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Many Traders Come and Go

Many traders come and go

But the markets will always remain

And the steps to heaven are eternal;

Follow in the footpath of a giant

And you shall ascend and find your fortune

Hedge Funds are behind the smart money pushing up the value of the EUR/USD

In the year 2014 the EUR/USD was trading at the 1.40 level and then political and economic circumstances led to hedge funds shorting the EUR/USD ruthlessly down and in driving up the value of the US Dollar brought down much of the physicals commodity markets as well.

Weekly Chart EUR/USD 2014 reminder.

In that same process international hedge funds piled into the US equities markets driving up the SP500 and the Dow to record levels.

2015-2017 were years of political chaos for Europe with Grexit, Brexit and Frexit seeming to pull apart the union at the seams and so the US Dollar and US equities were seen as a safe haven.

However 2017 marks a watershed in global markets. If economic theory proves correct in the long run then the cyclical nature of markets should kick in for both the US and European markets. On Friday the NFP data was a little robust but bearing in mind the Summer is good for employment and listening to the dovish statements of the FOMC then smart traders already know that the US cannot keep piling up stellar job growth numbers. In other words a contraction is around the corner. Over in Europe stagnation has been rife and negative interest rates seemingly did the trick to ignite the Euro markets as the same trick worked in US markets since the debacle of 2008. if that is the case then European expansion should start now and the economic theory of boom to bust appear to be correct in perspective.

Economic theory of expansion and contraction.

Most smart traders agree that the EUR/USD is undervalued as a pair. Friday's correction is normal. prices do not move up in a straight line. Expect consolidation this week at 1.17 as there is no sound economic reason for the pair to push lower. Soon enough we will be pushing for 1.19

The beginning of the Euro freight train; don't step in front of it!

Thereafter look to 1.24 and 1.30 as targets by the end of this year 2017. When you consider how hedge funds drove down the EUR/USD in 2014 on the back of economic and political uncertainty, what goes down comes back up, and this time it is the US markets which are coming under close scrutiny by hedge funds and it's beginning to look shaky, top-heavy and politically uncertain. The value currency this year is the Euro currency.

A currency can move in one direction in several pairs and present multiple profit scenarios

Now, today is a very good example how traders perceived the opening strength of the Japanese Yen and then sold it off only for it to rise again and fall off as the European session overlapped with the Asian session. As usual the session started in Tokyo with the usual buzz after a few hours of inactivity. Then the wave of emotions built through the day until the point of overlap with Europe.

Since a currency pair is a comparison between the strengths of two different economies you will notice that the JPY was perceived as weakening against several different economies because of fundamental weakness in the Japanese economy and trader anxiety over Japanese bond yields. So as a group the JPY wavered against the four currencies illustrated below - CHF, EUR. GBP, USD.

The lesson to be learn is that once you recognize the shape of the candles and see them time and time again in similar formations then you may choose the relative strength of your position ie. you could enter a single position or escalate to several positions to take advantage of a forthcoming three 15 minute candle bar direction over the next 45 minutes.

For the shorts the charts today on JPY signaled two short moves. As a rule of thumb I make my move on the second candle after the short signal being a Doji or a bearish engulfing candle pattern that engulfs the two previous green candles before the large red signal.

Please study as follows and recognize the two trading windows for 20-30 pips each. The strength of the signal will determine how many positions you open.

Pattern recognition is fundamental to taking quick trades to seize 20-30 pips over a 1 hour intra-day trading horizon.

Happy trading!

Forex Tokyo Open 2 Profit

Again I repeat Tokyo open

3 charts EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD

Not all the time Tokyo springs into action but on the pairs I watch regularly it's 2/3

Tokyo usually springs to life from local time 6.30 am. it is ideally located because come mid-day in New York forex traders just want to go to sleep since they start early to catch the Euro session. Liquidity thins and markets stall. it's the perfect window for a new direction.

The problem with waiting for key data releases is that you maybe right in determining a direction but in the first 15 minutes the volatility is so large that you get stopped out and then frustratingly you will see the prices move in the direction you anticipated after you have been stopped out!

I have found that it is better to trade the aftermath of a key report as volatility dies down. The first rule in trading is to cut your potential for losses and trading into large volatility can produce a whipsaw effect that can take your trade out even if you eventually were proven right.

Happy Trading!

Forex Tokyo Open 1 profit

EUR/USD

Japan open and 50 pip move.

One of the reasons I do not advocate trading key US data releases is because of the sheer quantity of players that jam into trades and the high probability of a whipsaw effect in the first 15 minute candle bar. For example, assuming that US Housing data came out as very strong and you were actually short EUR/USD prior to the data release on the morning, the usual tussle between the bears and the bulls may mean that your short may get stopped out quickly on an up move before the second fifteen minute candle plunges down. Yes, that's a great possibility and it;s very annoying to know that you may have been right with your market direction but you still got stopped out because of the huge volatility.

I prefer watching the dull, quiet, stationary market prior to Japanese market open because the potential for direction is enormous and the probabilities of large volatility whipsaw effects are much smaller.

The above chart is a good example how sleepy Tokyo wakes up and stirs to a 50 pip move.

Targeting small moves like this day in and day out is far more reliable than waiting for a big data release and hope for a large swing trading 200 pip tsunami move. With the big moves comes high risk and the possibility of a wipe-out. There is money in the daily trading ranges from Asia to Europe if you take a closer look at the behavioral charts reflected through candlesticks.

Have you ever wondered why seasoned veterans survive in the US currency futures markets? It is because they know how to scalp the small ticks. Be humble and book small profits and let your small trades accumulate in time. Be patient; this is a patience game. Don't hurry yourself into large winning trades."They stumble that run fast." If you are humble you will spot Mado windows every time for 10-20 pip quick trades an you can scale-up when you know momentum is on your side. But always trade with tight stops and if you take a knock on the chin, brush it off!

Trade with wisdom and find strength in the little, subtle changes in price action. Pattern recognition becomes your most formidable ally.

Gamers Are Better Forex Day Traders

The one thing about playing games is you learn to shut off your emotions.

I cannot count how many hours I plunged into racing games in the arcades ruthlessly trying to hunt the clock down by tenths of a second. Slamming my foot down on the pedal I almost tried to break the game again and again tirelessly.Every second of the course I could memorize. The brain works tirelessly to memorize every fraction of a second so that I know exactly when to decelerate on taking a corner and come out flying in 5th gear. I would pray for forgiveness to my girlfriend and my friends girlfriends who had to stand by behind us in the arcades for hours on end and just cheer us on as we hunted the clock down again and again and again with greater perfection. The brain shuts off all emotion and sensibility and only the pure logic of a sequence of moves performed in split seconds made the difference between winning and losing.

The human brain is remarkable. You perform a task and then the neurons in the brain connect through chemical interaction transmitting commands and retaining feedback from the result which collects into a memory. the more you repeat the task then the stronger the neural pathway becomes and the more neurons become integrated into the process of repetition. The exercise of memorizing certain moves in sequence during a racing game speeds up the way the brain absorbs the visual data and then implements an action. In the process the brain formulates its own independence of decision -making as the game hunts down the clock to record the faster speed.

The gamer does not need 5 voices from behind to tell the gamer to shift down from 5th to 4th gear. Similarly, the gamer trader does not need pundits to tell him to do this and that. More than half of the pundits are useless and dead wrong anyway. A gamer trader, just as in the case of car racing, builds hours of experience through pattern recognition. the more and more you stare at the patterns and watch the movement of the candles then the more likely the neurons will collect in your brain and retain the memory for random access when you observe a sudden repetition.

In this sense arcade gamers become ruthlessly logical day traders in the forex markets. They shut off their emotions and they do not listen to anyone. They don't need pundits and they certainly don't need a multitude of technical charts. Hardly any of these gamer traders now rising would get into MIT. But they would thrash an MIT grad any time when it comes to the art of making money in the forex markets because they have spent hours building up their predator instinct which enables them to carve small pips here and there in short bursts.

Some people call it a 6th sense. in truth; it is just hours and hours of recorded information building a mass of neurons that process data lightning fast and helps the gamer trader take a decision in the blink of an eye. of course in the long run if you are a position trader looking for days and weeks as your horizon then technical information becomes handy. But if you are a day trader and if you depend too much upon technical information then you might just miss the swing of the mood as a market reversal suddenly occurs in a few seconds. the gamer trader instinctively reacts faster because he has amassed more neurons to record the patterns in his brain.

Simply watching the flow of prices in a day helps your brain to identify the pattern of movement.

Hours and hours of reading and education did not help me to become a good day trader. But by simply watching human emotions the brain comes to understand the patterns of price action and is able to determine a response just as faster than anyone who spent hours reading books.

Bringing Down The Forex House

Bringing Down the Forex House in Asia

They're young, they're 18 -21 years old, they sit in their bedrooms, they chew noodles and

they bring the house down every single time and they are usually millionaires in Yen and Won and they do the hardest part. Then they they go out and blow all their money in expensive nightclubs but who cares anyway? They're young and they're arrogant but they will make the money again tomorrow again and again.

The Asian gamer trader is rising fast and with 5G around the corner and with China and India rising the forex trading distribution will soon be shared by Asia and Europe together. Certainly in the retail forex markets the Asian trader will become more predominant in the next 2-3 years and the age is getting younger and younger as a new generation of traders rise with a brutal efficiency to take on the forex world.

In truth 90% of the retails traders out there today have no real idea how the structure of the retail forex market works and that is why they consistently lose. So now I am going to break it down for you and hopefully you will take this understanding and become a better day trader for it.

Firstly, although hugely unregulated and non-descript, the forex spot market consists of about 80% bank commercial users, 15% large fund speculators and 5% non banking small retail forex customers .  The commercial banks which dominate the forex landscape are merely buying and selling under instruction for importers and institutional investors and therefore in an interbank market a bank is always making a bid-offer spread and booking profits countless times per day as customer orders come in. They do no use technical data as the mainstay of their transactional business. Herein lies the significant contrast where small retail forex traders cannot even make a move without reference to a smattering of elect technical indicators to justify their trade. Hence there is a failure to understand how the market works by the small retail trader.

Secondly, The FX platform provider is your house very much like a casino. The platform company has a line of credit with one or two major international commercial banks. A platform provider with 20,000 customers is likely to have an open line of credit of 20 million Dollars. Now, for illustration purposes lets imagine that the line of credit comes from Barclays Bank to the Platform Company.  This line of credit is paired with a quotation service which Barclays will provide to all it’s commercial customers which again is based upon it’s institutional price quote in the dealer market as quoted on Reuters and Bloomberg. That quote service to corporate customers is the basis upon which the Platform company will but and sell currencies to take the opposite side of their own customer orders through their own quotation service which is usually time lagged. So, essentially the Platform price a retail customer is using is time lagged behind the main price action of the bank dealer market.  Here the small trader is really at the mercy of the Platform provider to enter the trade at a time and price dictated by the Platform provider and failure to recognize this can become detrimental to the small trader’s longevity

Thirdly, Bank dealers in the interbank market are very much like the gamer traders that are emerging with the young people in that they are only concerned with what happens here and now as against any consideration of the past and the future. Bank dealers have no time to overload themselves with technical data and the new gamer traders who grew up on Naruto and other such online games are not going to waste a split second in determining where the action lies. Years of gaming have improved eye skills in understanding game play.

Looking at the 5 or 15 minute forex charts without consideration of massive amounts of technical data and the very first thing you notice is how the market moves in waves in rhythm as buyers gain strength and fade before the sellers. The only reference gamer traders keep in mind is the day chart because although trends can show up on day charts, within every 5 and 15 minutes you cannot expect prices to move up or down in a straight line, hence your window an ‘Mado’ to trade without emotion whenever pressure builds and eases off.

We are human after all and the trader that can know the wave of human emotions is able to bring the house down. Since 9 out of every 10 traders lose in the long run then the house doesn’t really care if it yields a dollar to a smart gamer trader waiting to pick that 1 Dollar up every single time. The new 21 something Asian trader has a staggering level of confidence to trade as i have never witnessed before an if they do not spend hours pouring over technical charts they're certainly staring at the movement of candles for any possible reversal as moods change and then they will pounce on the trade with ruthless efficiency and book a profit.

Then they go blow their money on their drinks, girlfriends, clothes watches and cars but they will return again because they know that the FX market is about reading human emotions. They get mad at night, they scream at police officers, they are petulant; but they know how to make money. They do not depend on anyone else to make a trading judgement. They can take a decision win or lose and move on to the next trade. Understanding how emotions work in a market is the key to a successful career in day trading forex. They don't need to work for banks and hedge funds. They're already stars in their own right and don't need to be bossed about and shown how to trade. They have transferred their eagle-eye gaming skills to the real money making arena and for every one gamer trader they're beating the hell out of the other 9 traders on the retail platform because they can ruthlessly switch from buy to sell as they move with the rhythm of the 5 and 15 minute candles.

There is no past and there is no future for the gamer FX Trader

Why do 90% of traders fail in the first 6 months? 

1. Because they are preoccupied with a flawed analysis of the past
2. Because they try to the base the future upon the past but the future can be anything

A gamer trader already knows all permutations of the past and all possibilities of the future. 

A gamer trader only lives for the now and in that living for the now he can identify with the true market pulse and flow with the wave of human emotions.

Bank dealers buy into selling pressure and sell into buying pressure and make spreads and cut their profits every single time because they only live in the here and the now. Equally the new generation of gamer traders are young and bold and they have no time for information overload and technical analysis but their skills are honed in for the only moment that counts and that is now. The gamer trader does not clog his mind with tons of technical information so much so that he spends hours deliberating a trading decision.

Tokyo open GBP/ USD 22.12.2016:

Watch the waves again and again and feel the rhythm as human emotions move the market and then bring it to an utter halt. Know this pulse and you have won half the battle to becoming a very good trader if only you can live just for the here and now.

Gamers Make The Best FX traders

University degrees and MBAs do not prepare you for your life as a trader. That's a fact.

If I was running a hedge fund I would take 10 kids from the gaming arcades every single day over top university graduates.

It is scientifically proven that a person who drives a car for twenty years has faster instinctive data assimilation, pattern recognition and consequential action and more likely to avert a collision than a new driver. The same goes for computer gaming. These sharp kids who grew up in the arcades and played online at home have sharper reflexes to become a day traders. we are regularly reading stories of teen traders who quickly accumulate modest fortunes as they transfer their skill set into a new arena where you can actually make money; and they're reveling in it.

The problems with the degree holders is they read too much into the market. They refer to their Bollinger Bands and countless studies and by the time it comes to a trading decision they are swamped with information overload. The gamer, in contrast, does not read the stochastics and divergence indicators and a ton of technical studies. The gamer closes his eye for a second, feels the beauty of the market forces at war, and then opens his eyes to a world of rhythm. Just watching candlestick charts in free flow without any reference to a technical study, will reveal a world of pure movement. Watch this movement over days and your brain will start to form pattern recognition plans. Allow the brain to feel the market pulse and flow with it. Do not read too much or you face the danger of taking other peoples opinions and reading different interpretations into the market action.

Feel the market pulse and let your mind flow with the opposing forces of selling and buying.

Shogun Total War Video

Don't Hang Out For The Big Trades And Pick Up The Little Cherries

A man may ride a donkey but at least the donkey is heading in a direction!


If you're a day trader do not hang out for the big waves. You do not need to wait for key announcements that can take you 150 pips up or minus 150 pips if you get it wrong. Tsunami trading can hurt you. 

The pairs that I monitor every day are - 

EUR/USD
GBP/USD
USD/JPY
EUR/JPY
CHF/JPY
GBP/JPY
USD/CHF
EUR/GPP

and crude oil 

Capture 20 pips  on 15 min charts for 3 candles after a signal or 45 mins and multiply that by 5/8 and youre likely to gain 100 pips versus 3 wrong trades of - 10 pips x 3 or - 30 pips.

Therefore net 70 pips can be booked regularly daily without even having to face a 50/50 prospect of a windfall or a wipe-out on a market data release.

Trade modestly as a day trader and you can pick up these cherries regularly as you see the patterns repeat over and over again.

Trade small and accumulate in the long run.

Happy trading!

Typical Tokyo Morning

Even at a pre-Christmas week with thinning volatility the following shapes and patterns are typical of a Tokyo morning.

The one thing a spot trader cannot do is trade if prices are going nowhere. great news if you're an options seller but most readers are not as sophisticated in putting $10,000 Dollars capital as a tie-in keeping in ind that you should never ever ever expose more than 5% your total capital on any one single trade.

So the greatest way to catch a move is to watch Tokyo open because by the time the FX markets drift into the California West Coast zone everyone just wants to switch off.

So here goes a typical Tokyo morning where sharp traders can each 20-30 pips each time. Not a lot you may think but hang on and hold that thought. Day in, day out capture these little 20-30 pip moves and they all stack u[ into a tidy pile which will then help you to escalate your trading scale. So take note of the little things in the FX markets if you want to succeed.

Little makes BIG.

Here's 3 - 15 minute charts:

EUR/ USD crashing through the 1.05 last night on close of US session as US traders throw in the towel. Two Bearish Engulfing red candles hammered the faintest revival earlier in New York. Then typically the market goes to sleep and drifts aimlessly in a tight range. Prior to Tokyo open the early Japan traders attempt a Fibonacci retracement as a typical reaction to the previous US session. After a good 4 hours of quiet the market has to take direction and 20-30 pips are instantly captured.

GBP/USD once again a Bearish Engulfing candle set up a wave of destruction as the shorts carried the close of US session. The market drifted and narrowed. Then Big Bang. After entropy comes movement and the currency pair is hoisted in early Tokyo session and another good 20-30 pips are captured.

USD/JPY fails to inspire on market open just to go to show also that sometimes the lack of direction can drift through Tokyo morning although at the time of writing volatility is starting to increase in range though no clear cut signal has shown itself to enter a trade.

On the whole of 6-8 currency pair majors you can expect 5/8 to take a direction after a lack of direction prior to Tokyo open.

The chart repetition occurs over and over again. Recognizing the chart patterns could mean he difference between success and failure. there is a time to trade and a time not to trade. wait for the window to open. 

Trading Tokyo open is far more profitable than trading Europe open because Europe follows on huge activity of Asia and more uncertainty creeps in but Tokyo awakens to a few hours of drifting quiet. Europe follows Asia's market noise. There is very little noise at US close. Therefore quiet and stillness is surely to be followed by noise on Tokyo open. The logic prevails. You trade the noise, you avoid the quiet.

Know your Mado.

Happy Trading !

Narrow Range 4 Inside Bar (NR4/IB) Trade Set Up

Apart from the Bullish and Bearish Engulfing patterns on 15 min charts one of the most exciting prospects is the NR4/IB where the market stalls like a motor car engine and just needs to kick-start from a state of entropy to hyper-inflation. Big Bang moment.

Spot the NR4/IB on today's 15 min CHF/ JPY. The trade setup came in prior to Tokyo open.
many Tokyo traders just love to get in there early and take advantage of directionless trading hoping to catch a big wave on Tokyo open.

The criteria for NR4 is that the preceding 4 candle bodies must be of same size or narrower and then the 4th or 5th body must become an inside bar and usually the color of the last body is an indicator of which way the market will surge.

Remember to trade 15 min charts within context of day charts and in particular the 50 and 200 day moving average.

Keep your eyes peeled.

3 charts on the GBP/JPY and how to trade Asia Euro time zones effectively

In the long run we seek rational order and balance; the sheer chaos of conflicting ideas makes us giddy and we grope for some sane anchor to pin down our belief systems and shape our confidence.

Now turning our attention to the Forex markets even a day in the global calendar can seem a lifetime and so when we search for rationality we more or less attempt to frame the day's trading activity against the yearly price range and the 200 day moving average to understand what is going on in the 24 hours we roil and seethe with intense emotion in taking positions.

If we break down the FX clock starting from Japan and Asia we have three major segments starting with Japan then moving across to Europe for the second session and then on to New York for the US session. The bulk of the day trading is completed during Asian and Europe sessions.

Let's take a look at three charts marking the progress of the currency pair GBP/JPY from the morning Asian session to Europe session. The three charts comprise Japanese time 11am - 15.00 am 17.00 for Friday 11th December..

Chart 1 - 15 minute chart

As can be expected Japan overnight was fast asleep but come 6am Japanese traders start entering the market and volatility starts to explode and momentum takes a direction. Entering a trade on Japan open is highly desirable as the session is packed full of action towards it's tail end where it will overlap withe the main market Europe. China HK and Korea adds to the growing regional FX position and liquidity.

Japan session is a good window opportunity to tak a position for any key Europe an US data release if you are a swing trader looking to capitalize on a news release.

Now let's follow to 15.00 hrs the same day yesterday.

Chart 2

Come 15.00 hrs yesterday you will notice a lot of action has happened and we are now entering into a lull in the market which I call the dead zone where it would be unwise to stake a new position. The ideal long trade would have exited around 15.00 hrs prior to Europe open.

So what happens next?

Chart 3

On Europe open the market jolts up with a large green body and larger candle bodies follow to indicate a huge battle of red and green. there is a 45 mins tussle going on where huge money is pouring in to take positions. The Hanging man on the 15 mins chart preceded by a large red body is the straw that breaks the camels back and the market plunges. Traders would have come in with big shorts on the 14th minute on the large red candle following the green hanging man. Two large red bodies follow as price collapses in 30 minutes. But then the small red body over a large line is a serious warning that the market has run out of sellers. The large green body over the next 15 minutes would have seen big longs come into the market. Thus the first two hours of the Europe open presents two brilliant trading opportunities.

The currency markets tend to follow this similar pattern all year round and hence we can understand a rational structure of thin and larger volatility across the two time zones. Work with that volatility in the short term. Feel it's pulse.

As a rule I do not think it's a good idea to take large positions into the US session and try to exit after a key report by 10 am EST. Why? Pigs get slaughtered and the US session has thinner liquidity and you can become stuck into a huge dead zone of directionless trading as you drift towards Japan open. If you want to hang out for the big trade in excess of 100 pips in a day session you are going to get slaughtered. Taking 20 pips here and there over select currency pairs over the Asia and Europe time zone gives you better chance of a 6-4 win ratio. I try to focus 90% my trades during Asia and Europe session.

Always remember past performances are not indicative of future results and 90% of traders do lose because they always read into the markets what is in actuality not there.

Stay well friends

Trading 5 and 15 Minute Charts From Inertia To Breakout

Ok, so now here are 2 charts today where we can witness how all things eventually change in time. While many times during the day traders wait for some new data and news to give them a new sense of direction and purpose, there will be always the opportunity for a trade when momentum suddenly builds upwards or downwards.

In the day short term traders can scalp by buying and selling within the framework of a minute. For example the 'buy' on the EUR/USD maybe 1.0635 and the 'sell' 1.0632. The spread would be 3 pips and usually within the space of under 1 minute the price may change  to 'buy' 1.0643 and the 'sell' 1.0640. Now if you have bought 1 unit EUR/USD at 1.0635 and if you had sold at 1.0640 in under a minute you may have made 5 pips on the trade. Scalpers thrive on momentum and weigh probabilities of a downward drive or upwards climb scalping all the way every 1 minute. Looking at the 15 minute charts scalpers pretty much understand that a decent run could last up to an hour before it fizzles out. Using these techniques many teen phenomena have emerged the last couple of years and making huge amounts of money in the process.

Lets start with the 5 min chart first.

On the EUR/ USD notice the last 2 red bars. That's 10 minutes where prices dropped from 1.0632 to 1.0625 which is a 5 pip range. Once momentum moves a scalper will sell and buy to close and then sell and buy to close inspecting the rate of change between the last candle and the preceding 5-10 candles on the 5 minute charts. Increases in the rate of change convinces the scalper to pile in and in some cases add more units on the scalp trade by scaling up to exploit profits on the window of momentum.

Lets start at the beginning and look at the 15 minute chart to see how the market developed today 8 hours ago.

As we can see 8 hours ago the market flatlined in a tight range. Notice that the flatline followed an explosive climb with an upwards bias. But all things run out of steam and so commonly the trajectory started to drift.

Now lets look the last 2 hours at the 15 minute chart to see what followed after the flatline.

Now notice that the flatline that followed after an explosive surge then resumed its course upwards over a 2 hr period. the market climbed from 1.06070 to 1.0655 in a massive momentum push.

So the lesson learnt is that with patience if you follow the flatline on inertia, a direction will eventually ensue to the up or downside and then you can capitalize on either by scalping every 1-2 minutes or by trading 5 minute or 15 minute candles.

It often pays to watch with keenness any lull and inertia because a market breakout becomes the essence of an intra-day swing trade. A good FX trader can keenly watch 5-6 strongly liquid majors during the Euro session and pile in trades with regimental stop-losses in place and often conclude a 6-4 winning ratio. Add the pips up in a day and that's significant. Therein lies the basis for many teen phenomena trading today. They simply have the stamina to rake in the trades with a brutal discipline to cut their losses and not think about it.

Most profitable hours for day trading forex

FX trading can be highly profitable for the disciplined mind whether as a day trading vocation or swing trading position taking over several days.

The most Profitable Hours for FX trading are the Euro session prior to New York cut. In these hours are the greatest depth and liquidity and volatility. You cannot make a profit if a price doesn't move. Usually key US economic announcements start early morning US session and at the back end of the Euro session. All the jockeying for positions takes place prior to a key US announcement. So if you are going to trade forex I would suggest to track the Euro session to the US session opening 1hr. If you track the session volatility for about a month it will become evident that price movements occur rapidly nd therefore you can make money on a good trade. Outside these hours the forex markets tend to drift as the buzz and excitement dies away.

The key to a good trader is consistency. When things go wrong do not waver. Apply your formula for success and markets will change direction as surely as the wind does.When there is volatility the markets can change on a dime so you are not always going to carry a good trade. But with consistent application in the long run you will have more good trades than bad.

Flash crash trade Pound/ Sterling

Flash Trading

Yes I'm a trader by background but after I saw Pound/ Dollar crash 6% in 2 mins in Asian session i need to point out the dangers of day trading.  Computer program trading is becoming more and more autonomous and self-determining and what started as a push became a cascading tsunami and more and more computer sell orders got triggered yesterday on the Pound. Mathematically computers are sifting through key words in news statements and quantifying those words as probabilities and exponential equations. Day trading has got a whole lot harder now because of the automated trading world and i recommend swing trading over 2-3 days using Japanese candlestick day charts is a safer analysis of momentum.

 

Anyone Can Be A Successful Trader

So long as a person can become disciplined to learn a system and stick with the system then there is nothing to stop anyone from becoming a successful trader. This is part 2 of the story put together by London hedge fund manager Lex Van Dam how he recruited normal people from all walks of life and turned them into competent traders to match any professional trader in the City. Lex Van Dam proves this point.

Million Dollar Traders part 2

 

 

Robot v s Human; The Discussion On Artificial Trading

Contrary to what many people think; robotic trade programs without human intervention are not without their own faults. Based upon a set of probabilities upon a series of historic data the robotic program attempts to reach an answer just as fast as the human trader. However, there is a difference. The robotic program is an artificial intelligence and copy of the human mind in function at it's very best. When there is a sudden object in the middle of the road ahead the robotic program may learn to swerve the car upon a quick risk analysis, but the human trader is more likely to take a decision to swerve direction even faster due to the synergistic combination of right and left brain responses. Do computer programs recognize patterns just as well as humans? They may recognize a pattern but when it comes down to interpretation and trading decision an artificial intelligence may lack the intuitive capabilities of a seasoned trader.

In the last two years automated trading has become the rave of discussion on the Internet.

Please read on the FT today the discussion about artificial intelligence and automated trading.

https://www.ft.com/content/84bb5c72-37a9-11e6-9a05-82a9b15a8ee7

The Age Of Information OVERLOAD For The Forex Trader

Actually, I personally think that when it comes to forex trading the Internet has far more damaging influences than positive when it comes to knowledge dissection, analysis and judgement. Why? Because there's so much information out there on the Internet it's mind-boggling. The average trader wants to make a decision; is he going to buy EUR/USD or is he going to sell? Alright; that's pretty simple enough given an analysis of candlestick charts and given that the trader has sufficient understanding of patterns and how they affect the markets. But to most traders that's not enough; they have to refer to ADX, ATR, Bollinger Bands, Elliot Waves,  price-envelope theory, MACD, OBV, oscillators, RSI, stochastic, Wiiliams percentage and so on and so on until all the hair splitting analysis takes so long that the petrified trader in the end doesn't know whether to buy or sell because his brain has been fried by the sheer size of information out there.

I'm going to relate to you a bad story now. A friend of mine was once hit on the road by a car at 50 mph in London, UK. The doctors said to her the only reason she lived was because she closed her eyes. if she had kept her eyes open and watched the car hit her the sheer shock of vision would have killed her instantly. It is an unfortunate example that I have to draw upon. Gratefully my friend recovered within a year miraculously. Thank God for her life. But the point I'm tying to make rather starkly is that with so much information out there hurtling at you almost at the speed of light on your broadband optics who is to say that you won't end up like Bambi frozen before the headlights? Because there's just way too much information out there for your brain to rationally process. The more indicators you study then the more time goes by and the more confused you begin to feel. No wonder 90% of new traders implode within 6 months of forex trading. This is because they have not learned to filter out the noise and retain only the most accurate and relevant analysis needed to make a very fast decision. Then their emotions run riot when the mental confusion sinks in. Good traders react fast. By the time you read over all the analysis on the Internet the trade window has long since gone and you're going to end up stressed with the burden of information overload.

But there is a solution; the answer is very simple. Just as simple as Alexander the Great cutting through the mighty and fabled Gordian Knot with his sword. Whether you buy or sell just do it and do not procrastinate with information overload. If it's a mistake, ok, never mind, you win some and you lose some, but do not look at the hurtling information flying in your face. Close your eyes, be silent, meditate in peace and become decisive. If you can understand Japanese candlestick charts as a science of trading then truly you will let your system do all the talking without having to refer to endless technical indicators out there on the Internet.

find inner peace as if you were within the eye of the storm. Unlock the real you of you in the face of boundless information and trade your system methodically and unwavering to success.