MCO Forex Signals

Hello all, 

8-May-13

EURUSD

Sell limit = 1.30993, SL = 1.31312, TP1 = 1.30673, TP2 = 1.30353

I'd advise moving your SL to breakeven if  TP1 is achieved.

07May13 (New Zealand)

USDCAD

Sell limit = 1.00795, Stop loss (SL) = 1.00955, Take profit 1 (TP1) = 1.00635, TP2 = 1.00475

If you are new to forex a good little strategy for you to kick off your trading career is to be used in conjunction with certain fundamental announcements.  Even as a long time forex trader this is a good little strategy to take a few pips out of the market.  The strategy is as follows:

First off you want to check out the forex calendar at Forexfactory.  Here you want to find announcements that are coloured red as these will give the most volatility.

Go to a currency pair that you think will give the best movement.  Eg if it was NFP which is the first friday of every month I would use GBPUSD currency pair.

Go to the 1 minute timeframe about 5 minutes before the announcment is about to take place.  Usually before the announcement there will be a lot of consolidation going on which is just sideways movement in the charts.

When the announcement occurs there will usually be a very large swing in the markets.  Don't get into the trade yet.  Wait for a retrace and put in a pending buy or sell depending on the direction of the movement.

As you can see in this picture the market shot up to point (A).  As I mentioned you do not want to get into the trade yet.  Wait for a retrace (B) and put in a buy stop at the price of (A).  You can set a SL at (B) or maybe a bit larger as you don't really want to be whipped out of the trade too early as this will be extremely volatile.

The reverse would be true if the market moved down.

Another possibility could be this.

As you can see in this picture the market moved up when the announcement occured.  At point (A) you would of been waiting for a retrace and for it to go back up but instead the market took  a rapid plunge down to point (B).  Now you don't know where it is going to go.  You could set a buy stop at (A) and a sell stop at point (B).  Depending on how many pips between the two points you could just set a SL of around 20 pips.  This can be assessed on a case by case basis.  You could also do this with no SL because if you got in at point (A) with a buy stop and the market moved back down and triggered your sell stop order both trades will be cancelling each other out so to speak.  This is called a straddle trade.  This can be risky however depending on who your broker is so definitely check this out before you make a trade.  

Hello Chartedseas, 

I trade on a live account with Axitrader as my broker.  They are an Australian broker and I find them to be very good.  They have excellent customer service, have very tight spreads, have good educational material at hand for the novice trader, use the MT4 platform, and their charts close at the New York close which I find very helpful.  I have tried a number of brokers and have found Axitrader to be the best.  

Thanks, 

Hello all, 

A few years back when I first started trading forex I wasn't really interested in trading anything longer that the 60 minute charts.  The main reason I did that was because I always wanted to be trading, or even worse, I always wanted to be in a trade.  

Half a year ago I started trading the daily chart which closed at the New York closing time and have never looked back.  The lowest timeframe I now use is the 4 hour chart which I use only to fine tune some of my trades.  

The reasons I like the daily charts so much which close when the New York markets close is because it includes the sentiment for the entire trading day, from the New Zealand open to the New York close.  After the New York close the market becomes very quiet which is a good time to analyse the market.

Below are a few more advantages of using the daily timeframe whilst trading forex:

You do not have to be constantly glued to your computer screen looking at the markets.  You can actually still have a life.

You do not have to quit your day job.  Half an hour a day is all that you need.

There is not much random fluctuations in price or random noise that the intra-day charts have.

More reliable price action signals.

You do not overtrade.  This is a very good thing.

Less clutter on the screens.

See the whole days sentiment, bullish or bearish, of the markets.

The list above are the main points that I can think of.  They are definitely the reasons as to why I now trade the daily charts that close at the New York close.

  Cheers, 

Well the trade that I took on the EURUSD yesterday has hit my stoploss of 17 pips and made its way up which would have been a tidy 3:1 Reward to risk ratio.  Unfortunately this one did not eventuate into a profitable trade but hey that is just the nature of the beast when it comes to trading. The markets at the moment are just so volatile, just look at the price of gold at the moment.  

Here are a few ways that you can use to improve your trading.  Some are very simple but often not implemented by the average trader.  In no particular order here is the list:

Trade only the major currency pairs.  Eg; EURUSD, GBPUSD, AUDUSD, NZDUSD, USDCHF, USDJPY, USDCAD, XAUUSD, XAGUSD.

Have a trading journal.  Include in this the trades that you have made, why did you enter the trade, stoploss, take profit, what sort of order was it, buy or sell, if it was a losing trade why do you think it didn't pay off, what was your target R:R and what was the actual R:R.   Enter in what ever you think will help you in your future trading endeavours.  Remember it will only be you that reads it.

Having and implementing strict money management rules.  I only risk 1% of my total trading capital at anyone time.  This is regarded as a low risk percentage but I find it works well for me and prevents too much emotion getting in the way of a good trade, or a bad trade for that matter.

Stick with one trading setup and master it.  My recommendation would be to just trade the daily chart to start with.  Focus on price action setups at significant levels of support/resistance and with the dominant trend.

Remove emotion from your trading.  Easier said than done I know.  The ways I combat this is by set and forgetting trades, having decent R:R ratios, risking only a small amount of my trading capital.  There are many more reasons to combat this but first I think you have to ask yourself a few vital questions about why you are having doubts in your trades a fixing the issues yourself.

Do not over trade.  Trade only when the setups present themselves. 

There are many more ways to become profitable in your trading but above are the main points I used in order to achieve it.