Do you have any advice for trading 6E? I would prefer to work out my own strategy rather than copy someone elses but perhaps you could help with these questions:



Create a game plan before diving into the London session. The 6E can move fast, or be extremely choppy & exacerbate drawdown if trying to scalp. You should have levels / trendlines / high confluence areas identified beforehand.



What works?



Price action, patterns, psychological Numbers/Quarter Points (100/250/500/1000 pip intervals), a game plan, lack of hesitation, risk management.



What doesn't work?



Basing your trades purely on indicators. No game plan. Overtrading.



Any tricks or tips - i.e, "tends to respect S/R", "use level 2", "is good range-bound", "look at long-term" etc.



The London open will have movement. You want to profit on this movement and then come back & repeat the next day.

A tip would be to keep in mind the ADR. If for the past 10 weeks Eur/Usd has moved an average of 85 pips per day, you dont want to be shooting for 60 pips as you first target.

Ask yourself if you expect the session to trend / retrace & continue a underlying trend / reverse the underlying trend?

To add onto this, if the ADR is 85 pips, however the last 3 days have ranges of only 50, you can almost surely expect a volatility expansion.

Another tip would be to use alerts. The currencies can seduce you into early entries, if you have a problem with this, set alerts that text your phone/make a sound on your computer once price has gotten to a pre-identified level.

If you are struggling to get a clear read on the market, just come back the next day. Trying to trade every single session can cut into your bottom line. Often the most profitable thing you can do is *not trade*



What sort of charts are best? – Volume? Tick? Range? Standard candle? (With CFDs I used standard MT4 timed-charts but NinjaTrader offers a range off different types but I still haven't been able to find one that 'feels right').



You're thinking about this wrong. Multi Timeframe analysis should be done regardless of the market you are trading. I use a Monthly & primarily *Weekly/Daily* chart to identify levels, and create a bias for the upcoming session. A 4h/2h/1h chart would be good to give you an intraweek perspective, and anything from 30 minute to a 3 minute chart will give you a good entry timeframe. Wait for the timeframes to align/agree with your perspective and then execute. **Edit** - Make sure whichever feed/platform you are charting with, that your Daily candles are closing at 4PM CST / 10PM GMT. If they are not, your 4h/Daily/Weekly candles will be all sorts of messed up.

(Macro/Bias Timeframe, Intermediate Timeframe, Entry/Intraday Timeframe)



Any indicators that are great for 6e?


personally I'm not an indicator guy but volume profile / VWAP / 8/21/55 EMA's / RSI all have their use for me. I never take trades based on indicators, they only confirm what I have planned before the session, or tell me to be cautious. Indicators are merely context for price action to me.


Some final notes would be to keep it simple & have great risk management. Press it when you're getting a clear read/lower size or dont trade when you are not. And, of course take what I say with a grain of salt because what works for me may not work for you

[QUOTE=HitTheBid;700528]Do you have any advice for trading 6E? I would prefer to work out my own strategy rather than copy someone elses but perhaps you could help with these questions:



Create a game plan before diving into the London session. The 6E can move fast, or be extremely choppy & exacerbate drawdown if trying to scalp. You should have levels / trendlines / high confluence areas identified beforehand.



What works?



Price action, patterns, psychological Numbers/Quarter Points (100/250/500/1000 pip intervals), a game plan, lack of hesitation, risk management.



What doesn't work?



Basing your trades purely on indicators. No game plan. Overtrading.



Any tricks or tips - i.e, "tends to respect S/R", "use level 2", "is good range-bound", "look at long-term" etc.



The London open will have movement. You want to profit on this movement and then come back & repeat the next day.

A tip would be to keep in mind the ADR. If for the past 10 weeks Eur/Usd has moved an average of 85 pips per day, you dont want to be shooting for 60 pips as you first target.

Ask yourself if you expect the session to trend / retrace & continue a underlying trend / reverse the underlying trend?

To add onto this, if the ADR is 85 pips, however the last 3 days have ranges of only 50, you can almost surely expect a volatility expansion.

Another tip would be to use alerts. The currencies can seduce you into early entries, if you have a problem with this, set alerts that text your phone/make a sound on your computer once price has gotten to a pre-identified level.

If you are struggling to get a clear read on the market, just come back the next day. Trying to trade every single session can cut into your bottom line. Often the most profitable thing you can do is *not trade*



What sort of charts are best? – Volume? Tick? Range? Standard candle? (With CFDs I used standard MT4 timed-charts but NinjaTrader offers a range off different types but I still haven't been able to find one that 'feels right').



You're thinking about this wrong. Multi Timeframe analysis should be done regardless of the market you are trading. I use a Monthly & primarily *Weekly/Daily* chart to identify levels, and create a bias for the upcoming session. A 4h/2h/1h chart would be good to give you an intraweek perspective, and anything from 30 minute to a 3 minute chart will give you a good entry timeframe. Wait for the timeframes to align/agree with your perspective and then execute. **Edit** - Make sure whichever feed/platform you are charting with, that your Daily candles are closing at 4PM CST / 10PM GMT. If they are not, your 4h/Daily/Weekly candles will be all sorts of messed up.

(Macro/Bias Timeframe, Intermediate Timeframe, Entry/Intraday Timeframe)



Any indicators that are great for 6e?


personally I'm not an indicator guy but volume profile / VWAP / 8/21/55 EMA's / RSI all have their use for me. I never take trades based on indicators, they only confirm what I have planned before the session, or tell me to be cautious. Indicators are merely context for price action to me.


Some final notes would be to keep it simple & have great risk management. Press it when you're getting a clear read/lower size or dont trade when you are not. And, of course take what I say with a grain of salt because what works for me may not work for you[/QUOTE @HitTheBid

Thanks very much for this amazing post. It should be required reading for all newbies. I'm going to re-read it a few times.

You said that you look at the weekly and daily charts to get a perspective on where the market is but use much shorter time frames for entries if they align with the higher time frames.

So, for example, would you only enter trades in the direction of the weekly time frame and not trade counter to the main trend?

Also, how do you determine when to enter a trade on the lower time frame?

Thanks!

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@kazz

Think about when you walk into a theme park, or a large shopping mall - there is often a map with a star that says "You are HERE"; this is your daily & weekly timeframe. This is extremely important because you need to have done analysis respective to these timeframes, (historical/macro) to give you an underlying theme for what you are seeing on the lower timeframes. What might be more important for higher timeframes is the candles and how they are forming & being able to visualize how the current weekly candle might play out. Just because you are navigating to a certain store in the mall that is to the east, does not mean you won't have to walk to the west a few times along the way (Intraday). At the end of the day this is not specific to currency futures, but how I analyze any market.

Smaller timeframes give context to the higher - I like to look at it as "seeing inside" the weekly/daily candle. An example of what I may use is a 2h / 30 minute chart combined with a 5 or 3 minute to execute on. I use nothing special to enter a trade - maybe a pull back to vwap or the retest of a broken trendline will be my deciding factor to enter but often I *build a story* as I analyze down thru the timeframes. The key is that you use patience and wait for the A+ setups, and by this I dont mean wait for a level you think is A+ and enter as soon as it is tested, but to wait for your hypothesis to actually materialize and enter *as* price is beginning to move away from the level - may take 15 minutes to a few hours. Trade timing is just as if not more important than the levels you identify.


Risk management is at the end of the day the most important factor in your bottom line. Removing the desire to be correct from your thought process, identifying if you are entering simply because you crave the action or because you are trying to make money, being honest with yourself and cutting a trade that has clearly proven your original reason for entering wrong.

Position sizing, identifying "day types", etc. deserve threads of their own. My point is, it is not so black & white. This all comes with experience, your intuition will guide you. Stay open minded, learn how the market moves and always focus on what is happening now with price, not some lagging indicator.

HitTheBid 

@kazz Think about when you walk into a theme park, or a large shopping mall - there is often a map with a star that says "You are HERE"; this is your daily & weekly timeframe. This is extremely important because you need to have done analysis respective to these timeframes, (historical/macro) to give you an underlying theme for what you are seeing on the lower timeframes. What might be more important for higher timeframes is the candles and how they are forming & being able to visualize how the current weekly candle might play out. Just because you are navigating to a certain store in the mall that is to the east, does not mean you won't have to walk to the west a few times along the way (Intraday). At the end of the day this is not specific to currency futures, but how I analyze any market. Smaller timeframes give context to the higher - I like to look at it as "seeing inside" the weekly/daily candle. An example of what I may use is a 2h / 30 minute chart combined with a 5 or 3 minute to execute on. I use nothing special to enter a trade - maybe a pull back to vwap or the retest of a broken trendline will be my deciding factor to enter but often I *build a story* as I analyze down thru the timeframes. The key is that you use patience and wait for the A+ setups, and by this I dont mean wait for a level you think is A+ and enter as soon as it is tested, but to wait for your hypothesis to actually materialize and enter *as* price is beginning to move away from the level - may take 15 minutes to a few hours. Trade timing is just as if not more important than the levels you identify. Risk management is at the end of the day the most important factor in your bottom line. Removing the desire to be correct from your thought process, identifying if you are entering simply because you crave the action or because you are trying to make money, being honest with yourself and cutting a trade that has clearly proven your original reason for entering wrong. Position sizing, identifying "day types", etc. deserve threads of their own. My point is, it is not so black & white. This all comes with experience, your intuition will guide you. Stay open minded, learn how the market moves and always focus on what is happening now with price, not some lagging indicator.

Thanks very much for this brilliant post. It's got some very good advice and I've bookmarked it.

You say that you start by analysing the daily and weekly time frames first. What do you analyse in particular? Are you using these higher time frames to determine the overall trend of the market?

If so, what do you use to determine the trend - is it something like moving averages or CCI for example?

And, once you determine that trend do you then only trade in the direction of the weekly trend?

Sent using the NexusFi mobile app