GBPUSD action today

Hi. New 'wannabe' trader here. Been trying to learn the ropes for a few months.

Been off work a few days so been attempting daytrading gbpusd.
Was there any news today or obvious fundamental reasons which would have stopped you going long at alll today?

I've been stopped out on 5 trades for -100 pips today! (every trade has a 20pip stop)

The same method (bascially identifying the trend using a longer timeframe macd and the trading off the 5min) has worked quite well for me for a few weeks now, but got hammered today.

I know you can't win them all, but i'm trying to figure out if its just a bad day, or if i've missed something obvious which could improve future results if implemented??

I really want to get a daytrading journal going but i'm working most days (working from home today), so it's hard to keep track and post regularly etc.

Maybe you got your chart upside down. The 1m, 5m, 10m, 15m are going down all day long. But you are going long all day long. The market might (or might not) be turning exactly when you are now convinced you should go short.

Scholfield what do you use for the trend on the timeframe that you're actually trading? Is it higher highs/higher lows? Moving Average? And do you wait for this to align with what you consider the longer term timeframe?

As has been said, From what I see on 5m it's been in a downtrend since about noon. longer term trend looks down too.

Hi shakone:
I have been using the 4hr macd to identify the trend, and then using the 5 min to try to pin point the entry.
Like i say, I've actually done OK for the last few weeks, but today hurt!

hence I wondered whether i'd missed any obvious news announcements or any other reasons that might have warned me of any possible strong down move

regards

Scholfield - the longer term (daily) looks down (continuing after pullback to f50), there's enough price action on lower t/f's to indicate that there cld be a b/o of the recent sideways mkt to the downside. There's big sell off which hits H1 support level @ 580-90 which is a poss long trade with small stops, but continues the sell off and it sounds like you were trying to catch knifes all the way down. To conclude from the ltd info above:

~You do not appear to know much about price action. As above, plenty of hints. You do not need to know about news - price tells you all you need. Unless you want to trade news also?
~You do not appear to have a v good strategy - cos you tried another 4 times, when do you give up - 10 times? Account = zero? Did it still look a good long after the 1st trade was stopped?
~You do not appear to have good discipline or money management. Do you have a daily target? What's rr on a trade?

There's a lot for you to learn before you go jumping into trading a strategy, hopefully its just demo acct though?

Btw talking-forex.com has free news feed, it does give some decent info eg orderflows v useful to know.

Good luck, and good skills for posting.

scholfield said:

Hi. New 'wannabe' trader here. Been trying to learn the ropes for a few months.

Been off work a few days so been attempting daytrading gbpusd.
Was there any news today or obvious fundamental reasons which would have stopped you going long at alll today?

I've been stopped out on 5 trades for -100 pips today! (every trade has a 20pip stop)

The same method (bascially identifying the trend using a longer timeframe macd and the trading off the 5min) has worked quite well for me for a few weeks now, but got hammered today.

I know you can't win them all, but i'm trying to figure out if its just a bad day, or if i've missed something obvious which could improve future results if implemented??

I really want to get a daytrading journal going but i'm working most days (working from home today), so it's hard to keep track and post regularly etc.

Click to expand...

Good effort. Back off for now and revisit basic definitions of TREND. Price is the main arbiter of TREND not the Macd, the latter being the baby sister will therefore always defer to her big brother, Price.

Even amidst your troubles you had the luck to stumble on to the best indicator, second to Price. Stick with it.

scholfield said:

Hi. New 'wannabe' trader here. Been trying to learn the ropes for a few months.

Been off work a few days so been attempting daytrading gbpusd.
Was there any news today or obvious fundamental reasons which would have stopped you going long at alll today?

I've been stopped out on 5 trades for -100 pips today! (every trade has a 20pip stop)

The same method (bascially identifying the trend using a longer timeframe macd and the trading off the 5min) has worked quite well for me for a few weeks now, but got hammered today.

I know you can't win them all, but i'm trying to figure out if its just a bad day, or if i've missed something obvious which could improve future results if implemented??

I really want to get a daytrading journal going but i'm working most days (working from home today), so it's hard to keep track and post regularly etc.

Click to expand...

hey dude

have a look at what I do

heres my free 15m system attached below

using my rules the Dow was strong most of the day indicating only take SELL decisions on the USD and YEN and only BUY Decisions on the GBP if all was aligned

so basically you had to sit on your hands dude as all rules were nowhere near a signal

alternatively as others have said if you are managing just trend based decisions yuo could have SOLD the GU when the red GBP fell below the zero and the green USD was still above the Zero .....

N

and now guess what !

sell Gu on the 15m tf

N

May I ask NVP at what time and price did u sell please?

rsh01 said:

Scholfield - the longer term (daily) looks down (continuing after pullback to f50), there's enough price action on lower t/f's to indicate that there cld be a b/o of the recent sideways mkt to the downside. There's big sell off which hits H1 support level @ 580-90 which is a poss long trade with small stops, but continues the sell off and it sounds like you were trying to catch knifes all the way down. To conclude from the ltd info above:

~You do not appear to know much about price action. As above, plenty of hints. You do not need to know about news - price tells you all you need. Unless you want to trade news also?
~You do not appear to have a v good strategy - cos you tried another 4 times, when do you give up - 10 times? Account = zero? Did it still look a good long after the 1st trade was stopped?
~You do not appear to have good discipline or money management. Do you have a daily target? What's rr on a trade?

There's a lot for you to learn before you go jumping into trading a strategy, hopefully its just demo acct though?

.

Click to expand...

Hi.
Realised that I never replied to you.
No, it's a live account. Only small stakes of £1 per pip or so.

Anyway, this thread inspired me to really go back, bar by bar manually, highlighting my entries and properly journaling the results of the particular method I am refrerring to in this thread.
Obviously by hand (I am unable to code) it is a slow process, but for this month, the method is up 220 pips. Would have been a lot more had it not been for yesterdays battering!

I think (hope) thatmaybe you are wrong when you suggested I don't appear to know anything about price action. Maybe it's just that no method can sail smoothly everyday through various market conditions. Obviously it's easy in hindsight to pick reasons why I shouldn't have been going long yesterday, but as Im sure you're aware, it's a lot harder when there's nothing to the right of you chart except blank space.

Today, has been a good day of 2 trades totalling 60 pips profit.

Now, even though I am happy to be up, I do feel as though 220 pips for a month isn't much. I'd feel more confident that luck wasn't playing a part if it was a lot more. I'm often told that good traders average 30-50 pips per day on something with a range such as gbpusd.

For now, I need to keep doing more journaling, whilst slowly further backtesting my method.........manually........bar buy bar! ouch.

cheers

200 pips a month on a 20 pip risk per trade is excellent.

scholfield said:

Hi.
Realised that I never replied to you.
No, it's a live account. Only small stakes of £1 per pip or so.

Anyway, this thread inspired me to really go back, bar by bar manually, highlighting my entries and properly journaling the results of the particular method I am refrerring to in this thread.
Obviously by hand (I am unable to code) it is a slow process, but for this month, the method is up 220 pips. Would have been a lot more had it not been for yesterdays battering!

I think (hope) thatmaybe you are wrong when you suggested I don't appear to know anything about price action. Maybe it's just that no method can sail smoothly everyday through various market conditions. Obviously it's easy in hindsight to pick reasons why I shouldn't have been going long yesterday, but as Im sure you're aware, it's a lot harder when there's nothing to the right of you chart except blank space.

Today, has been a good day of 2 trades totalling 60 pips profit.

Now, even though I am happy to be up, I do feel as though 220 pips for a month isn't much. I'd feel more confident that luck wasn't playing a part if it was a lot more. I'm often told that good traders average 30-50 pips per month on something with a range such as gbpusd.

For now, I need to keep doing more journaling, whilst slowly further backtesting myu method, bar buy bar! ouch.

cheers

Click to expand...

Thanks for the response scholfield.

Still not sure why you took the same long 5 times, was it the strategy or was it your own poor discipline, I guess you know the answer. If its the strategy then you may need to reevaluate.

To get really good at reading price action takes thousands of hours of screen time, so I guess you have a long way to go yet. But perhaps your system doesn't require good PA skils, you can just set and forget. Journalling your trades though is highly recommended - as you are probably finding out, it should be done for every trade (and even for setups you don't take) and doesn't take that much time, and if you want to do it properly then manually is the only way. Its great for refining entry/exit points, and tweaking the strategy itself. If you are keen to learn more PA there are some good free info web sites about, if you're interested I can pm you some.

Well done for ignoring vendors on your thread, bit cheeky for them to post knowing that you already have your own strategy.

rsh01 said:

f you are keen to learn more PA there are some good free info web sites about, if you're interested I can pm you some.

Well done for ignoring vendors on your thread, bit cheeky for them to post knowing that you already have your own strategy.

Click to expand...

Feel free to PM me anything that you think might help.

As for ignoring vendors. Personally, I'm strongly of the opinion that if someone is able to trade with consistent profits, then they wouldn't be messing around online trying to make extra money charging to 'help' people through 'coaching'/selling indicators etc etc.
Those that can...do.
They are all a complete con. I've never fallen prey and never will, although I know a number of people who have spent thousands of pounds on complete rubbish.

Anyway, this morning has been another day of painstaking manual backtesting, now for the month of May.
Resultls not as Good, but still profitable at +120 pips for the month.

Tomorrow I'll try to backtest April.

Shakone said:

200 pips a month on a 20 pip risk per trade is excellent.

Click to expand...

Thankyou. That's encouraging to hear.

scholfield said:

Tomorrow I'll try to backtest April.

Click to expand...

In testing, April was the worst so far at just +40 pips for the whole month.
March was +140
May +120
June +220
This month currently going quite well.

I don't want to get carried away, but I'm starting to convince myself that maybe I have 'something', lol.

I've been trading a live account for the last 7 months trading very small stakes. I started with £1800 and It's now over 4k.
I withdrew about £3600 to my bank account a few days ago, so my account is rather small again for now.

Anway, the point of this post.
I want to do more testing. My biggest fear in trading is the whole 'methods always stop working in the market'. I don't know how people can trade for a living if this is the case, but I certainly hear it a lot. Aren't people always worried that their methods will soon stop working, and then you'll have to spend the next year, UNPAID, testing and working on new ideas?

So, I Can't seem to go back very far in metatrader. I want to look at smallish timeframe metatrader charts from like 2008 adn stuff.

Is this possible?

cheers

scholfield said:

April was the worst so far at just +40 pips for the whole month.
March was +140
May +120
June +220
This month currently going quite well....

Click to expand...

Well, this month is now the worst month so far.
We're 3 weeks in, and i'm at about brekeven for the month.
I still think that I may have an 'edge', but I think it's quite tight, and i'd need to be trading at big stakes to make it worth my while.
I want to have a method like Mr charts and that ilk, who make hundreds of pips every day! Then I wouldn't need to bet teh farm on each trade.

Anyway, month isn't over yet.

My 1£800 starting balance is over 4k now (trading tiny stakes. it's taken about 5 months!!)

If it can get a bit higher, I plan to start a journal just to track my journey. Might eveb get to see me blow up spectacularly, which would be nice.....

Going big is a sure sign your method is not working. It will also be the reason for your forthcoming blowing up. After that all you withdrawn winnings will get thrown back in for a quick gamble. You will loose no matter what because the market would have put you in a rage that you could not come out of until all your money are gone.

The only way to make it big in the long term is by way of compounding wins from small bets. Small bets also mean small looses. If you are able to contain your looses, the profits will practically make themselves.

My assessment of your technique is that you either don't believe in it, or don't understand it. Also possible is that the strategy doesn't fit you. A further possibility is that some recent events caused you to think you need to make money at a quicker pace but your technique wouldn't allow it. I would suggest taking a 2 month break from it all so that you calm down and look at it more objectively.

Today I had a single trade that won back all my looses of 15 trades and still came out winning for the day. The winning trade was also the smallest bet of the day. As my account balance gets smaller, my bets get smaller. If the balance grows, so will the bets. It's all about understanding one's own technique and believe in it.

scholfield said:

Now, even though I am happy to be up, I do feel as though 220 pips for a month isn't much. I'd feel more confident that luck wasn't playing a part if it was a lot more. I'm often told that good traders average 30-50 pips per day on something with a range such as gbpusd.

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hi scholfield,

contrary to what others have posted c200 pips per month trend catching isnt a very good return.

~a guesstimate avge of the atr of most major fx pairs is c100 pips a day - a decent trend trader will be catching 50%+ of the move.
~2 setups a day across the majors is not unreasonable.
~with a SR 50% and SL 25pips = 25pips per day = 500pips a month.
~sh1t loads of screen time, practice of PA entry/exits should squeeze SR closer to 60% and reduce SLs also
~which means that 500 pips a month is a lower limit for your monthly targets.

on that back of toilet paper analysis i think you need to review your strategy/techniques, but this is just my opinion.

hope this is not too blunt, happy to discuss further.

rsh01 said:

hi scholfield,

contrary to what others have posted c200 pips per month trend catching isnt a very good return.

~a guesstimate avge of the atr of most major fx pairs is c100 pips a day - a decent trend trader will be catching 50%+ of the move.
~2 setups a day across the majors is not unreasonable.
~with a SR 50% and SL 25pips = 25pips per day = 500pips a month.
~sh1t loads of screen time, practice of PA entry/exits should squeeze SR closer to 60% and reduce SLs also
~which means that 500 pips a month is a lower limit for your monthly targets.

on that back of toilet paper analysis i think you need to review your strategy/techniques, but this is just my opinion.

hope this is not too blunt, happy to discuss further.

Click to expand...

Not too blunt.
Like I said, if i'm honest 200pips per month doens't sound very good to me either, although i've had a few messages saying that anyone telling me that they are making 50-100 pips per day consitently are talking boll0x and that my results are good.
I don't know.
I've had a look on the 'live calls thread' on this forum. Some of the guys seems to make money overall, but if you do the maths, they don't seem to make anything like the 50pips per day you talk about (over time)

I'd like to see someone make 50pips on average everyday, with live calls to prove it can be done. Would be interesting to know that it's actually possible.

On the plus side, my live account is at a new high today. made 50pips on cable.

I started this account with £1850.
I have just shy of £1000 in there now, although have also withdrew £3850 into my bank

Considering upping my stakes slightly soon.

scholfield said:

Not too blunt.
Like I said, if i'm honest 200pips per month doens't sound very good to me either, although i've had a few messages saying that anyone telling me that they are making 50-100 pips per day consitently are talking boll0x and that my results are good.

I'd like to see someone make 50pips on average everyday, with live calls to prove it can be done. Would be interesting to know that it's actually possible.

Click to expand...

200 pips per month is good and would probably put you in the 90+ percentile of traders. Of course, 2400 pips a year requires a lot of buying power to make it worth your while.

What I like to remind myself of when trading, as I've read it before, is winning every trade from here on out, or making 50-100 pips per day, is completely permissible and such a triumph is not inhibited by physical law - and said even another way, to answer your question, it IS "possible." But whether psychology is bound by physical law is yet to be determined! I guess what you want to know is there are people out there who are making heaps and gobs of pips per day, I can at least certify . . . there might be But I don't think they're on t2w (no offense to any fabulous traders who might read this!)

I made 424 pips last week, this week I'm up 60, that's almost 50 pips/day in the last 10 days. I do not expect that to continue. If I did, I would be setting myself up for severe disappointment and disaster, and I know to expect the average to fall to around 20 pips/day, fingers crossed and god willing . . . and if there are no mistakes.