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Entry

How to enter a trade at the right time! I get asked all the time about trading entries, so here you are, this is my strategy for how I enter trades based on price action, and while price action doesn't tell you the future, it enables you to read what is happening with the most important aspect on any chart, what is the market willing to pay for an instrument, the price! This chart is a daily chart, I use long-term charts to find my levels (support and resistance) and what the trade is doing over a long period which impacts the short period, if you enter using charts lower than 15m, without getting a signal or level from a chart on a higher time frame, you have a high chance of risk and subsequent loss. As this chart shows, we rarely miss trades, because there are so many opportunities to try again, and often lower-risk opportunities than trying to find the top or bottom of a move, this is suicide, we are not market movers, leave that to the hedge funds, banks and pension funds, we make money out of their moves, follow them, don't try to change the market or will it to change, you will lose YOUR money. The Pin bar entry strategy has a high degree of success, it is not a guaranteed trade, they do not exist, but if you research your own charts, on a daily, 4h and 1h timeframe (not lower), you will see them being respected a high degree of the time. The three try rule is my favourite entry, I use it everywhere, do not enter on the first move up or down unless there is a candle pattern that signals the entry, there are many. But once you have your long-term levels on a chart, and price moves back to that level, watch as volume (and confidence) declines, we get lower highs and the probability to enter a trade increases. There are thousands of permutations of these entries, no chart is every the same, no entry without risk, but it's your job to find the highest probability trades with the least amount of risk, if you have any questions or comments, I'd be happy to learn or answer your questions.
Education
by CBMotivation
7
The markets are there to make you feel stupid or brilliantMany a trader will have made their best analysis based on information at the time and then taken an entry position, only to find that the market does something unexpected. Price may move violently in the wrong direction i.e. not the favoured direction and comes close to a stop loss or actually stopping out the position for a loss. Now with hindsight a trader feels or thinks, " How stupid - I should have seen it coming. I shouldn't have done that. " This happens enough times to new traders. Seasoned traders live with it and have less such self-talk. I think it's important to acknowledge those feelings. These are partly thinking processes and emotional processes. New traders often feel demoralised after 10 or so failures in a row. " Am I doing something wrong? " - they may think. This is a reasonable question. It could be that something is wrong. However, nothing may be found wrong with one's methodology or application of one's personal rules - after a careful reassessment. It's good to check. The BTCUSD chart shows what is some sort of 'head and shoulders' pattern. It's not the best picture of it in the world but something is there. Wherever one takes a position in BTCUSD, it could be wrong. Why? The markets respect no one person. A proportion of traders will have taken a position in this and made some real profits. They will punch the air and with joy go, " YESSSS!! " From my long experience I've learned that 'feelings' of being right or wrong, actually bends the mind a trader. I'm speaking for myself quite clearly. Others may have similar experience. A feeling of being good after a string of wins, often creates a subconscious sense of confidence. Imperceptibly this can creep into future trades and then one realises some major losses. My own strategy is to try at best to reduce trading frequency and exert even greater diligence in entering trades after a series of wins. I aim to expect the unexpected. It's always a tad difficult when I get stopped out for a loss. But I repeat to myself that the stoploss is there to protect against the 'unexpected' - so it's not actually unexpected. It is a limit. It is the expected limit of price moving not in a favoured direction. There is no single path to 'a promised land' in trading. Traders can adopt different methods, different rules, and be consistently profitable. The largest obstacle which is difficult to train out a trader, is their own personal psychology . By this I mean things like attention to detail, biases, emotions, discipline etc. So in many ways feeling stupid or brilliant can affect our future decision-making in imperceptible ways. Traders can lose discipline after losses or big gains. Mark Douglas spoke about these sorts of things. The BTCUSD chart is not intended to attract thoughts on whether to go long or go short. I'm not really interested in whether the H&S is there at all or correctly drawn. I'm taking it beyond that. What happens next to traders who come out of this period - some bruised, some overjoyed? Trading is not about winning one trade or a small handful. It's about the long road ahead. I'm delighted if others can share their experiences.
BITSTAMP:BTCUSDEducation
by Captain_Walker
A Strategy for Market Entry and Exit - Part 3SUGARUSD:OANDA Weekly Chart A-E are similar to A-C above. F. This is another example of a DI becoming dominant in a pullback but for only a brief period of time. Notice how (A) gave a signal but that an exit was quickly signaled. After the pullback (B), then (C) gave a new entry signal to long side for many weeks before TRIX signaled a potential cover of the short. G. Is another example of the action similar to (F). NOTE: These types of actions work best when the ADX is above 20 or when it is trending up. SUGARUSD:OANDA Daily Chart More examples of the same concepts. However, this one provides good insight into a strong trend and how the TRIX, in conjunction with the DMI, will keep you in a market longer. And, when an exit is signaled, how to re-enter if the DMI indicates the trend is still intact.
OANDA:SUGARUSDEducation
by mxb1961
A Strategy for Market Entry and Exit - Part 2Part 1 can be found here: Key Tenants DMI is used as a triggering mechanism to establish support->resistance or resistance->support lines TRIX used to identify targets to exit and re-enter and on-going trend (if the DMI indicates a down trend, the a negative cross of TRIX over HMA would indicate a level to short Divergence can happen in both DMI and TRIX to indicate a weakening trend. With the TRIX, it can be a negative divergence where price makes new lows but TRIX makes higher lows or positive divergence where price is making a new low but TRIX is making lower lows in a blow-off fashion. Stoch indicates overbought/sold conditions with potential leading trigger on trade. Can leverage mid-point levels as trade continuation SUGARUSD:OANDA as an example reference 4hr chart above A. This is the period where the -DI crossed up over the +DI signaling that the trend was turning down. For Wilder, the low on this day would be the extreme point and you would enter a short position once price moved below it. A stop would be placed at the high of the same day as the cross. I’m looking at this more from the point of using the closing price instead of the high or low. If the next day closed below this price, then I would enter a short position at that close. At this point, you can use whatever trailing stop strategy you currently used to exit should price move contrary to your position B. This is the day that the +DI crossed up over the -DI signaling a possible buy. However, price did not close above this line before the ADX (green line on the DMI) dropped below both DI’s and eventually 20. Once this happens, a trend following indicator should not be used and signals that happen now I don’t act on. What has been suggested is that during this time, look for patterns in price and watch for price to breakout of this pattern. C. -DI again crosses up over +DI and with price closing below this line, a signal to enter short again is given 1. This is the first signal after (A) that indicates a correction may be happening. Once the TRIX crosses up over the HMA, that period’s close is used as the line to determine if the trade will be closed. If price closes above this line, then exit the trade. This is the case and the short position would have been exited 2. Because the trend is still down as indicated by the -DI being dominant, when the TRIX crosses down over the HMA, the close for that period is used to enter another short position. 3. Again, a signal is given to cover the short but in this case, price did not close over this close so the trade would not have been exited even though many periods went by 4. This time, the signal was hit to cover the short and again, due to the trend being down (-DI dominant), the signal was again triggered to re-enter a short position 5. Exit signal given and short was covered 6. This time, the sell signal to re-enter was not hit and price eventually entered a period of consolidation signaled by the ADX dropping below both DI’s and 20 7. NOTE: This is a important part of DMI/ADX that I use and will keep you out of a lot of churn in markets: When ADX drops below both DI’s and/or below 20, don’t use a trend following indicator to take trades. An option is to look for a price pattern (a channel, flag, a triangle, maybe a trend line) for price to consolidate into and then break out of. This consolidation should last for at least 5-7 periods or longer. Use the TRIX to potentially give a signal as to the direction of the breakout. In this case, the breakout was to the down side. Between (B) and (C), you see a pattern that happens in the DMI where there is a pullback. In these cases, one of the DI’s can become dominant for a briefly.
OANDA:SUGARUSDEducation
by mxb1961
2 TARGETS EXPLAINED - POSITION SIZING - BANKING PROFITS Hi All, I recently have been asked to publish this diagram for executing a 2 target order. I have labeled the diagram with order sequence in a perfect world scenario. Steps below relate to numbers on chart I am not telling you this is how everyone does it and this is only based on the questions I have been asked, every strategy has its own order entries stops and targets. 1. Price action comes down to hit your Limit Order Entry/Entries - when we find the reason for entry in this case we have identified this as an advanced pattern. When price action has at least past the B leg and we anticipate that price will continue downwards towards our D completion and predict where the Market is most likely to go after this, we then decide on our entry type and execute the order - The most important thing is to know where your entry stops and targets go before the entry level is reached. We mark these area's out and place 2 Order Entries @ Half position size. So let's say you would like to buy 20k EURUSD and the spread was 2.3 pips with a pip cost of $1 per 10k (minilot) trade. The cost would be: 2.3 pips * $1 per minilot * 2 minilots = $4.60 Now let's say you bought 20k in EURUSD, but this time, you bought two separate minilots, 10k and 10k. The cost for this would be Position #1 - 2.3 pips * $1 per minilot * 1 minilot = $2.30 Position #2 - 2.3 pips * $1 per minilot * 1 minilot = $2.30 The 2nd scenario costs the same as the 1st but allows two different sets of stops and limits (one set per ticket). So now we have the Order in Place with your target 1 and 2 and only exposing you to a stop loss of your original 20k After D has completed you need to make sure to bring your targets down until D has completed. 2. Now you have your order filled, based on historical data and forward testing results in the most likely of places price will retrace to being the 38.2% for T1 and 61.8% for T2 - now in your testing results you may just take one position and use the 50.0% for your one target. Keep in mind this is just an example. We have already banked our target 1 with 43pips - Price can do 3 things Go up Sideways or down. We hope price would just continue to hit our T2 - in this case price will retrace when sellers have their orders in at the 38.2% 3. We then move our stops up for position 2 to break even. 4. Price action usually will retrace and can indeed come back down to stop you out for a break even trade on position 2 but this has already banked 43 pips at 10k Half Position. 5. Price action doesn't stop us out and we are looking for Target 2 to be acquired, when T2 is obtained we have completed a perfect trade. And target 2 has banked 69 pips You can also trail a stop when the price action hits T1 if you need to sleep or leave for some reason and don't want to leave the position exposed to loss if it turns in the wrong direction. You can take step number 4 after the retrace and use the LLLC candle wick and trail the stop 5 pips below or above the HHHC candle wick depending on bearish or bullish. Note: some brokers or platforms do have the feature to have two limits on the one order. Also note the dollar figure is great that's what we all want is to make money in the market, the most important thing though is to not go broke, protect capital, dont expose yourself to too much risk, bank profits and don't be greedy. Being a consistently profitable trader putting yourself in the highest probable trades, Like Warren Buffett Says The stock market is a device of transferring money from the impatient to the patient. Their are a million ways to make and lose money in Forex - good luck I hope this helps for all those who asked to post it
Education
by Oztrade
2