Stress Free Breakout trading Journal

Hello,
My name is Vladimir, naturally I am from Ukraine. About half a year ago I tried trading forex for the first time. I used signal providers services and that was my mistake. As a result a lost some of my funds and that was the beginning of my studying about Forex. I tried different Strategies and trading styles. As trading forex is not my primary occupation I had to find out the strategy for trading Morning time (9-00 GMT) and I found breakout strategy very usefull.
I hope that this thread will help me to monitor my trades, and all your comments are welcome. Today I will begin to post my trades and a bit later I will give a short description of how does it work for me and what setups and indicators I use.

Basics.
There are a lot of different types of breakout strategies. My setup is the following:
Time to trade: We will for a period from 04-00 till 07-00 GMT. That will be the time to build the "box". 07-15GMT is the time we will place our pending orders.
Pairs to trade: I will trade GBPJPY. But this strategy is also good for GBPUSD and EURJPY.
TP&SL: I will place 2 pending orders with SL=75pips and TP1=50pips, TP2=100pips. As soon as TP1 reached first order will be closed and the second one will move the SL +40pips from the entry point.
Time Frame: M15
How to build the "Box":
1. Pull out a M15 Chart .
2. Draw a vertical line at 04:00 time on your Chart.
3. Draw a vertical line at 07:00 time on your Chart.
4. Draw a Horizontal line at the highest of the bar between the vertical
lines.
5. Draw a Horizontal line at the Lowest of the bar between the vertical
lines.
Trend determination: To determine the trend I use MA 95 on M15 chart.
Days to trade: I will trade from Tuesday till Friday and avoid Monday.

01.09.2009

Here are pending orders for today 01.09.2009

Hi Soondoock,

Nice description. I like it. Remaining questions: Only take FIRST breakout - or BOTH (if price breaks opposite trigger)? MA based on CLOSE only? Any backtested results?

Thanks

Hittfeld

answer

Hittfeld said:

Hi Soondoock,

Nice description. I like it. Remaining questions: Only take FIRST breakout - or BOTH (if price breaks opposite trigger)? MA based on CLOSE only? Any backtested results?

Thanks

Hittfeld

Click to expand...

Hello Hittfeld,
Thank you for your question.
I do trade only first breakout. It seems the best way to trade this strategy. I did backtests only from the beginning of this year. As soon as I will have time I will post the results. About MA, it is EMA 95, close. I also know that some people trade the both ways and you can see the situation which correspond exactly to your question. But this happens only during the news mostly so I prefer to stay out of such a trades.
Back to our current situation. Both trades are closed at the moment and the Net profit for today: +50 +40
here is confirmation and screenshot of my chart.
Result:


Chart:


Backtest result from 1 Jan 2009 - to present day:

Vladimir : I will be taking your signals, can you post these here.
I am looking forward to see for myself how good this works.

fantastic said:

Vladimir : I will be taking your signals, can you post these here.
I am looking forward to see for myself how good this works.

Click to expand...

Be my guest. I will try to post my pending orders as soon as I will do a screenshot. It is exactly 7.15 GMT. Please watch my trades and results, And if you want you can follow them on your demo to understand how does it works and I am sure you will be able to do it by yourself very soon. Questions are welcome.

great: I am waiting.
can I assume you trade for yourself?

fantastic said:

great: I am waiting.
can I assume you trade for yourself?

Click to expand...

You are entirely right. This thread is the way to strengthen my discipline.

02.09.2009

Good Morning!
Here are pending orders for today:

It seems that we have a retracing at the moment and still in a bearish trend.

Hello again,
Trades are closed. Net profit +50, +40 pips.

watchin'...

So how do you use the EMA? Price >EMA at 7:15 means buy stops, otherwise sell stops? Have to be a certain distance away?

Hotch said:

So how do you use the EMA? Price >EMA at 7:15 means buy stops, otherwise sell stops? Have to be a certain distance away?

Click to expand...

Hello Hotch, and thank you for your question.
EMA is only to determine the trend direction. Look at the chart from the post #4
If a box is below EMA95, I will have only sell orders. If the a box above EMA95, I will have only buy orders and if the EMA95 crosses the box or in the middle of the box I will have both sell and buy orders. Hope this will help.

Interesting system. Interested in where you place your buy order - 1 pip above/below the box (adjusting for spread)?

PokerBrat said:

Interesting system. Interested in where you place your buy order - 1 pip above/below the box (adjusting for spread)?

Click to expand...

7pip approx.

This thread looks interesting. Let me try this for tomorrow.

GBP /USD would have failed this morning through a reversal after approx 20+ pips. Do you suggest tweaking SL and profit targets?

london_lad said:

GBP /USD would have failed this morning through a reversal after approx 20+ pips. Do you suggest tweaking SL and profit targets?

Click to expand...

Yes, according to my entry rules today could be the bad day but this is GBPUSD.
Concerning TP&SL you can try TP1=30pips, TP2=60pips and I am not sure about the SL but it seems that the best way is to put SL on other side of the bands after 30pip hit move SL to b/e. But this is up to you to try GBPUSD. Any way wish you the best!

Soondoock: Dont get me wrong mate. I think this is quite a stress free setup. I will give it a go tomorrow. Which pairs would you normally recommend for such strategy?

london_lad said:

Soondoock: Dont get me wrong mate. I think this is quite a stress free setup. I will give it a go tomorrow. Which pairs would you normally recommend for such strategy?

Click to expand...

We trade at the opening of the European Market, so we should trade pairs which contain European currencies. GBP, EUR. But some of the pairs do not have good PA (Price Action). So we should find the pairs with high volatility. I think GBPJPY is the best candidate, 1-st Place; 2-nd place GBPUSD; 3-rd place EURJPY. But to determine TP&SL for them (GBPUSD; EURJPY) we have to spend a lot of time manually test and record results with strategy tester using visualization. But I do not have such a time, I am also sure that not only me using this strategy, and I think there are many ways to use breakouts, such as NewYork session breakout or daily, asian session. By the way all my trades are Live so results are real.
To london_lad, everything is ok. Do not worry, when we find out something new we will always have a lot of questions. You can read the first post of the thread where I mentioned main rules of the strategy.
And sorry for my English:smart:

03.09.2009

Good Morning,
Frankfurt is opened and it seems we will have difficult situation today, Ema crosses the box and we can see bullish trend but it's not obvious. But PA shows that GBPUSD also has bullish trend. According to my rules we will have Pending orders in both ways and I hope only one direction will play today. The box range is about 100pip that is really much.
Also 9.30GMT will be a high impact news Services PMI (It's a leading indicator of economic health - businesses react quickly to market conditions, and their purchasing managers hold perhaps the most current and relevant insight into the company's view of the economy;)
Orders for today:


As I said before situation if difficult. My TP1 did not reached a few pips to be closed. Was not near my computer. At the moment both trades are in a small profit and I still hope to close them both in profit. But any way I will close my positions before New York session starts.

I am here to post my results for today 4 trades. 2 were deleted after buy stop orders became active.
Net profit: +50, +40
Results for Today:


Just thoughts, It seem that GBPJPY continues to follow UP trend but there will be news in a 10 mins.GBPUSD reached +70 pips after breakout of the a box. I am done for today. Thank you all.