Quote from increasenow:
1-how do you monitor so many pairs at once?...you trade like 10-15 pairs, correct?
2-how many standard lots per trade?...ever "micro-mini" lots?
3-did I read correctly, your stops are 10-15 pips per trade?
4-what are your best times to trade?...
5-are you in the USA or from what country and timeframe do you trade?
6-what is the average length of trade you take?..minutes, 1/2 hour, hours, days?
7-do you have a bias towards "buy" or "short" set-ups?
8-what are your chart timeframes?
9-use any MA or EMA's?
10-do you literally sit i fron of monitor all day or...rely on actual "pre-set" stops etc to exit/enter while you are "shopping" for instance...or are you purely a "manual" trader in that you must place the trade right there at your monitor etc.
1) I rarely have more than 3 to 5 positions on at once even with the trend strategy I use which this thread isn't about, more about my levels I come up with at night. I'm watching the USD, JPY, EUR, GBP, CHF, CAD, AUD, and NZD and trading the pairs that most make sense.
If the EUR is the STRONGEST pair and USD weakest then I'm buying it on pullbacks. Also I typically focus on the strongest and weakest pairs so rarely more than 4 or 5 I'm watching.
Look at the AUD/NZD last night and early morning. Both were statistically weak against most other pairs so its dumb to trade a weak pair against another weak pair. You'll almost ALWAYS get chop and I like to trade STRONG TRENDS.
2) Most of the time I'm doing 2 to 10 lots per trade and the reason I'm trading so small based on my account size is I do have multiple positions on usually at the same time. I've traded stocks, futures, oil, gold for a very long time before I started almost exclusively trading Forex and I find Forex the easiest to trade by far because the trends are so strong and often last for so many hours. For new traders I recommend 1 mini lot to start and then scale up. Keep your maximum risk per trade at 2 to 3% of your account.
So for $2k account with a 10 pip stop you can risk $40 which allows you to trade 4 mini lots.
3) Yes of course I use tight stops, I'm always shocked to hear how wide some Forex traders have their stops but if your system is profitable the TIGHTER the stops that does NOT affect your winning % is the best so you can trade LARGER size.
4) Best times to trade are when strong trends are existent. Usually 3am EST till noon. You have to adjust your lifestyle and learn to take naps to be a Forex trader! I find the US session is 30% more difficult than London as often the trends are over and you have to learn the finesse of counter trend trading which is harder for most traders to learn. I can go over my counter trend systems at some point if anybody is interested.
5) Yes in USA of course.
6) Length of trade is 100% determined on when my trailing stop gets hit or profit target. It can be 2 minutes to 3 to 5 hours. I like trendlines for entries AND exits! Also use Fib targets and will often exit after the second wave up. Usually that maximizes the winning trades.
7) Yes of course I have a bias, what do you think my overnight predictions in this thread are about???
8) I use 2 min charts and 50 Tick charts for entry and usually a 2 min chandelier trailing stop or fib targets or trendline breaks or major support/resistance levels for exits. It's a gut feel thing mostly for exits and what the longer term trend is. If longer term trend is steeply down and I see some strength I'll take fewer pips and hold less time.
9) No of course I don't use MA or EMA's in the way you are probably meaning, I don't use stochastic, RSI, or any other tools. I do use 20, 50 and 200 day moving averages on Daily charts but only in my overnight analysis and only factor them in if the markets up or down too much and I think they could be CLOSEST support/resistance so I may end up using them once or twice a week at most.
10) No I don't sit in front of monitor much at all. I use TopGun's VB scripting language to alert me when one pair is super strong and another is super weak when I'm awake and trading. And when sleeping or napping I'll use my price levels. I have programmed in alerts that send me a cell phone message ONLY when my levels get hit and ONLY when the market's not too strong/weak to take trade. If markets too strong to short I don't even get the alerts and will sleep through it. I get about a total of 5 to 6 hours of sleep a night and usually nap for an hour in the afternoon. I also try to take off a day every week when I feel the probability of my setups is not too high and not worth waking up to take trades.
