The funny thing I learned about charting is if you look at a chart and use too many tools you can make it look like anything. I try to keep it as basic as I can, because if it’s basic and obvious then I know other traders are seeing it to which makes the trade that much stronger. When I set up my charts every day or if I am away from them for a period of time (few hours, half a day or so). I am first looking for strong support and resistance lines. I look on the longer timeframe charts. First the day, then 4 hr and lastly 1 hr. The only time I watch the 15 min chart is for a stronger of sooner entry point. Second, my strategy is to trade with the trend on the higher timeframes. I don’t take many counter trend trades or trade on a ‘messy looking chart’, I’ll just look at a different pair or just wait. I like very obvious trends and trade on the dips. When a pull back occurs I’ll place a fibonacci from the previous low to the current high it’s pulling back from. Then I might pull back to the hour timeframe and look for either a bullish (or bearish if that’s the trend) on a major Fibonacci line, like the 61.8 for example. If I get a strong candlestick (like a hammer for an up trend or a falling star on a down trend, etc). Once it’s confirmed it’s moving back with the trend I’ll place my stoploss right below the 100 fib line (last dip) and my first take profit at 0.0 fib line. Once the trade starts hitting and going through the next fib lines I’ll move my stoploss to 0, then 50, 23.6. That way if it does reverse, my trade will exit at a zero loss, or smaller gain as it moves up. Once it’s at 0.0 I’ll either just exit the trade (even though it could very well make the next leg up) or keep my stoploss at the 23.6 line and look for the next resistance or support line and let it keep going and exit near there. I also keep my eye on the RSI indicator for over bought / sold signs. If the RSI is above the 50 line but below the 70 line there’s a good indication it will keep trending up or below the 50 and above the 30 if it’s trending down. Once you get a lot of time watching a pair you’ll ‘feel’ for the lack of better words the ebb and flow of that pair. I also watch for major news announcements. If you’re in a trade and a major announcement comes out it can get very volatile and snap up or down without any good reason until the announcement has settled in. So I try not to trade around those or exit the trade before hand. I hope that helps. Please keep in touch and let me know how you’re doing. I’m always curious how others trade and how they do their setups. Take care! And good trading!
@BPTrader , That is awesome. It looks like you have found your trade set-up. I have moved back to demo from my live account to work on my patience with a set-up from ICT. See my response to
@NickKalty. I like how you use the fib as a trailing stop-loss. I am only comfortable using a fib, not too good with RSI or MA (Moving Averages) on my chart. I had a teacher/mentor that used the RSI, the 50 and 200 MA's for institutional bias, with the 20 and 9 exponential MA., but it all confused me on the chart. I just did not grasp the bounce off the 9 or going short if under the 200 etc... It worked well for him and he was profitable, but I couldn't see it as well as he did, Great guy and a great teacher for those that can see it.
I prefer a clean chart using candles and a fib. As far as scaling out. I like defensive trading, I scale out when one target is hit and then close the trade at the second target. This was something I was able to take from that teacher above. Once I hit the first target, I move to breakeven. My first rule, like with many is the preservation of capital. For me once I am past 50% retracement level, I am in overbought.
As far as
News goes, I set my calendar up for the week. No trades during news, cut trades before the news and restart 10-15 minutes after the news. I got that one from a guy named VP and it seems to keep me out of trouble.
Thanks for sharing and keep up the success. We all love hearing it.
Finoptusa