I have to say....this is amazing. I've read this thread all the way through (and the first 50-100 pages I have read and re-read many times) and this was a great way to spend a morning, getting a refresher of everything.

I congratulate you for your hard work, and also for making this available to everyone else. May it be rewarded. It must have taken you a long time. It also set off a few thoughts in me.

The paradox of forex trading is that, when you find your way to the right material, it is a simple and virtually guaranteed way to succeed financially. If you opened a restaurant, your success would be in the hands of fate, no matter how hard you worked. In this business hard work, patience and dedication almost guarantee success. So why do most fail? Because no other business will put you more in touch with your own shortcomings, the limits of your ego, your impatience, your fear, your greed. Trading will show you the promised land and then make you realise that you are the only obstacle standing between yourself and that land.

If you're having trouble, don't blame James16, don't blame the market, don't blame period. Ask yourself, are you following James' minimum requirements? Are you working hard enough at learning? Are you having patience? Have you read a large chunk of this thread? When you stop and see that the problem is something you're doing it's a really crucial moment. Because if it's something you're doing, then you can fix it.

I can't play the guitar. Nor can I speak french. But if I sat down and committed to 8 hours practice a day, day in day out, no matter what, then in a year I'd be a pretty mean guitar player. Or I'd be able to speak French like a native. It's not about innate ability, or a god given gift. No one can play the guitar when they first pick it up. Everyone who speaks French started not knowing a single word.

Patience, hard work, self awareness, dedication. Apply these, read this thread, and success is all but guaranteed.

(Written to inspire myself as much as anything else.... )

I have to say....this is amazing. I've read this thread all the way through (and the first 50-100 pages I have read and re-read many times) and this was a great way to spend a morning, getting a refresher of everything.

I congratulate you for your hard work, and also for making this available to everyone else. May it be rewarded. It must have taken you a long time. It also set off a few thoughts in me.

The paradox of forex trading is that, when you find your way to the right material, it is a simple and virtually guaranteed way to succeed financially. If you opened a restaurant, your success would be in the hands of fate, no matter how hard you worked. In this business hard work, patience and dedication almost guarantee success. So why do most fail? Because no other business will put you more in touch with your own shortcomings, the limits of your ego, your impatience, your fear, your greed. Trading will show you the promised land and then make you realise that you are the only obstacle standing between yourself and that land.

If you're having trouble, don't blame James16, don't blame the market, don't blame period. Ask yourself, are you following James' minimum requirements? Are you working hard enough at learning? Are you having patience? Have you read a large chunk of this thread? When you stop and see that the problem is something you're doing it's a really crucial moment. Because if it's something you're doing, then you can fix it.

I can't play the guitar. Nor can I speak french. But if I sat down and committed to 8 hours practice a day, day in day out, no matter what, then in a year I'd be a pretty mean guitar player. Or I'd be able to speak French like a native. It's not about innate ability, or a god given gift. No one can play the guitar when they first pick it up. Everyone who speaks French started not knowing a single word.

Patience, hard work, self awareness, dedication. Apply these, read this thread, and success is all but guaranteed.

(Written to inspire myself as much as anything else.... )

Darkstar!

I never met you on here man, but on the recommendation of mbqb11 I read all of your posts. They transformed my thinking about forex. Thanks for the resource and for sharing your knowledge.

What brings you back?

Darkstar!

I never met you on here man, but on the recommendation of mbqb11 I read all of your posts. They transformed my thinking about forex. Thanks for the resource and for sharing your knowledge.

What brings you back?

I don't share here much, but I read it religiously every day. I wanted to chime in with a couple of things that have been clicking for me.

I've been backtesting using a backtest program. Which means taking trades manually while the market replays as live. It's a great way to get experience under my belt and it means that I can take or pass on 40 weekly pinbars in a day, rather than waiting 3 years for them to appear in demo. I used to think backtesting was to find out if the system works, and hell why did I need that because I believed Jim. Now I realise it's about more than that. It's about testing the real system....me. Honing my bar selection criteria, working on my exits, dealing with the psychologicals....and yes, they do come up while backtesting. At least for me.

I also realised something about A+ and B grade pinbars. I used to get upset if I saw a B grade pinbar take off while everyone celebrated. Why wasn't I in the move? Something clicked when I was backtesting. If B grade trades work 30% of the time, that still means that one in three will work. Doesn't mean I should take them, because the other two will fail and it'll hit my equity curve. But the measure of a good trading decision isn't whether the trade works out or not. It's about my probabilities and expectancy across many many trades. So I am getting less anxious when a PB takes off without me. Because I know trade selection that puts me into that bar, will also put me into two losers tomorrow.

It's just a thought, but I like to keep my posts as a sort of journal log so I can look back over my aha moments.

I have made so many bonehead decisions while learning to trade, given other people my money to trade and watched them lose it, not put in the hours. But it seems that a lot of us go through that. Now I am finally surrendering to the hard work; the minimum requirements, the confidence building, the pickiness, the staying on higher timeframes until I get it. And you know what? It's easier and quicker than I thought. We all seem to look for shortcuts and lose money but what Jim is saying is that, from 26 years of experience, there's no way shorter than his. His minimum requirements are the shortcut. It took this bonehead a little while to realise that. So I won't be touching the 4H until I've mastered the daily and weekly over months. If it takes longer than others, then it takes longer than others.

Another word on higher timeframes. I used to think that we are taught to start there because the bars are more reliable, and they fail less often, so it is a good place to learn. I think that's definitely true. But I think the real lesson is patience. Watching charts night after night after night, and closing them down because there's nothing ideal to trade, I am learning acres and acres of patience. The kind of patience that when and if I go to intraday will allow me to stare at a screen for weeks and take a small handful of trades. That's the lesson. Passing, passing, passing.

Thanks for indulging the ramble guys. I am the anti-Bemac, never one word when a hundred will do.... But one day I want to look back on my FF posting history and see how far I've come.

Happy trading!

The one I use is forextester which I am very happy with. And yes, you can enter demo trades and see how they pan out. It does cost money to buy though.

Other people use VHands which is a free backtesting program for MT4 but I have no experience with this.

Good luck.

Thanks man. That's an honour.

6 trades taken this month.

2 break evens, 4 winners, zero losers

James16, thank you thank you thank you.

Post one material Jim?

Awesome post Mike. I can relate to a lot of it. Thanks. Things are just beginning to click for me and I found forex about a year ago, and Jim's PF in August. You're right. It takes as long as it takes. There's something weird about how long it takes to arrive at something so simple. I'm just at the beginning of my journey but am at the stage where I am starting to see rewards.

And if you're watching Jim, I love this quote from a TS Eliot poem which sums up the goal of this journey for me.

"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Hey don't worry. Read mbqb11's most recent couple of posts and there is one in there about the learning curve of new traders. A few months of being totally overwhelmed is normal. The information is overwhelming at first, but eventually it becomes very simple and second nature. IMO the hardest part at the beginning is that you don't see many rewards because it seems like so much to take in. But if you stick with it, it gets clearer, and you get better and better and get the rewards of a good trade well managed.

Newbie errors are what makes us good traders.....if we learn from them. And it's why Jim recommends three profitable months on demo before going live. Those newbie errors don't have to cost you a cent.

Good job on ploughing through the first 200 pages. That dedication will really serve you well....

As for what you added when you edited your post, I can only recommend what is serving me. Only trade price action on daily and weekly timeframes to start with. No matter how sweet the 4h trade, keep the discipline and pass on it. Review the bars at daily close and weekly close and trade them if they are tradeable. Don't chase entries through lower TFs if you miss the original moves. Fewer opportunities? Sure. But much more reliable signals and less of a chance to hand your profits back.

I second Jig here. PPZs can go back as far as you like. But don't go crazy. Shrink your chart a bit and the really obvious ones will jump out at you.

What I do is, rather than cover the charts in lines, I look for the ones near where price is now, picking only the really obvious ones on higher TFs, then I look at the TF I am taking the trade from and zoom out a bit.....that's where I really watch for PPZs. I won't let a 4h PPZ bother me if I am taking daily trades. But I am aware on weekly trades for example that a couple of bars can make a PPZ (each bar is the low across a whole week).

What's cool is to draw immediate PPZs on say the daily, then scroll back and see how price interacted with your lines over the last 20 or so years. Trust me, it's amazing!

And I would also add that it's better to always place your PPZ on a round number if possible, and be aware that especially on higher TFs, these are zones not exact pip values. Sometimes they can be 50-100 pips wide or more.

Hope that helps and isn't to patronising. If you know all that already then hopefully it's helpful to someone else....

Thought the name seemed familiar Mark. Sorry for rehashing stuff you already knew. Hopefully someone new to the thread will pick it up.

Take care.

I have to say, this thread has been on fire these last few weeks. The amount of wisdom being posted is astonishing.

I'm grateful to all of you for making it so great. First thing in the morning I read every single post since I last logged on and have been doing that for 6 months. It's amazing.

I wanted to add something to the account size/potential return discussion.

Reward is always related to risk. There is a correlation between maximum potential drawdown and maximum return on investment. In a normal situation, as one increases so does the other. If you want 20% a month and you're currently getting 2%, well risking 10 times what you risk could get you there. The problem is it increases your max drawdown and your probability of reaching that drawdown by a lot. And there are all kinds of problems associated with getting out of a hole.

If you have tolerance for that, well then I have a great system for you. It has a one in two chance of doubling your money on a single trade and a (ever so slightly greater than) one in two chance of wiping out completely. It's called roulette. Go bet on black.

One thing I try to say to myself whenever I look at the charts is "I am a professional trader, not a professional gambler". I want high probability setups, not the 'excitement' of a borderline will she/won't she trade. That means passing on trades like the recent GU pinbar that have now broken. I'm not saying anyone was wrong to take that, far from it. Just that my plan is different. I'd rather take A+ trades and widen the number of charts to look at to include stocks futures and commodities too. It's sometimes tough watching the less than perfect trades take off without me, but I am trading my plan and sticking to it.

It really is all about your tolerance. And I think what Jim preaches is that when you have a big account your tolerance is going to be very very different. You may not mind your trade going into a big retrace before breking if your account size is $3000. But what if you had a million dollar account and that retrace was tens of thousands. Would you want that kind of hassle? Remember that when Jim says that with a large account size a few pips can yield a big return, he also means that a few pips against you can be a big loss.

When I first read this forum I wanted to be raczekfx (I still do, Mark ) But I can't run before I can walk. Mark has a lot of experience, traded pure Jim style for a while and still does on one account. And then, after extensive and probably tiresome research and development, he came up with a more aggressive style that he's tested thoroughly and that totally fits his psychology and comfort zone. Trying to emulate his trades before going through that process yourself is in my opinion trading suicide. And I know. I did it.

So it is all about tolerance for risk. And when you have small change on each trade you're more likely to take the iffy ones because, hey what's losing 4 or 5 bucks? But the habits ingrained here will last you a lifetime. And there are many ways to reach that large account size. More people than you realise watch this forum. If you become a senior member and display consistency I am pretty sure someone will approach you before long asking you to trade their money. That brings its own hazards but if you want to, you can take that route.

By taking the 2-3 slam dunk trades a month Jim is promising you a method that can produce a 95% win rate. Which means on a large account you'd rarely go into drawdown, you'd make good money, and you'd have plenty of time for fishing...

I'm no old timer, just getting to a place with this stuff, and as always I like to post here so that my post history can act as a kind of journal. If I'm preaching at anyone here it's me....

I can so relate to this. It's probably one of my big hurdles. Rather than playing a bar on its merits I look to see what the seniors make of it. I forget that what they think of a bar is only part of the whole picture. For example, mbqb11 likes to move his stops at the end of the day. He doesn't day trade off a daily chart so much. That's more Jim. So mbqb11 is looking for more potential to remove. James16 and Jaroo are more day traders off the daily chart. They take some profit off the table at first target.

Everyone evaluates a bar based on how they trade. If I want to day trade off the daily chart, it's not necessarily going to line up with a trade Mike would take. And if I want to move stops only at the end of the day then I've got no business trading some of the trades Jaroo takes.

It takes me a while to get this through my head, because I am easily swayed. Call it 'forum confluence' if you will. What has helped me is backtesting. Because that is decision after decision taken on my own. Helps to build the muscle.

Thanks for posting this PipGator. Boy do I relate...

Hey Jellybean,

Exactly the same thing happened and still sometimes happens to me. It can be crippling. Now I notice when I open the charts where my bias is (it could be "oh god I hope there's no trades" which is me being gun shy, or it could be "dammit I'm not going to pass on another that takes off!" which means I am biased towards over trading) I try and just acknowledge this and be aware.

First thing to say is that it's much better to be gun shy than it is to be trigger happy. Trading is passing passing passing. Someone on this thread had been struggling recently and Jim put him on a maximum of 5 trades a month, but preferably 3. So that part is good. Every loser takes a winner to cancel it out (if you trade the way James does, usually more than one winner to cancel it out) That's what people forget. Your loser makes your next hard earned winner count for nothing. As a wise old man once told me, a ten mile walk into the woods is a ten mile walk back.

But onto the main part of your post which is that you need confirmation from forum members. Boy do I ever relate to this. Go back over the last hundred pages and there's a great post from a guy who changed his pending order 4 times based on what he read from different members. There are a couple of things IMO that it's important to remember, and a couple of exercises that might help.

Firstly, you never know what someone's trading plan is. I used to really want mbqb11's opinion on every trade and had to resist asking him. A lot clicked for me when I realised that he very rarely takes a daily or weekly price action setup, and only lets the best of the best in. And the reason he does this is because the bulk of his trading is from intraday and consolidation breakouts. I was missing the big picture. He also doesn't like to move his stops until the end of the day. So a trade that bounced in the middle of the day would be bad for him. Whereas James16 and Jarroo like to day trade off the daily chart. Jarroo will take more setups because his criteria is whether they can get to first target where he will take half off the table. No way is right, they all are variations on the solid gold of James16's basic teachings. But crucially, each member will give a different opinion on a setup based on how they trade.

And here's the crunch....it's useless to take Jarroo's trades if you manage them like Mike. Look at how you like to trade, when you're available to be at the computer, whether you like to day trade off the daily chart. And if you're only taking dailies and weeklies on demo as per James' recommendations, then it's probably not wise to seek the opinion of someone for who the bulk of his profits come from elsewhere and who only takes a handful of dailies a year.

You're dealing with perfectionism. It's my biggest psychological hurdle too. Never trade never lose, right? I so relate. Guess what? You're so far on to have even recognised this as an issue. Your post shows you are miles ahead of the pack who only post on ff asking "please help. what will GU do next?" And it's easily fixable.

I would suggest two things to help. Firstly, backtest. Either use forextester, vhands or just scroll historical data on MT4 forward with the F12 key. Do a search for backtesting programs on FF and see which approach you like. Get hundreds of trades under your belt backtesting because that will be hundreds of decisions you made on your own, without the forum noise. If you take losses and are wondering why, then fire a pm to me or anyone else with an annotated chart saying "I took this and managed it this way, what happened?". In a weekend you can backtest hundreds of daily pinbars and you'll then work out what you're comfortable trading, and what they are likely to do. Keep a spreadsheet with the entry, SL, TP, date and how the trade would have played if you'd tried various exit strategies. Full TP at first support/resistance target? Partial TP? When would you move the stop to BE? How far did the trade run in total? Did it break next bar? It can be tedious but it really, and I mean really, builds confidence. Which is what you need right now.

Secondly, and this was once suggested to me by someone, open a new demo account and try and lose the cash as quick as possible. Literally burn through it. Don't have any other purpose. If it goes up 400% then don't suddenly think 'oh I am going to change the objective'. No. Just try and lose as fast as possible. That'll help the gunshy thing. It did for me. It's fun too. And it gets you pulling the trigger and over that fear hurdle.

That was suggested to me by someone. I don't know if it's a proprietary exercise or whether it was just a frinedly suggestion. If it's the former then I have no problem editing it to remove it from the post and apologising. I think it's okay to pass on though which is why I am putting it here.

Good luck! You are closer than you think. Most traders on here think psychology is a luxury for when they are earning millions. You're way way ahead of the curve.

Hey there,

In general, with every price action bar, the stop goes at the other end of the bar and the order goes at the breach of the bar with a small buffer to signal it's completely broken. The bigger the timeframe the bigger the buffer. There are more aggressive ways to play these involving a more aggressive entry on the retrace into the bar, or a reduced stop size, but it's not a good idea to try those until you're comfortable with the other way. Also, traders like James16 and mbqb11 who have a lot of experience play the bars conservatively as I described originally. So the more aggressive way doesn't necessarily lead to more profits. In fact, it's often the other way round.

We tend to look for bullish outside bars at lows and bearish outside bars at highs to signal reversals. Which is why I won't be playing these bars. That doesn't mean they won't work but I look for high probability trades and these BUOB bars are more reliable at swing lows.

That's the beauty of this method. Once you know the basics of identifying a good bar and understanding side to side support and resistance, then you can use James16's price action methods to build your own strategy, perhaps even taking a system that didn't work for you before and adding a PA element to it. It really is powerful. Everyone here trades so differently, all using the same basic principles. But they all started the same way, building from the basics up.

Which is why in my experience, playing BUOBs at lows is a good way to go first, before learning to use them as continuation bars. I tend to lean towards beig more conservative and always ask, as mbqb11 taught me, "could I get my money in better elsewhere?" In this case the answer for me would be 'yes'.

Again, just my view and opinion on how I would look at them. The joy of this thread is that there are so many different perspectives and a very healthy lack of ego. Most people will help you out.

Good luck if you decide to play them. I'll be watching them with interest.

Hey Dave,

I had a look through your post history and see that you're very experienced, so I hope my answer didn't come across as patronising. Hopefully it'll be useful to someone looking over the thread.

It seems your question is whether on the breach of the bar at a breakout level we wait for a retrace to that level before getting in. The simple answer is, in general, no. Once the highs and buffer are broken, the trade is on. There is often retrace/drawdown especially on outside bars and if you wanted you could finesse an entry there using fibs and SR levels on lower timeframes.

I think that may have been more what you were looking for.....

Josh, you're an inspiration brother. This is exactly what we should all be doing.

I completely agree with this. Backtesting is not just about the results you get. It's about sitting there taking trade after trade after trade and developing a "feel" for how the bars work. If you've taken 800 price action bars in backtesting you're going to be building a lot of confidence. More than if you looked at Josh's word document and poached the results.

I always like to think of it in this way: I'm not backtesting the system or the method. I respect james and the others. I know they are not lying. the system works. What I am backtesting is me. I'm the variable between James trading price action and me trading it. So I'm the part that needs to be put through testing, tweaking and improvement.

Every batch of trades I backtest takes another sack of nerves out of the "should I/shouldn't I" dilemma at daily close. Trading shouldn't be nerve wracking. With a well tested system, and an adherence to james16's minimum requirements, it should be boring, predictable... and profitable

Be my guest. And thanks...

Like a poster with two big eyes and the words "THE EYES OF MIKE ARE UPON YOU"

Be afraid children. He hunts the reckless and feeds on the overtraders.

I am a great believer in the more pairs the better and I think it helps avoid overtrading.

Really good setups don't appear that often per pair. And analysing the dailies every night takes hardly any time. Most nights there is no bar, so I close the charts. If I'm only watching 6 pairs then it may well be months before a trade comes along. And then I get tempted by B trades.

So personally I watch 25. Daily and weekly time frames. And I look for 3-5 trades a month. I am aiming to expand to commodities and metals and indices when I have fully backtested these. That'll mean many more chances to catch the very best slam dunk setups. And I still am only looking for a handful of setups a month.

When people talk of watching fewer pairs their rationale is often based on the amount of analysis they have to do per pair. With this method it's so simple. The bar, the location, the pivot zones. Only then will I start looking for confluence and even that is limited to fibs, the 150 and 365 EMAs, and MACD for divergence. That's it. I open my charts at night and cycle through my pairs in about 10-15 minutes.

Gotta love the simplicity of this method. The complicated part is my ego which often gets in the way. You wouldn't believe the dance it has done with me today because just as I was about to place an order for the NU daily pin, the darn thing shot down to my first target. But that's another story.....

Hey Jellybean,

I pnly trade dailies and weeklies and keep them on both. Meaning the 150 and 365 are relevant to whichever chart I am looking at. I've seen the 150 and especially the 365 act as support and resistance on all timeframes though. You could go a little mad if you had the 1H, 4H, daily and weekly 365 EMA levels in your head so I just look to the EMA for tehc hart I am evaluating.

Just do a scan back over the last several hunded bas on any time frame with the 150 and 365 plotted. You'll be pleasnatly surprised.

Hope that helps.

They are just another tool in the confluence kit. They are useful on their own but it's when they combine with price action, fibs and possibly divergence that we get the slam dunk trades. And even they don;t sometimes work out..... But across a large number of trades we begin to see the benefit of our high probability approach.

You got it. Each price action bar discussed is a trigger in its own right. Pin Bars are often discussed more because they are more popular but every one of those setups in the right location is tradeable.

Welcome to the thread. Reading through it will advance you more than you can ever imagine.
Good luck.

Personally I prefer BUOBs at swing lows, I've found them more reliable that way. Also, I don't enter any price action trades until the bar is breached. I've found that what I make looking for an entry on the retrace of the bar, I end up giving back on taking those entries where the bar doesn't breach. So it's not worth it for me.

It's also worth noting that the small friday bar is from very low levels of trading on friday because of the public holiday. That, the fact that the BUOB is not at a low, and the big round number 1.50 area looming above make this an easy pass for me. I'm watching 1.50 for some PA though, and the chart shows what I personally am looking for. With apologies to mbqb11 who has shown me a hundred charts like this in the past...

That's not to say that it isn't tradeable, I'm just giving you my take. Others may have different views.

Hope that helps.

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The reason I mention the low volume friday, is that BUOBs for me are breakouts of a daily range, with price dipping below the previous day's low and then being rejected all the way to beyond the previous day's high. When the bar is smaller because traders were taking a day off then I am less inclined to trust the lows and highs for breakout purposes unless the bar was in a A+++ location. They are a little like Sunday bars to me.

Also, I should clarify. I look for confluence with my trades. A combination of factors that enhance the probability. So once I know the bar is a valid bar, I look for a good location then for some combination of fib support, divergence, PPZ, EMA levels. When I have two or three supporting factors then I consider it a high probability trade. In assessing this bar I don't see any confluence factors so I pass. It may well shoot to the moon and go to 150 and beyond. I've seen many, many of them do that. But it's not one I'd want to put me money behind. We deal here in probabilities not predictions, so I look for a trade with a high percentage chance of succeeding and try not to get too phased when the ones I pass on take off, remembering that 3 out of 4 times they probably won't.

I think you'll get as many perspectives on the bar here as there are members on the forum. What is important is what you feel. One person may pass and another may take it and they are both right. That is the joy of this work, there are so many ways to make money doing it.

As I said, that's just my thinking, but I tend to be a conservative trader. Others may give you a different perspective.

Hope that helps.

Preach it brother! Let em hear it in the valleys and the mountains....

This is funny. I was reading this paragraph and getting ready to post "I couldn't agree more, you're a wise man" and then I got to those brackets at the end....

It takes a while to uncover the kind of trader you are. I am still learning. But what James teaches here allows you to stay in the game while you find out. He teaches the most conservative, basic approach to build an account and build confidence. And then you can add your flourishes. Believe me, if you do it like James says and you have a long run of winners it just does the most amazing things for your confidence. It's been doing it for mine.

As I've always said, Mike takes a lot of his trades intraday and then waits for the juiciest 2 or 3 daily setups a month. Jim Jarroo prefers to day trade off a daily chart and so takes more trades, gets his stops to break even or takes partial profit quick and then hopes for a runner.

The key thing is, there is no right way.

Look at raczekfx. He trades incredibly aggressively but he's profitable. And I believe it's because he is trading a style that suits his personality. rustyjeff is incredibly comfortable with super short time frames and has been trying to train himself on the dailies recently (I think I read that jeff, apologies if I've misremembered). ryanmcd came in and shook things up with his style which involved the 5m chart. I am beginning to discover that I like day trading off the daily chart. Small moves, quick break evens, and hopefully I will start to widen what I trade to futures, metals, and equities; picking the best setups and taking small RRs on each one.

I found forex just under a year ago. I thought that with the "when you see the green button buy and when you see the red button sell" that I would make a fortune. I demoed and started to learn that that wasn't working. I've spent over a year studying and demoing, whilst doing my other line of work, and the time invested is really beginning to pay off. It takes a while to begin to see things simply. That's the benefit of time spent studying. it simplifies, simplifies, simplifies. mbqb11 has a set of rules that give him comfort. If his rules are broken, no trade. And he doesn't care if it goes to the moon. There will be other opportunities. He's happy, in his comfort zone, and profitable. What I most want to emulate is just how routine and easy trading is for him. No drama.

I've made so many mistakes along the way. I thought it would be a great idea to give some money to others to trade for me while I was learning this method. And I thought I picked people well. Guess how much I lost to the first guy? ?23,000. That's right. I feel sick just thinking about it. And the total losses to date have been bigger.

But as someone said before, sometimes we have to fall hard to learn the lesson. Paying "trader tuition" in this way is avoidable if we follow James' directions, but it seems that so many of us didn't do it this way. Whilst it hurts, I am also encouraged by the fact that there are so many in this thread who have some horror stories of losses in trading. Then they found this place and now they do very very well. I am slowly on that path myself.

If anyone is new to this thread, there really is no way to convince you that this is more than just another "this really works" system on FF. But believe me, if you're reading this thread and taking it seriously you don't know how lucky you are. You are ahead of the pack. This is a market proof method, indicator free, simple and profitable. There are hedge funds that would kill for this information. I know. A friend of mine runs one of the biggest ones in London. But the best place to hide this "secret" is in plain sight, accessible to everyone, on a forum called forexfactory....

Sorry for being verbose fellas, and thanks for reading. But my heart really does overflow with gratitude when I think of what I learn here and how many people are willing to help. James16 and mbqb11 could confidently trade as well as if not better than anyone in the financial world. And here they are, helping us for free. That is special. And then the people they teach, end up helping those that come after. That is such a beautiful example of man helping his fellow man. And when I read the stories of those of you in different corners of the world coming here to look for better lives for your families, then my heart wells up. If you follow this earnestly, you know that this is no get rich quick, that you need to be well capitalised to make an income. But you're willing to sit here and learn the skills, and then share them with others.

It is truly a special place. And I am very grateful for it.

And if anyone is new.... read Jduester's post history and do exactly what he did....

Thanks Bundy. You couldn't have explained more clearly how different intraday trading is to daily. That's brilliant.

Maybe someone should do a similar one on the dailies showing how much easier it is.....

Spend a little time on this thread and you're going to regret choosing that name....

You'll be a wise old trader before you know it with the nickname "total newbie".

Then again they do say that the secret to success is to always have a beginner's mind...

Good luck and welcome.

I did do a formal test of retracement entries. Large sample size, I only picked the very best pins, and it performed worse than waiting for the breach. It's worth remembering that James16 says it isn't actually a pinbar until it's breached.

A more interesting agressive strategy is having a reduced stop after the breach, say at second eye level. I'm doing testing at the moment with that. It's not that different to what someone like Jarroo does, which is rarely alow himself to take a full loss. Rather he gets out early if price is going against him, sort of a mental reduced stop.

It's also worth stating that I'm discovering that simple is always better in trading. Overcomplication leads my mind towards grail seeking. I've seen too many traders (some of who worked for me) explode by trying to get too cute or fancy. They've turned A+ trades into losers with disastrous results simply by trying to finesse the entry. Not saying it can't be done, but it's a hazardous path.

I probably need to do a little testing on what level of retrace needs to happen before I pull my pending order. For example if this goes up 80% of the bar, will I still have my pending order there if it breaches beyond the low tonight?....

Let's see. I'm setting an alert for if price does get close to my pending entry. And if it breaks the nose of the bar, the pendings get pulled.

This is exactly what I meant. Go back over my post and you'll see that I said that nothing in my testing shows anything to warrant an entry before the breach. That's just me. Rac is hugely profitable doing this.

What I meant was that entering after the breach, if you were minded to be aggressive (and I'm not) you could set your stop above the left eye. I'm pointing this out to show that there are ways to be aggressive and still wait for the breach.

Personally I want to keep things simple for now. And today it's saved my bacon.

Jim, would you have pulled your pending order on the USDCAD by now because of the deep retrace?

Just to chime in on this subjects of aggressive stops....

It takes me a few seconds to scan a pair on the dailies to see if there is a bar. If there is, then I look for the locations and confluences. I don't really worry about too much else. (indicators, fundamentals don't mean much to me). This means I can check a lot instruments every night.

To those of you that are thinking about being aggressive and squeezing pips out of every trade, can I suggest possibly widening your remit to learn about futures, stock, indices.... in fact everything with a chart. My plan is to eventually trade all these, some on weekly only some weekly and daily.

That way, with all the extra opportunities, I can keep my entries simple. Entry on the breach, stop on the other side of the bar. It seems like it might be an easier and more stress free way of gaining the extra pips, than trying to squeeze them out of every forex trade with retrace entries.

Of course everyone trades differently so it's just an alternative point of view. Clockwork71's silent service thread is great for talking about price action setups on stocks as well.

While it's "Question Jarroo day"...

When you say 26 pip stop, does your MM mean that you trade a fixed percentage of your account per trade? Or do you base it on say 1R for the full bar and then have your stop behind the second eye thus reducing the risk.

I'm genuinely curious as to how others manage it. As we know, a smaller stop means nothing if the percentage of the account risked is the same.

I can agree with this. I sent an email to Jim because one of my three months was 1% and I wondered if it was too little. But I am building a foundation here and taking profit at first target, being picky and risking 1% means that 1% is very reasonable. Then in the future, going months without a loss, I can consider increasing risk, or rather widening the instruments I trade. This is just the beginning of the journey for me. And A+ price action setups are so rare that often you can go a month without trading.

I have been following this material for many many months, since about august last year. And then i did about 3 months of live trading at the end of 2008 and was profitable for 2 of them and the other was a very small loss. Then I took some time off for personal reasons and am back now, doing month 2 of my 3 months with no losses at all yet.

For me it's important to stick to the rules I set myself because I think that's the key to trading. Being rewarded for breaking my rules is one of the worst psychological reinforcements I can get.

There are so many more layers to this than getting profitable. This month has been more about learning that trades that don't fit my plan take off all the time and developing the psych to resist feeling that I "missed out". The trading part has been relatively easy. So it's a constant learning curve.

Bit of a ramble before work.....hope it helps.

Aaron

Guy Finley is great. He was first recommended to me by James16 over on the PF.

I can also second the value of meditating. A few months of doing this showed me that if left unchecked my emotions would just go haywire. Why did the trade take off without me, why did I lose, should I have closed there, should i have taken it, should I have taken partial profit, endless watching of the charts.....this can destroy your mind.

And I have seen at first hand how traders with year long profitable records explode when given serious money to trade. I believe that most systems work and the reason most people fail is because trading is 80% psychological.

Have a great weekend everyone.

I've spent some time today bouncing around some other threads and I just wanted to express my gratitude to everyone here for their civility. Aside from the information here there is an incredible degree of respect for everyone, and the seniors don't holler in your ear aggressively. No one is beaten down or humiliated and opinions are expressed simply, in a straightforward manner and with respect.

It's only when you see what else is out there that you truly begin to appreciate what's on offer here. I was one of those who found J16 early but speaking to some people who have traded for years before finding this thread, it seems I have been very very lucky.

Happy trading next week everyone.