(binned per thread starter's request) Market bottom rotation trad

Looking forward for your contribution on equity setups. Mind that equity markets will beat the crap out of FX any day on M1 plays due to much larger number of instrumets, even on day like today when FX is in crickets mode equities will almost never disapoint.

CRM forgot to place alert, decent move.

CL tracking for potential long play, B quality setup no strong impulsive move ahead of it. Also HFC.

Took HFC long, exited on 0.3R loss. CL squeezed quite strong but didnt get a fill on pending.

ATI on sight with momentum move into supply.

CVX maybe potential play, nothing too strong to stress about though.

MRK in play will look to get filled on long on this one for sure.

On close watch now few plays that could turn into end of the day / end of the week plays. Nothing too strong but decent overall plays.

MRK didnt get a chance to get filled on pending long, quick move.

MO.

SHOP might turn into one.

CVX exited on break even.

Squeezed well but got capital / buy power locked in SHOP so no fill.

SHOP sold for 1R gain 30% position, the rest BE.

And thats about it for this week, goes without saying how important is trading last 30 mins before market close, 4 solid plays on the go all delivering.

Before going just to make sense for anyone reading trough the setups you need to go trough whole thread to make sense of setups becouse they are quite un-evenly explained trough all the pages. By no means am i organised person so take what youll get is the way thread will operate in near future.

Alright off i go watching few episodes of Billions season 3 and disappear. As pointed out previously next week eyes on gold for macro play on Syria.

Had 3 trades today, 2 of them NZD/CAD and AUD/NZD were break-evens

Made about 1.5 R on EUR/USD trade got in after 5 min pin bar, almost got stopped out. I work so I've had to improvise to be able to use this method...will it work? who knows?

Also I use the bottom of the pin bar/engulfing as the SL, this way won't give me as many opportunities and probably not as high risk to reward but can't keep up with charts as much as I'd like.

Mistakes

Trading just like any complex process where one starts to engage in while not having a full knowledge or perspective shaped to confront it, will by default lead to making mistakes. Knowing that ahead and fully understanding and admitting that one will make mistakes trough his / her journey is hugely advantageous as it puts every mistake into correct perspective, yet its something that is impossible to do ahead because one needs a lot of experiance and failures before realizing that, this therefore increases chances for one to give up before succeeding at it. Some things one can learn from knowledge passed by others, and some things can be pointed out but actually can never be learnt unless the experiance is taken. Once you do realize that and come to other side of tunnel the good thing is, one can then start to have proper realistic expectation in anything in life that has same approach and is hard. If something is hard and creates a lot of struggle, one might ask then why do it? For that every person will have their own answer why they are attempting to make it in trading, and usually the actual answer that one things it is the answer is later on turned out not to be the actual answer, usually people tend to go after something that makes money as they assume thats the real goal, but once you start making decent money it could turn out that almost doesnt matter and there is hidden goal behind it. Knowing that ahead could be very advantageous as such trader will less likely make mistakes as it will be more realistically long term thinker, but realistically its hard to figure it out, usually most people will only find real answer once passing trough initial superficial goal. Once the real answer is found the trading will become more stable and likely also more patience guided.

There are many great quotes to post on mistake making and right mindset to learn from them. There is only so much person without experiance can grasp to learn from them, by majority cases one needs experiance and repeation before fully grasping them. Usually only very open minded and technical persons will grasp those lessons without any experiance.

David Millar:

"People do make mistakes and I think they should be punished. But they should be forgiven and given the opportunity for a second chance. We are human beings."

While it might sound that Millar is being harsh there, the reality is that animals only learn from mistakes that bring pain and give punishment. If mistake is rewarded its likely that this person will not change mindset or learn anything from mistake, because why bother? Therefore the nature shapes the costliest and most dangerous mistakes as biggest punishments if those mistakes are observed by others, if they are not observed, nothing is learned and that deadly mistake might exists within many generations. Soft mistakes that are punished are the ones that animals learn the quickest.
One brilliant thing about markets is that markets will punish every participant if there is mistake or wrong opinion that keeps persisting. Therefore trader is forced to figure out why something was wrong and find a fix to it. Market will give everyone second chance, but not everyone will take the lesson, some will not admit a mistake and therefore that initial mistake might be extremely costly.

Robert Zoellick

"All of us make mistakes. The key is to acknowledge them, learn, and move on. The real sin is ignoring mistakes, or worse, seeking to hide them."

That should be straight forward. This applies to trading on every level. Understanding every single word and part of sentence in that quote and understanding the extent of impact on trading, is having a proper mindset and knowledge in trading. Realistic expectations, admission, go trough the closet of skeletons but dont let those affect you in mood in future, strategizing the plan to fix those instead of forgetting them.

Meek Mill

"If you don't know where you make your mistakes, that's your worst mistake: not knowing where your mistakes are at."

And this is where it is no longer just about theories on how one should trade, but this is where one really gets in trenches and thats where it becomes difficult.
The majority of traders, especially beginners will simply not be able to define what exactly a mistake in trading actually is. One of major reasons why they wont be able to define a mistake is due to lack of research of their own traded pattern and their own strategy, simply that. If one thinks on more broad level....what is a mistake? If you want to define that, you need to have process oriented approach. Mistake is simply sub-optimal execution of a process which often yields a bad result. Now in order to define mistake, one needs to know what is the optimal execution of ones strategy and pattern, and that can only be done with extensive research or help of computing / algo power. One will often find that majority of traders will think of trading like a subjective opinion weighted process where your opinion is just another subjective opinion and there is no real right or wrong when it comes to trading, but that is not where the exact reality is at. For example, a trader will exit loss with 10 pip SL and the other trader trading same instrument will say "oh too tight exit there, i have view that price will go in your direction but needs to drop first some more", now if you actually research both of those individuals often none of them had substential research done, actually none of them usually had any substential backtest done on strategy so any opinion will be just a complete guess.
If strategy isnt robust it cannot be stress or back tested, if its too robust it could be exposed to pattern overfitting. There is decent balance to be done.
So in order to find what mistake is and where it is positioned, one needs first historical research and strategy optimization to be done. A good strategy and opinion is 80% optimized, perfect strategy (doesnt exist) is 100% optimized and poor strategy is not optimized at all.

Mary Taylor Moore

"Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave."

The best things in life are the ones that create consistent pain, usually those are the things worth fighting for, there are negative exceptions but it often holds true.
Trading is huge risk taking process, pretty much everyone at beginning has large loses, if you dont take chances you wont be able to have potential for large gains, but to achieve large gains it usually begins with very painful path. The worst thing that can happen to trader (which actually many successful traders agree) is to have winning streak straight from the go, if no painful lessons are learnt, chances are that trader will form a too high expectations or not having full perspective which increases chances of complete failure with giving up somewhen later on the run.

Winston Churchill

"History will be kind to me, since i am the one who will be writing it."

There is similar quote passed by Julius C, but its interesting how under-realized both those lessons are. When it comes to learning any lessons or infos there are different kind of informations. There are true raw facts of factual situations or events that happened backed by empirical data, those are the highest quality info and the most useful in trading as there is no hidden agenda behind them. Then there are semi objective infos passed by individuals that have condensed large amount of data to pack it into smaller quick lessons (for example this thread), those informations might or might not be fully correct, being somewhat on the tilt of being very right in some cases, being sub-right in other or being wrong in third cases. Then additionally to that are highly subjective views usually aimed from two different reasons, one is emotional bias toward that info, or simply hidden agenda with targeted attempt, those infos are the most dangerous as they shape wrong view on the actual subject.
So now one might ask, yes but thats all theoretical brainstorming without much substance since its useless. Whats the solution to it, how can one see the reality as close as possible to its core truth? The answer is diversification of informational inputs, having many different perspectives shined on situation by people who do not share same values and do not share same single persons who they learn from, and having people in the mix who has no real care for what the situation is and are able to be more objective with less emotional bias. The higher the trader moves on macro scale the more likely it is that one will deal with subjective infos with hidden agendas. Trading reality is all about matrixing, matrixing is where you know what the result is as result is currently reported, but the key is to find what actual variables shaped the result so that one can learn that lesson for future. To find the real variables one needs to move more to the left side of historical data than majority of conventional wisdom will tell you and also to have many different perspectives and views on situation.
Once one puts substential time of studying macro events such as economic crisis, tensions, bull markets, wars and uses correct strategic approach one will find very frequent hidden agendas pushed by different players and that conventional wisdom out there on situation will be very wrong. Victors write the history very often, therefore it might not be objective report. Knowing how to tell objective person from subjective what are the thinking mechanics behind is can be very adventageous.
And since this thread will cover many different strategies that i use, such as short term, micro term and macro term strategies all the correct mechanics will be addressed. In my books a good trader is flexible and has large arsenal of strategies to never be forced picking bad plays just becouse "there is nothing out there", but rather have large play base to always find good entries.

Confucius

"Never contract a friendship with a man who is not better than thyself."

One of highest possible ways to advance trough quickly and learn as quick as possible is to use the point above as much as possible. Obviously there is a room to which that saying should not be used, somethimes friendships or any relationships are just due to completly different goal and that does not need to be applied, for example if you find attractive girl one doesnt need to have her to be better on the knowledge to you, because the goal of what one is targeting from such relationship is very different to just have an advanced knowledge.
But when one deals with very competive subjects such as markets, then you certainly want to adapt that rule. Erase your ego, do not be ashamed being humbled by someone who knows more than you even if you have dealt with that subject for years. There are few different personalities and aims how people approach that. Some people just enjoy being around people are worse than themselves strategically as they enjoy ripping into their lack of knowledge or performance, those people will generally advance very slowly as one doesnt not learn much doing that, and then there are people who will always push into stronger people just to learn lessons from them and enjoy being proven wrong and learning from mistake. The end result in both cases is the same...dopamine, its chemical reward that brain triggers in both process, but in first case one is positiviely rewarded for poor behaviour (against evolution) and in second one is rewarded for good behaviour. Keep sticking to first behaviour and eventually some other specifies will out-compete you.

Confucius

"The superior man thinks always of virtue, the common man thinks of comfort. "

One needs to push himself into doing something that is hard, painful (but with always having second chance), a comfort does not improve ones strategic thinking.
One thing about trading is that it never gets comfortable, simply becouse its a probability based process one can never truly relax around it with place of comfort, markets constantly test that person. Being tested without doing reflection on past decisions is not learning, but not being tested consistently with doing too much reflection on single or few repetitions is even more dangerous as it creates unrealistic expectations. Think of it as process not a single hits.

Confucius

"To know what you know and to know what you dont know is the real knowledge".

To really understand the works of reality one needs to be humble (humbled by previous mistakes) that every person only has true knowledge on very limited amount of subjects and poor knowledge on pretty much 99% that exist in universe. Not understanding that will lead to confront often subject and having wrong opinion on it, sadly in most cases people get away with it, as they are not punished. But in markets there is no hiding room. If one has limited knowledge on certain subject on markets its far better to realize that 100% and then ask a person who one judges might have the answer rather than just assuming its not important or to hide the question just to not look weak in public. Having strong opinions on where one has strong knowledge and that strong knowledge is admited and confirmed by consistancy of performance, there is huge difference between having "good" knowledge which is purely theoretical but not proven by consistency of applying it on process, and knowledge that is backed by tons of positive data. Engage yourself in frequent process and one will adapt quickly, engage yourself in slow process and one will adapt slowly. This is digital age, one better does first method.

Confucius

"When anger rises, think of consequences."

Putting this one into bold letters, probably his best quote. There are two most destructive emotions that humans have, especially in 21st century (back thousands or hundreds of thousands years ago, somewhat more useful, but today ....nope) : anger and euphoria.
Both of those fellings on oposite side of scale, each of them in specific situations very destructive. Trading is strategic process, one needs to think of its own psychology what makes a good mood or state of trader to have a good chance executing trades well. The overall answer is neutral and open minded approach. No substential bias and also a lot of self doubt and especially no moral compass at current situation. Having a completly oposite view on any of above points creates impossible state to succeed in trading.
I have addressed before how important is not trade when being in angry state but it should be pointed over as its one of most destructive states in trading.
When trader trades in anger mode it will lead to bad decisions and poor execution, so when one spots himself being angry first thing is to think ahead what happened previously when trading angry, what were the consequences. Your job as trader is to outsmart majority of participants, or to level-smart the largest players / shark, your job however is not the beat them defenetly not as retail trader, that is strategy for sized players only.
Being in euphoric state when winning a trade will often produce similar results to being angry, but the end result of mood will be different usually ending with sad state. Even a good strategic player will somethimes be pushed into angry or euphoric state due to certain variables, if so one should stop trading until cooling down.
I could point to a graveyard of trades in initial 3 years of trading that are a proof of not doing that and then ending with terrible results. Luckily majority are demo trades, but still the point remains. That is why i usually tend to cut losses quick and not attempt another reentry if price does actually go into direction initially planned as that often triggers anger if price again goes agains trader, there are exceptions and usually those are backed by good reason, but never force the second entry. This is something i believe it cannot be learnt, no matter how many times its read, its just something that gets baked by experiance or it doesnt.

Confucius

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance."

When it comes to frequency of trading opinions there is no better quote to point than this one. If one can break down a bad / wrong opinion by empirical research and exactly point to how that thinking process of person yielded wrong result / opinion one will learn a substential lesson. Once you understand how to use bullshit detected you will be able to use it on any subject that you have decent knowledge on. Everyone is ignorant at some point, but for one to advance its important to not be and know how to spot ignorance.
Here is a very quick and extremelly high performing equation how to very likely spot a ingorance:
-know specific persons broad history of knowledge
-spot them having strong opinion on subject they have very limited experiance and knowledge on (admitedly or non admitedly)

Thats it.
What is the end result? Terrible performance of reality checks.

Now while i could write whole book on examples of this, ill just name few, and for any reader to pick a key strategic lessons it needs to be practical so that one can see what kind of decision making and thinking leads to person being ignorant and thus very likely wrong. Practical real examples recorded by myself:

2008 crisis.
-Person with limited knowledge on actual crisis, individual with overall knowledge on economy but that knowledge not being connected to reality (having idealistic view of how economy should be run), having strong opinion on subject, and once the research is done, one will be able to tell his view has nothing to do with reality.
Has bearish view on USD in that time, but the reality why USD droped initially is completly different.

2015 Greece crisis
-person with extremely limited knowledge on how financial markets work, how nations with positive surplus or negative deficit tend to work, person shaping very strong opinion on subject just from few articles read from media. Terrible non-realistic view on actual event why it happened, how it happened, how it resulted.
Has opinion that Greece will default and EU will force a default, completly oposite reactions on Greece bonds.

2014 official start of asymmetric war between US and Russia.
-individual with limited economical knowledge and no knowledge whastsoever on first cold war, nor the history itself. Creating a blind spot on required topics in order to fully grasp the actions taken and possible reactions and thus being completly wrong on overall direction of market. Also a person with very limited frequency of repetitions on subjects trying to address.
Has bullish emerging market view, reality is emerging markets had strongest drop at that year since last 20 years.

2017 individual with opinion that break of specific EURUSD trendline will almost certainly yield strong drop down to 1.000 and lower. Posted like a 100s of videos on it, amazing. Individual with somewhat limited knowledge on price action, with wrong mind set when it comes to trading, and no realization that certain event could turn price in other way strongly and erase the efficiency of that pattern.
Has strong bearish opinion, but EURUSD actually bottoms up and has strong run to 1.25 . Its not the fact that he was wrong that matters (becouse anyone can be wrong on anything) its how the thinking process was formed is what is problematic as if that thinking is replicated again it will consistently yield bad results.

2011-2018 a thousands if not millions of people with non realistic view on crypto currencies. This one is the most interesting, becouse the more complex the subject is and the more new it is the more chances are that many people will have bad opinions and decisions. I addressed this previously but there are a lot of lessons to be learned in this sector.
So...individuals with almost no knowledge on technology at all, no knowledge on how money works, will often tend to have strong opinions on crypto currencies based on snipets of data that they get from media, article here and there and then form opinions. If one stress and back tests those opinions and fits them to inovative technologies or especially revolutions or elevations of money as technology, those opinions fall bad, really bad. To the case of almost being wrong in 99% cases.
Now to figure out why is important to learn from it. No knowledge on subject is one thing which was already pointed out, but it goes above that.
It is actually that people tend to use laws and rules of universe to explain what a good money is and what a bad money is which is big flaw. Money as technology is not backed by rules of technology its simply abstract and conceptual technology where certain participants that the properties that certain thing has could and should become a money. Therefore history recorded many different things (which today might sound absurd) as money: shellfish shells, large gold coins, item to item, trousers, forks, and many more, and there were specific reasons why those assets were specified as money, and it had nothing to do with laws of physics in overall (at least not direct terms).

Therefore any new technology needs to be judged if it will be successful from this basic standpoint (100% objectivity):
-does it solve any problems in society
-will anyone find those problems solved as very useful thus likely to use it
-are there many people sharing that view likely , or just few individuals

For that one needs to step outside of its head, and judge the world from completly neutral point, not what you think its useful but trying to figure out how some other individual that lives 1000s of kms away from you might find that useful, if answer is consistently yes then what one has is technology that will likely dominate the whole world. All technologies that had such answer answered with consistency are now covering the whole world even if there was initial resistance to it (goverments, individuals, banks etc). Market will always outdone any individual if its played from stronger hand, market cannot be squeezed if the participants do not twitch.
If one does research on internet in 90s and the opinions of many people, its easy to see how many people with no knowledge on http or TCP protocol and their potential complety mis-judged the potential of that technology. Cryptocurrencies are the closest resemblance of that tehnology but in a much stronger de-centralized sense. If one understands what thinking processes, and knowledge history got those persons in wrong opinion (time proves if you are wrong), then one can learn what kind of thinking is strategically weak and not aligned with reality. A dinosaur mis-judging the mouse as playful but non threating being is the one one the way out, not the other way around. Not understanding the mechanics behind it, is mis-judging the situation. If done on individual basis it yields poor behaviour or even death, if done on large scale basis it leads to extinction.

By the way its hard to see that chart, Oandas software has a bit too much lines, would be better if you could use Lightshot software and just draw quickly why you traded and what you saw. It only takes few seconds to point it out.