ForexTraderX

3 reasons, and only 3 reasons: 1. They don't have an edge 2. They don't have a plan that provides clear structure on how to best apply that edge, and how to best avoid the risks associated with trading. 3. they don't follow their plan (good ole' patience and discipline are attributes needed to follow ones plan)

oh, as far as comissions goes, it varies somewhat widely, ya. best thing is to shop around, and weigh low comissions against quality of order execution and order routing, as well as customer service provided, and your own frequency of trading. think through what you need. read reviews of brokers. go with one that is spoken highly of, but will give you what you want. and learn about order exectution and order routing. half a penny commisions per share won't mean a thing if they middle your orders, and make the bid ask spread on every trade you take. look for a direct access broker. good luck.

If your in the U.S...here's a link for a very general summary. don't base it on this though. first...i'd suggest you talk to your accountant. tell them what your thinking. then, trade stocks, and see if you actually have any profits to pay taxes on. I thought I would about 2 weeks into my trading adventure. 5 years later, i still was yet to see that accountant a 2nd time. here's that link: Stock Trading Tax Rules | eHow.com i'm not a tax guy. i don't know aything about this. this is my legal disclaimer. good luck.

solid post man. it's funny, over this summer i've made some significant changes to my trading plan, the vast majority focusing around playing to my strenghts, and shielding myself from my weaknesses. I used to have a daily routine. I'd do it every day. I have 3 catagories of trades I would look for every day, plus some stat arb, and the occassional more exotic or sophisticated trade if I had more time and was compelled to do so. Over this summer, i've now totally thrown away that daily routine. I used to trade every day. Now I only trade when I feel like it. I used to have goals, and daily tasks to prepare, to develop, to research...etc. now I only have my trade review. I've greatly reduced structures and routines, as well as mental goals and "deadlines". I now only trade if I feel like it, and I only trade the setups I feel like trading. I essentially have replaced drive and focus with "new age-y vibes" and almost a lazzie faire attitude. some days, i almost flip a coin...heads I open the charts, tails i don't even bother. funny thing, is my trading is slowly but very surely stablizing after a very rough 4th year of full time trading. How is this possible? because i've been able to remove expectation from the equation. without expectation, i've found a more organic approach to the markets, only trading how i want, as i want, when i want, for the time i want. And this has had the elegant outcome of letting the markets convince me of an opportunity, rather than the other way around. If I place an order, I want to. I believe in it. but most importantly, it's the orders I DIDN'T place on the previous days when I lacked the desire to act. I've found that desire to act is my own subconcious seeing a truly wonderful, not-to-be-missed trading opportunity. And the other times? well obviously, the market doesn't want me bad enough, because i don't see anything that catches my attention. And I couldn't care less. And I've never felt more confident that the rest of the year may not be a good example of highly efficient, effective work on my part, but it will be a great example of how to let the trade come to you, rather than set a standard or process to work ones butt off to find the trade at a regular scheduled time and place. THis is not to say I don't have specific rules. I do, fairly comprehensive ones. I just don't even bother to play the game i don't feel like it. And this, in effect, has organically instilled a greater degree of discretion than I've had before. after the hardest year of the last 4, I'm looking forward to the rest of the year, and 2013 We all have our own ways to play the game the way we NEED to, in order to win. The hardest part is finding those needs within ourselves, and learning the best way to channel them to be compatable both with us, and the nature of the capital markets. For myself, i'm finding greater patience and discipline by sleeping more, going on more walks, and looking for reasons NOT to "go to work". this is a very interesting business, isn't it. FTX

If you give me $100 bucks, I'll tell you all the gurus and indicators and books and seminars that WON'T make you money.... and that's one HECK of a good deal. FTX

nobody hates you. they either don't believe you, or they believe you, but simply know that 6 months is simply not nearly enough time to prove that one can make a living trading, regardless of method or knowledge or strategy or plan. Unless of course you've made enough to retire on for life in that 6 months. in which case, congratulations! however, if you continue this for several more years, bought a house, a car or two, done some travel, maybe made a few investments outside the market with your profits.... ya, then most who you meet will not hate, but possibly admire or even envy you. and then you can tell them you made money right off the bat. and you'll be all the more special for it. i do wish you much continued success however.

Nope. that's all of em. next post. j/k. here's a list of what i find works. it is not a complete list, and much of it is conceptual, but it should give you some ideas: support and resistance previous significant highs and lows, such as daily, weekly, monthly, session, etc. trendlines, and trendline breaks. VSA market profile candlestick patterns (check out bulkowski. he's done some amazing work on probabilities and patterns) understanding market microstructure understanding auction market therory (microstructure is a subset of this) trading failures of parabolic moves. statistical arbitrage (see "pairs trading") going long once price breaks out into a relatively low liquidity zone, and covering once it hits a zone of significant liquidity. fading barrier options pushing into barrier options arbing forex futures against forex spot market (takes proper capitalization, but can be a guaranteed profit if one is prepared for potential black swan volitality swings - hint, use options as insurance here) fading a gap fill, either in forex, but better yet in equities. using options in the equity markets to get "paid" while you wait for your order to fill...so you make money regardless of whether you even get the trade to trigger or not. there are many more... but, this should be enough to get you started.

Dude. quod erat demonstrandum. Hey DAVDT, one time i went looking for a girlfriend, but wouldn't you nkow it, after i introduced myself i pulled down my pants for them to see what I had... but in spite of how overwhelmingly impressive that was, for some odd reason I never actually got that girlfriend. but, i had plenty of "quality time" to myself. seems to me your enjoying your "private time" here in public too. just be sure to mop up your mess when your done eh?

Care to explain what an STP broker is?

i like to use previous highs and lows - 1st retest of those are more likely than other places to produce a small (or larger) reversal in the opposite direction. candlestick patterns are good. check out bulkowski's site (think it's called thepatternsite.com, or somethig like that. bulkowski. google him) he has conducted some pretty exhaustive reasearch on market patterns including candlestick patterns. this alone can provide an edge to build around. support and resistance - tops of ranges, bottoms of ranges (see previous highs and lows) market profile and VSA are both very sound concepts, I use em, they make money. printed flow data for spot forex trading.... goood to provide confirmation, or help pick a good entry point if you have other compelling reasons to believe in one particular direcational bias in a market. information on options, of a particular interest are barrier options. can develop some really really neat-o trading concepts around barrier options. google: darkstar, trading. he's developed some good models around various aspects of options and how they influence the spot forex market. sam seiden and supply and demand zones. a good basic primer for starting to see how markets work, and has some very good, high probability trading strategies. I also like trendlines. best indicator in the world to determine if a market is trending, reversing, consolidating, breakign out, etc... a simple diagonal line on a chart. nobrainertrades.com has some great work published on how to use S/R and trendlines for some good intraday profits, and Steve (the guy who runs the site) is the real deal. institutional experience, retail trader, one of the most complete understandings of how the markets work of anyone I know of. Uses trendlines like a trendline fiend. on a very very rare occassion, fibonnaci... and also, on a very rare occassion, a moving average to filter out one specific setup I have. i once heard a guy say if it makes any sort of squiggle on his screen, it can't make any money. I tend to agree.

My Brain - I use it to help me determine which tool should be applied to which situation, and what importance to place on it. My toolbox has tools that only make straight lines on my charts, including volume, horizontal depictions of volume, candlestick patterns, statistically viable tools, fundamental trends, COT studies, highs and lows of all sorts, but most of all a constant, very deliberate choice to monitor my own internal thoughts, feelings, and emotions, in order to make sure I personally am mentally in the correct place from which to best be able to choose the right tools.

BUMP... baby, BUMP! two out of three girls i would mess around with before i met my wife had the tramp stamp. they also both had boyfriends. my wife does not have a trampstamp. we have an excellent, committed, loving relationship, and both trust and mutual respect define the boundaries of every part of it. Trampstamp = probably not wife material No Trampstamp = probably NOT screwing the neighbor and the door man when your working late to provide for her future. hah. the trampstamp. BUMP FTX

The only automated trading programs that I know of that are successful are the ones that are made by traders and programmers for their own trading purposes, or are licensed for 6, 7, or 8 figure sums to investment banking firms to use. in other words, they are all proprietary. Unless your the guy who developed the strategy on which the automated system trades, then your not even trying your luck if you use one of these you can buy on the net for a few hundered dollars. you have much better odds of taking that money and putting it on red or even in vegas, and spinning one time. No joke... not even being cynical. just putting it in perspective for you. and by the way... tossing a baseball at the lever that dunks the clowns at the fair is something you "try your luck at". forex, and trading in general, is a knowledge business that you learn and develop over several years, complete with business plan, investment capital, and an internal burning desire to accomplish a difficult, all encompassing challenge that you will find is somewhat akin to making a long term relationship (like a marriage) work out successfully for years and years. this requires constant development, passion for the relationship, a deep desire to improve every mistake you can identify, from now until you stop trading, and very likely a need to genuinely enjoy the challenge of the worlds capital markets. I say this all so again, you have a REALISTIC understanding of what it will require of you to be able to take a small amount of money and become a full time, successful trader. Luck frankly, will play less a roll in your success or failure as a trader than it will in possibly any other industry you could ever try to achieve it. this is the industry of anti-luck. But I wish you well

Well, those are indeed impressive numbers, and nice to see it was done over 14 trades, not just one or 2 lucky home runs... guy will very likely kick my ass then.... I don't want to get into the full analysis here, for a variety of reasons, but the fact is that allowing unlimited drawdown can and does increase the likelyhood of someone getting lucky. It opens the door to the possibility that I see absolutly no reason to allow for, unless the contest is to show who can get lucky, vs who can trade well. and I see your side clearly, and for all intents and purposes this is small enough of a contest that there is a sense of camraderie that I feel will set the tone for it and discourage such foolish trading tactics... but again, there is a very slight possibility of undermining the spirit of things if we allow unlimited drawdown, where there is no possibility if it is held with a realistic cap. is this an unnecessary rule? very possibly. but it will be relevent if for some reason someone drops their account by 30%, only to end up 60% on one lucky trade. I'm down with 20% mystic. completely down. I'll get registered before this coming weekend is over. Looking forward to it. personally, I hope the champion shows up and competes... would love to see what he's trading and how he's doing it. that type of thing can be invaluable to all traders IMO... and even more so to veterans.... simply because many seasoned traders have enough knowledge to see the "insight" in what a better trader is doing... and such understanding simply isn't possible without a high level of trading proficency in the first place. Anyway, i'm excited. you guys can count me in, i'll be formally signed up in the next day or so.

I'm not so sure Neg... I know this post is a bit old, and you may feel a bit different now, but when you say the market is moving up on nothing but hope and possibilties, I feel a bit different. I think MM nailed it pretty good a few posts before yours. Right now, I believe we may start to see the "flight to safety" trade unwind as negative sentiment is clearly waining. I'm not saying all is good, in fact, it seems china and to a lesser extent the economies most directly dependent on china will likely start to faulter a bit (AUD, maybe NZD, etc...) but, over all, economic data coming out of the US and europe is improving, most noteably kicked off by the improved and surprising NFP a few weeks ago. Furthermore, the great bond bull run of the last 3 - 4 years I believe has run it's course... keep in mind, much of the capital that has "eased" it's way into the world economy over the past few years has been primarily absorbed in the bond markets and various other "safe" havens, thus fueling this rally even futher above and beyond what record low interest rates will do. And I don't see many markets starting to post negative interest rates (though a few are)... but I don't see this going very widespread or very "deep" anytime soon, I believe we've about exhausted the "value" that could be obtained in such safe havens. As money starts to slowly trickle out of these havens, this will likely increase the "risk on " sentiment, and futher drive money back out of commodities, and in particular the U.S. dollar, and into reallocation into other asset classes, most obviously the world equity markets. I dont' want to get too academic here, or bogged down in details, but in fact when currencies rapidly devalue (argentine peso, russian ruble post fall of the berlin wall, etc).... historically they have rebounded to SURPASS the economic conditions they were experiencing before any problems were recognized by the investment community, and they have done so in 6 months - 24 months in over 15 case studies since world war 2. In short: history has show 100% of the time, once a currency devalues and bottoms out for whatever reason (hyperinflation, political upheaval, etc)... there is a complete and full economic recovery from trough back up to peak within 6-24 months. It's actually quite astounding as I read a very well done reasearch report on this about 2 months ago. So, in spite of the "impending doom"... i think the fundamentals of excess money flowing in the world, unsustainable trends in commodities and government bond markets, combined with some overall increase in fundamental reports out of the US and europe.... and considering the techncial "oversold" conditions of some of the risk currencies and other risk markets... I just think the value of "safety" is now become too expensive for what it is priced at, and this leaves primarily equities to be undervalued, and likely outperform significantly over the next 6 - 24 months. Not to mention that many companies have been trading recently for below book value, and the nikki index over all is providing the greatest P:E ratios for value investment in the last 2 generations, and that is WITH the japanese yen being so expensive... should it start to drop, valueations would only look MORE attractive. No, i'm going contrarian here, backed with some pretty strong underlying fundamental data behind it. I fully acknowledge that none of it negates the problems that europe is facing... but they have been facing those problems now for a few years, and it has been known...not a surprise to anyone. what IS the "new player" on the field is shifting improvement on the economic front in the regions that were first hit by the crisis, namely the U.S. and europe... that, and a general market tone of many that "we are going to all go to financial hell and die now"... tells me that most everyone interested in selling risk, and buying safety, has done so. i now think we will see a shift slowly emerging over the next few months as the general public notices that the "smart money" has been moving into risk assets...and we just may see for the first time since this mess started,j a sustainable if incremental improvement in economic conditions, and risk markets. just my 2 cents...

wow... an active thread built around real market analysis here... cool guys! I'm looking forward to getting involved here.. is it all the 4 E-mini's? (YM, ES, NQ, TF)? I suppose I can go check out some posts to answer my own question here... looking forward to contributing in the coming sessions

Well, i just came across this thread for the first time, and though I'm pretty new here, i'd be happy to get involved if some others do the same. looks like a great bit of work over all, and a thread I think would be well worth reviving

Wait... what??? I was JUST going to sign up now... but no draw down rule allows for very unrealistic leverage amounts, given that the goal is to grow an account as much as possible in 1 month... it's not actually to trade as one would do so in order to do this full time for a business. maybe 5% is too small... I personally think it is. maybe cap it at 10%, or 20%... you know, something that a professional trader or hedge fund manager may experience on a bad month, but taking all restrictions off of this makes it possible to bet it all on a single trade with a tight stop... if that trade runs 200 pips to profit, with taking no more than a 20 pip stop, and a person risked half their account on it... they will be very likely head and shoulders ahead of the rest... but not a single professional trader I know of would ever think to do such a crazy thing. If the goal here is to see in some way who has some genuine trading skills, above and beyond the rest... the contest must enforce some DD restrictions. Otherwise the winner could be a good trader, or he could be the guy that let it all ride on a longshot, and lucked out. again, i thought 5% was too tight, but i was totally willing to work with it, and in fact I believed it was a brilliant restriction because it greatly increased the probability of the better skilled trader coming in first, rather than the more aggressive (and quite possibly lucky) trader coming in first. If there is some sort of restriction, I'll sign up as soon as I see it. If there is just a free for all... i personally will pass. anyone else feel the same way?

Well ok that's true about the brokers, but for me, it's only been an issue maybe 4 or 5 times ever in my trading career, out of thousands of trades... and the WORST I ever had was about 15-20 pips of slippage when the SNB announced they were pegging the euro, and once when the tsunami in japan occured, I think I got about 10 pips of slippage when the news broke. It's just such an incredibly insignificant issue, that if your actually having regular problems with "slippage" causing massive losses because your leverage amount was high, then it's your broker...and if it's not your broker, i'm willing to bet that on your losing trades, your account drops by well over 2% every time you lose. and it's NOT true "the higher the leverage, the higher the risk". and I'll prove it here: A trader has a $10,000 account. He takes a long trade on the EUR/USD with a 10 pip stop, and a 11 pip target (an extra pip to cover his 1 pip spread). He risks 2% of his account balance on this trade, so should the trade hit is stop 10 pips below, he will lose $200 (which is 2% of his 10K) That works out to be about $250,000 USD he "sells" in order to "buy" about $200,000 units of euros (it's a long trade). So, he just leveraged 25:1, and he is risking $200 on this trade should the trade drop 10 pips and get stopped out. That's 2% of his 10K account at risk. Now, say that same trader, on a seperate trade, has another account with 10K in it. He again goes long in the EUR/USD, and he risks $200 on the trade, which is 2% of his account total. HOWEVER, rather than take a 10 pip stop, he takes a 200 pip stop (and a 201 pip target...whatever) In this case, he is risking only $12,560 units (give or take)... so, he is leveraged about 1.25:1. Almost just 1:1... in other words, it's almost no leverage at all. HOWEVER, his risk has NOT decreased at all! he is still risking 2% of his account. he is still risking $200.00. in one example, he is leveraged about 25:1. in the other example, his leverage is barely more than 1:1... yet, his risk has not changed a bit. (unless you count slippage, which as I said earlier, if slippage is an issue, it's not your slippage, it's your broker) So, unless you can show me a way that this math is wrong, or not relevent... then i'm gonna go ahead and say, no, more leverage does NOT necessarily mean more risk. More risk means more risk. More leverage means quite simply a larger or smaller change to amount of investment capital per unit of market price fluctuation. The words are not synonyms of each other. It's like saying "more horsepower in a car makes for a more dangerous car". No. that's simply not true. If you drive the speed limit everywhere, always use your turn signal, never make an illegal lane change, never drive drunk, and always watch the road... well, i dont' care what your horsepower in your car is, you could have 1000 horsepower in your ferrari... your actually about as safe as you ccould be. and your in fact MUCH SAFER than the new teenager with a license who gets drunk for his high school prom and tries to race his buddies to the illegal night club after the dance. That guy could manage to wrap his 130 horsepower toyota around a stop light. But the little old lady obeying every traffic law in her 1K horsepower ferrari? ya, that's simply just never happen to her. she will never wrap her car around a pole, regardless of the horsepower.... ie: leverage. SO in fact, the reality is leverage is related to risk, but in no way directly correlated to risk. Again, if i'm wrong here... please point out where and how. I don't think there is much more to say, but would like to see someone show me where my logic is wrong.

Ok, i'm 100% with you on this. it is important to understand leverage on a conceptual level, and always consider total exposure (leveraged total exposure) at any given time. Just speaking personally, if I risk even upwards of 2% of my account on a single trade, i never even get into 10:1 leverage... and that's regardless of whether my stop loss is 15 pips, or 100 pips. I think me personallly my average trade works out to be about 5:1 - 8:1 leverage. and for someone who is day trading, I believe risking even 2% per trade is pretty cowboy. Of course, there are mathematical ways of determining what the "appropriate or optimal risk" is for a trade, based on win rate, profit in terms of R, standard deviation of "average losing/winning streaks"...etc. but all that being said, if one is getting just 1 trade per day, and has a 60% win rate, with winners and losers each averaging 1R... risking 2% of ones account per trade will generate approx. 8% per month. If the account is left to grow, within 5 years, a person can take $10,000 and run it up to over 1 million. In another 2.5 years (7.5 years total), that $10K will now be 10 million, and so on...etc. I guess what smacks me funny about the whole idea of needing to know what your leverage is, because you'll likely blow up if you don't understand it... is that if a person has a $10K account, and if they are risking approx. 2% of their account, on a trade in the EUR/USD, and they have a 20 pip stop on the trade....that would leverage them up about 10:1. If they have a 40 pip stop, to acheive the same risk amount on that trade, with the same account size, etc... they would only be leveraged 5:1. And, considering the typical 1-2 pip spread on the EUR/USD for most spot forex traders, if someone has a "strategy" that targets 10 pips or something... they need to overcome a significant disadvantage due to just even a 1 pip spread... making most strategies used by retail traders with retail brokers absent of long term viability if they are going for small pip moves (like, anything less than 10 pips). It's just too much to overcome, due to transaction costs being such a high percentage of your profit on little 10 and 12 pip targets. so, given than it's safe to assume at least a 1 pip spread on the EUR/USD for the retail trader, i would say a minimum "average" target should be about 20 pips. otherwise...the "juice" is just too high for the vast majority over the long run. And now we are basically back where we started. a 20 pip target, with a 10K account, and 2% risk per trade, with a risk:reward ratio of 1:1, and a 60% win rate... you can take 10K over 10 million in about 7 years...and in doing so, you will never exceed 10:1 leverage on any single trade. If this is such a paltry sum for a would be trader, and obviously nothing less than "30% profit per month will do"... then I think that trader has MUCH bigger problems than the potential to over leverage! I do agree with you that it is good to understand how leverage works... and maybe i'm just an arrogant bastard, but I tend to think that if one is blind to the fact that they are greatly over leveraged, and that person has no concept or understanding of why that is bad.... I welcome them to the marketplace, and I only can hope for them to be on the other side of my trades... something akin to driving a Ferrari down a freeway at 160 MPH, and not realizing why that is dangerous.... well, I got a darwin award for ya buddy. ANyway, I think we've beat this horse good and dead. yes, leverage is important to understand, but if one doesn't get that almost intrinsically, instinctively, maybe this isn't the right field for them. FTX

At this rate, I see 1700 by mid next week, and though we may pull back from there (or IMO, more likely stall out for a bit and consolidate before moving on)... I see 1720-1727 being hit before we see 1610 again. I'm bullish over all until we see 1725-1730... OR until we see a significant bearish reversal candle on the daily chart... and even then without a real trendline break which likely won't occur until price closes under 1600-1620 at least.... i'd treat any drop in price with skepticism, until we hit 1725-1730. There, I would turn to a neutral bias, and just wait and see what comes next.

just for the record, i'm right now long the 6B futures contract from 1.5860, targeting 15 ticks to 1.5875, stopping out at 1.5845. I will move stops to BE+1 if I can get 10 ticks of profit on this trade.

well, I'm going to look to get long between 1.2510, and 1.2490 if we can pull back to that price range, and I see price action showing signs of the retracement being done, and a continued move up. In particular, any nice pinbars or range expansion bullish candles on a 15 minute, 30 min, or 1hr chart once price hits that range. If other risk markets are generally holding up well during this coming london/US trading session, I may look to enter if price hits 1.2510... however, if price is moving down with conviction, particularly if we have hit 1.2620 or higher in price BEFORE we retest the 1.2510 level... I will wait for price to hit the bottom of my "zone of interest"...closer to the lows around 1.2490-1.2480. However, I will have a long order at around 1.2460ish, with about a 30ish pip stop, and a 30 pip 1st target, 75 pip 2nd target, and i'll keep that order there until the week is finished. Basically, 2 areas I like, the lower one I want a long order at no matter what... the higher one, i'll wait to see what other markets are doing, how price enters that zone, whether we break trendlines or not... etc. It will be situational, most importantly it will depend on how price reacts if it reaches 1.2510-1.2490 during the london or U.S. session, but before it has hit 1.2620.

hey all, I'm going to be doing some real intraday "scalping" analysis this coming week. It'll be in some of the various futures markets. going to be using some "market profile" like concepts, as well as some VSA style concepts, and of course good ol' price action, S/R levels, multiple TF analysis, etc. This is going to be geared towards the true "day trader". my average hold time for trades of this sort is around 20-30 minutes, and I might take anywhere from 3 - 6 or even more entries and exits during the first 4 hours of the U.S. open (when both london and the U.S. are trading actively). I may do a bit around the london session, but I plan on focusing primarily on setups that develop or are ready to go come the U.S. session open. And for this, I will likely do a little conference chat and possibly screen sharing via skype. I may do something through anymeeting as a screen sharing service, but for questions, answers, discussions, etc... it will be via skype. So, if your reading this, and your still struggling to make consistent profits, guys, i don't know how to say this any other way... you should drop by. once upon a time, I came across a few good resources for trading that opened doors to various aspects of market analysis that I didn't know existed, and those are the "secrets" that helped me take this into a full time business. I'm "distilling" down a lot of what i've learned into some powerful concepts in which to both understand the markets, and how to quantify that understanding to determine high probability setups. If your not trading full time, but you don't care to check out (for free) what at least one profitable trader does in detail to make money on a regular basis in the markets.... well, i'm really not sure what to say, except... thanks for being a liquidity provider for those of us who do this full time. for those who are interested in watching some live trading and real time trading analysis, send me a PM, or post on this thread that you are interested. I will have a day and time over this coming weekend posted up for those who "RSVP". If you don't post your interest on this thread, or send me a PM, then i'm not going to bother trying to block out a segment of my trading day to give a free chat room webinar on a couple of ways that you can apply to make money in the markets consistently. If I get 4 RSVP's, i'll do it. Otherwise, not. This is for free and fun, so if you want to learn more, RSVP either in this thread or via PM, and lets get ready to do some real trading, and make some pips FTX

About 2 days ago, there was one heck of a good trading opportunity in the EUR/CAD. It was one of those days, that the market just moves relentlessly in one direction. However, many people may have missed the opportunity, because it had in fact moved relentlessly in one direction the day prior, and "usually", after strong one directional moves This may not always be able to be "predicted" ahead of time... but here is a specific concept that any trader can make good use of. It does require some discretion, and it does require some patience... but it's about as "no lose" a situation as one will find in the forex markets. Essentially, it is this: Find two pairs comprised of 3 different currencies, with both pairs showing clear evidence of moving in a particular direction (either both up, or both down)... then look to take the strongest market long against the weakest market. As usual, this is easier to show than tell. Lets take a daily chart of the USD/CAD, the EUR/USD. As you can see from the pics attached, the same day that the USD/CAD makes a nice bullish "pinbar" (implying the next 24-48 hours will see price move up, rather than down)... we also have a very strong bullish "breakout" candle on the EUR/USD (also implying, that the EUR/USD will see price move up over the next 24-48 hours). So, if you follow this to it's logically conclusion... it looks like the next day, the USD is very likely to be bullish against the CAD It also looks like the EUR is very likely to be bullish against the USD. So, if the CAD is weaker than the USD, and the EUR is stronger than the USD, well, gee, it probably stands to reckon the BEST trading opportunity will be somewhere in the EUR/CAD... to the LONG side! The last pic is a 30 min chart of the EUR/CAD.... as it moved on the day following the bullish candles in the USD/CAD and EUR/USD. As you can see in the intraday pic of the EUR/CAD, we didn't really even pull back at all. It just went vertical the entire day. Without knowing more about you or your trading style, this is probably the best overall general recommendation I could make for you. Look for this type of situation. It doesn't occur every day, maybe not even every week, but it will set up in the major forex currencies maybe 3-4 times a month, and those are the days where you really can't go wrong if you just go with a long trade in the strongest market, and a short in the weakest market. One very simple way to trade it (which I personally do not do, but it would likely provide a decent edge) would be when you see such a situation, just go long the strongest market, and short the weakest market, just as the NY session closes at 5:00 am E.S.T. If it is a bullish situation (like this weeks EUR/CAD setup was...) Put a stop under the low of the previous day, and put a target of equal distance. These are not likely to be hit, but they are just your "emergency stop" and "celebration target". Now, hold the trade for 24 hours exactly, and close it out the next day. The odds of closing above yesterdays close is significantly greater than closing below yesterdays close.... and furthermore, because you are trading such a strong market flow, even if your trade loses...it is likely that your losing trades will be somewhat small (losing days in this situation usually end up as small doji like candles, so small losses), and winning days will be much like this example, where you could capture 85-90+ pips. Anyway... what i've just spelled out here WILL WORK. it WILL MAKE A PROFIT. Of course, the "magic" is in knowing what pinbars or engulfing or range expansion breakout candles are "quality", and which ones to ignore due to circumstances in the market (such as, looking to go short a market that just sold of 1000 pips in 5 weeks, and is retesting a yearly low.... etc) I hope this helps...lemme know if it does. Also, if you care to either send a PM, or skype, or post here even more about your trading background and style, i could probably give you a better answer.