The allure is the entertainment and sweat of it all right? I think that's what TS doesn't understand. There's nothing fun about learning to code or taking a second job. That's work. This is FUN for you, and that's a big part of this right?

For sure, that's a part of it. I enjoy this far more than I would taking a second job. And, if I'm being honest, another part of it is wanting to accomplish something that others say you will never be able to accomplish.

I usually don't trade on FOMC day, but I saw the USD continuing its slide after the release and couldn't stay away. Got in on the sell-off around 17:30 on this chart of the DXY. Rode it to a +22% day.

There's no accomplishment because there is no skill. You cannot beat forex. All of your returns are luck.

If you make $500 or lose $500, there's as much skill involved as playing roulette.

Even if I'm dead wrong and there is skill/edge in forex, your annual return would be less than 50% or so if you were the best in the world. There just isn't a giant edge in forex. There are people way smarter than you, way more connected to information, way faster than you, who don't make 20%/year trading forex. There just isn't an edge in forex. Which is obvious if you think about. An ultra liquid huge volume low spread instrument moved by macro events and large players is a crowded space.

And you're proven absolutely zero. You're not posting your entries and exits in real time (why not? that used to be a requirement for these threads to remain open), so nothing you say means anything.

The set of liars is >>>>>> the set of people who come out positive at trading >>>> the set of people who make world beating returns at trading. Run Bayes theorem on that.

I would bet money 50/50 that if you post your next 10 entries and exists in real time, they will be net negative (including fees and spread).

I get that there isn't a giant edge in Forex. I agree with you. But jumping from that to "All of your returns are luck" is absolutely foolish. There's a luck element, yes, but there are indeed retail traders that make money in Forex month in and month out. There's not many obviously. But they do exist.

As for not posting my entries -- I haven't done so because I haven't wanted to spam this forum, and I never intended it to be a personal blog so I wanted to keep those kind of posts to a minimum. But if my honesty is going to be questioned, I absolutely will post them.

Here are my last 10 entries and exits, which you will see are net positive. If you want some action on my next 10 trades, just say so.



Also, here is a link to my Trade Explorer on Forex Factory. If you scroll to the bottom you will see it - "Nico Trades". Notice "Account XXX10" and "Broker: Traders Way" matches the top left of the screenshot above (I'm not going to post my full account number in an online forum). This Trade Explorer updates every entry and exit.

Edit: The screenshot above doesn't include trading costs, whereas the Trade Explorer does. For 0.2 lots (my current position sizing) it ranges anywhere from $1.10 - $1.60 round-turn out of the 5 pairs I trade (EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CAD, & AUD/USD)

let ToothSayer pout all alone...

Some of us really like your posts, fwiw (being somewhat skeptical that is).

I would really like if you would articulate some of your past trades...why you took them...where you were planning to exit (SL or TP). This could be an interesting try to see for yourself gaps in your thinking and where you could get better? If you agree?

And maybe we help by asking the right questions?

It appears that you've already deviated from your initial strategy. Initially, you were planning to swing trade based on 1 day charts, but in your most recent trades, you are trading in less than 30 min. time intervals.

Trading is a constant evolution. I trade differently today from the way I traded last year or in January or even last month. Markets constantly evolve or least change their personality. If the market is volatile and swinging big you trade it differently from when it is range bound and bouncing in a channel.

Being able to recognize the market you are in is as important as anything. This takes a lot of experience and most don't have the time or patience to ever really learn this. And even then it is dicey. Playing breakouts in a range bound chop will kill you. Playing channel fades in a volatile swinging market will kill you. But if you can match up the strategy to the current market you will succeed. Everything works sometimes, you just gotta figure out what time it is. There is an old adage which all traders must take into account.

"Trade the market you are in, not the market you want."

Great suggestion. I will take you up on this a little later when I'm off work.

Yes, I deviated from my original strategy as evidenced on page 3 itt where I explained that I intended to switch to more of a day trading approach... Mr. Baseball is right, but I also did so due to the realization that I was trading an approach that didn't suit my style simply because I have been told "it's the only way"... **** that noise.

Candy,
Always good to see evidence. Thanks.
I'd love some action. You trade a lot more than I thought and more frequently so let's move it out. I will offer you 50/50 on $100 that your next 30 trades (rather than 10) are negative including fees. If you're skilled, that ups your odds, if you're not, it ups mine. It's basically a zero spread binary option on your trading skill.

We'll take fees near the middle of your range (see below), weighted to you ($1.30/trade).

Caveats: this runs for at least 10 days. I want this spread over a little time for fun purposes. So if you make 60 days trades in 10 days, we count all 60. You seem to make about 3/day, so no difference really, just don't want you shoving 30x on the first day.

Deal? Payment via bitcoin, or it that doesn't suit, name something else now.

Oh and entries and exits must be posted in real time. The price is taken at the minute of your post.

Let me know if interested.

This might be a slight issue, as I trade the open of the NY session which is while I happen to be at work. I'm generally not busy that early (hence why I'm able to trade), but it's entirely feasible that as I'm putting on a trade, my office phone rings or boss comes by about something leading to a discrepancy between the moment I execute a trade and the moment I'm able to post it on here.

Here were my two trades on EUR/USD Friday:

I typically look to determine market direction on the Hourly or 4-Hour charts, then switch down to 5-minute charts for entry. This trade deviated from that approach for a reason that I typically struggle with: Fundamentals. The long pin bar and few candles before my entry was when Advance GDP was released and came out one-tenth above the forecast. While I typically DO NOT pick tops or bottoms, I felt this was a good indication of a possible short-term change in trend. So I went against my typical approach and went short (against the hourly up-trend)



My stop loss was hit 20 minutes later for -10 pips, and I did something I also typically don't do: Jump back in taking the opposite side of my loser. To me, this is "revenge trading" and almost always comes back to haunt you. I made an exception here as price tested the bottom of the 1-deviation BB on 3 occasions and failed to close below it. I went long and set my SL 1 pip below that resistance point.



Price went up over the following 2 hours. At the point where it dropped out of my top BB channel and failed to bounce back in, I manually closed the trade for +18 pips. Netting 2.7% for the day.



This may be a bad example of how I rationalize entering/exiting the market, but it is a good example of how I try to manage trades. I'm almost always looking for something in the ballpark of 1:2 risk/reward which I think is important. The winner above came out a little less than that ratio, but I also believe in taking what the market gives you and not being too wrapped up in R/R. A lot of newer traders (and god knows I did this) get obsessed with the idea of trying to scalp just a few ticks while risking 5X or more that move to do so. I think people do this because it results in being right more frequently than being wrong, which is just a pure psychological need that humans have imo. But, obviously, a few bad trades in a row can wipe out weeks worth of small winners when you do that. It really took me a while to get out of that mindset and get to the point where I was using a better R/R.

Range Breakout

This was a trade I took on GBP/USD Thursday morning. I typically get up around the NY Open and take a look at what price did over the start of the Euro session. Price was trading in a well defined range and I decided to take a short at the close below the bottom of the range. Breakouts are a relatively small percentage of my entry strategy (probably around 25% of the trades I take). SL was at 1.3145 (just above middle BB line). This one is painful to look at as I totally blew the exit. I decided to close the trade after a bullish doji. My thinking here was that if I waited to exit at the point where price closed above the bottom BB channel, I would've given back half my profit to that point. Instead of sticking to my usual methodology, I tried to predict what would happen (rookie mistake). Price rejected just below the bottom 1-deviation BB line and continued down. This easily could have been a 50-pip, $100 trade... Live and learn.

I can get on board with this. The thing that is hard to wrap my head around is that, how can a trading strategy that incorporates ZERO percent fundamental analysis have an edge?

I know you mentioned that you mainly trade short-term oil futures. I'm guessing that along with TA, you have years of experience following industry news and macro events that correlate with oil prices and other commodities . I am assuming that you are not spending the entirety of your time simply looking at price action on a chart. But I could be wrong about that.

It's obvious Candycreep is simply relying on nothing but TA in his trading. With the low barrier to entry in understanding the core principles of TA (surely a bright middle school student could learn TA), how is this enough to beat the market?

Is every losing trader simply misapplying TA or are most market participants entering trades based off of fundamentals (seems unlikely in speculative markets like FOREX and futures), allowing scalping opportunities for short-term traders?

In the short term fundamentals don't matter. At least to making short term trading decisions. It's ALL technical! If I am trying to rely on my fundamental analysis skills trading against the oil desk at Goldman, Exxon, OPEC, Boone Pickens etc. I am done before I even start. I can't compete with all that they know that I never will. Any slob on this forum that "thinks" they have a fundamental edge is likely delusional. Maybe ... maybe in some small cap stock that no one follows and they have done lots of research on but even then very unlikely.

I rely on trends and momentum for the most part. Whether I want to trade those on the edges of the range (breakouts) or mid range (channel fades) depends on how the markets are trading.

Wednesdays are by far my most profitable day. 70%+ of my profits come on Wednesdays. Why is that? Because it is inventory report day which moves the market. This is a fundamental piece of news but I trade it technically. I don't try to fundamentally analyze the number because I don't have that capacity, at least like all of those big boys mentioned earlier. But I can read the reactions in the charts and market movements and know how I want to be trading it.

The worst thing a short term commodity trader can have is an opinion.

^ It seems like you are strategically-placed to profit from volatility, so more power to you.

I would be scared sh*tless of the big boys manipulating the market. Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't an institutional trader (or a programmed bot), put out a big short order right when the price moves above a support line? This would squeeze out all of the retail traders who will be forced to sell at their pre-defined stop-loss. Once the selloff goes into motion and the price drops far enough, these same big boy traders can buy at a lower price.

They can "try" to manipulate but it doesn't always work. In fact often there are big bots and institutions on both sides. This can even be to the retail traders advantage. When these markets run they can run hard and fast as stops get taken out. Most commodity markets are dominated by institutions since retail traders rarely if ever hold commodity contracts.

It's all about reacting to what the market is doing rather than predicting what the market is going to do. This point is lost on most TA bashers. TA is not predictive but rather reactive. Those with a fundamental bent feel they have to have an opinion based on research that predicts what will happen while the technician reacts to what is happening and has no preconceived notions of what is going to happen. You can't out think or out guess these markets you can only follow them.

Mostly though it comes down to money management. If a happens and then b happens then bet on c. Maybe a and b happens so you bet on c because you have calculated that when a and b happen that c will win 50% of the time and lose 50% of the time which makes it a coin flip but you also know that winners pay off at 2:1 when you bet on c. That is a coin that you want to flip as often as you can.

Yes and no. As mrbaseball said, in short-term trading its all about TA. However, you can't just jump in with no inkling as to what's happening on a macroeconomic level. If a new trader wakes up one morning at the NY open and decides to place a trade on any USD pair, but it just so happens to be the first Friday of the month, he runs the risk of being blown out of the water 30 minutes later when the non-farm payrolls come out. Same on a Wednesday afternoon when the FOMC happen to be releasing their meeting minutes.

Being completely ignorant to high-impact fundamental movers in Forex is like taking a stroll through a minefield. You might come out unscathed if you're lucky, you might not. In this sense, the short-term trader doesn't need to necessarily study fundamentals to enter and exit the market, but rather to know when to stay out altogether.

Obviously you have to be aware of major economic reports that will affect the markets. But you have no need to analyze them. The market action will do that for you. When I was trading interest rates my monthly results often centered around the monthly unemployment report. Since I have been trading energies my weekly focus has been around the weekly inventory report.

A trader needs to be very aware of these fundamental events but will generally run into trouble if they try to analyze them. These events often offer up the best technical trading opportunities you will see. Fundamentals move the markets but technicals tell you how to react to them, where to get in and where to get out.

What is happening to the USD? I've been in Albania(USD/ALL) for awhile and was getting $1/125-128 lek in March and April. It's been in a downward spiral for the past few months and I got $1/113 today. Down 12% vs the Albanian lek in 3-4 months

This is a great post. For anyone starting out, or even an experienced trader, develop and keep some kind of a trade journal. I have a journal that outlines why I made the trades I made and what I was thinking at the time, going clear back to the very first trade I ever made 5 years ago. The journal is now worth so much to me personally, as it shows my evolution and what worked and didn't work.

So absolutely evolve, and record your evolution in some form of a journal.

I couldn't agree more.

The DXY has been in a solid downtrend pretty much since the beginning of the year... Thanks Trump

Thanks Mr. baseball.

With this in mind, what makes you specialize in oil futures? If TA is your sole source of edge in trading, couldn't you apply it to trading the most active stocks in the S&P? Or Forex? or bond markets?

If Wednesdays comprise of 70% of your profits, couldn't you find more active markets on other days of the week for you to make more money.

Or does your trading strategy only work specific to oil futures? For example, set-ups that you recognize as +EV trading crude wouldn't necessarily be +EV set-ups if you were trading AAPL?

What is it about the oil markets that you enjoy so much (the weekly petroleum reports seem to be a good reason) that make it a better commodity to trade compared to gold, silver, pork bellies?

Have you considered cherry-picking different sectors of the markets that's are rapidly expanding in market share (ex: tech socks soaring this year or emerging markets ETF) and simply trading break-outs in these markets since they are so bullish and give you a safe risk-reward?

I trade futures because it is what I know best. I have been trading futures/options professionally since 1987 when I started out as a market maker in the T-Bond options pit at the CBOT. Since futures has been my focus for the past 30 years I am more comfortable with them.

Wednesdays are simply a product of the oil inventory report. Today's was kinda crappy and didn't offer up any outsized moves or strong trends. Because of the report I trade more size on report day because the edges are generally bigger. Plus I am sort of semi-retired now so I only trade a couple of days a week now but always on Wednesday for the opportunities the report gives.

I do some swing trading in stock options and even some scalping occasionally but that is not the main focus of my trading. My style of trading works best in more volatile markets so I always look toward futures or stocks with larger ATRs (average true range). Since I am generally playing for moves I want to trade something that moves a lot.