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Documentingtrades

Using the new SignPost ToolI love the new Signpost tool that was released this week... i was all set to put in a feature suggestion when I realized I could already do it: make the signpost go DOWN as well as up! I am a stickler for documenting your trades - EVERY single trade: the winners but ESPECIALLY the losers - so you can learn, reinforce, and EMBED your trading system into your subconscious. (See link to a previous article on that very subject below!) Hope you enjoy this video... let me know what you think! Trade well... -Anthony
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COMEX:SIH2021Education
by ocaptain
23
How to be a Successful Forex Trader Segement 8Trading before News News is a fact of Forex trading and while their are several ways to trade the Actual release and it's aftermath, today I want to focus on trading before the News. Understand that the decision to enter the market before News is a conscious one and you don't have to do it. Prime examples are days where interest rates, for a currency you contemplating trading, or Non-Farm payroll are being released. if you intend on trading before news, you must determine whether you are going to stay in the trade during the release or get out. Personally, I usually do not trade on UK interest rate days because the market, at some point, tends to go flat ahead of the release. I certainly do not want to be in the market at the time of the release. The reason is simple, I have no control!! My methodology is based upon high probability trades with tight stops (20-30 pips). Having a position on at the time of the release gives up both my probabilities and my stops. there are 3 possible outcomes: 1) if the release comes out against me, I'm toast, I will take a hit 3 to 5 times what I plan on (as most of you know slippage will cause the stop to be disregarded and or executed at the extreme of the move). 2) it comes out as expected, the trade may be okay but the market may whipsaw and with an expected widening spread, might get taken out anyway. 3) if the news comes out in my favor, I may still get taken out by either a quick whipsaw or widening spread or a combination thereof. How can we make an informed decision on whether to trade or not to trade. In the last segment I talked about documenting and reviewing your trades. I use my documented trades to make my decision. This week, the UK had News releases on Tuesday, Wednesday and Today. On prior occasions, my trades set-ups were not effected by UK employment and retail sales (Tuesday and today's releases) so I opted to trade on those 2 days. yesterday (Wednesday) UK CPI was being released and historically my trades set-ups did not work, so I did not trade yesterday. (which was a good decision). The last thing you want to do is be in a trade ahead of news and "Hope" that the news bails you out. Far too often I have been bit by that bug. Please don't find yourself in that position. Just wait their are plenty of opportunities. In the next segment I will discuss how many trades do you need. I hope you enjoy this post and find it helpful. I would appreciate if you "like" it and follow me :) Stay Green my Friends :) Allen
Education
by AGold54
2
How to be a Successful Forex Trader Segement 7Trade Review and Documenting Most successful traders review and document their trades, unfortunately, alot of new traders do not. "what's done is done, can't change it...." while that is true, you can, and imho must , learn from them. Each afternoon, whether I take a trade or not, I review the market and my potential set-ups, executions, and trade completions. I firmly believe reviewing your trades can help determine what went right, what went wrong and how to improve. Moreover, I track 2 valuable pieces of information, for me at least, which is DD (drawdown) and PP (Pip potential). If you follow my trades, you will know that I trade the same set-ups, over and over again...almost boring. You will have also noticed that I use a set pip stop loss and profit target. I can do this because I have documented, literally, thousands of my trades and I have determined statistically, where a trade reaches the point of no return. Understand that I risk 2% of my account on each trade. which means that the tighter my stop loss, the bigger my return will be. And as weird as it may sound, the occasional loss, using a tighter stop, does not matter as it easily covered by the successful trades. The screenshot above is how I documented Monday's trade in GBPCHF. It was Type 1 trade that was triggered on the breakout. I used a 25 pip stoploss and risked 2% of my account. Once the trade was up +25, I closed 1/2 my position and moved my stop to flat (I actually got +27.4). By doing that, I banked a 1% gain for the day, with no further risk. The trade continued to go my way but found support, retraced slightly, and I closed the remaining 1/2 for +54.8 pips. Very conservative trade management for sure but I ended up banking 3% on this trade. I will take that any day of the week :) I print the screenshot as well as save it under both trade type and in an all screenshot folder. I review the past week on Saturdays and a full month upon the month's conclusion. I also periodically review them to look for any trends or things that I may have missed. Moreover I track trades in an excel spreedsheet, that I will attempt to attach a screenshot of. This allows me to compile and easily access my data. I hope you enjoy this post and find it helpful. I would appreciate if you"like" it and follow me :) Stay Green my Friends :) Allen
Education
by AGold54
16