Thanks for all the upvotes and comments on the previous pieces:

• Risk management parts 1,2,3
• News trading part 1

From the first half of the news trading note we learned some ways to estimate what is priced in by the market. We learned that we are trading any gap in market expectations rather than the result itself. A good result when the market expected a fantastic result is disappointing! We also looked at second order thinking. After all that, I hope the reaction of prices to events is starting to make more sense to you.
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Before you understand the core concepts of pricing in and second order thinking, price reactions to events can seem mystifying at times
We'll add one thought-provoking quote. Keynes (that rare economist who also managed institutional money) offered this analogy. He compared selecting investments to a beauty contest in which newspaper readers would write in with their votes and win a prize if their votes most closely matched the six most popularly selected women across all readers:
It is not a case of choosing those (faces) which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinions genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.
Trading is no different. You are trying to anticipate how other traders will react to news and how that will move prices. Perhaps you disagree with their reaction. Still, if you can anticipate what it will be you would be sensible to act upon it. Don't forget: meanwhile they are also trying to anticipate what you and everyone else will do.
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Part II

• Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases
• Data surprise index
• Using recent events to predict future reactions
• Buy the rumour, sell the fact
• The trimming position effect
• Reversals
• Some key FX releases

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Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases

The majority of releases are quantitative. All that means is there’s some number. Like unemployment figures or GDP.
Historic results provide interesting context. We are looking below the Australian unemployment rate which is released monthly. If you plot it out a few years back you can spot a clear trend, which got massively reversed. Knowing this trend gives you additional information when the figure is released. In the same way prices can trend so do economic data.
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A great resource that's totally free to use
This makes sense: if for example things are getting steadily better in the economy you’d expect to see unemployment steadily going down.
Knowing the trend and how much noise there is in the data gives you an informational edge over lazy traders.
For example, when we see the spike above 6% on the above you’d instantly know it was crazy and a huge trading opportunity since a) the fluctuations month on month are normally tiny and b) it is a huge reversal of the long-term trend.
Would all the other AUDUSD traders know and react proportionately? If not and yet they still trade, their laziness may be an opportunity for more informed traders to make some money.
Tradingeconomics.com offers really high quality analysis. You can see all the major indicators for each country. Clicking them brings up their history as well as an explanation of what they show.
For example, here’s German Consumer Confidence.
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Helpful context
There are also qualitative events. Normally these are speeches by Central Bankers.
There are whole blogs dedicated to closely reading such texts and looking for subtle changes in direction or opinion on the economy. Stuff like how often does the phrase "in a good place" come up when the Chair of the Fed speaks. It is pretty dry stuff. Yet these are leading indicators of how each member may vote to set interest rates. Ed Yardeni is the go-to guy on central banks.

Data surprise index

The other thing you might look at is something investment banks produce for their customers. A data surprise index. I am not sure if these are available in retail land - there's no reason they shouldn't be but the economic calendars online are very basic.
You’ll remember we talked about data not being good or bad of itself but good or bad relative to what was expected. These indices measure this difference.
If results are consistently better than analysts expect then you’ll see a positive number. If they are consistently worse than analysts expect a negative number. You can see they tend to swing from positive to negative.
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Mean reversion at its best! Data surprise indices measure how much better or worse data came in vs forecast
There are many theories for this but in general people consider that analysts herd around the consensus. They are scared to be outliers and look ‘wrong’ or ‘stupid’ so they instead place estimates close to the pack of their peers.
When economic conditions change they may therefore be slow to update. When they are wrong consistently - say too bearish - they eventually flip the other way and become too bullish.
These charts can be interesting to give you an idea of how the recent data releases have been versus market expectations. You may try to spot the turning points in macroeconomic data that drive long term currency prices and trends.
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Using recent events to predict future reactions

The market reaction function is the most important thing on an economic calendar in many ways. It means: what will happen to the price if the data is better or worse than the market expects?
That seems easy to answer but it is not.
Consider the example of consumer confidence we had earlier.

• Many times the market will shrug and ignore it.
• But when the economic recovery is predicated on a strong consumer it may move markets a lot.

Or consider the S&P index of US stocks (Wall Street).

• If you get good economic data that beats analyst estimates surely it should go up? Well, sometimes that is certainly the case.
• But good economic data might result in the US Central Bank raising interest rates. Raising interest rates will generally make the stock market go down!

So better than expected data could make the S&P go up (“the economy is great”) or down (“the Fed is more likely to raise rates”). It depends. The market can interpret the same data totally differently at different times.
One clue is to look at what happened to the price of risk assets at the last event.
For example, let’s say we looked at unemployment and it came in a lot worse than forecast last month. What happened to the S&P back then?
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2% drop last time on a 'worse than expected' number ... so it it is 'better than expected' best guess is we rally 2% higher
So this tells us that - at least for our most recent event - the S&P moved 2% lower on a far worse than expected number. This gives us some guidance as to what it might do next time and the direction. Bad number = lower S&P. For a huge surprise 2% is the size of move we’d expect.
Again - this is a real limitation of online calendars. They should show next to the historic results (expected/actual) the reaction of various instruments.

Buy the rumour, sell the fact

A final example of an unpredictable reaction relates to the old rule of ‘Buy the rumour, sell the fact.’ This captures the tendency for markets to anticipate events and then reverse when they occur.
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Buy the rumour, sell the fact
In short: people take profit and close their positions when what they expected to happen is confirmed.
So we have to decide which driver is most important to the market at any point in time. You obviously cannot ask every participant. The best way to do it is to look at what happened recently. Look at the price action during recent releases and you will get a feel for how much the market moves and in which direction.

Trimming or taking off positions

One thing to note is that events sometimes give smart participants information about positioning. This is because many traders take off or reduce positions ahead of big news events for risk management purposes.
Imagine we see GBPUSD rises in the hour before GDP release. That probably indicates the market is short and has taken off / flattened its positions.
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The price action before an event can tell you about speculative positioning
If GDP is merely in line with expectations those same people are likely to add back their positions. They avoided a potential banana skin. This is why sometimes the market moves on an event that seemingly was bang on consensus.
But you have learned something. The speculative market is short and may prove vulnerable to a squeeze.

Two kinds of reversals

Fairly often you’ll see the market move in one direction on a release then turn around and go the other way.
These are known as reversals. Traders will often ‘fade’ a move, meaning bet against it and expect it to reverse.

Logical reversals

Sometimes this happens when the data looks good at first glance but the details don’t support it.
For example, say the headline is very bullish on German manufacturing numbers but then a minute later it becomes clear the company who releases the data has changed methodology or believes the number is driven by a one-off event. Or maybe the headline number is positive but buried in the detail there is a very negative revision to previous numbers.
Fading the initial spike is one way to trade news. Try looking at what the price action is one minute after the event and thirty minutes afterwards on historic releases.

Crazy reversals

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Some reversals don't make sense
Sometimes a reversal happens for seemingly no fundamental reason. Say you get clearly positive news that is better than anyone expects. There are no caveats to the positive number. Yet the price briefly spikes up and then falls hard. What on earth?
This is a pure supply and demand thing. Even on bullish news the market cannot sustain a rally. The market is telling you it wants to sell this asset. Try not to get in its way.

Some key releases

As we have already discussed, different releases are important at different times. However, we’ll look at some consistently important ones in this final section.

Interest rates decisions

These can sometimes be unscheduled. However, normally the decisions are announced monthly. The exact process varies for each central bank. Typically there’s a headline decision e.g. maintain 0.75% rate.
You may also see “minutes” of the meeting in which the decision was reached and a vote tally e.g. 7 for maintain, 2 for lower rates. These are always top-tier data releases and have capacity to move the currency a lot.
A hawkish central bank (higher rates) will tend to move a currency higher whilst a dovish central bank (lower rates) will tend to move a currency lower.
A central banker speaking is always a big event

Non farm payrolls

These are released once per month. This is another top-tier release that will move all USD pairs as well as equities.
There are three numbers:

• The headline number of jobs created (bigger is better)
• The unemployment rate (smaller is better)
• Average hourly earnings (depends)

Bear in mind these headline numbers are often off by around 75,000. If a report comes in +/- 25,000 of the forecast, that is probably a non event.
In general a positive response should move the USD higher but check recent price action.
Other countries each have their own unemployment data releases but this is the single most important release.

Surveys

There are various types of surveys: consumer confidence; house price expectations; purchasing managers index etc.
Each one basically asks a group of people if they expect to make more purchases or activity in their area of expertise to rise. There are so many we won’t go into each one here.
A really useful tool is the tradingeconomics.com economic indicators for each country. You can see all the major indicators and an explanation of each plus the historic results.

GDP

Gross Domestic Product is another big release. It is a measure of how much a country’s economy is growing.
In general the market focuses more on ‘advance’ GDP forecasts more than ‘final’ numbers, which are often released at the same time.
This is because the final figures are accurate but by the time they come around the market has already seen all the inputs. The advance figure tends to be less accurate but incorporates new information that the market may not have known before the release.
In general a strong GDP number is good for the domestic currency.

Inflation

Countries tend to release measures of inflation (increase in prices) each month. These releases are important mainly because they may influence the future decisions of the central bank, when setting the interest rate.
See the FX fundamentals section for more details.

Industrial data

Things like factory orders or or inventory levels. These can provide a leading indicator of the strength of the economy.
These numbers can be extremely volatile. This is because a one-off large order can drive the numbers well outside usual levels.
Pay careful attention to previous releases so you have a sense of how noisy each release is and what kind of moves might be expected.

Comments

Often there is really good stuff in the comments/replies. Check out 'squitstoomuch' for some excellent observations on why some news sources are noisy but early (think: Twitter, ZeroHedge). The Softbank story is a good recent example: was in ZeroHedge a day before the FT but the market moved on the FT. Also an interesting comment on mistakes, which definitely happen on breaking news, and can cause massive reversals.
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Not many people like to talk about bear markets, especially not when the more emotive terms such as "Stock market crash" are used. It's often looked upon as fear mongering, and sensationalism. Preparation is practical, though.
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This post is not intended to be fear mongering. In fact I want to discuss ways we can look at the market and plan for different scenarios that can mean we have no reason to be afraid.
Even if the S&P500 was to trade at 1,000 (big drop from current price (Today is the 31st August 2019, price is 2,946), we can plan and act in such ways this is a non harmful event for us. Particularly those who have net worth's to protect that has heavy stocks exposure.
This is not going to be one of these, "It's the top RIGHT NOW ... everyone panic!" sort of posts. Regardless of my views on this, I know this is a message that would not be well received. You do not know me, and too often people have cried wolf on this and been laughably incorrect. Instead what I will do is describe price moves in the indices that most people will have every reason to believe at this point can't happen.
Hopefully, they do not happen. I am not gleefully fangirling for a market crash. I just think there is prudence in preparation. These events will not happen in the hours after I post this, so I'd ask you kindly suspend prejudices. There is nothing to be gained by bickering over opinions of whether this will happen or not. I just want to give my perspective on how a person should protect themselves after it happens, if it does.
I'll cover some of the things I'd forecast will be points people will want to raise or questions likely to be asked. If you'd like to skip to the forecast and subsequent trade plan you can scroll down to the line break (unless you're going to make a common comment, then please read the following section first).
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Why Do I think My Opinion Matters?

Many of you may be smarter than I in many ways, but few of you will have spent as much time assessing charting patterns as I have. Indeed, many people will scoff at the very idea of "lines on a chart" being worth anything. I'm not here to have this debate, I fully agree your view point is rational and logical. If I'd not spent years watching price charts every day, I'd think the same.
I focus mostly on Forex markets. I know these well. There are many ways currencies look like they may move that are ways they should not move unless there is big problems in stocks. These are nagging warnings. The attitude to risk in the Forex markets is negative, and stock markets show dangerous patterns. I watch these topping sorts of patterns every day. I see them in intra-day crashes, intra-week crashes and intra-month crashes.
Most major moves fit into these patterns, and when the same patterns are applied to previous stock markets in the months before they crashed, the way the patterns form and then complete (in a crash) is the same. From my perspective, these are just intra-decade crashes. There is little technical difference on the charts - although it's very different in the real world it affects.
This is why I am doing this in a "IF we see this ... then this is likely". I know at this point in the pattern, my methods predict something that will be highly unusual. If that thing happens, if we do not crash after that, we'd be breaking the trend of all market crashes in history (this is not likely, it does not seem the smart way to bet your net worth).
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Technical Analysis is Tea Leaves!

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You're welcome to your opinion on this, and I do understand your point of view. I will not post examples to try and prove my perspective on it, since it will always be called "curve-fitting". All I will say is nothing I have done in my years of trading has involved me persuading others what I do works. I do not sell training or anything of the like. I've spent many years using the things I've learned to bet my own money, and I've done well.
I will not debate on this subject, because it's always a deadlock. You can not convince me I've not seen what I've seen, and I can not show you what I've seen, and do not expect you to believe it without proof.
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Stop Fear Mongering!

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I really would like to re-iterate, I do not want you to be afraid. I am going to describe something that might happen that will be scary if it does happen. If it does not, there is no problem. I do not wish you to be fearful before, during or after.
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This is like "Stop, Drop and Roll". None of us ever expect to be ablaze. If we are, this is good information. It will be better than running about waving arms and feeding the flames to engulf us. All I want to do here is to give you the "stop, drop and roll" of a market crash. To prevent you panicking and making bad decisions at bad areas. To allow you instead to go, "Fuck! Okay ... well that's not good. Now I have to ..." if scary things do happen.
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No One Can Time the Market!

People have predicted and traded every stock market crash in history. The fact that many people try this and get it wrong does not take away from the fact people get this right, then place the right trades and make millions. Not many people make understanding the ways a market moves their life's work. If you do, you get a good feel for it's mood at any given time.
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[Fundamental Analysis ] Says That Won't Happen!

I am not here to debate analysis viewpoints. Doing so has little use, it's better to forecast, assess and then take the best actions. I'll confess I am too ignorant on many of these topic to engage in debate. I wake up every day 5 days a week and decide where to bet my money. In doing this, I've found charts forecast and news reports. I can find no way of making money by being told what happened already, so I use the charts.
What I will say is for the warning move I will discuss to happen, something news related will have to change. Some catalyst event will have to happen. In 2008, it was Lehman. Make no mistake, the warnings were on the chart long before the bankruptcy was in the news.
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Time in the Markets is Better than Timing the Markets

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I am perfectly fine with this perspective, and not here to argue against it. If the market could drop 50% or more and you'd not be concerned because you think it will be back up in 10 years, this is none of my business.
I'm a day trader, so for me personally timing the markets is everything. Spending a lot of time in the market day trading often means you've made a mistake. I'm looking for ways to get foresight into what market moves may develop and understanding of what times and conditions I can enter into these moves to profit from the.
I want to stress I am not necessarily advocating the average person tries to time the markets. In the same way an electrician would not suggest you re-wire your own home. You also could not say to the electrician it's better to leave the lights off than risk getting a shock. Different preparations and skills sets give different possibilities. I spent a lot of years and lost money through a lot of them starting out learning how to do this.
The things I will explain here will not allow a person to consistently time the market. If I may be excused a cheesy pun, this "crash course" will be dealing with only single event, and one single set of scenarios. What I want to put forward for you in this is price moves to watch for and then (really quite specific) levels of price that are likely to offer us the best prices to protect long stock portfolios, or take speculative short trades. Very thin area of assessment.
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Forecast and Plan.
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What if the S&P500 Went to 2,200 ... Quickly?

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It's the weekend, and the last day of August in 2019. The S&P500 has closed 2922 after rallying through the week after some sharp drops from all time highs. We may see record highs again if this keeps up ... but what if next week it opens and starts to fall? Or maybe rallies higher but can not make a new high and starts to fall.
What if it falls faster than it did in the last drop, and what if this time it does not stop? What if it gets to the lows of 2790, and goes from there quickly to 2700. These big levels act as resistance and the market can not trade higher than them. Instead it hits them, reverses and goes down more.
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I think people would be nervous, but there'd be still the feeling of this being a normal, albeit tough, corrective move. There's weekly lows of 2,333. Above here the market is still technically up-trending. What if we got there, and the market went through it like it was nothing? What if the coming weeks or months we seen candles bigger than any we've seen recently? What if we were hearing news reports of record falls, rather than record highs?
What if over the development of only weeks and some horrific trading days we went from today's 2922 to break under the 2015 lows of 1,886?
I think people would be afraid!
Nothing I am saying is for the purposes of fear mongering, but I think this is possible. I'd like to say I think it's "highly unlikely", but I am thinking a lot about how to structure real bets on it and I like my odds. If this happens, it's likely the market will go lower still. What you do during the following weeks and months may have a huge affect on your financial health by the start of 2021.
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How Does This Scenario Look on a S&P500 Chart?

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https://preview.redd.it/ggqyvs2f6xj31.png?width=658&format=png&auto=webp&s=a9d00d758caf655341bd4780a8277b7556546a50
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That looks like it's not going to happen, right? I think that this looks like it's not going to happen. We learn through our life experience, and my life experience has taught me when I ignore what I think about things like this and build well structured trade plans that would assume it will happen, money comes. For me, this makes sense to bet on at the moment, as unlikely as it looks. That's getting a bit into "Calling the high", though. \Which this is not about.
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This is about what do you do if this happens? What if there is a day when they say on the news that the market just made it's lowest point in the last five years ... and economists and experts say it can go down more!
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1 - Filter and assess your sources.
Before you act or even think about the information these sources have (pertaining to what trades to make or expect), check what they were saying now. If they're not saying this could happen - don't worry too much about what they say happens next. They have as much chance of being wrong.
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2 - Do not panic.
This is a time to remain calm. Bad things have happened, and there will have been multiple days the market has dropped precipitously. Different economic factors explaining these moves may be threatening to get worse and the market may take more dangerous swings spiking under recent lows. This is the point at which most people will panic and make bad choices with their portfolio.
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3 - Buy Around 1,800
This obviously sounds like something anyone would do right now, with price at 2,922; but with the conditions that'd have to be occurring for this of move to happen will make this highly counter intuitive at the time.
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4 - Understand Something Changed, New Highs are Not Coming
From peak pessimism around 1,800 I expect the market to start to rally. Rallying strong. Making markets great again.
At this point, you should understand something has changed. The market is not meant to trade at that level in an up-trend. Frequently when these levels 'break', there is a strong counter move that is fierce. It's also brief. We can buy here and offset some of the losses in the mini bounce (but be very cautious).
2,129 area is where the danger of a bear move comes back in. It might rally a bit above here into 2,333.
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This is where the second mistake many people will make will be. Not buying the lows, but then starting to buy into this rally thinking it's going to new highs.
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Very Important: If price makes moves consistent with what I've described 2,220 - 2,300 are hedge areas.
If you take appropriate actions in these areas you can protect yourself from the chance of excessive loss if the market is to crash in 2020. You can also do this without taking on much risk. Granted if you hedge long portfolios there is some risk of losing a little, but your area of risk on these hedges is less than the area of risk on a long portfolio after this has happened.
When this has happened, historically it's always led to a crash in the coming months/year. We'll have done something the markets do not usually do. Big corrections may look similar, but when you deal with this all the time, you come to know there are specifics that should be noted. If the levels I've mentioned for a buy fill, the market is crashing. It's no longer a question of if.
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5 - Hold Hedges Until 1,100
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If we crash, the low will probably be only a bit below this level. Anything more than this in a fall would be truly horrific (I know many people think this is horrific, but from a technical point of view this is really to be expected, and not unusual. It only happens after long periods of time, so it's unexpected and uncommon. It not unusual in trend formation).
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https://preview.redd.it/puc4slkk6xj31.png?width=662&format=png&auto=webp&s=69e219ba15beddd6bbc944898efa8bce74cd3c85
I am not a financial adviser, and can not tell you any trades you should be making to hedge portfolios or to take speculative positions. I've given these levels on the S&P500, and there are many things correlated to this you could use to protect portfolios. If this happens, I will be very much 'In the trenches'. I'll be trading in various markets every day and sharing some of my insights and trade plans, but I can't tell you specifically what to do.
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I am only sharing this with you to let you know there are strategies people have used in the past to predict crashes, and I've used these strategies a lot and become good with them. They now predict a market crash starting in 2019, developing through 2020, and the things I've explained in this post would be the next steps if the prediction is accurate.
If the next steps happen, the strategy would then forecast the S&P500 to go from 2,200 - 2,400 sort of range to 1,000.
I am asking no one to take this seriously at the moment, but I would suggest if the market makes moves similar to what I've described - you then consider there may be a lot of merit to what it further forecasts. Things could look very different from how they do this weekend in a few weekends time.

TL;DR - I will try and flip an account from $50 or less to $1,000 over 2019. I will post all my account details so my strategy can be seen/copied. I will do this using only three or four trading setups. All of which are simple enough to learn. I will start trading on 10th January.
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As I see it there are two mains ways to understand how to make money in the markets. The first is to know what the biggest winners in the markets are doing and duplicating what they do. This is hard. Most of the biggest players will not publicly tell people what they are doing. You need to be able to kinda slide in with them and see if you can pick up some info. Not suitable for most people, takes a lot of networking and even then you have to be able to make the correct inferences.
Another way is to know the most common trades of losing traders and then be on the other side of their common mistakes. This is usually far easier, usually everyone knows the mind of a losing trader. I learned about what losing traders do every day by being one of them for many years. I noticed I had an some sort of affinity for buying at the very top of moves and selling at the very bottom. This sucked, however, is was obvious there was winning trades on the other side of what I was doing and the adjustments to be a good trader were small (albeit, tricky).
Thus began the study for entries and maximum risk:reward. See, there have been times I have bought aiming for a 10 pip scalps and hit 100 pips stops loss. Hell, there have been times I was going for 5 pips and hit 100 stop out. This can seem discouraging, but it does mean there must be 1:10 risk:reward pay-off on the other side of these mistakes, and they were mistakes.
If you repeatedly enter and exit at the wrong times, you are making mistakes and probably the same ones over and over again. The market is tricking you! There are specific ways in which price moves that compel people to make these mistakes (I won’t go into this in this post, because it takes too long and this is going to be a long post anyway, but a lot of this is FOMO).
Making mistakes is okay. In fact, as I see it, making mistakes is an essential part of becoming an expert. Making a mistake enough times to understand intrinsically why it is a mistake and then make the required adjustments. Understanding at a deep level why you trade the way you do and why others make the mistakes they do, is an important part of becoming an expert in your chosen area of focus.
I could talk more on these concepts, but to keep the length of the post down, I will crack on to actual examples of trades I look for. Here are my three main criteria. I am looking for tops/bottoms of moves (edge entries). I am looking for 1:3 RR or more potential pay-offs. My strategy assumes that retail trades will lose most of the time. This seems a fair enough assumption. Without meaning to sound too crass about it, smart money will beat dumb money most of the time if the game is base on money. They just will.
So to summarize, I am looking for the points newbies get trapped in bad positions entering into moves too late. From these areas, I am looking for high RR entries.
Setup Examples.
I call this one the “Lightning Bolt correction”, but it is most commonly referred to as a “two leg correction”. I call it a “Lightning Bolt correction” because it looks a bit like one, and it zaps you. If you get it wrong.
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https://preview.redd.it/t4whwijse2721.png?width=1326&format=png&auto=webp&s=c9050529c6e2472a3ff9f8e7137bd4a3ee5554cc
Once I see price making the first sell-off move and then begin to rally towards the highs again, I am waiting for a washout spike low. The common trades mistakes I am trading against here is them being too eager to buy into the trend too early and for the to get stopped out/reverse position when it looks like it is making another bearish breakout. Right at that point they panic … literally one candle under there is where I want to be getting in. I want to be buying their stop loss, essentially. “Oh, you don’t want that ...okay, I will have that!”
I need a precise entry. I want to use tiny stops (for big RR) so I need to be cute with entries. For this, I need entry rules. Not just arbitrarily buying the spike out. There are a few moving parts to this that are outside the scope of this post but one of my mains ways is using a fibs extension and looking for reversals just after the 1.61% level. How to draw the fibs is something else that is outside the scope of this but for one simple rule, they can be drawn on the failed new high leg.
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https://preview.redd.it/2cd682kve2721.png?width=536&format=png&auto=webp&s=f4d081c9faff49d0976f9ffab260aaed2b570309
I am looking for a few specific things for a prime setup. Firstly, I am looking for the false hope candles, the ones that look like they will reverse the market and let those buying too early get out break-even or even at profit. In this case, you can see the hammer and engulfing candle off the 127 level, then it spikes low in that “stop-hunt” sort of style.
Secondly I want to see it trading just past my entry level (161 ext). This rule has come from nothing other than sheer volume. The amount of times I’ve been stopped out by 1 pip by that little sly final low has gave birth to this rule. I am looking for the market to trade under support in a manner that looks like a new strong breakout. When I see this, I am looking to get in with tiny stops, right under the lows. I will also be using smaller charts at this time and looking for reversal clusters of candles. Things like dojis, inverted hammers etc. These are great for sticking stops under.
Important note, when the lightning bolt correction fails to be a good entry, I expect to see another two legs down. I may look to sell into this area sometimes, and also be looking for buying on another couple legs down. It is important to note, though, when this does not work out, I expect there to be continued momentum that is enough to stop out and reasonable stop level for my entry. Which is why I want to cut quick. If a 10 pips stop will hit, usually a 30 pips stop will too. Bin it and look for the next opportunity at better RR.
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https://preview.redd.it/mhkgy35ze2721.png?width=1155&format=png&auto=webp&s=a18278b85b10278603e5c9c80eb98df3e6878232
Another setup I am watching for is harmonic patterns, and I am using these as a multi-purpose indicator. When I see potentially harmonic patterns forming, I am using their completion level as take profits, I do not want to try and run though reversal patterns I can see forming hours ahead of time. I also use them for entering (similar rules of looking for specific entry criteria for small stops). Finally, I use them as a continuation pattern. If the harmonic pattern runs past the area it may have reversed from, there is a high probability that the market will continue to trend and very basic trend following strategies work well. I learned this from being too stubborn sticking with what I thought were harmonic reversals only to be ran over by a trend (seriously, everything I know I know from how it used to make me lose).
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https://preview.redd.it/1ytz2431f2721.png?width=1322&format=png&auto=webp&s=983a7f2a91f9195004ad8a2aa2bb9d4d6f128937
A method of spotting these sorts of M/W harmonics is they tend to form after a second spike out leg never formed. When this happens, it gives me a really good idea of where my profit targets should be and where my next big breakout level is. It is worth noting, larger harmonics using have small harmonics inside them (on lower time-frames) and this can be used for dialling in optimum entries. I also use harmonics far more extensively in ranging markets. Where they tend to have higher win rates.
Next setup is the good old fashioned double bottoms/double top/one tick trap sort of setup. This comes in when the market is highly over extended. It has a small sell-off and rallies back to the highs before having a much larger sell-off. This is a more risky trade in that it sells into what looks like trending momentum and can be stopped out more. However, it also pays a high RR when it works, allowing for it to be ran at reduced risk and still be highly profitable when it comes through.
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https://preview.redd.it/1bx83776f2721.png?width=587&format=png&auto=webp&s=2c76c3085598ae70f4142d26c46c8d6e9b1c2881
From these sorts of moves, I am always looking for a follow up buy if it forms a lightning bolt sort of setup.
All of these setups always offer 1:3 or better RR. If they do not, you are doing it wrong (and it will be your stop placement that is wrong). This is not to say the target is always 1:3+, sometimes it is best to lock in profits with training stops. It just means that every time you enter, you can potentially have a trade that runs for many times more than you risked. 1:10 RR can be hit in these sorts of setups sometimes. Paying you 20% for 2% risked.
I want to really stress here that what I am doing is trading against small traders mistakes. I am not trying to “beat the market maker”. I am not trying to reverse engineer J.P Morgan’s black boxes. I do not think I am smart enough to gain a worthwhile edge over these traders. They have more money, they have more data, they have better softwares … they are stronger. Me trying to “beat the market maker” is like me trying to beat up Mike Tyson. I might be able to kick him in the balls and feel smug for a few seconds. However, when he gets up, he is still Tyson and I am still me. I am still going to be pummeled.
I’ve seen some people that were fairly bright people going into training courses and coming out dumb as shit. Thinking they somehow are now going to dominate Goldman Sachs because they learned a chart pattern. Get a grip. For real, get a fucking grip. These buzz phrases are marketeering. Realististically, if you want to win in the markets, you need to have an edge over somebody.
I don’t have edges on the banks. If I could find one, they’d take it away from me. Edges work on inefficiencies in what others do that you can spot and they can not. I do not expect to out-think a banks analysis team. I know for damn sure I can out-think a version of me from 5 years ago … and I know there are enough of them in the markets. I look to trade against them. I just look to protect myself from the larger players so they can only hurt me in limited ways. Rather than letting them corner me and beat me to a pulp (in the form of me watching $1,000 drop off my equity because I moved a stop or something), I just let them kick me in the butt as I run away. It hurts a little, but I will be over it soon.
I believe using these principles, these three simple enough edge entry setups, selectiveness (remembering you are trading against the areas people make mistakes, wait for they areas) and measured aggression a person can make impressive compounded gains over a year. I will attempt to demonstrate this by taking an account of under $100 to over $1,000 in a year. I will use max 10% on risk on a position, the risk will scale down as the account size increases. In most cases, 5% risk per trade will be used, so I will be going for 10-20% or so profits. I will be looking only for prime opportunities, so few trades but hard hitting ones when I take them.
I will start trading around the 10th January. Set remind me if you want to follow along. I will also post my investor login details, so you can see the trades in my account in real time. Letting you see when I place my orders and how I manage running positions.
I also think these same principles can be tweaked in such a way it is possible to flip $50 or so into $1,000 in under a month. I’ve done $10 to $1,000 in three days before. This is far more complex in trade management, though. Making it hard to explain/understand and un-viable for many people to copy (it hedges, does not comply with FIFO, needs 1:500 leverage and also needs spreads under half a pip on EURUSD - not everyone can access all they things). I see all too often people act as if this can’t be done and everyone saying it is lying to sell you something. I do not sell signals. I do not sell training. I have no dog in this fight, I am just saying it can be done. There are people who do it. If you dismiss it as impossible; you will never be one of them.
If I try this 10 times with $50, I probably am more likely to make $1,000 ($500 profit) in a couple months than standard ideas would double $500 - I think I have better RR, even though I may go bust 5 or more times. I may also try to demonstrate this, but it is kinda just show-boating, quite honestly. When it works, it looks cool. When it does not, I can go bust in a single day (see example https://www.fxblue.com/users/redditmicroflip).
So I may or may not try and demonstrate this. All this is, is just taking good basic concepts and applying accelerated risk tactics to them and hitting a winning streak (of far less trades than you may think). Once you have good entries and RR optimization in place - there really is no reason why you can not scale these up to do what may people call impossible (without even trying it).
I know there are a lot of people who do not think these things are possible and tend to just troll whenever people talk about these things. There used to be a time when I’d try to explain why I thought the way I did … before I noticed they only cared about telling me why they were right and discussion was pointless. Therefore, when it comes to replies, I will reply to all comments that ask me a question regarding why I think this can be done, or why I done something that I done. If you are commenting just to tell me all the reasons you think I am wrong and you are right, I will probably not reply. I may well consider your points if they are good ones. I just do not entering into discussions with people who already know everything; it serves no purpose.
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Edit: Addition.
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I want to talk a bit more about using higher percentage of risk than usual. Firstly, let me say that there are good reasons for risk caps that people often cite as “musts”. There are reasons why 2% is considered optimum for a lot of strategies and there are reasons drawing down too much is a really bad thing.
Please do not be ignorant of this. Please do not assume I am, either. In previous work I done, I was selecting trading strategies that could be used for investment. When doing this, my only concern was drawdown metrics. These are essential for professional money management and they are also essential for personal long-term success in trading.
So please do not think I have not thought of these sorts of things Many of the reasons people say these things can’t work are basic 101 stuff anyone even remotely committed to learning about trading learns in their first 6 months. Trust me, I have thought about these concepts. I just never stopped thinking when I found out what public consensus was.
While these 101 rules make a lot of sense, it does not take away from the fact there are other betting strategies, and if you can know the approximate win rate and pay-off of trades, you can have other ways of deriving optimal bet sizes (risk per trade). Using Kelly Criterion, for example, if the pay-off is 1:3 and there is a 75% chance of winning, the optimal bet size is 62.5%. It would be a viable (high risk) strategy to have extremely filtered conditions that looked for just one perfect set up a month, makingover 150% if it was successful.
Let’s do some math on if you can pull that off three months in a row (using 150% gain, for easy math). Start $100. Month two starts $250. Month three $625. Month three ends $1,562. You have won three trades. Can you win three trades in a row under these conditions? I don’t know … but don’t assume no-one can.
This is extremely high risk, let’s scale it down to meet somewhere in the middle of the extremes. Let’s look at 10%. Same thing, 10% risk looking for ideal opportunities. Maybe trading once every week or so. 30% pay-off is you win. Let’s be realistic here, a lot of strategies can drawdown 10% using low risk without actually having had that good a chance to generate 30% gains in the trades it took to do so. It could be argued that trading seldomly but taking 5* the risk your “supposed” to take can be more risk efficient than many strategies people are using.
I am not saying that you should be doing these things with tens of thousands of dollars. I am not saying you should do these things as long term strategies. What I am saying is do not dismiss things out of hand just because they buck the “common knowns”. There are ways you can use more aggressive trading tactics to turn small sums of money into they $1,000s of dollars accounts that you exercise they stringent money management tactics on.
With all the above being said, you do have to actually understand to what extent you have an edge doing what you are doing. To do this, you should be using standard sorts of risks. Get the basics in place, just do not think you have to always be basic. Once you have good basics in place and actually make a bit of money, you can section off profits for higher risk versions of strategies. The basic concepts of money management are golden. For longevity and large funds; learned them and use them! Just don’t forget to think for yourself once you have done that.
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Update -
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Okay, I have thought this through a bit more and decided I don't want to post my live account investor login, because it has my full name and I do not know who any of you are. Instead, for copying/observing, I will give demo account login (since I can choose any name for a demo).
I will also copy onto a live account and have that tracked via Myfxbook.
I will do two versions. One will be FIFO compliant. It will trade only single trade positions. The other will not be FIFO compliant, it will open trades in batches. I will link up live account in a week or so. For now, if anyone wants to do BETA testing with the copy trader, you can do so with the following details (this is the non-FIFO compliant version).
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Account tracking/copying details.
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Low-Medium risk.
IC Markets MT4
Account number: 10307003
Investor PW: lGdMaRe6
Server: Demo:01
(Not FIFO compliant)
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Valid and Invalid Complaints.
There are a few things that can pop up in copy trading. I am not a n00b when it comes to this, so I can somewhat forecast what these will be. I can kinda predict what sort of comments there may be. Some of these are valid points that if you raise I should (and will) reply to. Some are things outside of the scope of things I can influence, and as such, there is no point in me replying to. I will just cover them all here the one time.
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Valid complains are if I do something dumb or dramatically outside of the strategy I have laid out here. won't do these, if I do, you can pitchfork ----E
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Examples;
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“Oi, idiot! You opened a trade randomly on a news spike. I got slipped 20 pips and it was a shit entry”.
Perfectly valid complaint.
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“Why did you open a trade during swaps hours when the spread was 30 pips?”
Also valid.
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“You left huge trades open running into the weekend and now I have serious gap paranoia!”
Definitely valid.
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These are examples of me doing dumb stuff. If I do dumb stuff, it is fair enough people say things amounting to “Yo, that was dumb stuff”.
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Invalid Complains;
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“You bought EURUSD when it was clearly a sell!!!!”
Okay … you sell. No-one is asking you to copy my trades. I am not trading your strategy. Different positions make a market.
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“You opened a position too big and I lost X%”.
No. Na uh. You copied a position too big. If you are using a trade copier, you can set maximum risk. If you neglect to do this, you are taking 100% risk. You have no valid compliant for losing. The act of copying and setting the risk settings is you selecting your risk. I am not responsible for your risk. I accept absolutely no liability for any losses.
*Suggested fix. Refer to risk control in copy trading software
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“You lost X trades in a row at X% so I lost too much”.
Nope. You copied. See above. Anything relating to losing too much in trades (placed in liquid/standard market conditions) is entirely you. I can lose my money. Only you can set it up so you can lose yours. I do not have access to your account. Only mine.
*Suggested fix. Refer to risk control in copy trading software
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“Price keeps trading close to the pending limit orders but not filling. Your account shows profits, but mine is not getting them”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
* Suggested fix. Compare the spread on your broker with the spread on mine. Adjust your orders accordingly. Buy limit orders will need to move up a little. Sell limit orders should not need adjusted.
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“I got stopped out right before the market turned, I have a loss but your account shows a profit”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there differences in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
** Suggested fix. Compare the spread on your broker with the spread on mine. Adjust your orders accordingly. Stop losses on sell orders will need to move up a bit. Stops on buy orders will be fine.
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“Your trade got stopped out right before the market turned, if it was one more pip in the stop, it would have been a winner!!!”
Yeah. This happens. This is where the “risk” part of “risk:reward” comes in.
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“Price traded close to take profit, yours filled but mines never”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there differences in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
(Side note, this should not be an issue since when my trade closes, it should ping your account to close, too. You might get a couple less pips).
*** Suggested fix. Compare the spread on your broker with the spread on mine. Adjust your orders accordingly. Take profits on buys will need to move up a bit. Sell take profits will be fine.
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“My brokers spread jumped to 20 during the New York session so the open trade made a bigger loss than it should”.
Your broker might just suck if this happens. This is brokerage. I have no control over this. My trades are placed to profit from my brokerage conditions. I do not know, so can not account for yours. Also, if accounting for random spread spikes like this was something I had to do, this strategy would not be a thing. It only works with fair brokerage conditions.
*Suggested fix. Do a bit of Googling and find out if you have a horrific broker. If so, fix that! A good search phrase is; “(Broker name) FPA reviews”.
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“Price hit the stop loss but was going really fast and my stop got slipped X pips”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. I use a strategy that aims for precision, and that means a pip here and there differences in brokerage spreads can make a difference. I am trading to profit from my trading conditions. I do not know, so can not account for, yours.
If my trade also got slipped on the stop, I was slipped using ECN conditions with excellent execution; sometimes slips just happen. I am doing the most I can to prevent them, but it is a fact of liquidity that sometimes we get slipped (slippage can also work in our favor, paying us more than the take profit would have been).
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“Orders you placed failed to execute on my account because they were too large”.
This is brokerage. I have no control over this. Margin requirements vary. I have 1:500 leverage available. I will not always be using it, but I can. If you can’t, this will make a difference.
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“Your account is making profits trading things my broker does not have”
I have a full range of assets to trade with the broker I use. Included Forex, indices, commodities and cryptocurrencies. I may or may not use the extent of these options. I can not account for your brokerage conditions.
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I think I have covered most of the common ones here. There are some general rules of thumb, though. Basically, if I do something that is dumb and would have a high probability of losing on any broker traded on, this is a valid complain.
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Anything that pertains to risk taken in standard trading conditions is under your control.
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Also, anything at all that pertains to brokerage variance there is nothing I can do, other than fully brief you on what to expect up-front. Since I am taking the time to do this, I won’t be a punchbag for anything that happens later pertaining to this.
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I am not using an elitist broker. You don’t need $50,000 to open an account, it is only $200. It is accessible to most people - brokerage conditions akin to what I am using are absolutely available to anyone in the UK/Europe/Asia (North America, I am not so up on, so can’t say). With the broker I use, and with others. If you do not take the time to make sure you are trading with a good broker, there is nothing I can do about how that affects your trades.
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I am using an A book broker, if you are using B book; it will almost certainly be worse results. You have bad costs. You are essentially buying from reseller and paying a mark-up. (A/B book AKA ECN/Market maker; learn about this here). My EURUSD spread will typically be 0.02 pips or so, if yours is 1 pip, this is a huge difference.
These are typical spreads I am working on.
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https://preview.redd.it/yc2c4jfpab721.png?width=597&format=png&auto=webp&s=c377686b2485e13171318c9861f42faf325437e1
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Check the full range of spreads on Forex, commodities, indices and crypto.
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Please understand I want nothing from you if you benefit from this, but I am also due you nothing if you lose. My only term of offering this is that people do not moan at me if they lose money.
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I have been fully upfront saying this is geared towards higher risk. I have provided information and tools for you to take control over this. If I do lose people’s money and I know that, I honestly will feel a bit sad about it. However, if you complain about it, all I will say is “I told you that might happen”, because, I am telling you that might happen.
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Make clear headed assessments of how much money you can afford to risk, and use these when making your decisions. They are yours to make, and not my responsibility.
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Update.
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Crazy Kelly Compounding: $100 - $11,000 in 6 Trades.
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$100 to $11,000 in 6 trades? Is it a scam? Is it a gamble? … No, it’s maths.
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Common sense risk disclaimer: Don’t be a dick! Don’t risk money you can’t afford to lose. Do not risk money doing these things until you can show a regular profit on low risk.
Let’s talk about Crazy Kelly Compounding (CKC). Kelly criterion is a method for selecting optimal bet sizes if the odds and win rate are known (in other words, once you have worked out how to create and assess your edge). You can Google to learn about it in detail. The formula for Kelly criterion is;
((odds-1) * (percentage estimate)) - (1-percent estimate) / (odds-1) X 100
Now let’s say you can filter down a strategy to have a 80% win rate. It trades very rarely, but it had a very high success rate when it does. Let’s say you get 1:2 RR on that trade. Kelly would give you an optimum bet size of about 60% here. So if you win, you win 120%. Losing three trades in a row will bust you. You can still recover from anything less than that, fairly easily with a couple winning trades.
This is where CKC comes in. What if you could string some of these wins together, compounding the gains (so you were risking 60% each time)? What if you could pull off 6 trades in a row doing this?
Here is the math;
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https://preview.redd.it/u3u6teqd7c721.png?width=606&format=png&auto=webp&s=3b958747b37b68ec2a769a8368b5cbebfe0e97ff
This shows years, substitute years for trades. 6 trades returns $11,338! This can be done. The question really is if you are able to dial in good enough entries, filter out enough sub-par trades and have the guts to pull the trigger when the time is right. Obviously you need to be willing to take the hit, obviously that hit gets bigger each time you go for it, but the reward to risk ratio is pretty decent if you can afford to lose the money.
We could maybe set something up to do this on cent brokers. So people can do it literally risking a couple dollars. I’d have to check to see if there was suitable spreads etc offered on them, though. They can be kinda icky.
Now listen, I am serious … don’t be a dick. Don’t rush out next week trying to retire by the weekend. What I am showing you is the EXTRA rewards that come with being able to produce good solid results and being able to section off some money for high risk “all or nothing” attempts; using your proven strategies.
I am not saying anyone can open 6 trades and make $11,000 … that is rather improbable. What I am saying is once you can get the strategy side right, and you can know your numbers; then you can use the numbers to see where the limits actually are, how fast your strategy can really go.
This CKC concept is not intended to inspire you to be reckless in trading, it is intended to inspire you to put focus on learning the core skills I am telling you that are behind being able to do this.