Post by squirrel on Dec 2, 2015 17:47:25 GMT -5
Squirrel here,
Just thought I would introduce myself here too, as turning up in the middle of your trading session on the chat client maybe wasn't the best way to go about it.
Due to the nature of my other commitments, I am able to trade 3-4 days/week usually from Frankfurt open to London close or slightly beyond if conditions are favourable.
I have a long history in online poker and developed a sporadic interest in trading after the online poker boom went pop on "Black Friday" in 2011. Still play for fun but it doesn't earn the nut.
Got semi serious with some indicator/mechanical rules systems but couldn't believe in it enough to commit proper money when the little light turned green/red/blue etc and when the expected value of the trades wasn't met it was usually that I hadn't checked the pivot points, daily open, atr, phase of the moon, etc (BTW on FF there is a popular ongoing thread "Astro based Turning Points" complete with indicator). Meanwhile I could "see" opportunities on the chart that I thought were repeating/exploitable. Guess this is starting to sound familiar.
Working on the assumption that if I had thought of it, someone smarter than me had thought of it before and had probably written a book about it, Al Brooks caught my attention and while I was wading my way through some of his beginners stuff I found Bob Volman's FPAS.
I struggled quite a lot to understand FPAS and in hindsight this was down to my delayed learning whilst using the indicator/rules systems. I didn't come to appreciate FPAS until I had implemented UPA for 6 months or so.
The "slower" pace of UPA on the M5 allowed me to catch up on reading the price action and I found it more accessible, as a price action beginner, than FPAS. I have been live trading with UPA for the past 9 months and have learnt/developed as a result of rereading it several times. The 6 months of annotated charts is fantastic for flicking through whilst setups evolve and even better for reviewing missed/skipped trades.
Notwithstanding the setups in UPA, the continued reinforcement of not cherry picking trades and trading all valid setups was excellent. This chimed well with the poker idea of expected value and that not every trade had to be a standalone winner. The section on unfavourable conditions has become more important to me, now that I am seeing the setups arriving, as the overall conditions have a lot more influence on trade validity than the setup, imo.
In a effort to tighten up my UPA entries and to better visualise the pa inside an M5 candle, I started to use an M1 chart. This naturally led me back to FPAS and the 70T chart. The 70T chart, set on full pip, started to make more sense to me and I could see SR and build up more clearly.
Sometimes the UPA and FPAS setups overlap and I trade these as UPA.
UPA pattern break combi setups are often FPAS ARB/BB and my favourite UPA breakout of a sloping pattern line often sets up as an FPAS IRB, these often have great follow through after the initial double pressure pop.
I currently trade EU,EJ, GU and UJ on UPA. I also watch and occasionally trade AU and UCad on UPA.
EU and UJ on FPAS only because of lower spread. (UK spreadbetting, so all charges are upfront in the initial spread).
I find trading very challenging and it can be quite lonely too, so its great to find somewhere with traders of a similar mindset and ethos who are actively sharing ideas and supporting each other.
Off to read the journals now.
cheers
Squirrel
Just thought I would introduce myself here too, as turning up in the middle of your trading session on the chat client maybe wasn't the best way to go about it.
Due to the nature of my other commitments, I am able to trade 3-4 days/week usually from Frankfurt open to London close or slightly beyond if conditions are favourable.
I have a long history in online poker and developed a sporadic interest in trading after the online poker boom went pop on "Black Friday" in 2011. Still play for fun but it doesn't earn the nut.
Got semi serious with some indicator/mechanical rules systems but couldn't believe in it enough to commit proper money when the little light turned green/red/blue etc and when the expected value of the trades wasn't met it was usually that I hadn't checked the pivot points, daily open, atr, phase of the moon, etc (BTW on FF there is a popular ongoing thread "Astro based Turning Points" complete with indicator). Meanwhile I could "see" opportunities on the chart that I thought were repeating/exploitable. Guess this is starting to sound familiar.
Working on the assumption that if I had thought of it, someone smarter than me had thought of it before and had probably written a book about it, Al Brooks caught my attention and while I was wading my way through some of his beginners stuff I found Bob Volman's FPAS.
I struggled quite a lot to understand FPAS and in hindsight this was down to my delayed learning whilst using the indicator/rules systems. I didn't come to appreciate FPAS until I had implemented UPA for 6 months or so.
The "slower" pace of UPA on the M5 allowed me to catch up on reading the price action and I found it more accessible, as a price action beginner, than FPAS. I have been live trading with UPA for the past 9 months and have learnt/developed as a result of rereading it several times. The 6 months of annotated charts is fantastic for flicking through whilst setups evolve and even better for reviewing missed/skipped trades.
Notwithstanding the setups in UPA, the continued reinforcement of not cherry picking trades and trading all valid setups was excellent. This chimed well with the poker idea of expected value and that not every trade had to be a standalone winner. The section on unfavourable conditions has become more important to me, now that I am seeing the setups arriving, as the overall conditions have a lot more influence on trade validity than the setup, imo.
In a effort to tighten up my UPA entries and to better visualise the pa inside an M5 candle, I started to use an M1 chart. This naturally led me back to FPAS and the 70T chart. The 70T chart, set on full pip, started to make more sense to me and I could see SR and build up more clearly.
Sometimes the UPA and FPAS setups overlap and I trade these as UPA.
UPA pattern break combi setups are often FPAS ARB/BB and my favourite UPA breakout of a sloping pattern line often sets up as an FPAS IRB, these often have great follow through after the initial double pressure pop.
I currently trade EU,EJ, GU and UJ on UPA. I also watch and occasionally trade AU and UCad on UPA.
EU and UJ on FPAS only because of lower spread. (UK spreadbetting, so all charges are upfront in the initial spread).
I find trading very challenging and it can be quite lonely too, so its great to find somewhere with traders of a similar mindset and ethos who are actively sharing ideas and supporting each other.
Off to read the journals now.
cheers
Squirrel
