I got an e-mail from Dean yesterday who has spoken to Anthony Wright at support regarding the tough trading conditions created by the holidays. I’ll post his comments but first I want to explain my take on it all.
I’ve been using my particular settings very successfully for three months with only one losing week and only then by a handful of pips. I realise that there are an infinite amount of settings one can use, and professional traders probably change and adapt their approach to the markets depending on conditions at the time. This is probably sensible and no doubt profitable however, the whole point of me using Tufxp wad that I didn’t want to have to work too hard or make personal judgement calls and I somehow fluked the settings I found to be profitable. If I’m going to continuously change my settings depending on market conditions, then no doubt I’ll become a better trader, but where does that leave other people that want a point and click system, which to be fair this system is sold as?
Just because it’s been a choppy ride for the last week or so is no reason, in my opinion, to decide the settings don’t work… at least not yet! So I’m more than happy to post other settings and strategies etc for the benefit of readers that might want to try other tactics but I’m still going to stick to my settings for trading just to see how it holds out through the rough as well as the smooth. Last week and this week they have saved me from entering disasterous trades (well apart from the one which just slapped me in the face!) and today has found a couple of good trades to get me back my pips from last week and a good profit on top.
Anyway, back to Deans comments:
“I remember you saying you didnt watch the market overview videos by Keith but I glad youre aware of the holiday season and the potential impact it can have on trading. I spoke with Anthony Wright (support team member) he suggested because of the current conditions we should be entering traders quicker. You do this by right clicking on the PTP tool (red dollar symbol) in the tool bar and change the entry point from 50% down to 25%. It was also suggested to me the initial risk should never be more than 30 pips and because of the choppy conditions we should be using a trailing stop of 3 bars. I know you have been trading a lot longer than me but some of the recent trades Ive lost using a trailing stop of 5 bars would have in fact been slightly in profit with a trailing stop of 3…
Another useful tip for double checking if the PTP signals are on matching times on both the 5 and 10 min chart is to use the Floating Data Box. I find this is better than the crosshairs as they still don’t always match up. You can access the Floating Data Box by right clicking on a graph, selecting Screen Display > Floating Data Box. Now were every you move the mouse pointer it will tell you the exact time relating to where it’s placed.
I would recommend watching a how to video which Keith published yesterday. It’s called multiple currency trading. It’s not meant to be for beginners but he tells you how to trade 10 currency pairs at once which will open up more trading opportunities.
Ive also been testing, when I in a trade to also monitor the 1 min chart. As this appears to give a really good indication on what the 5 min chart is going to do next and maybe it might be worth stopping trades when they are in profit instead of letting them run into losses… Who knows just an idea.”
Thanks for those Dean. Again, I’m going to stick with my settings because I really want to know how they perform over a whole year without changing them because if they produce a good profit without having to learn to become a professional trader, then I’m more than happy to stay a dumb amateur who happily rakes in an extra fifty or hundred grand a year.
There were no trades yesterday using my settings but a couple of nice ones today. I managed to pull in 16 pips this morning despite it being a long (up) trade that retraced pretty quickly but this afternoon was a cracker. I traded through a couple of medium impact news items as I had already locked in a good profit. The difference between the 5 and 10 minute charts was 15 pips exactly so only just a qualifying trade according to my rules… but it still qualified thankfully! The trade closed with the trailing stop with another 65 pips profit netting 81 pips on the day.
