# 3 trading systems you use that work



## pharaoh (25 September 2006)

Can anyone name 3 systems you find that work - ie macd etc...
I am going to learn 3 and apply them to FX trading. 

There is just so many out there, and they all seem quite hard to learn,    so would appreciate hearing from you on what works. 

At least that way I can narrow down my field and focus on learning a few. 

Cheers,
Pharaoh


----------



## professor_frink (25 September 2006)

pharaoh said:
			
		

> Can anyone name 3 systems you find that work - ie macd etc...
> I am going to learn 3 and apply them to FX trading.
> 
> There is just so many out there, and they all seem quite hard to learn,    so would appreciate hearing from you on what works.
> ...




Haven't traded FX personally, but have heard of people using pivot points for FX pretty well. Might be worth looking into.

cheers


----------



## Milk Man (25 September 2006)

1- Reversals
2- Break-outs
3- News announcements (maybe)


----------



## macca (25 September 2006)

Hi Pharoah,

Forex is COMPLETELY different to share trading, it is pointless learning how to use an indicator on stocks and then applying it to Forex IMHO   .

There are heaps of forums on Forex, I think the most popular one is Forex Factory, if you go there you can spend a month reading up on all the things people have tried   

Good luck


----------



## pharaoh (25 September 2006)

Thanks guys. 
Oh, have you guys traded forex? It is pretty addictive...

Tech/a - your pm is full...can't reply


----------



## DT_Futures (2 October 2006)

try woodies cci on tick charts...
otherwise pivots


----------



## wavepicker (2 October 2006)

pharaoh said:
			
		

> Thanks guys.
> Oh, have you guys traded forex? It is pretty addictive...
> 
> Tech/a - your pm is full...can't reply




Hi Pharaoh,

Not sure if you are a beginner at FX or not. 

In so far as trading FX goes, it really depends on what sort of trading plan and time frame you wish to trade. Are you long, medium or short term trader? This will be quite important to the type of system(s) that will be used. 

There are many systems out there, but this is what I do. 
Over the medium to long term I use a combo of Elliott Waves and a proprietary form of Cyclic Analysis to try and keep me on the right side of the trend. Being such a liquid market, the EW patterns a really textbook if you know what you are looking at. Short term there appears to be much more white noise which makes it much more difficult to trade. In my opinion during these instances, the time you trade is probably just as important as the strategies you employ. I tend to focus more on the London and European opens and time zone overlaps as well as Fundamental Announcements before the US open. Generally speaking during the day in OZ it's pretty dead except with respect to the USDJPY and EURJPY on occasions. I look at pivot points combined with MACD for probable divergences during these periods as these often precede movement. Looking for confluence with my cyclic analysis techniques and other patterns.

Irrespective of what other say, if you are using lagging indicators, they will be the same as what is being used on stocks and other financial instruments. The only new wrinkle being that you will need to adjust the parameters on those indicators to be adaptive to the time frames you are trading. Also you won't have volume on the FX charts to analyse as you would on stock charts. Generally speaking you would still use your channel and trendline analysis as you would in stocks as well.

However, more importantly before even thinking about systems/methodology, I think it just pays to study/observe currency price charts for patterns of the trend and how those markets behave for at least 6-12 months before even thinking about trading them. More information can be gleaned by simply studying price movement than anything else IMO. In fact this is great practice for any type of market, even the slower ones. Focus on trading one pair but also use other pairs for confirmation as well. 
I found Bill Mclarens Foundations to Successful Trading a big help with respect to identifying patterns of the trend and looking at price movement, even though it is more applicable to trading stocks. However I have also found many other peculiarities to price movement simply by making my own notes.  Spending time to study the market will give you a great orientation with respect to currency price movements. In fact most traders don’t even bother to do this and open a live account straight away without any plan or idea as to how they are going to trade this market


Cheers


----------



## pharaoh (12 October 2006)

Hi wavepicker

I am sorry it took me so long to reply and thanks for going into so much detail on what you do. 

I actually took quite a few losses - lost half of my account in 3 weeks   
Anyway so I put it all on the backburner and coupled with busy at work forgot to check my thread out (wife is pregnant too so been busier than usual)

I'm glad I did though, thanks a lot for the info, I will get through this and see how I go

(I dont even know what Elliott Waves and Cyclic analasys is) just yet, doh

Cheers,
Pharaoh


----------

