Allright, some questions for the pros here...

What pip stops do you set before reentering? What about taking a profitable trade off?

I think im being to active in my trading and getting chewed up by pip spread...

Any ideas or strategies would be appreciated.

I trade reversion and breakout at pivot points. Say you are looking to go long EUR/USD and there is overhead resistance at the pivot point. Once the pair get there, it either will stop and reverse or stop consolidate and breakout. For reversion I wait for a couple of 5 min or 15 min bars to show that it is not a consolidation before taking the trade and putting a stop about 15-10 pips above trade. On breakout, I wait for the pair to move 15 or so pips after the consolidation period. Then I buy and put my stops 5-7 pips below the pivot (about 22-25 pips total). If the trade is good, once I make enough to cover the stops, I take 1/4 to 1/2 off depending upon the movement and move my stops so that I either breakeven or move my stop to my entry point. After that it is just a matter of managing stops. I add to my position at pivot points always with stops so that I breakeven. In this method you get stops quite a bit but when you do catch a good trend it can go 300-700 pips/ contract for you.

care to post a pic of an entry point? Its strange, im generally succesful on my equities trades, but when it comes to forex, fuggedabout it!

I over trade and the pip spread just eats me alive.

hi mortgagemalaise, this is an example of possible entry points. I made several entries around 1.5885-1.6000 this week. Got stop a couple of times but also made some good pips too.

Of course I use a lower time frame to time my entries (5 or 15 minutes)

thanks appreciate it.

6-12 pip stop on the majors, and occasionally a 20-25 pip stop on yen crosses..

Max took your advice last might turned around a 40 pip loss. Did not feel comfortable going to sleep with a stop though. Not sure I have the risk tolerance for thus game. Overall ended day down 11 pips could have been much worse thouh.

Nothing like putting on a lot and going to bed. FOREX is an exciting thing... the part about my computer waking me up with price alerts every few hours is kinda lame though.

mortgagemalaise, Try a micro acct or mini acct or even a demo account to see if you like trading this way or not. The whole point is try to get in at good pivot point and manage your stops well. You're gonna be stopped out many time but try to minimize the losses and maximize the gain. For example, I never play big for reversion/new entry unless I wanna gamble. Instead i put in a 1/2 lot or 1/4 to test the reversion/new entry. If the trend is my friend, I try to find if there is a channel or a range that the pair is moving in. In the example above, it look like usd/chf is range trading but a breakout can occur at anytime. In this case, going short at upper range and going long at lower range has been effective. If I was trading a up or down channel, I always go with the trend when of the channel. For example if I am going long EUR/USD and I see that a nice channel is forming, I would add at the bottom of the channel and put my stops 8-15 pips below it. Once my position is established I tried to add when the pair move down to the channel line again and take some profit along the way. I always move my stops so that it is about 10-15 pips below the channel line (uptrend) or above the channel line if downtrend. That's way I lock in my profit and go to sleep.

Good luck dude,

Mike

If thats too messy for ya try trading the 4 hour bars instead, off of weekly and monthly pivots, SR, trendlines and use candles... Very different.

I never did really try doing the daytrading with pivots thing, mostly because I live in the wrong timezone... If I lived in the UK I could daytrade the pivots until the cows came home.

Your tempting me again! lol ahahaha Thanks for your advice, im going to take the weekend off and start again on monday. need to cool down. I need to figure out alerts, last night i could have easily been into a nice profit, however, i was catching Z's and missed the most profitable exit point. lol ah well. good trading to you.

Dude we live in the same timezone. I noticed you can make some good pips around the following times (PST). 22:30 to 23:30 and 0:45 to 1:30. If you're an early riser, you can trade the 5:00 to 6:30 time frame and the 7:45 time frame.

Also when I catch a wave such as a good trend, I can just ride it until I am stopped out. That could mean a trade that last 2-3 weeks even.

hmm... You do ok that late? I havent tried it due to the whipsaws... I bet you get some good fades eh?

I could try some... No harm i guess..

I was thinking - you ever stack em up, like only trade off pivots that are the same, where you look for pairs where daily and weekly pivots line up and trade off that level? Or do you just see whats moving the most and trade it? Looks like a really clean short on the cable this AM off the pivot under overhead SR... Did you catch that one?

hmm thx I may play with that idea... Just look for a strong mover and fade a pivot retest off SR... Trail stops on pivots... Could be more fun, I get gnarly bored with the four hour timeframe.

No I missed that as I woke up groggy at 5:30. Actually on the 15 minutes I saw that the ma cross (8/34) was rolling over but I got killed on Tuesday night on the same roll over so I didn't play it last night. Plus that would have been gambling and I didn't want to. Who knew BOE would extend their QE? Actually the trade I took this morning was eur/jpy when it jumped to 137.72. I went short and got a few pips but got stopped out. I got back in at 137.92 and rode it down to 137.00. Didn't trust it so got most of my trade out and left a stop on slightly above 137 and got popped. Had to leave for stuff all day so I locked in my gains.

I could never trade a 4H chart... I'm a 15 min chart guy myself. Hardly ever get more than 60 or 70 pips on a trade, but I rarely eat more than 15, so it works out.

huh...
So what do you use for trend determination besides watching whether the pivot is higher or lower each period?

Also I noticed that the 10 minute frame and four hour pivots looks pretty cool and shows some trades at more reasonable hours :)... I may watch that.

I see what you mean about cable short being a gamble, looking at the pivot charts on both daily pivots and four hour the trend was still up..

Funny I never thought about using pivots in that way - just sell above, buy below, in direction of trend.

duh. Shows how slow I am - I had bain's course too

cool -yeah u can use the weekly pivots in the same way with an hourly chart... thats cool stuff. Look at the USDJPY rejection today at weekly r1 - thats a classic short down to at least 94.85....

Zen who are you talking to? :-P . Anyways I expect some volatility and fireworks tomorrow. Too bad my neighbor hit me up to take her to LAX. Nice family and I got work to do in LA too so I agreed. I think we get a head fake with the release but all USD pair should head lower until next week. Dare to take a flyer short EUR/USD @ 1.4435 over the weekend?

Quote:

Dare to take a flyer short EUR/USD @ 1.4435 over the weekend?

I would kill for that setup. YES please!

Why o why did I sell!!!!!!!!!! Lol big move today.

I should say cover. I was short at 1.4493!!!!!!

u mean 1.4430 right? Nice pin failure in the top of the range in the middle of the day - I should have seen that one :(...

Na this was from a couple days ago.

Sorry fat fingered on I phone.. 1.4393

Do you know what stinks? Last night I calculated the top of a reversion for GBPUSD to 1.6820. Just to be safe due to throwover I placed a GTC order to sell a 1/2 lot @ 1.6840 only to see it miss the top by about 5-10 pips. hahaha. Anyways I think it maybe good to take a flyer on AUDJPY shorts here or a direct short of USDJPY as I think the top is around 98.10 max. We should see a retrace to 96.3 to 96.5 at least.

Just looked at weekly on USDJPY. top may go to 98.70 on the next rise. I still think we retrace to 96.3 to 96.5 first.