sorry for the double post, but i just saw what seems an interesting trade on the usd jpy, we have a nice indecision candle followed by a lower opening candle. stop loss could be very tight, if you look left on the chart you see others have made big orders at that level to sell before. entry would be 118.632, stoploss 118.95 take profit i suppose conservative would be 118.05

 

PS: decided to do it with an order to make sure price was actually gonna go down. so i didnt enter this as i'm really only doing eurusd live at the moment, but it will be interesting to see how it develops.** Register Here for Free Membership to see this image/link **

EDITED TO ADD: well so far this trade isn't doing quite what i expected, a lot more orders in the way of my target then i expected. i wonder if this isn't the kind of situation where one would close early? or possibly put the stop loss at 1 pip TP? this is part of trading i have the least idea about. when to jump out of a trade if it's taking longer or going a more round about route then expected. when i see all this consolidation i wonder if it will be able to bust through it to my target.** Register Here for Free Membership to see this image/link **

 this is how it went so far.

second update: trade has gone into the red territory, still hasn't broken the high that started me on this test trade, but it no longer looks as straight forward as it did when i first test entered it. looks like it will not be successful.

did a couple of practice trades today, plus a small eurusd sell for 18 pips.

 

here another one that i entered for real and i'm wondering if that can be called a turning pattern? or is that just consolidation before it continues the down move?

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while this one looks like its forming into a double tap reversal? this is a practice trade. as you can see i entered it before the double tap had formed. impatient as ever, i really have to write down my exact rules i think before i go much further. i get the feeling now i got it and then realize i didnt think things all the way through. anyway any experienced members that feel like chiming in,  feel free.

 

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well this is what i have come up with so far, i still need to familiarize myself much better with the way the various patterns will show up on the charts. the only safe solution will be to trade a demo account till i can see and read the patterns in my sleep so to speak. anyway check out my:

 

   
          Rules to Enter a Trade and Questions to Answer Before I Enter

1. What is the over all,big trend? (always check larger time frames for the big trend)

2. Do I have a signal, i.e. entering pattern, at an order flow area with a confirming candle set up?

3. What price will I enter the trade at, why?

4. what is my stop loss, why?

5. what is my profit target and why?

6. what is my total risk to reward? is it at least 1 to 1 or more?

7. which entering pattern am i using to confirm the trade

8. what candle stick formation additionally confirmed the trade for me?

9. is my trade respecting the order flow zones, do i have space?

 

edited to add: i was wondering if you ever use orders to confirm your decision so to speak? like if you see a formation and think price should break out of it in a certain direction, do you ever place an order out in front of the price so to speak? you would lose a few pips but be getting a kind of confirmation about the correctness of the direction?

 

btw: nice double bottom forming on the eurusd as we speak on the 15m chart, but yeah thats a counter trend trade which i'm actually not really allowing myself on my real account anyway. also the pattern might change into a continuation pattern, who knows at this stage where the bottom will be for the eu.

hello again everyone that might possibly read this at some point, lol....

 

anyway had some ups and downs in my live trading recently, thought i'd cracked it a couple of times only to realize i was not quite there yet.

 

the usual thing is happening, i am making profit with 2 demo accounts, but my real account is back to 7% draw down after getting it up within a 1% of the starting amount. so yeah quite depressing. only reason i'm not down further is that my account manager told me to short gbpusd just before nfp. but yeah that another story, point is, i'm going back to studying. am learning how to operate a windows machine so i can finally instal meta trader and use the great indicators and scripts Theo kindly provided here. hope i can figure it out, finding windows very counter intuitive when compared to operating a mac, bt thats neither here nor there.

 

i will update this thread as i make progress. will probably end up going vip membership, for now i'm studying the basics of charting, from moving averages, eliot waves, trend lines and fibonaci levels as well as studying up on what exact rules apply to using various patterns. even just drawing a trend line is not much good if one doesn't follow the rules everyone else is about drawing them.

did a few hours of random back testing with Theos method of going back to a random pint in the charts history, then starting to trade from the last candle on the right. i found myself making a good few hundred pips profit if i just use candle stick entries on a 4 hour time frame with a generous stop loss. was quite amazing to see how easy it was to make trades with 100 pips and more profit. i think this is probably the first thing i have to change, no more trading small time frames unless it's the right direction for the bigger time frames main trend anywyay.

 

i have a trade running on the eurusd right now, so far  it's 150 pips in profit, it's a sell. i set my stop loss to 100 pips now so what ever happens i will gain at least 100 pips and maybe it will end up being 299. time will tell. i noticed that zulutrader has a broker that provides incredibly good spreads and you can choose the leverage at any time to change it. they also allow micro lot trading so you can practice with less, but the great thing i like is i can open various positions and manage each one separately on the same pair, i can even hedge trades if i want. this also allows me to open a few small positions and close the first 1 at 1/1 letting the second run for free so to speak. some demo accounts they just average out your trades for the same pair.

 

anyway, still working on this, lets hope i can make some better trades this week.

 

WM

Theo Patsios said
couple of notes after reading your post...

I have a macbook pro for when I travel and my multi screen PC at home, I actually dislike the Mac for trading on IOS even though there are MT4 for Mac patches, they just don't seem to work the same. When I do use my mac I just use remote desktop software to connect to my windows VPS and have the best of both Worlds.

Demo is always easier than live which is funny because you are not doing anything different on the technical side of things, it proves just how tricky the psychological part is. Still, you have to start somewhere and if you can't make consistent profits on a demo then you have no business trading live. Only when your demo shows consistent profits you should be moving to micro, making sure you can do the same and then slowly increase your trading size to grow with the experience, slow and steady wins the race.

Relying on account managers and trading news events is not something I would ever advise but each to their own.

Have a great trading week,

Theo

thanks a million for your feed back, i really appreciate it.

 

i noticed that the reviews for mac patches to run mt4 are all prety crap. so yeah i'm gonna have to get the hang of windows for my trading. mt4 will also allow me to keep on demo trading.

i hear you on keeping on with demo trading till i can make a consistant profit with my demo account. how many months should i be profitable before i start doing deals with 0.1 of a micro lot? i mean thats only a few bucks risked per trade at that size, depending on stop loss. don't you think it's beneficial to trade live with such small positions just to start training the psychological aspect of trading?

 

i hear you on account managers, but i have to say he has helped me a lot so far, my account is actually 4% in profit today, he called me up and told me to sell 100 barrels of oil right now for 50 bucks tp, i did it on the phone as i was out the house and by the time i got back the trade was closed in profit. it's been a month or more and he is slowly convincing me that he really does want my account to grow. at the start i was skeptical and didnt follow his tips, but with time he is proving himself, so yeah, it's hard not to use his tips when they are as concrete as they some times are. although i think he has the ulterior motive of trying to get me to fund the account with more serious money, the question is will he be as helpful when he has gotten me to upgrade the account. he tells me that my present balance is not enough to risk trading stocks and commodities and that only trading currencies puts me in a slightly higher risk category then accounts that trade a combination of stocks, commodities, futures and forex. does he have a point?

 

i still want to learn how to do the trades myself, so i might open a separate account for me to learn on, but yeah, no rush, need to keep doing the demo accounts profitably for at least a few months first. no point doing what most do and blowing my first account. 

well it turns out he had ulterior motives after all, he was only showing me the service he will give if i add 10k.

 

so yeah, not doing that. prefer to learn how to do it myself even if it takes a year or 2.

 

back to studying and demo trading for now. hopping for the eu to drop today, same with gbpusd.