Al Brooks - Trading Price Action Trends

wrbtrader · Jan 20, 2012

Quote from NoDoji:

Right, PA comes first, anything else on the chart is secondary...

Yep...

To a price action trader, price action is primary and indicators is secondary for those that may have them on their charts. In contrast, to an indicator trader, indicator is primary and price action is secondary.

cornix · Jan 21, 2012

Quote from BCE:

It's that way in life in general isn't it? Genuinely happy people are too busy being happy and enjoying their life to waste their time and energy ragging on other people. It's unhappy people, whose own life maybe isn't going so well, that spend so much time being critical of and bashing others.

It also tends to become kind of a bad habit and puts those negative people in the pathological circle of negativity so they have less and less chances of becoming happy as situation develops.

oilfxpro · Jan 22, 2012

Quote from cornixforex:

It also tends to become kind of a bad habit and puts those negative people in the pathological circle of negativity so they have less and less chances of becoming happy as situation develops.

Cynics will always become more cynical , they have seen the few snake oil salesmen generating huge revenues from p/a training education with very little benefit for noobs.In fact they taught the noobs the wrong things to look at.

cornix · Jan 22, 2012

Quote from oilfxpro:

Cynics will always become more cynical , they have seen the few snake oil salesmen generating huge revenues from p/a training education with very little benefit for noobs.In fact they taught the noobs the wrong things to look at.

What is the criterion of "wrong" thing to look at in trading?

oilfxpro · Jan 22, 2012

Quote from cornixforex:

What is the criterion of "wrong" thing to look at in trading?

Some of these mentors teach their losing breakout systems , static trading systems which have no earnings often for for years ,gambler's logic , renamed-rehashed price action into more confusing thing, teaching noobs into trading bar by bar unfiltered noise .

cornix · Jan 22, 2012

Quote from oilfxpro:

Some of these mentors teach their losing breakout systems , static trading systems which have no earnings often for for years ,gambler's logic , renamed-rehashed price action into more confusing thing, teaching noobs into trading bar by bar unfiltered noise .

Breakouts can be very profitable. Honestly I can say I even prefer good breakout to a reversal signal.

cornix · Jan 23, 2012

Speaking of breakouts, Euro just provided us with great example.

http://www.cornixforex.com/2012/01/example-of-good-breakout-entry/

BCE · Jan 23, 2012

Quote from the bouch:

so if you're criticizing unhappy people does that make you unhappy?????

Not sure if your line was meant to be humorous.

But was just making an observation, not being critical.

cornix · Jan 23, 2012

...and another one.

You would never ever even wish to need larger than 6 pips stop on any of such trades, each providing tens of pips. Context is everything.

http://www.cornixforex.com/2012/01/and-another-good-breakout-trade-today/

SteveH · Jan 23, 2012

Quote from cornixforex:

...and another one.

You would never ever even wish to need larger than 6 pips stop on any of such trades, each providing tens of pips. Context is everything.

http://www.cornixforex.com/2012/01/and-another-good-breakout-trade-today/

While I don't trade the Euro Dollar futures (Globex 6E contract), I hand-checked what stop I would need to trade it intraday on a mid-level volume chart (350-400 contracts per price bar) with a nice volatility study. I found all of the winning trades, recorded the MAE (Maximum Adverse Excursion...aka the drawdown) and the MFE (Maximum Favorable Excursion...minus 1 pip)

Sure enough, it matches what cornixforex is saying. A 6 pip stop would have kept me in 95% of the winning trades.

That same study on the CL, which I do trade, requires a 10 tick stop to capture 94% of the winners. The average winner on the 6E was 18 pips ($225) and 29 ticks ($290) on the CL. About the same on a ratio basis. 50% of the 6E winners are 12+ pips while 61% of the CL winners are 20+ ticks. No great surprise. The CL is more volatile and is a better reward for the risk on a per contract basis.

Here's the bigger picture. EVERY winner has a measurable MFE / MAE. Focus on THAT when you're researching your possible edges. You know what all the winners are paying out and what you had to risk to capture a significant pct of them.

Look. We all know that the hard part is finding a way for the losers to not overcome the winners on a monetary basis (duh!). But from reading trading forums, I get the impression that the majority of trader hopefuls cannot even tell you something similar to the above. The MAE stat will stand out in your research and tell you what your best stop area is to catch 90-95% of the winning trades. For example, On the CL, everything which works out well for me on a 5 min chart and below over 100's of trades doesn't need more than 10-15 ticks [heck, 65% of the winners in the study above only need a 6 tick stop!]. Any more and my risk of throwing money away needlessly goes up because the few big winners I may get from a bigger stop is going to get eaten up by the losers on the average trade which never needed that much of a stop to begin with.

Summary to newbies: Your winners tell you how much to lose on the losers.