NeoTrader

OT I have the utmost respect for you, so please don't take this as insult or attack. I am floored at the amount of leverage and risk you are throwing down with that 25k account. That cotton position alone with 5 cent initial risk was insane to me. I don't know if I am alone on this, but I'd like to see more under the hood of what you are seeing. I'm not sure if it's just your experience with trading or if you have some additional criterion that you use that you think would only confuse us or complicate things. From my own investigation and from what you've explained It seems you use support and resistance levels to confirm your entry or to enter before the system signals with very aggressive entries. Would it be possible when you take these kind of entries you elaborate on what you see? Similar to your coffee trade when you pointed out on your 30 year continuous chart that selling had occurred at that level historically. I don't know if time allows, and I know this would require extra effort on your part, but i'm guessing (hoping?) I'm not the only one who would like to see this. I just seems like you have a lot more cooking than the stochastic closing on an up or down basis for entry. Some of these trades you take is like watching a guy juggle chainsaws, I know you are a pro and aren't going to lop your arm off but wow is it something to see. :cinema::shocked:

So I've been keeping an eye on EUR/USD and I don't think I've seen such a clear cut example of consolidation. It seems to be compressing into an ever smaller range and the EMAs are nearly flatline. I could be way off here but I am betting it is gearing up for one heck of a trend/move. Thoughts? :missy:

I am starting to get where you are going with your math Russell, but it only hold's true if you continue to risk the same amount after 6, 9, or even 12 losses. If you were considering Ruin to be dead broke, after 12 losses if you made another trade with the same risk you'd be risking 100% of your capital! Depending on your risk model whether it be percentage based, fixed, or something else one would think you need to adjust it to be inline with your capital.

Decided to jump into the EURGBP Short Entry @ .8759 Stop @ .8890 approx 1.5ATR10 and nicely tucked behind two swing highs

I took that long in Spot last week. Took a ton of heat but hung on. I "got away" with a 1.5ATR10 stop. Just don't bring your bad oats luck with you. Good to see that someone who knows what they are actually doing is taking a similar trade

Yeah I probably won't even look at commodities until my trading account hits 100k

Its a good thing for me that statistical math isn't required to make a profit.....

I threw the Risk of Ruin calculator into excel, to expand on Avarice's math. Simply modify the winning percentage box to see the resultant probabilities in the table. Please use as a reference only, and as always verify figures for yourself before use. RiskofRuinCalc.xls

I find myself checking the charts in the morning around 9, around mid day as well as at 5. I know that I need to cull it down to checking only at end of day. I've been able to resist making changes in the morning or mid day, but I find it hard to break the habit of peeking at not only my open positions but scanning through charts looking for other new budding setups. It doesn't help my discipline much that i can check my charts at will from my 9 to 5 job. I know part of it comes from excitement. I'm anxious to look at anything and everything through the perspective of this trading system. Wanting to spot the beginnings of a Kroll like 16 month trend. To sum it up in a nutshell i need to settle down

CAD/NZD looks like a short signal very soon GBP/USD long still chopping around taking some heat but still on plan. Seeing what price does at local support level around 1.6800 over the next day or so is key to me. May just close and look to better trending pairs. No sense jumping in the wood-chipper. On a personal note, I find myself wishing that I had just discovered traderslaboratory instead of 4 years ago, and this is the first thread i happened to read. The old adage comes to mind that its difficult to add to a cup that is already full. I find I struggle with emptying my head of all the short term trading habits i had developed over time. :crap: So tough to watch price dance on your entry making you sweat that it will break against you. perhaps a plunger to the forehead would work.....

I know the title is a bit dramatic, but I was wanting to get other people's thoughts on what they do with their USD when the value is taking such a nasty hit, and who knows how long it will stay depressed. As you may have surmised by my screen name I'm new to the game, so I am interested in the opinions of more experience operators. Is this even a factor to those folks who trade in USD? How do you hedge against a falling dollar?

To SIUYA, OT, and others, Thank you for your insight. It greatly help me to organize my thoughts and really think about what I am trying to accomplish here. I was getting hung up on the wrong things. In essence I was trying to mix methodologies. Looking for trend following profit using a short term trade style risk. It just isn't going to happen that way. I need to let go of that, decide my hold time and set a congruent risk level. You really are your own worst enemy in trading. It's not the market makers, professionals, or the commercial shops that get you. Its you that gets you.

I would like to echo Russell's query/concern if I might. Not too much has been discussed in the arena of stops. Either protective or profit taking. I am hoping that can be further discussed by those participating. As for me I use a multiple of the ATR combined with a local high/low. I usually avoid things that would require more than 1.5x ATR due to the fact price has to run quite a ways in my favor just to make it a 2 x 1 ratio. Because your intial stop has an enourmous bearing on your profitability, its a constant source of anxiety and or tweaking for me. As for profit taking, I can't seem to devise a method that I am comfortable with. I end up either getting out too early or too late (a cliche problem i know). Any suggestions on making it more systematic or mechanical and less discrectionary? Using the 65 EMA seems reasonable but in the forex markets, especially lately, price can spike price past the 65 EMA on news then happily resume the trend. Addtionally in the case of a newly formed trend the 65 EMA does not have much space at all from the 21. Yielding a stop area that is most likely far too close. Perhaps this has to be chalked up to the "you can't win them all" aspect of trading? I understand losses must happen, I just can't seem to find a method for stops that I can sleep with. Any suggestions are welcome.

Excellent trading Russell HQ. What made you jump out of that YM trade might i ask? Did you exit at resistance? Good thing you did too, price fell off a cliff since then.

Russell HQ I am no math and or excel wiz. But I plugged the well known expectancy formula into an excel file. This forumla will take your average win, loss, and winning percentage and tell you the average expected gain/loss per trade. Makes it easy to plug in numbers and get a rough idea of what you need to be shooting for as far as risk / reward. The figures will be approximate in the case of uneven percentages like 33%. If you add more decimal places it will be closer. (i.e. 33.33% instead of 33%) My apologies ahead of time if this is obvious and already in everyones toolbox so to speak. expectancy_calc.xls

Maybe its the old daytrader in me then. Makes me somewhat squeamish to take trades in the face of resistance/support. I suppose this is akin to a psychological hang-up. I expect reactions at those levels but perhaps fear something violent that will wipe out standing profits, maybe make it hard to stick with the position. Part of my process in backing up to taking trend trades is to stop white-knuckling it.

It is looking like the GBPUSD is looking to resume its uptrend. Something I'm keeping my eye on. However, it is looking like some stiff resistance at the 1.6700 ish level where price was rejected pretty hard at the beginning of may. Also there is some intermediate resistance at 1.6500 ish. This brings me to a question. I dont want to cloud things up with the system, but I want to know OT's opinion on situations like this. Do you take signals that will run you smack into nearby strong resistance/support? Do you take the trade anyway and just put on a smaller position size? Disclaimer: My analysis of the mentioned resistance levels may be completely off as I am by no means an experienced operator, so please feel free to mock and or correct me. :haha:

I am intrigued by the ability to scan charts for criterion like that. Peterbee, or anyone else for that matter, can you tell me what software you are using? Does anyone know if there is one available thats compatible with Ninja Trader perhaps? Free would be great obviously, but I would pay for a tool that could filter through a stack of symbols for setups.

I thought I would post another chart that makes me upset I didn't come across this method at the beginning of the year. :crap: Take a look at USD/CHF since February. Picture perfect decline with tons of places to pyramid your position. I'm sure OT caught this and is still riding it down...

Avarice, Not spam at all. I am looking at the same levels of potential support and will be watching closely. Hoping that momentum and the clear cut price action will carry us through that 110.5 ish level. I guess i more posted it because it was so pretty looking. Not often you see that.

I have been following this thread closely since I have found it, and I believe it contains a wealth of information. Thank you OT for your efforts and knowledge sharing. It is truly an asset to this community. In the spirit of this thread, going through some charts I found a perfect setup that Stanley Kroll mentions in his book. A breakout of a long term range into a new trend. Attached is a Yearly chart of the EUR/JPY. Note the rangebound activity for months followed by the strong close outside of the range to the downside. It then makes a gorgeous pullback to the 21 EMA and resumes the new downtrend. After going through this thread and reading Kroll's book setups like this are much more obvious to me and things are starting to click. I ground out my fair share of capital on the intra-day level and its like a breath of fresh air to step back to larger trend following time frames. So hello to the thread and thank you all for your excellent contributions.

I'm not sure how you trade obviously, but perhaps using the trendline in conjuction with a support or resistance level as well as some other confirmation. Purely trading off a trendline in my humble opinion is pretty brave.

Might I suggest using online temporary e-mail address services when requesting "free" e-books and the like. There are serveral free ones on the net. Much better way to keep your inbox spam free than suing "the man"

I found this post on "Re: What Would Have Been a Good Way to Trade Today (monday 7/27)" interesting and have nominated it accordingly for "Topic Of The Month July, 2009"

Just don't let it consume time better used testing your 7 day trial.