CFDT - (therapy)

[andymac]

hahaha well what i can tell you is that i am busy trying to stop my hed spinning. i have completely stuffed myself.
i may not think i had changed my rules that much but i have changed them enough that i have completely lost confidence in what i am doing.
so i am looking at charts, i can see where and what i should be stalking but because my rules have changed it is no longer intuitive and at this timeframe i have stopped dead.
so although that sounds bad, it is probably what i needed as i did want to bring about change, but i think it is going to take much longer than i anticipated.
so..... i got so frustrated a while ago i took AUD long. not sure if it fitted rules or not, will have to go back and check.
i could see USD index about to break down, could see i should be looking long for aud, gold , gbp by my eye AUD looked best setup.
entered .73202 half position stop now .73183.

index up oh so gently on uk open but at least up, i feel i should have a long order around 2750 - last hi on us500 but i may just sit here and watch..........

 

[Triple B]

you got analysis paralysis!

 

[andymac]

yippy iii ohh

 

[andymac]

Looking at the last threes weeks of the AUDUSD (4hr chart). This is a very simplistic view of EW but this does outline the basic strategy. You look for an impulsive move (up or down) on a higher time frame then stalk your setup using the 15m chart. The waves won't be perfect, but are they good enough for you to use? OR are you good enough to use what the market provides?

View attachment 90365

hi Peter thanks for the questions. i will see if i can work my way through them 1 at a time. please see my 4hr chart attached, sorry i am not good enough to re-markup yours. simple answer tho for this one. first 5 yellow bars you have marked on the chart as impulse waves -no trade. if you look at my chart i have labelled these as 1-2-3-4-5and V. Five waves of an ending diagonal , overlapping and horrible to try and trade. very often i find this pattern for a 5th wave on forex. you will see i also marked previous wave III low and IV hi on the chart, have a look at the MACD through this wave III - V section this is a little helper for me, MACD usually makes its deepest move at bottom of a wave III, so once MACD starts to wane i am out i don't want to trade wave V.
once a low was made at 5andV and we then got a nice impulse wave up to about .71090 i then become very interested. that wave up pulled back to around .62r
then we have a second wave up to .76 ext on my chart, under normal circumstances a break of wave 1 hi triggers me into the trade. if i can , if i can see this second small wave ending around the .62-.76 extension i will avoid triggering into the trade as there is then a 1-2,i-ii, set up and if i can avoid sitting through the second pullback i will, if not then i just sit through it, then wave 3 is the trade i want up above the 200 ext to about 238.
so we have done this so far looking at a 4hr chart, perfect for stalking. once i start to look closely at the first wave up from the lo at V i will use a 15m chart to look for an impulse up, followed by an a-b-c back to around .62r
this trade is my reversal set up described above.

 

[andymac]

peter2 do you think andy didn't follow his strategy last week?

will although andy may have followed his general strategy last week and the week before it would be very fair to say he often deviated quite wildy from any "set plan"

 

[andymac]

I want to channel your enthusiasm into the right questions. Here's another chart showing three impulsive swings.
Swing #1: Even I can see the abc here. Would you be stalking this at the right time with your 15m chart?
Swing #2: Stalking the PB, but price doesn't PB deep enough for your EW liking. What are you going to do in these situations? A shallow PB indicates a stronger trend for me, how about you? Are you going to trade the obvious BO when the PB's are shallow? You're stalking the chart. Are going to have a plan B?
Swing #3: You stalk your entry but get stopped out for a loss. Is your trading plan going to allow for a second attempt providing price doesn't PB much deeper?

View attachment 90366

Swing #1: Even I can see the abc here. Would you be stalking this at the right time with your 15m chart?
Swing #2: Stalking the PB, but price doesn't PB deep enough for your EW liking. What are you going to do in these situations? A shallow PB indicates a stronger trend for me, how about you? Are you going to trade the obvious BO when the PB's are shallow? You're stalking the chart. Are going to have a plan B?
Swing #3: You stalk your entry but get stopped out for a loss. Is your trading plan going to allow for a second attempt providing price doesn't PB much deeper?

right Peter this one is interesting and i can't answer it fully without seeing the wider picture, i.e.- what happened before, but i will give you what i can see,
Swing 1, yes definitely looks to be impulsive wave up with deep pullback if it was the first wave up after a run down i would be interested.
swing 2 , things start going astray here, your leg 2 is too long to be 1,2-i,ii is too short to be wave 3, so although i would be in the trade during this swing up i would be starting to feel uncomfortable when it started to pullback again from such a low run up. i can't quite tell from your chart but the pullback gets very close to the hi of wave 1. hopefully get out of this one at no worse than breakeven.
pullback after your leg2, in answer to your question about shallow pullbacks, yes love a shallow pullback, have not had a chance to finish my post on entries yet but as a preview my entry 2 is for continuation of trends, like it when pb is less than .38 of last leg enter on break of previous hi again a simple abc trade really. i like to see a clear elliot 3 wave pb. but i will get to that. back to this little teaser.
Swing 3 , i would not be surprised if the 2 legs you have marked 1 and 2 were actually an ABC rather than 2 legs of a larger impulse. Just to my eye it looks more like an abc up for larger A leg, pb then impulse wave for leg C being leg 3 marked on your chart. but then the next leg up,(not labelled) goes higher again so as i said not sure with out bigger picture. however, just going back to shallow pb after leg 2 up yes using a continuation entry i like this trade too.
After swing 3 there is a pb down with 2 entry boxes marked. yes looks like a 3 wave or abc correction down to first entry box , i would really like to see it , the pb, on a 15m chart to see if i can see a complete 3 waves. again tho i am nervous the pb is too deep, i really like to see less than .38 pb of previous leg for continuation entry. looking at it on your chart i would like to think i did not enter but it is different live than looking later. i was planning on putting in the .38 max pb as a rule in my new plan, it was not in my old plan.

two bigger picture things. timeframes has been my biggest downfall i think. The thing with all these patterns on both your posts is that if i zoom down to 1hr charts from your 4 hour charts there are many more possible trades. and then i can zoom down again , and so on. last week i was trading patterns on a 5m chart and using 1m charts to confirm. so many trades and more to the point so much effort to make a buck. so what i want is to try and find a reasonable happy medium , i need enough trades in a week to keep me involved but not too many, and yes each week will be different i am sure some weeks there may be none or only 1 or 2 but i need a lot less than i have been doing.

second point is the EW thing which i think you asked on previous post. i have great faith in EW but it is also part of what got me into this spot. if you(i) try to trade on Ew alone my natural tendency is to keep lowering timeframes as it is the easy way to better confirm patterns. i have done this in the past. what i now do is trade using basic break out patterns or swing trades or abc trades whichever you would like to call them, i then use EW as a confirmation tool rather than primary trade tool.
taking my trend reversal entry discussed above, it is nothing new to look for a trend reversal at chart resistance , wait for a leg up followed by a higher low and enter a 2nd leg up, which is all that i am doing. all i then add is that i want to see the first leg up have 5 waves as this increases the odds that there will be a second leg up of consequence. if the first leg up has only 3 waves there may well still be a second leg up but chances are it will stall at 100% of the first leg. so i am just trying to increase the quality of the trades i do take by using the Ew to help confirm.

and time i shut up for a bit. but again thankyou for these questions as each one is making me go through the process of what and why and making me write it down which i hope will get me somewhere faster.

 

[willoneau]

I like the idea of using breakout and swing for entry and EW for conformation and determining the probability of success. Once your strategy is firmly in place taking the entry signals should be clicking the mouse, managing risk and next trade please.

 

[andymac]

ok just for fun live example of my stuffups. i realised today while i was busy making coffees that with my new set of rules i had accidentally counted out my favourite trade set up. please excuse the charts did not have time to cleanup as i wanted to try do this fast. just went and checked triple b's latest winning gold trade. he just trade what now looks like and abc correction upwards on my 15min chart, quite nicely i think.
when i looked at hourly chart there are 5 waves up to a high, then 3 waves abc down, shallow correction possible candidate for continuation trade. however then you can just see 3 waves only upwards (at this stage) the ones triple b just trade on a much smaller timeframe. if you look at my 15m chart you can see the abc up much more clearly. now this abc up could morph into more waves up , even an impulse up bringing the continuation trade into play, however 3 waves up can also be a complete correction. and anew wave down may begin. under my proposed new rules i would not try and trade this next leg down as the first down from the high was only a 3 leg abc down, i want impulse 5 waves down.
however - only on the short side - if the low of the first abc down is broken then often rather than the next leg just being roughly the same length as the first finishing around the 100% extension on my chart at around 1215.60 the next leg down can often go to 200%. in this case the 200% extension is very close to a .62r of the whole first 5 legs up on the hourly chart????? i call this my abc crash trade. and i ruled it out over the weekend , idiot.
so I am watching this one for the evening - aggressive entry short around 1218.60 lo but the good entry is at 1218 lo looking for around 1208.5 target.

 

[andymac]

I like the idea of using breakout and swing for entry and EW for conformation and determining the probability of success. Once your strategy is firmly in place taking the entry signals should be clicking the mouse, managing risk and next trade please.

hi will i was just looking for you i presumed you had gone to work?

 

[willoneau]

Yep last night , will be on the ball tomorrow. Interesting afternoon before I left , was short bias but entries not filled. Lucky as market moved up away before I shut shop and got ready for work.

 

[andymac]

i am just sitting here watching possible trade on gold i mentioned above. i am mentally stuffed have been writing testing playing trying to work out where i am , this is one way to keep me away from too much trading, is way harder than just doing it.

 

[andymac]

possible trade setup - update - 5 leg impulse down from 1223.1 hi looks to have completed at 1219.16. pb now in progress, this implies another leg down , at least, as long as pullback does not exceed 1223 of course. moved sell order up to 1219.05

 

[Triple B]

Good night lads ,good luck

 

[andymac]

good night triple, i am just about done too.

 

[willoneau]

i am just sitting here watching possible trade on gold i mentioned above. i am mentally stuffed have been writing testing playing trying to work out where i am , this is one way to keep me away from too much trading, is way harder than just doing it.

While you are testing and playing andy you should reduce your risk size at least until your happy you are not creating errors (me factor) on top of the results you are expecting to achieve with your trading plan.

 

[andymac]

ok just for kiks, back to longer terms charts when not much happening. and please nobody trade these just an object for study.
hourly chart shows tiring trend up - macd- and last 2 days action is very messy from an elliot wave perspective, this could go on slowly grinding upwards for days, it's gold, it could shoot up in 5 minutes, but just saying i am wary for now, looking for a bigger pullback of a couple of days, 1209 area be nice place to reload.
check last nights action running along bottom of trend channel, then broke below, and has just re-tested from underside,,,,,,

yyyy

 

[andymac]

ok so lets start with the ugly bits. some results for week 1 .ok i need to work a better way to load files as has not worked so far.

 

[andymac]

View attachment 90475

 

[andymac]

ok that was a bit odd but their there.
So, long and short is way more trades still than i want and way more than plan allows but at least less than the last few weeks.
15 of 36 trades i have marked in red , these trades were all outside of plan, mostly using smaller timeframes than i should.
learnings, aside from lack of discipline the obvious thing to me is that i did not have a profitable trade to start a session until friday.
tue and fri were reasonable days with results closer to what i am aiming for and far fewer trades. tuesday i was shellshocked after i stopped completely on monday as my new rules had completely sapped my confidence. consequently i was very slow and particular on tuesday. wed and thu i had my confidence back and ran off the rails. fri the market was very slow and particular after thanksgiving and so i had no choice but to be the same.
so, when i go slowly results are good and when i get sucked into the momentum of short term fast moving markets the results are rubbish. nothing really surprising there i suppose it is just i have gathered a bit of evidence to help (hopefully) convince myself to pull back and slow down.
general market state, just a brief overview from a 4 hr chart point of view, most forex and indexes i look at were sideways more than trending this week.

next weeks goal, 25 trades , proper preparation before beginning each session and trade the plan ..... which is not yet finished, i will try add to that in a bit.

 

[cynic]

ok that was a bit...
...
next weeks goal, 25 trades , proper preparation before beginning each session and trade the plan ..... which is not yet finished, i will try add to that in a bit.

Congratulations on surviving your first week. And may I commend you on your courageous and generous sharing of your experiences.

Do you mind if I ask about your 25 trades goal?

Perhaps I missed something in my reading of your earlier posts, but I am wondering whether 25 is intended to mean the minimum number of trades sought, or the maximum number of trades sought, and am also curious to know your general reason/s for choosing to have this kind of goal.

In my asking , please rest assured, that I am genuinely curious, and have no intention of condemning or endorsing, the underlying reason/s for your choice of goal.