nanningbob wrote:

benloe wrote:

nanningbob wrote:

art wrote:Glad it's not just me that's had a crappy week, typical august

I decided a long time ago I would try to be honest about my trading. To let traders know the ups and downs of this business. March, April, May, I was having the best trading months of my career. Did some things I had never done before. Averaging around 50% increase a month. Then June July August came around and it has been up and down. The key though is during these rough trading times is you dont lose your shirt and you keep your account intact. Hopefully this fall things will pick up and I can continue to increase my account and have a real solid year. That is what trading is really like. I am happy that for 2 weeks I was increasing my account over 1% a day but not this week. Really cool, it goes like this. HEY GUYS I am really doing great with this. So I post and crappola. Well not totally I am up 3% for the week and have almost 1/2% up now which I will close soon. So that is trading in reality.

I hate the guys who run threads and wont reveal their losses, bad days, bad weeks, bad months. To think you can go through a trading cycle and not have losses is absurd. Yet some of these guys make you believe that is the way they always trade.

I just want to know if anyone has been able to make a living out of this system. (or any system)
It has changed soo many times.
That is Good and it is Bad.
Just like forex.
I think I am giving up after many many years.
I hope you Guys make it!
B

I hate to pick on you but obviously you do not under stand the basics of the system. What has changed?

buy above/ below 240 line?? NO

Enter crossing DP or WP lines back into the trend?? NO

RSI pinned/STO 5 pinned with CSS reads versus STO 7 crossing back into the trend?? A better change and a much quicker less interpretive read. The difference is the STO 7 gives a warning when it unpins giving you a very specific point to enter or look for a trade. That is an improvement. You are no longer dependent on CSS reads, with RSI2 reads and then trying to find the best entrance. It tells you this is a good place to set your pending trades. You have a very good chance of success.

The CSS info page?? HAS that changed? NO it is still the same page.

When to take profit?? You can take profit as WS1 or WR1 or you can use xxx.00 lines. Now which make reading the charts universal to all users? Those blue xxx.00 lines. WS1 and WS2 are no longer broker dependent on the math based on GMT 0 +1 +2 or +3. You can now set your TP SL and entrances to the blue lines and everyone can use those same lines and they are the same on all brokers. That is an improvement.

SO what has changed ???? Explain that to me please. The basics of the system remain the same throughout. Buy above 240, sell below. Buy the dips in the UT, sell the rallies in the DT. It is what every trader tries to do and be a success at.

benloe wrote:Can you make a living using this?

garyfritz wrote: Bob consistently reports 1% or more, per day, with VERY few losing days.

1% per day is about 20% per month.

If you can't make a living with 20% per month, you're not likely to make a living with ANY trading approach.

nanningbob wrote:I'm am trying desperately to make 10.6 profitable as I want to trade it exclusively and I am struggling having 3 out of 4 losers this morning and 2 out of 2 yesterday using your setup to the best of my ability.

HOW I TRADE

There are so many different philosophies of trading and so much information. There is no such thing as a correct philosophy but there are philosophies that fit you as a person. My philosophy is to put the odds in my favor by volume trading and trading small. Making sure no one two or more trades can hurt me.

For example this week I have executed 78 trades of which my scorecard shows 54 winners and 24 losers for a 69.23% win rate. That win rate is actually very low for me because when I am nailing it, it is closer to 75-80% But I can chalk that up to a reversing market. My win rate will drop during a reversing market. That makes sense because I have to take more losses than normal. But here is one stat I usually dont report and it is part of my trading philosophy. I have cancelled 35 pending trades. Now for 4 days that means I placed 113 trades. That means of all the pending trades I place 47.8% were winners, 21.2% were losers and 31% were no takers. That comes out to placing 28 trades a day. How can I do that???

First I trade very small lots. A trade would have to go over 300 pips in the hole to equal 1% of my account. Most currencies wont do that in one week especially if I stay on the side of the trend. So I minimize my losses so they cant hurt me. Yes I can get enough losers to lose money in a day, week, or month but they wont kill my account. So it becomes a numbers game for me. (think of a blackjack player who is allowed to count cards, he will almost always come out on top)

Here is how I play the odds. If price crosses the Weekly pivot what are my chances of making a profit. To see this study clean off all indies and just have the WP on the screen. How many price moves make some kind of profit every time it crosses a WP, no other indies. The answer is most of the time.

Second. How many times does price cross the DP and go into profit, at least 10 pips or more? Well clean off the screen and look at it with just a DP. How many touch and reverse compared to how many break through.

Now add the 240 line and only take buys above and sells below. What is your winning trades to losing trades ratio. I already know that answer because that is how I trade. I will consistently hit 75% sometimes go over 80% and sometimes be under 70%. You see for me win to loss ratio is far more important that TP to SL ratio. 5 trades that are winning rack up pips faster than 1 or 2 trades that are losing. Those are the odds. Now I have added the STO for a more specific entrance place to look for a trade. Even with that I still remain in that 75% win rate, but my DD has been less because of the better entrances.

My whole attitude to trading changed years ago when I rejected the notion of one trade in one trade out. The example above is 4 trades one day 2 trades another. You lose the odds of going into your favor by limiting the number of trades you take. I know why people trade like this they play bigger lots. Bigger lots mean bigger losses and when they happen especially a series of loss they can be very damaging to an account. It also causes discouragement.

I play little lots 4 cents to a thousand. That mean 12 cents on a 3000 account or 24 cents on a 6000 account or 48 cents on a 12K account. Lets a take a thousand dollar account and trade a nickel a trade. I want to keep the math simple. I average 25 pips for a winning trade and 30 pips for a losing trade this week. That would mean I would make about 1.25 for a winning trade. Big deal you say hmmmmm but I have had 54 this week for 67.50 or 6.75% of my account for 1 week. Then I subtract the losers. They average 30 pips x .05 equals 1.50 per losing trade or 36.00 or 3.6% of my account. Subtract that and it comes to 31.50 profit or 3.15% of my account for the week so far. Thursday sucked. A 3000 dollar account that would be 94.50 and a 10K account would be 315.00 and so forth.

What am I doing. If I play as many DP, WP and xxx.00 line crosses as I can in the direction of the trend I will have more winners than losers. WHY? I set a pending on of 3 things will happen. Price does not cross so I cancel the trade. Price crosses but doesnt go far, Ok bank some pips. Price takes the trade and reverses, it will happen. BUT most of the time it will cross and go somewhere and I will bank a profit. If I trade small enough I can take all of them and no losing trade can hurt me because I am banking pips faster than a loser can multiply. So I trade in with many trades. If you dont believe me trade one penny trades with a 1000 bucks and watch what happens. It will take 100,000 lost pips to lose your account so you dont have to worry. I actually would like to know if anyone could lose a 100K pips. Is that even possible.

So when I set a pending trade what are my odds. 47% were winners, 21% were loser and 31% never took. That is called putting the odds in your favor.

To the person who wrote the letter. You trade big lots and want to make big money, but if your trades were not right on you make nothing or lose. I am not under that kind of pressure to make every trade the just right trade. A couple days ago I wrote gbp/xxx I will look for trades there. Only one moved gbp/nzd and I got 80+ pips in the bank. I also said I would play NZD but they were all duds. I took some others and they hit. I played 20 pairs and 4 or 5 hit. If you didnt catch those 4 or 5 you got nothing or hit some losers. That is how I trade. If trades dont move in my direction I am not in. If they do I am a winner. Of the 3 groups of results, those that hit and reverse is the lowest percent of trades if you are running with the trend. Close those out and you have a winning day. That is how I trade.

On Wed. you reported you had 3 out of 4 losers. I bet I had the same 3 losers. But I had 12 winners and 6 losers that day and won around 200 pips. I trade small, win small, lose small but I keep my win/loss ratio up by playing the odds that crossing DP, WP lines in the direction of the trend. So that is my answer to how I constantly win a lot more often than I lose.