Thank you to all those that wished my Dad well for his prostate cancer treatment in Melbourne.

His operation went well and hopefully he is on his way to a great recovery.

I am back on the Sunny Coast and have spent the last week testing signal generating software that we have been working on.

Programming is expected to be completed with a working version next week.  Just in time for the Brisbane ATAA meeting.

Getting some good entries and setups. 

As a sneak preview here are some entries that have signaled lately with the beta version.

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6E signal.jpg (96.64 kb)

Back from holidays and a little slow to get into the blog writing.

A trade setup tonight on the Euro which has some unique characteristics.

Long term viewers of the blog and those that have done Alexander's Pride Trading course know of it as a pump fake trade.

The trade does enough to give longs hope with price making a higher high but the major trend is down.

This price action nails the retail bottom pickers looking for reversals.

As buyers fail to push price up any further sellers take the batten forcing long traders to cover and setting up a down move with the trend.

This trade needs to be traded in the right context to get high win percentages consistently.  As do all trade setups.

In partnership with Alexander we have been developing an analytical system for traders.

I have been using a beta version successfully in live trading and the execution of this euro trade tonight is an example trading 3 contracts.

I am aiming to have a fully functional version ready for my ATAA presentation in Brisbane providing any bugs are sorted with our engineers in the US.

Nothing better than putting my head on the chopping block in front of a crowd.  Should be fun.

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I'd like to thank everyone who reads the blog for their support over the last year and those with blogs that have recommended my site.

Today the site had it's 15000th visit over the past 12 months with over 40000 page views which I find quite remarkable as I am quite low key.

One of the comments in the previous blog asked about structure.

As I developed my trading skills I picked up on support and resistance areas and how to trade some setups from these areas depending on price action.

I began to get a feel for when selling strength moved to equilibrium and then to buying strength through hours spent in front of the computer.

Anticipating these areas is pretty much what is required to make profits through trading.

The importance of structure in market trading really became apparent to me when I worked with Alexander at Pride Trading.

His trades are primarily based on structure with zones of support/resistance providing targets with a high degree of accuracy.

I learned about inside bid and ask zones and how they skew odds for directional moves.

I have marked up the current Euro fx futures showing basic structure areas.

Structure EUR.jpg (182.43 kb)

Once the structure is clear, entries can be based on a successful test or failure of these zones.

We can ascertain if the market is trending or range bound and adjust targets accordingly.

On the euro at present if the inside bid zone holds my potential trades are biased to trading the long side.

If we break through the inside bid to the down side I can look for a retest fail of the zone to give me a high probability low risk trade down.

Understanding structure in the market alows us to trade a plan that fits changing odds in real time.

With the start of the new year I have decided to concentrate on trading forex for a new challenge.

I am looking for more flexibility with my lifestyle this year so I can do more of the important things such as surfing.

The past month has been about refining my technique for the EUR/USD and defining my trading plan template.

The template is based on 3 core principles: Market Structure, Trend, Retracement.

No doubt I will fiddle around the edges as I always do with entry/exits.

I have changed my tick bars to range bars after viewing an ex floor traders chart setup.

This has helped avoid whipsaws that I've experienced with time & tick charts.

The range bars also help with entry timing as I can put limit buy or sell orders at a pre determined area a point above/below a range bar close.

These are the first of my trades yesterday and this evening.

As long as my win/loss ratio's are consistent I am aiming to raise my contract size as I progress.

The charts are the EUR/USD futures with a range bar of 5.

The start has been good with all 4 trades working in my favour.

The losing trades as they arrive will be posted.

6E jan12.jpg (99.31 kb)

6E jan13.jpg (114.18 kb)

With the first trade, I traded manually through Interactive brokers.

So the trades are on screen but I've had to draw the area I entered and exited the trade.

The second trade I entered through Ninjatrader and are printed correctly.