re-crossed (at a small loss) and now we're in a sell which is a few pips in the red. I'm not saying not to trade these 3 pairs, just maybe wait in the beginning because it's frustrating to start with re-crosses (even if the losses are small, it's FRUSTRATING).

Mega trending !

I'm so happy for those who recently joined us. Look at this, this is just a few hours after my last pic:


No comment required ;-)

Beautiful week beginning

June 15, 2009

Beautiful week beginning. We started the week at yesterday’s open at +531 and we’re currently (Monday 1pm) at +1,180 as you can see below. You should add to that eurgbp at +203 and gbpjpy at +154 for a total of a bit over + 1,500.


Happy trading !

Trading Guidelines

June 14, 2009

I’ve put together what I’ve learned from experience and from others about what I think are important elements which will make your trading experience better. These are:

1. Have fun!
2. Follow a system thoroughly and stick to it if you believe in it.
3. Absolutely trade with money you have already lost in you mind (it’s spent already, ok?)
4. Consider the profits (or losses) as pips or points or whatever, but never as “money” while trading. You’re making “points” here for the moment.
5. When your boyfriend (or girlfriend, of course, or whomever happens to be watching your trades while you’re sleeping) wakes you up at 4am with a totally panicky look and announces in a freaky voice “YOU’RE NOW DOWN XXX PIPS!!!!!!!!”, tell him to breath slowly. Then immediately turn on the side and go back to sleep, pushing him/her out the room with a annoyed gesture of the hand. You’re in control.
6. Never nurse your trades – go to a game site/install a game and go play games or go do something else. Let your trades breath.
7. Enjoy your learning – small seemingly meaningless building blocks will eventually start making a heck of alada sense.
8. Did I mention BE PATIENT?
9. This is my favourite: Believe me there WILL BE another (many, many others in fact) great trading opportunities tomorrow, next week, and the week after that, really!
10. I truly love robots (EAs or Expert Advisors) but you still need your brain to make decisions about market direction. So a good partnership between bots and personal decisions is the way to go.
11. Trust your judgement – don’t hesitate, and be responsible for the consequences.
12. Totally enjoy your gains – you made them happen. You’re the one trading and the markets absolutely don’t care about you. YOU ARE ALONE! So tap yourself on the back for making such great decisions and having a great time.
13. Go slowly. Take the time to analyse the situation. Don’t rush decisions only to regret them afterwards.
14. Be grateful for the fact that you have this great privilege of actually being able to trade.
15. Try to be nice to others as much as possible and don’t forget to give back as much as possible.

Diversification in Forex

June 12, 2009

The week is coming to a close (already!). It started off (mon, tue, wed) with strong trending, then yesterday and today (thu, fri) we had some whipsaws in some pairs, maybe due to some news about the upcoming G8 meeting this week-end ? All in all, here is our winner for the week, GBPJPY at +400 and our loser for the week (in terms of open trades) GBPUSD currently at –115 (but closed at +231 earlier) along with GBPCHF at -29. You can see gbpusd whipsawed.



EURGBP is also still showing good strength at close to +200 and USDCHF which came close to crossing but continued its down-movement, currently at +35. GBPAUD fooled around a bit on Wednesday and Thursday, but seems to be back on track at +58.

Some of you are trading just one pair, others a few pairs and others all pairs. The important thing is to keep all pairs going in your observation platforms. Since you’ve got 10 pairs showing you if they’re biased one way or the other, you’re benefiting from diversification which is as important in forex as elsewhere. This also helps in developing an eye for correlations and influences by some pairs on others and can enlighten your decisions about exits or moving SLs.

I wish all a peaceful week-end and hope to see you back Sunday evening !

Why are my trades different from yours ?

June 11, 2009

You'll sometimes notice small discrepancies between 2 platforms. These are due to any of several factors for which we can't do much.

You'll notice that some trades are sometimes omitted because of error messages or other technicalities like your broker doing maintenance (and disconnecting you for a short period) at the time a trade should have been taken. Or sometimes, if I hear the alert but no trade is automatically taken (for any reason) I'll enter it manually, so the price might be off a few pips. If I'm not near my computer (sleeping for example), well no trade will be taken (see 2nd screenshot). There are also the broker "requotes" which will make the price a bit off of when the alert went off. Also,depending on your broker, the entry or exit prices might be slightly different.

Here is a screenshot I just took a few minutes ago.


If you count the pairs, you'll see that there are 9 and that EURGBP is missing. I had some technical problem last monday with this one, but I hope you didn't because look at this:



Do you see the red triangle? (this is my real account, by the way). This is where you should have entered. I got out at some point, as you can see, but if you're still in, you're about 150 pips in the green which equals about $262 USD since this pair's pips are worth approx. $1.75.

Variations in spreads from broker to broker may also make a difference, along with which deposit currency you're trading in.

Other possibilities include trades not being taken for various reasons. Go here to read about what to do/check when this happens.

Eurusd and usdchf and Hedging

June 10, 2009 EURSUD & USDCHF

These 2 pairs are inversely correlated at about 97%.

What does that mean exactly? Well it means that if they were inversely correlated at 100%, they'd be like mirrors and every time eurusd went up a pip, usdchf would go down 1 pip. But it’s 97%, so there’s a slight discrepancy there which I investigated in extensive detail last autumn and which might be one day the subject of another blog (you can download a correlation table from the download page, if the subject interests you).

But I want to you to focus on something which happened today, and it’s the first time I see it happen. Look at those 2 pairs in the pic below, taken a few minutes ago:

What you’re basically seeing is a hedge (or a 97% hedge, if you’re picky).

What happened is that a sell eurusd happened at the same time as a buy usdchf earlier today (this was an anti-hedge). Then usdchf recrossed, the trade was closed and retaken as a short. So basically, now it's become a hedge, so we can’t win here with 2 shorts. One of the 2 is going to start going long, but not both because it’s impossible. And at the same time, the other will be losing money. Doesn’t really matter which one wins/looses. But we’re stuck in a hedge. There are worse things. A hedge means you’re not “makin’” and your not “losin'”. At some point, one will hit its SL but the other will be almost exactly the same amount in profit.

It’s the first time this happens because the moving averages for the 2 pairs are quite different. Ok, so we won’t be making money with these 2, but let’s have some fun and take bets. Which one do you think will win, eurusd or usdchf ????

We're still A TRENDING !

Well things are still going great at 4am (my time) and I'm off to bed and hoping you're part of this great action. See you tomorrow.

What do I do if the EA doesn't take a trade

June 9, 2009

Let’s say you clearly see that a cross has happened, but your bot doesn’t enter a trade. You need to check for a few things:

1 - Make sure the EA activation button (Expert Advisors)is green (or click on it to make it active):



2 – From the top menu, choose TOOLS then OPTIONS. The Experts tab should look like this:



3 - Right click on any pair, choose Exert Avisor, Properties, Common, and make sure everything is checked like this:



4 - Try shutting down and restarting your MT4 platform. Alternately, do a Clean-Up of your computer using your preferred software, completely close Windows, count 30 seconds (so the memory is completely erased)then restart your computer.

5- When you hear a signal alert (bell) and/or you see the alert pop-up window and no trade is taken, wait a few minutes, then look at the Experts tab, at the bottom.



If you see something like this(Alert: Moving Average Cross Down!), the EA has recognized a valid cross. Then look at the Journal tab next to it. Here is where you will see error messages, if any.



An error which sometimes occurs is "No Error". I don't know of any “cure” for this as of now. Simply enter the trade manually if you wish or wait for the next signal.



Something else which can happen, and is broker-related, is the message "Trade Context Busy". Again, enter the trade manually if you wish, there is nothing any programmer can do about this, it is broker related.

Everyday, a log file is created for all trades/activity and stored on your computer. You can access these files and look for any anomaly. The files are located here:
c:\Program Files\mt4 Ob Trend\logs\*.* and looks like this:



You can see the "trade context busy" in this example about at mid-page.

Finally, try opening a demo with a different broker as (possibly) some brokers are not EA friendly (or so I've heard).

If all else fails, fly me an email, and we'll see what we can do.

Current open trades

June 9, 2009

It's been a slow day apart from gbpusd and audusd being on a roller coaster but fortunately I came out at a bit over BE. Here are the trades in my live account which I still have open:



usdchf was just recently taken and I upped my SL for audusd to .7999 to make sure I secure some nice pips, should it start losing steam (you can see it came very close to being hit in the last hour). We're still seeing strong trending, so I'm still in for the upcoming days.

Happy trading !

Center of Gravity indicator mq4

June 8, 2009

I just realized I hadn't uploaded the indicator Center of Gravity as I said I would back in April and I completely forgot about it. Sorry about that. It is now on the download link.

If you want more info on how to use it, go to "Articles 22 to 29 "

GBPJPY

June 8, 2009 - Later

GBPJPY has been playing games with us recently as you can see in the pic.





There was a long taken where you see the green arrow (that's Friday afternoon). Then after a few bars there’s a blank followed by my broker finally opening 1.5 hours late (at 17h30 my time). I had put an SL on Friday at 8 pips, and when my broker opened, the SL was hit (a pip is a pip). Later there was a recross (short) where you see the red arrow, but gbpjpy decided it wasn’t feeling short at all. I didn’t move my SL and went to bed and at noon today, upon recross up, the trade was closed at a loss (it happens). There was no re-entry for me in my real account because of “trade context busy” and I didn’t enter manually because I was away from the computer. But as you can see below, it’s currently up 25 pips and here I would put my SL to BE+1 (break-even plus 1 or at 157.72).






Most of the others are doing great at a current total of +2000.



(I’m trying to post smaller images because of space availability, but these are, respectively:
gbpusd, usdjpy, eurusd, gbpchf, audusd, eurjpy, gbpjpy)

Later

I wrote the above around 3 o'clock this afternoon. It's now 17:06 and GBPJPY is up at +35. I'll post a pic a little later.

Update: June 15, 2009

Well, that trade finally closed today at noon at a very nice +300 pips !!!

Manually managing trades taken by the EAs

June 8, 2009

I thought I had clearly illustrated that I sometimes let the EAs do everything and sometimes I just let them Enter but I then manage my trades manually. This means you can always manage your trades after they have been entered by the EAs. Some of you thought that once the robot takes a trade, it has “full control” over the rest of the destiny of the trades and you can’t do anything but watch it. It isn’t the case at all.

You can ALWAYS manually modify ALL the trades that the EA has taken. For example, you can modifiy the stop loss, you can put a trailing stop (of x pips, of your choice), you can modify or put a TP (of your choice) or you can simply exit a trade when you want.

To do so, in the TERMINAL WINDOW right-click on the trade you wish to modify:

SL & TP

Choose "Modify or delete order". You will have the choice for SL and TP. You can use the defaut which is suggested or put in your preferred numbers manually.

Trailing stop

Choose "Trailing stop". You can use the suggestions or "custom" and put in your numbers (minimum 15 pips).

Exit trade

Choose "Close order”, then “close” to confirm.

Markets Open

June 7, 2009

My broker finally opened at 17:20 (!) and here is what my screen looks like. We closed Friday at +1,256, a bit over what I had posted earlier in mid-afternoon, so there wasn't a lot of "profit taking" at closure as I had anticipated.



This looks impressive (and it is!) but don't forget about the gap closing. The gaps aren't huge, but still, if they actually close, we should be back around 1,256 in an hour or 2.

5-digit brokers

June 7, 2009

Well markets open in 5 hours, I hope everyone's ready.

A user brought up the fact that his broker (Alpari) uses 5 digits instead of 4 (I don't know why, but it's something we're seeing more of). So I have asked a programmer - one of the best - to make the necessary changes in the EA for those of you whose broker also has 5 digits.

In the meantime, simply make the changes in your EAs, that is, multiply by 10. For instance, if the SL for a pair is 150, this will come out to 15 on a five-digit broker. So set the SL to 1500 and you should be fine. Also adjust TPs in the same manner.

As far as I know, all the other settings should not be affected, but please fly me off an email if I'm wrong.

Psychology and Trading Tip

June 6, 2009 – Tomorrow, another trade

There are many things that we traders don’t do well. At least me. One of the things I find the most difficult (but I’m working on it) is patience, or rather lack thereof. This can lead to overtrading or in taking trades just for the sake of being in a trade so that you can watch it evolve. Bad mistake.

I have learned over the years, however, a grand secret of trading which I will share with you today. You’ll probably come to that conclusion yourself one day if you haven’t already, but if you haven’t yet, believe me because it’s true: tomorrow, there WILL BE another trade opportunity. If you don’t have a good set-up (when trading manually) in front of you right now or if your bots haven’t entered a trade today YET and you get impatient, tell yourself that you can’t stop time from going by and eventually time will pass and you’ll be 5 or 10 hours from now and your charts will look much different than they do now and you WILL get another trading opportunity. There’s always an opportunity, specially in forex. There are every day. So don’t enter a trade if you don’t “feel” it right (manually) or go do something else rather than wait for your bots to take a trade.

Also, tell yourself there will be other opportunities if you just had a bad trade. It’s part of the game to have some losers. We’d all like to have only winners, at least I would. But it’s just not possible. And the important thing is to have more winners than losers. Forget that “bad” trade and move on. Tomorrow there will be another great opportunity.

Try to stay positive, but also prudent. Greed is a human trait we have to live with, but put a lot of effort into trying to be the least greedy you can. Take some profit early or move your trailing stop or stop loss so that you can secure some profit. If a wick hits your stop loss and then price continues in your direction, don’t start cursing. Be happy with your current actualized profit. This is real money, not potential money. And tell yourself there will be another great chance to make another great trade tomorrow. Why? Because there will always be another trade opportunity tomorrow!

(Well, ALRIGHT! - you can't say that on Fridays........... ;-) )

Happy Saturday to all !

Incredible Friday!

Well this Friday turns out to be an incredible day. I told you that some Fridays are “yawn” days when nothing much even MOVES 2 TICS but then there are Fridays like today that totally rock and your balance keeps going up and up and up. I just took this pic a few minutes ago. Amazing, I tell you.


Things might close a bit lower because of profit-taking at the end of the week – or not, who knows? (As I’m writing this, it’s still going up !!!!!!!)

Another + 200 pips in a few hours

June 5, 2009 - About to go to bed

I'm just about to go to bed, here's it 1:30am. Checked the account before leaving the computer and just a few hours after my last post, look at where we're standing:



This is just amazing! Over 1000 pips right now. This is a live photo (print screen) taken a few minutes ago, go check your charts if you're not convinced. They'll give you the exact same numbers, yippeeee !

Who wouldn't love trading forex I ask you ?

Another +100 pips in less than 2 hours

June 4, 2009



Quite amazing, frankly. Less than 2 hours and we're now up to +842 and counting...

Interest rate statements

June 4, 2009 – Interest rate announcements

Today, there were 3 interest rate announcements: GPB, EUR and CAD. I will never understand the whole news trading thing as today was quite messy although the three interest rates were (1) anticipated to stay the same and (2) in effect, did stay the same, respectively at 0.50%, 1.00% and 0.25%. So why all this movement?

And tomorrow is the NFP, as usual on all the 1st Fridays of every month, and that one is always messy as well. Actually, all the news which are in “red” (in the Forex Factory calendar for example) are messy, followed by interest rate statement (double messy) and finally the NFP (triple messy). So I’ll be turning off my bots in my real account before going to bed tonight.

Our account did well in spite of the news and apart from a GBPAUD trade hitting its stop loss, the open trades are currently at +724 at 17:30, as you can see below:

When to exit a trade

June 3, 2009 – Exiting a trade based on the fast MA

There are multiple answers to this question “When should I exit a trade”? You can let the robots decide for you, you can set a predetermined TP (Take Profit) based on the daily range of a pair divided by 2, for instance, you can use a trailing stop, or trail manually or you can move your stop above and below support and resistance zones, like I did yesterday.

And you can also exit a trade based on the fast MA (aqua line).



This is AUDUSD. I had put my SL above the resistance (red dotted line), but when I looked at the graph later (pic above) I saw that price was crossing the fast MA. Based on this, I decided to exit where I put a red line at 82.12. You can also see at the bottom that I took in a profit of +35 pips at 0.8212. You can see what happened next:



I’m not saying it works all the time, but it can help you decide to exit early when a pair shows early signs of being « exhausted » and secure some profit while you wait for the next cross in the other direction.

Support and Resistance in Forex

June 2, 2009 – Support and Resistance in Forex

As you can see in the last picture, we can use support and resistance to decide on various stop levels. I use an indicator (called, of all things, support and resistance !) which calculates and draws everything automatically. I uploaded it to the DOWNLOAD link, so feel free to use it, if you’d like.

But there’s one thing that I’d need to clear up. The words Support and Resistance, I believe, come from the world of stock trading, where one hopes a stock will go up rather than down, in a “normal” market. Shorting in the stock market is very complicated and not used a lot. So the Support line (bottom) is called this because it supports the price, which is going up. And then once it reaches a certain level, it hits some resistance (top) to continuing its ascension.

However, in forex, it isn’t the same thing at all, as we don’t really care if a pair is going up or down, as long as we’re in the right direction. So in a sense, you could call the blue and red lines both resistances (or supports, your choice) but they’re really equal in Forex, they’re zones or areas where price tends to stall and revert and if the zone is broken, then usually we’ll see strong movement in the direction of the resistance break.

Trending continues

June 1, 2006 - Trending and trending...

This is a pic taken a bit earlier. Look at the balance !



+2,200 pips !

In there, we've got a trade from last Tuesday, 4 trades from Thursday, 1 from Friday and 3 taken today. EURJPY isn't there because of technical reasons (trade context busy) but if you didn't have technical issues, yours should currently be up over +300 pips. So add 300 to the number up there if you didn't experience technical problems or decided to enter manually.

Here's a close-up of GBPJPY in my real account taken a few minutes ago:


You'll notice I've set my stop loss a bit below the support (blue dots). This was taken while I was sleeping... I'll tell ya, there isn't a better job in the world than trading forex. OK, see you laterz.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE JULY 30, 2009 OK, I finally put up a FAQ yesterday, so you don’t need to go through the WHOLE blog to understand the system (the blog IS getting pretty big!). I’ve made a selection of the most important things I speak about, so it’s like a filter of all the less important information. It’ll help you gain a quicker view of the approach. Simply click on FAQ in the right menu.