Monthly Archives: January 2013

Create Your Own Trading Success Journal

Posted in: Trading Process and Strategy | , by
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The following email made my day (and maybe my month)!

This is exceptional work. I can't fault any of his setups or entries. Brilliant.

What pleases me most is to see signs of real professionalism, such as a willingness to take a small loss and then re-enter. And confidence to change bias as new information comes to light; looking for a breakout failure but switching to take a breakout pullback entry when the breakout failure doesn't trigger.

And the breakout into a narrow range bar on climactic volume… that absolutely was sweeeeet! Love it!

Anyway… what's the point in sharing this? It's quite simple:

  • There is GREAT value in YOU putting together a similar collection of trades from your own trading. Call it a "Trading Success Journal"; a source of inspiration and motivation for those many challenging sessions ahead.

Here's the email I received…

EMAIL:

Hi Lance, Happy new year.

Several months ago I had sent you some charts with the 3min setups on the left hand side and their triggers into those setups on the right hand side. Your gave me some really good feedback which was greatly appreciated. Since then I have kept a log of some of my better trades for future reference. This comes in handy when I'm in a slump and just cant seem to get my focus right or starting to have doubts in my methodology. What I do is I review all of my better than average winning trades which seems to give me a boost that brings back the confidence in my trading. I just thought that you might want to see a few of them since I know you love lower time frame triggers into the setup. Instead of sending you a bunch a charts with scribbles and notes all over them, I'm just showing you the actual trades including their triggers.

I absolutely love the YTC PAT methodology.

PS. Theses trades are all from the stock "SPY". Just so you know, 95% of the time I take my T2 targets above or below the 3min candle instead of a pre-defined area since I'm trying to get into habit of letting my profits run until the market takes me out.

Cheers

B.M.

trading success log

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Candlesticks equal Price Bars

Posted in: Trading Process and Strategy | , by
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Email Q&A:

I would like to see a side by side comparison of the various candlestick chart patterns & equivalent bar chart patterns.

In other words, what does a Shooting Star look like on a bar chart? The same with a Harami, Dark Cloud, Piercing, Engulfing, Morning Star, etc.

Thank You!!!

Response:

No problems at all. Great idea! Many people don't realise it, but candlestick patterns may also be displayed via OHLC Price Bars. The data is exactly the same. It's a great idea to learn to see the sentiment changing in both formats!

You'll find the images below.

If you want to print it though, get it first in PDF format at my ebook page: https://yourtradingcoach.com/ebooks/

candlesticks equal price bars

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Trade Entry Triggers – Micro-Trendline Breaks

Posted in: Trading Process and Strategy | , by
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My preference for triggering entry is via a lower timeframe pattern breakout, such as shown in many examples throughout the YTC blog archives. For examples you might want to refer to the YTC Newsletter signup bonus ebook, “The LOST Files – 150 Lost YTC Blog Posts” for the following posts:

  • Chart Patterns at the Micro Level
  • The Fractal Nature of Price
  • Micro Trigger Patterns – 123 Bottom
  • YTC PAT Readers: Is a Single Bar Pullback Sufficient For Entry?

And if you want more information, the patterns I use for lower timeframe entry are outlined in the YTC Price Action Trader.

However there are other ways to trigger entry.

One that you may find you like is the concept of using micro-trendline breaks to enter the trade. Again, I'd recommend this on a lower timeframe, although the concept could apply to the trading timeframe if you use that for trade entry.

As with all good price action concepts, it applies across all markets and timeframes (provided sufficient liquidity to ensure smooth price flow).

Let's look at what I mean through some chart examples. We'll consider only the case of a pullback entry into a trending market. Once you understand this idea you should be able to adjust it to any other environment and trade setup.

We'll start with a pullback within a bearish trend, with a bias for continuation lower.

micro trendline breaks

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