ezy wrote:I have two questions mainly for Bob:

1. Let's say a classic 10.4 pending order triggered. Hours later it's floating in a loss. SL is at the 240MA. When should one manually close the trade and move on?

Egads if I could answer that question I would be the richest man on earth. 240 is my final line of defense. (usually) Not going to talk about why i let some trades go beyond that not even going to teach it. But the 240 is it. How many trades do I actually close at the 240 line as losses? Very few.

The questions to me is not hours, it can be days or even weeks or months. I am a long term trader when it comes to trend short term on taking profits. I am not afraid to hang on a trade if I think the trend is on my side. In my 10.4 booklet I taught about thinking long term. If you look at the chart below it is the nzd/jpy from June 2012 to April 2013 it was in an UT (blue area). 10 straight months. In other words if you only did buys you would never have taken a SL if you gave your trades enough room. This is a monthly chart. Then 4 months of DT and then 4 months of UT. In reality if you can get the direction right you take a SL when direction changes. That is what the big boys who trade in the millions of dollars do. It is why you often see in the COT reports the big boys are trading one way and the rest of the crowd is going the other way. More next post.

2. Should we move the SL to BE in any situations or let's just leave it where it was originally?

My view of trading is NEVER LET A WINNER TURN INTO A LOSER. That is why I take my profit in a session and move on. (I am not a fan of risk to reward ratio) In case you didnt notice Forex doesnt move in a nice steady line. It moves in spurts. Price will always 100% of the time retrace to some point. So once price spurts I take it and go on. One thing I never NEVER never NEVER do to myself is regret a profit. What I mean is "Man if I just had waited, I would have had 120 pips instead of 50" I NEVER NEVER think like that. I am happy I made a profit and move on. There are always trades, every single day. Some only go 10, some go 500, but the usual is 20-50 on a spurt so that is what I take. The question then becomes am I a trader who can let a trade ride (like the big boys) or am I an immediate reward guy who cant sit on a trade long like Nanningbob? That will answer your question.

Last Friday night/afternoon USA session, after the euro close all of a sudden 13 trades went into profit about 130 in the afternoon. None were bigger than 23 pips, smallest was five. Altogether they made up 201 pips total profit. Nice way to end my trading week. I closed everyone of them. I can bet you there may not have been any trader in the world who closed up with a 200+ pip profit during the USA afternoon session but I did. So I got 200 pips without waiting all week for a move to go 200 pips. My risk to reward ratio was crap but my risk was nil because I was just riding the long term trend. Price above/below 240 and 60 ETC. and all the trades had been taken either Thurs. or Friday.

Thank you

SteveHopwood wrote:

trucomallica wrote:Nice run, Steve. Maybe at the begining of January you can add more pairs.

I am gradually adding them. Sometimes from my CSS read, sometimes in response to one of Bob's fundamentals posts.

Time was I would come across a system, load it onto 32 charts, lose track of where I was and retreat in despair following a few losses. Or a lot of losses.

Here I have taken the opposite approach. I started with the majors and GJ. I have added a few pairs as the three weeks passed.

Sorry if I have told this story before - actually I know I have but it does not impact on the strength of the lesson.

When I first started trading/losing-money in the Forex markets I happened across a thread entitled. "20 pips a day" or some such, at FF. At the time I thought, "20 pips a day? Get a grip. Only a moron is satisfied with 20 pips a day."

Seven years and several blown accounts later, I can confirm that had I made 20 pips a day from the start, then this forum would not exist. I didn't so it does, and arguably best for all of us involved.

Point is, slow and steady has its advantages when learning to trade Forex.

ezy wrote:Thank you Bob for precious advices.

For me it seems you really get the big picture what's going on in the world at the big boys' and fundamental level. I guess there is no way to read that information from the charts alone.

Can you recommend any specific website that is good to read on a daily basis and keeps us up to date about what is in the world going on?

nanningbob wrote: I sign up John Mauldin's newsletter.