It appears many professional traders have come to a conclusion I arrived at about a year ago – that the market is stuck in a range with no long term trends. Sounds to me like they better start trading ranges! LOL!
Read the whole article at WSJ Market Beat
I just ran across this post while browsing forex factory and thought it was worth posting here:
Think of Michael Jordan. He was one of the greatest basketball players ever. Regardless of his athletic ability, when he went into baseball, he struggled immensely and that was after having playing experience all through high school. Today he golfs and is considered to be just below the level of a pro player. He has amazing talent at almost any athletic endeavor he sets out to do, but regardless of all this, he was only able to master basketball. He practiced the game so intensely everyone around him had to work harder just to keep up with him. He would come early and stay after practice. Why? Because he knew to be a true master at the game of basketball, he had to dig one hole 50ft deep and not 50 holes 1ft deep.
If you are not digging your 50ft hole, but relying upon several methods, systems and tactics which are likely disconnected, you will never master trading. Do you really think institutional traders are trading 5-10 systems all at once? Do you really think a sniper becomes an expert marksman by learning how to use 50 weapons or a few? All experts in any field subconsciously know to be a master at anything, you have to dig your 50ft hole.
source: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=298277
Is it possible to scalp and make a living in the markets?
Have you ever heard of Paul Rotter? Well he was an independent trader who was raking in 7 million/month scalping.
Read this interview with the infamous Paul Rotter and let me know what you think.
Own a bank stock – any bank!
Here’s a little overview of the year-to-date performance of some of the major global banking stocks on December 29, 2011, before the opening bell:
BofA: -60.38%
Citi: -44.76%
Goldman Sachs: -46.41%
JPMorgan: -23.03%
Morgan Stanley: -45.24%
RBS: -50%
Barclays: -34.32%
Lloyds: -63.02%
UBS: -29.33%
Deutsche Bank: -28,55%
Crédit Agricole: -56.04%
BNP Paribas: -37.67%
Société Générale: -59.57%
These are just some of the Too Big To Fail institutions. And while your governments have enough faith in them – or so they want you to believe – to prop them up with trillions of dollars of your money, investors are fleeing them, even if they can expect them to be propped up further.
Read more: http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/12/december-29-2011-trends-2012-end-of.html#ixzz1hz87rp4P
After what looked like an early morning trend change, the Euro looks to be headed down again. Get ready to sell pullbacks to the 21 EMA.
For a while now I have been trying to become a pure price action trader. Well, as Jessie Livermore once said
“The game taught me the game and it did not spare the rod.”
What the game has taught me is that price action trading is for the disciplined screen watcher. Price action trading requires too much discipline for me! I have come to the realization that I need at least a couple of indicators to keep me from OVER trading.
My best trading was done in 2007 with just pivot points and a 21 EMA. Trading seemed real easy back then. I would just wait for price to hit support, then break the 21 EMA. I almost never lost using this method… and as I am writing this I can’t seem to remember why I stopped using it.
Anyway, I have starting using moving averages with pivot points again. I have added fractals and will even add the awesome oscillator to keep me in trades longer.
Above is a snapshot of today. I took 7 trades off of the 1 minute chart. All but 1 were winners. I’ll start posting what I’m doing in the coming days.
In the meantime – enjoy your weekend.
The Japanese government has intervened and began aggressively selling yen in attempt to weaken the currency as it reached 15 year highs.
I am fond of pivot points. The trades in which I’ve made the most money and been the most consistant have all involved pivot points. Do I think pivot points are the holy grail of trading? NO! But I do think that enough people use them to make them effective.
Look at this image of this mornings Asian and European sessions. The red dotted line was R1, the yellow solid line the pivot point, and the green dotted line S1.
Remember for forex, pivot points should be calculated at 5PM EST. So the lines were calculated and drawn before the overnight price action occurred.
Draw your own conclusions.