soundfx

Hi Marchello,
 
Thanks for your basic description of how you're trading.
 
As KelvinHand says, what you're doing isn't really related to the SM system at all, however it seems to be working very nicely for you. I only commented on the DD on that particular trade as it seemed to go against how we've seen we should be trading SM's system, though I've also noted your numerous successful trades too :)
 
I like the idea of being able to select decent trades whenever we decide to open our charts and I think it would be of great benefit to others if you were to start up a separate thread called "Marchello's Trading System" or whatever. The problem at the moment is that your results are mixed in with various stuff in this thread and just get lost as the thread continues to grow.

Ok guys,
 
I've coded an indicator WaterskiguyScan which you can find here:
 

http://www.multiupload.com/DQPJCTS4N3
 
Run it on any chart and it will give a basic list of all pairs which are trending on the Weekly chart and also shows spreads.
 
If there are 3, 4, or 5 candles all with higher highs and higher lows then the list shows the Long candle count.
 
If there are 3, 4, or 5 candles all with lower lows and lower highs then the list shows the Short candle count.

Scalper72,
 
Here's my main chart:
 
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/3479/15mchart.jpg
 
Standard Bollinger Bands 20,2 (to give an idea of o/b and o/s in a non-trending market)
SDX-Sweetspots indicator to give me the psychological "round number" 00 S/R levels
Elder impulse candles (blue candles sometimes help you keep out of the market at less than optimal times)
Horizontal SR lines drawn by me to show where price has turned previously
 
I also use 5m charts for entries with normal candles, but the rest the same.
 
As you can see - good trades today would be Buy bounce off bottom of horizontal channel at 4318, target next round number 4400. Double top then forms and sell when price looks as though it's coming down from 4400 to bottom of channel again. Then wait to see if we get a another bounce or a break. As it happens break of bottom of channel gave further short bias and then we can trade down to next psych level at 4300. If momentum strong at that stage we could have stayed with the trade until we get a blue Elder candle or when we hit 4200 - whichever comes first.

Marchello,
 
Thanks for the "thanks" - judging by the lack of response I can see that folks are pretending what I've said isn't true, doesn't apply to them etc. or they've not realised the significance of what I've just posted :)
 
Guys, I've spent years doing exactly the same as you, trying hosts of manual systems and finding that none of them work for me. I've also tested hundreds of EAs, I've built various EAs as tests based on what were said at the time to be hugely accurate manual systems and none of this stuff worked.
 
The first thing to realise about trading is that you need to shake off your "9 to 5" delusions about what a job is. Trading isn't a "job" for starters and should never be treated as one - always treat your trading as a business where the main costs are your losses and your profits come from your "edge" in the markets. Don't turn up at your screen at 9am or whenever and expect to earn a living by sitting there trading for the next 8 hours and taking an hour for lunch. Trading doesn't work like that!!!
 
My profitablity increased significantly as soon as I realised that the less time I spend staring at the screens, the better my trades were. I can wander around the house doing other things and check on the screens every now and then to see what's happening. If something good has just started - then I jump in. If something good looks about to start then I'll sit in front of the screens to see how things progress, if price goes nowhere I'll do something else, otherwise I'll be in on a trade, and I'll either set a stop and target and go and do something else, or if I think that the trade may turn back again quite quickly then I'll watch it and make sure I don't let a winner turn into a loser.
 
Trading like this gives you an ability to see the market at a glance, because everytime you wander past and see the screens, your view of the market is not based on any preconceptions at all - you're just looking at the screen and saying to yourself "is there a trade setting up for me right now, or one just around the corner?".
 
For me this worked best to ensure that I only took the best trades - others may have better self-discipline. However, I know a lot of consistently profitable traders too and they'll all tell you the same thing "ONLY TAKE THE VERY BEST SIGNALS".
 
Some "systems" may not give great signals and I don't use a "system" as such - and nor does anyone else I know who does well in the markets.
 
Instead what you need to accumulate over time is a "trader's toolbox" of techniques which you find have worked for you personally. For example, if you always trade the open of the next candle after a good spike high or spike low and have normally profited - then that's one of the methods you put into your toolbox. If this method has worked for you then obviously you've mastered the right size of spike or maybe you combine this with price being outside the Bollinger bands too, or outside certain moving averages, or divergence against the RSI or whatever - it doesn't matter.
 
All this stuff comes from putting in the screen time, looking at signals from price action (rather than following rigid "system" rules) and then finding what works for you more often than not, and putting that method into your "toolbox".
 
Trading is a profession and like any other profession, it takes time to learn. Trading is deceptively simple and catches most newbies out because the markets constantly "do our heads in" - the moves make no sense, technical indicators don't work all the time, fundamental indicators don't work all the time etc.
 
Nothing works all the time in trading - it's not an exact science, despite what some TA afficionados will have you believe (I'm thinking of the Eliott Wave gang here lol). What you need to do to become a good manual trader is to first spend a lot of time following the markets (this is the only time when it's acceptable to spend 8 hours in front of a screen - when you're learning and on demo...). When you've done this for long enough and tried making all sorts of ****** trades as "tests", you'll begin to realise, that instead of making 50 trades a day and ending up with a huge loss (normally caused by chasing earlier smaller losses), it's not too much trouble to just make 2 or 3 trades a day and end up with a huge profit - even if one of those trades was a loser.

Marchello,
 
Thanks for the "thanks" - judging by the lack of response I can see that folks are pretending what I've said isn't true, doesn't apply to them etc. or they've not realised the significance of what I've just posted :)
 
Guys, I've spent years doing exactly the same as you, trying hosts of manual systems and finding that none of them work for me. I've also tested hundreds of EAs, I've built various EAs as tests based on what were said at the time to be hugely accurate manual systems and none of this stuff worked.
 
The first thing to realise about trading is that you need to shake off your "9 to 5" delusions about what a job is. Trading isn't a "job" for starters and should never be treated as one - always treat your trading as a business where the main costs are your losses and your profits come from your "edge" in the markets. Don't turn up at your screen at 9am or whenever and expect to earn a living by sitting there trading for the next 8 hours and taking an hour for lunch. Trading doesn't work like that!!!
 
My profitablity increased significantly as soon as I realised that the less time I spend staring at the screens, the better my trades were. I can wander around the house doing other things and check on the screens every now and then to see what's happening. If something good has just started - then I jump in. If something good looks about to start then I'll sit in front of the screens to see how things progress, if price goes nowhere I'll do something else, otherwise I'll be in on a trade, and I'll either set a stop and target and go and do something else, or if I think that the trade may turn back again quite quickly then I'll watch it and make sure I don't let a winner turn into a loser.
 
Trading like this gives you an ability to see the market at a glance, because everytime you wander past and see the screens, your view of the market is not based on any preconceptions at all - you're just looking at the screen and saying to yourself "is there a trade setting up for me right now, or one just around the corner?".
 
For me this worked best to ensure that I only took the best trades - others may have better self-discipline. However, I know a lot of consistently profitable traders too and they'll all tell you the same thing "ONLY TAKE THE VERY BEST SIGNALS".
 
Some "systems" may not give great signals and I don't use a "system" as such - and nor does anyone else I know who does well in the markets.
 
Instead what you need to accumulate over time is a "trader's toolbox" of techniques which you find have worked for you personally. For example, if you always trade the open of the next candle after a good spike high or spike low and have normally profited - then that's one of the methods you put into your toolbox. If this method has worked for you then obviously you've mastered the right size of spike or maybe you combine this with price being outside the Bollinger bands too, or outside certain moving averages, or divergence against the RSI or whatever - it doesn't matter.
 
All this stuff comes from putting in the screen time, looking at signals from price action (rather than following rigid "system" rules) and then finding what works for you more often than not, and putting that method into your "toolbox".
 
Trading is a profession and like any other profession, it takes time to learn. Trading is deceptively simple and catches most newbies out because the markets constantly "do our heads in" - the moves make no sense, technical indicators don't work all the time, fundamental indicators don't work all the time etc.
 
Nothing works all the time in trading - it's not an exact science, despite what some TA afficionados will have you believe (I'm thinking of the Eliott Wave gang here lol). What you need to do to become a good manual trader is to first spend a lot of time following the markets (this is the only time when it's acceptable to spend 8 hours in front of a screen - when you're learning and on demo...). When you've done this for long enough and tried making all sorts of ****** trades as "tests", you'll begin to realise, that instead of making 50 trades a day and ending up with a huge loss (normally caused by chasing earlier smaller losses), it's not too much trouble to just make 2 or 3 trades a day and end up with a huge profit - even if one of those trades was a loser.

Here it is:
 

http://www.multiupload.com/HJZ98N96I3

Here it is:
 

http://www.multiupload.com/HJZ98N96I3

Dan,
 

 
Don't kid yourself lol. If it was this easy to make a highly profitable EA, it would have been done years ago ;)
 
Reversing bad trades doesn't necessarily mean that they automatically become good trades and this same topic has been raised several times before and I've yet to see a ****py EA with trades reversed that was anything better than mediocre, in fact a lot end up being perversely even worse than the original !
 
However, as a trader I retain an open mind and anything is possible, though as a trader I also work in probabilities and based on what I've seen, the probability of this reversal idea working is close to 0.

So very true deadsoul, in fact I suspect that by the way Red Bull has been bumping every thread going that he's just collecting systems and not really using any of them lol.
 
I've done the same I admit it. My hard disk is stacked with loads of systems (mostly rubbish ones). It takes some effort and discipline to take a system and trade it by itself for a week or two using the system rules only.
 
I think the main problem is that to test a system properly, you need to be trading actively in the main sessions. Most folks here, judging by the way everyone is infatuated with EAs, have a "day job" and are not trading full-time, so are unable to test these systems properly. Likewise any traders who are trading full-time are unlikely to want to give up 1 or 2 weeks of income earning potential to test a system in demo, which will probably turn out to be a disappointment.

Hi Neil,
 
It would be handy for others if you posted your test results or opinions on the systems you're testing - start a thread called "Neil's test lab" or something like that :)
 
From what I've seen of manual systems they fall into 3 main camps:
 
1) Trending System
2) Ranging System
3) Breakout System
 
All have their faults - trending systems don't work in ranging markets and vice-versa and breakout systems are prone to trading false breakouts.
 
Each system type can be subdivided into:
 
1) Conventional (typically MA's for trending systems, BB's/Stochs/CCI etc. for ranging systems)
2) Novel (stacks of fancy indicators which you can't understand how they work unless you analyse the code).
 
"100 Pips before breakfast" is a good sensible ebook which explains how to trade trending markets effectively.
 
"Easy FTSE Trading System" is another good ebook which explains how to trade ranging markets effectively. It's geared for the UK spread betting markets and for the FTSE, however applies equally to MT4 trading and Forex.
 
"1 Minute Daily" (currently on the blacklist I think) is probably the best "set and forget" Asian range breakout system I've seen - though you have to adapt a long term view with these sort of "set and forget" systems. "Forex Child's Play" works well for more active traders.
 
There's no one system which fits all conditions - otherwise, that would essentially be a "holy grail". The route to becoming a consistently profitable trader is taking bits of each system which you personally are most comfortable using and then you need to put in lots of screen time so that you intuitively know the best time to bring out a particular tool from your trading toolkit.
 
For example, I don't like using MA crosses to trigger entries into trends - I've had many bad experiences with them in ranging markets, so can never trust them. Instead, I look at candle patterns in larger timeframes, where price is obviously moving in the timeframe I'm trading and take note of HH or LL breaks and where support and resistance levels are. If price is trending up and breaks a recent swing high but there is strong resistance a few pips away - then now's not the time to go long, wait for a bounce off resistance and then enter when price starts moving up again. You can either take a few pips with the trend back to resistance or hang on for a larger move, given your better entry point.
 
When the market is obviously ranging - i.e. you look at your chart and the bollinger bands are quite wide and essentially horizontal, then that's the time to look at trading BB extremes. If these extremes coincide with S/R levels then all the better - you have a higher probability trade which can be taken back to the middle band and often from one extreme band to the other.
 
You're right about trading style, and that's what makes it so tricky for us to just trade someone else's system as successfully as they do. Trading shouldn't be a chore or we're not in the right frame of mind - so if systems/methods are too complex, too "black box", too unpredictable etc. for you personally then don't attempt to use them.
 
Finding our "niche" in trading doesn't mean finding a system which works perfectly for us - I think we need a learn a range of methods which can be brought out at the right times depending on market conditions.
 
Trying to trade 1-2-3 setups will pay big dividends in trending markets but will kill you in ranging markets. Taking every MA cross will give you some huge winners (if you can avoid taking winners too early) and then you'll hit a period of possibly weeks where every trade will fail. Knowing how to trade the market on your chart right now I believe is something which can only come naturally after you've put in the requisite "screen time".
 
All I've mentioned so far has been concerned with entries - which despite what some others may say are important. A good entry can give you easy pips and a bad entry can get you stopped out. Money management is important, however a good entry with good money management is still better then a bad entry with good money management.

I agree Freddy,
 
We can safely leave crazy risk/reward systems to the EA fans lol. A backtested chart over a couple of days/weeks/months which goes up to the moon will keep them happy (until they hear the sound of exploding accounts that is..) ;)
 
In manual trading we should aim to always have 1:1 risk/reward or better. As a manual trader there are so many days when we may not be trading - e.g. NFP day, national holidays in US, national holidays in UK, national holidays in Euroland etc. We can't afford to be letting losers run wild no matter how occasional they may be.
 
One of biggest problems in manual trading has been preventing myself from overtrading after taking more losses than normal (which is part of the game from time to time)...I trade 1:1 and I can still do my account a lot of damage if I fall into this trap, having 5:1 risk:reward doesn't bear thinking about.

ok - I've just found the TSD one, thanks to marthart in the post:
 

http://indo-investasi.com/showthread.php/10007-TSD-Forum-Elite-Section-indicators?p=170777&viewfull=1#post170777
 
Here's the indi:
 

http://www.multiupload.com/ANMJ5KNIXR
 
tb36670 - if you think it's a useful indicator - how are you using it?

annbeea,
 
The set and forget system was last month's Dittoman special ;)
 

http://www.multiupload.com/2B77Z03689

Don't get too excited about the EA guys - it's just a trade management EA.
 
EA manuals are here, though I've not been able to track down the EA itself as yet:
 

http://www.multiupload.com/9J11KJEL9S

Pilfinger,
 
This EA does the same thing allowing you to click and drag SL's and TP's:
 

http://www.multiupload.com/GPBNA8T5H6

Guys, easier said than done lol. This is what most traders end up doing (this is for stocks though I'm sure we could cobble together a forex one ;) ):
 
http://werc.homelinux.net/photos/wow/Funny_stock_chart.jpg

Guys, easier said than done lol. This is what most traders end up doing (this is for stocks though I'm sure we could cobble together a forex one ;) ):
 
http://werc.homelinux.net/photos/wow/Funny_stock_chart.jpg

ikke,
 
I think most folks have 5 digit accounts, and that shouldn't make any difference to the arrows appearing or not appearing. You've probably got a weird combination of parameters set up.
 
Here are the 3 main indicators current version:
 

http://www.multiupload.com/R9IPDJRL3E
 
Close MT4 if it's open, put all the indicators in your MT4\experts\indicators directory, then restart MT4.
 
You only need to attach II_PipAccumulator to the chart and with the default settings I've uploaded, it should look like psaini's. The historical boxes and arrows should draw immediately (with these default options) and arrows should appear too. The alerts are set to trigger when a new arrow appears.
 
The other two indicators were used mainly for research and you don't need them to trade with default settings on II_PipAccumulator. II_PipAccumulator only reads probabilities from II_Prob_Hist when running in multiple timeframe display mode.

Guys, easier said than done lol. This is what most traders end up doing (this is for stocks though I'm sure we could cobble together a forex one ;) ):
 
http://werc.homelinux.net/photos/wow/Funny_stock_chart.jpg

Guys, easier said than done lol. This is what most traders end up doing (this is for stocks though I'm sure we could cobble together a forex one ;) ):
 
http://werc.homelinux.net/photos/wow/Funny_stock_chart.jpg

Hi Guys,
 
I remember Eggzactly posting a system called Pacman some time ago which used constant range bars, though I can't find the thread any more.
 
Here's some of the thread which I saved and the indicators:
 

http://www.multiupload.com/OQGVKEJUXT

jamestan1978,
 
To make it clearer on your charts where your trade entries and exits were, you can click on the closed trade in your account history and drag it to the chart.
 
That will place an arrow where you entered the trade and plot a line to a triangle where you exited the trade (in the same way that you'd see trades on the chart if you were running an EA).

Pilfinger,
 
This EA does the same thing allowing you to click and drag SL's and TP's:
 

http://www.multiupload.com/GPBNA8T5H6

Hermes,
 

 
Have you any idea what you're talking about or even where the coloured boxes come from ?
 
To say that we cannot use them as indication is complete nonsense - all you need to do is look back over psaini's trade history to see that you can make very nice consistent profits when using the boxes as part of an overall trade strategy - and that's the key!
 
Psaini uses various other methods (S/R breaks etc. - read the thread!) to back up his trades - also ensuring that the master probability indicator is in line with the trade.
 
The arrows and boxes have been mentioned several times before and are only a "heads up" that the direction may change soon - that's all. You shouldn't be rushing to place trades on as soon as you see an arrow because it won't work consistently. You need to use the arrow to give you a possible new direction and then look at other indicators (e.g. S/R levels, candle patterns, Pivots, Fibo retracements etc.) to see if that signal makes sense and whether you're confident that it's a high enough probability trade to place.
 
No indicator will give you great signals all the time, so if you're still searching for that indicator stop now, or you'll be in the same place in 10 years time ;)
 
The coloured boxes are painted when arrows are formed and those arrows with default setting come from something very basic which is MT4 MACD cross with settings 24,52,18...and why are these "special" numbers? Well, they're not that special at all if you consider that that standard MACD parameters are 12,26,9. So, all we're looking at is a more slowly changing MACD (reflecting higher timeframes than the one you're looking at - i.e. the main short-term trend at the time). Of course, MACD crosses, like MA crosses and everything else which just gives you a different view of where price used to be, will never be able to give you solid consistent signals. As soon as we see a cross down on MACD it doesn't mean that price has to continue in that direction. Price will do what it wants. It doesn't care about our indicators, analysis or how much we've wagered on a trade.
 
As for the boxes, they're just fancy graphics which have stuck with us from the original system.
 
When a Sell arrow paints it will close the last box which will have started with a Buy arrow and vice-versa. To say that green boxes are particularly bad is also complete nonsense because the reliability of the signals on both green and red boxes is completely dependent on the market conditions at the time. Next week you'll probably be saying that the red boxes always give false signals lol.
 
A few posts back I gave a link to a word doc. which contains psaini's comments before and after taking trades and the screenshots of the trades - both winners and losers. I recommend that you study those trades in detail if you're thinking of trading this system manually.

magrech,
 
In the thread you'll find that psaini has already mentioned that he always has a stop level set in his mind rather than physically added to the trade - this is typically between 30 and 40 pips. This is only recommended for experienced and disciplined traders who will take out their trades which are going the wrong way immediately price gets into the "stop zone" they have in mind. Anyone without that discipline will be tempted to let the price "breathe" a bit more and before they know it they're staring at a substantial loss rather than a manageable one - I know I've been there lol.
 
Guys,
 
I've lumped together most of psaini's trades and screenshots and rules for trading his system and have placed them in a word doc. for ease of reference, it will also save psaini having to answer the same questions over and over:
 

http://www.multiupload.com/XP5FHJGWCG