SOME OF THE BEST POSTS FROM RYAN

INTRODUCTION

Dear traders,

I have gone through almost entire posts made by Ryan. They are the real Gems. I am Fortunate to come across such a dynamic personality. Almost, all the posts made by Ryan are thousands of hours of experience. They have a bitter reality which if digested can open the doors to abundance. To know is something and to realize is different. I have realized many of the things Ryan discusses and hope others will unfold their potential.

95% of people don’t make big in the financial market speculation. Those 5% unleash their potential and live the life they want within Natural limits. Nothing is far from Truth. Only truth can set you free. Truth is there , was there and will always be there. Truth is the first and last ladder of success. Ryan’s posts will set you free, if you read them, re read them until you are enlightened.

I have complied some of the best posts by Ryan and categorized them into four classes

1) Trading Psychology

2) Money and Risk Management

3) Trade management

4) Game Plan

I hope those who read this with full faith and love, will land in the world of heavens!

Thank you Ryan for sharing your experience and wisdom

Trading Psychology

The market is easy you can show a 6 year old Phillip's method and they will make more money then 90% of the people out there. Reason is they don’t use emotions and trade what they see, once you add greed and fear people trade like crap.

I started when I was 23 I am 31 now so it took me some time. The key here is to not have any or as little bills as you can, I also saved up over 1 years worth of living money before I started but I lived in a cheep apartment and had everything else payed for. The last thing you want to have when trading full time is to have to worry about paying bills, that will cause you to force a trade and you will lose money that way. Just stick with it, also trading is not very exciting, in fact I am in computers so I got a job and traded when at work and did just as well, now I work from home doing computers and trade. Just take it step by step and you will be fine. 1st thing, learn how to make money trading, if you can't do that don't worry about the 200k or paying bills. It like running your own business, I also did that before I traded so I did not freak out when I did not have steady income, also it teaches you how to save when times are slow.

Jim you will get it, I did the Fib’s for a long time, then did Gartly's that are just Fib’s with a wave count, I did cycles, I did all the other RSI, BB, Stoc's, etc. Just remember this one line my mentor told me "It all works and none of it work" and it's 100% true, a good trader can take any "system" add there own style to it and make money... Back when I was on AvidTrader chat years ago there was a trader there that wrote these great system, I messed with about 10-15 different ones and I made money with everyone of them, the flip side is he could not make any money no matter what he did, he even had it say SELL and BUY but he would screw it up somehow and after losing 3-5 trade new system time. Also I knew of someone who ran a huge hedge fund, made lots of people tons of money but he could not trade his own money to save his life. This pretty much boils down to emotion, I know I sound like a broken record but it's the truth, I put a ton of time in my mental / physical health so I can be in tip top shape all the time when I trade. I have traded in poor mental health and trust me it does not get better once you get a loosing trend going, I knew we all have been there.

Just take your time, Really once you get good at trading it's the most boring thing in the world but once you get to this point you have made it

Remember when I said trading is the most boring job in the world? Lol it's so true. When it's slow I go to the Gym, cook, walk outside and enjoy life. I also play video games or read.

My worst trading days are when I was at the screen all day long pushing something. Once you know what to look for you just scan the charts and walk away.

Don't worry everyone does this. As I said a while back trading is boring and with boredom comes change, with change comes loss, with loss comes excitement and not the good kind. You have to go back to being bored, want excitement? Jump out of a plane, go to a casino. The market is NOT the place for excitement

Glad we can help, it will get easier to trade and it could be tomorrow. Just have to sit tight, plan your trade and then take the trade and see what happens. If you wrong who cares, as long as you did not trade off emotion or some different rule or being bored you are fine. :)

Take a deep breath and don’t just jump in because you have nothing else to do. Why did you take this trade if you did not have a sl and tp? You have 2 options at this point, take your time and plan the trade or keep shooting from the hip and blow out your account.

I got if from my older brother and He's a pro poker player. He does not play unless he has a edge. You have to take this same approach to the market. If you trade because there is nothing to do go to a casino and have fun and blow all you money and go back to work, the market is not the place. Trading is my living and I treat it as such, You have to spend time and look over charts over and over and get a feel for it. 4 years ago I printed out every day on the @ES from 1991 and read over them, it took about a year but after that I could call tops and bottoms on that market all day long and still can I just don’t enjoy trading the 3min and honestly I don’t need to trade so that's why I quit it. I love this method and it's well though out, no judgment you see this and this you take the trade, don’t think don’t worry buy or sell put in a good stop and walk away. As I tell a lot of people the best trades some people take is when they put on a position and go to sleep because they don’t screw with it When I am taking a trade I want the 8ma / 21ma and 89ma all lined up in my favor do I miss some trades? Sure but again I am going back to that rich deck, my brother did not make millions because he played hap-hazardly

I am just saying that once you start trading more contract not only do brokers make your spreads better but they set you up on a better platform and give you free research and such. I have been trading a while and started at 1 contract on the ES back in 2000. Also same thing goes as paper trading if you can make 10k in paper but not real money it's emotion, you can trade 10-20-100 contracts and it does not matter if there is no emotion. I know people that trade 100 contracts it's just a number and does not affect the trade at all. The only downside to getting a broker account is 500k min deposit.

It is experience, It does not matter how smart you are or how much you have read the next step is looking in the mirror and knowing the only person you are trading against is YOURSELF. There is no way to know if you are going to win or lose, if it was that easy there would be systems out that made you 100's of millions but there is not. I know some people that got it in 3-4 years like myself and can make as much as they wish. I also know people that have been trading for 15+ years have a Dr in math from MIT and can NOT get it. The cold hard truth is some people will never get trading and they may spend 20+ years trying to get it. Others get it and do well. Also I printed every day from 1991 out in 2001 and read every chart on a 3min chart. I did spend 18 hours a day for 4 years with someone who had 20+ years of making millions a year in the market so I could not of had a better mentor to help me and I STILL LOST FOR YEARS! I really think if you are cut out to trade you can trade any system and make money, I know this 4hr is not the 1st or only setup I have traded and made money with I have used about 4-5 now on all different times and made money. The biggest thing I see is most people who come into the market are the top 5% of the smartest people, they have mastered the job they have and are looking to beat the market. Well the market does not care if you are a Dr or if you have 100 million in the bank it will make you 100% responsible of your actions. Also people who blame the market on a bad trade will never make it. You have winners and losers and the market / friend / post here can NOT be the blame of a loss or gain.

It's funny after all of these years of trading you keep seeing people fail on the same stuff over and over and they keep talking themselves out of the good trades then they get mad when they miss it and take a crap trade. Do you homework so when the trade comes up you don't have to think about what to do you just take it, if you don't like to lose get out of the market because you are going to have a loss.

100's of ways to make money, 1000's of way's to lose it. Also remember it all works and none of it works, depends who's looking at it. I trade from the 4hr down to the 1min just depends on how I feel that day. After 10 years of doing this nothing really has changed, from stocks to options to the S&P e-mini it's all just charts. Take the time to learn it and as everyone else said find something that works for you and the biggest thing of all is don't blow out a account trade small and keep it small. Also I hate to say this but a lot of people just will never be able to trade and will go "System" to system and never get it

Mike hit the nail on the head, how many times have you played poker, had the winning hand and the last card screwed ya? I know I have had this happen to many times but I had to go with it because the odds are right. It's more a feeling then anything and it takes time, sometimes I throw the rules out the window on a spike of news and hit the 2nd or 3rd bar just by FEELING that it's going to work. Play the good setups as best as you can and fold on the crap ones, and yes you will still lose sometimes even with the better setup's.

True, Some of the time I take a trade based on what I have seen in the past work and this just takes time. You can NEVER make money in the market trying to make rules that are 100% cut and dry and this is why so many people fail. For people to get this they are just going to have to see for themselves what works over and over and over. For new people it maybe better to just stick to the cookie cutter PB's and setups they can try to take that are more cut in dry.

Well I said I would not be back but I also said I NEVER want to see someone blow up and trading 5% that will happen. I blew out 3 account that way. When doing something new I trade with AS LITTLE AS I CAN, if I trade with 2-3$ per trade that's great because I still feel the action but not the $$$ pain. Get this down good before you risk a lot please, I don't want to see posts about "Ryanmcd SUCKS and blew up my account!"

If you like to read check out the Bill Williams books, I like his stuff because he has a PHD in psychology and can talk to you how all this "Chaos" works. I think his daughter is running the show now but Bill is a stand up guy and can trade real time, I have seen it he just does not like to pay taxes lol... gone

The more time spend looking at it the more you WILL do something and 90% of the time

It’s the wrong thing. Trust me I have done this well over 1000 times when I started out, if you mess with a trade when you are emotional you will screw something up. If you spent the time looking over the charts and came up with a trade that looked good in a "No risk" mindset it is almost always better then once the trade is on.

Think about it, why change it once you put the trade on? What changed? You have to remember that the "pros" will look at the charts and they know what they need to do to shake out the weak hands aka YOU.

I used to do this, talk myself out of trades over and over and watch them work. You have to build trust in what you do to NEVER 2nd guess it. If you pass a winner and pick a loser it gets worse and over and over, I have been doing this full-time now about 6 years and it took a lot to just take the trade and do think so much about it. I will say with this system it really does take ALL of the guesswork out of it if you take the time and build trust in what it does.

It's easy and makes money that's why people don't like it. They need more stuff on the screen so they look smart lol :)

I will say, the best thing a trader can do is to come to the realization that a bad trade or a good trade MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Great post as always, I knew of 2 people that could chart better then anyone I have ever seen. They would spend like 2-3 hours with lines and all this good stuff but they never made money, I would trade the charts I had no idea what it was saying but I knew if it looked short or long and I did well. These people used to work for huge firms Merrell and the other was UBS and would give the charts to others to trade. They both quit and tried to do trade but they would freak out every time they opened a trade and screw up all the rules... Funny thing is they both now run a large hedge fund and do well trading others money lol. Sorry for the long rant I just have seen 1st hand what happens when you think too hard and it seems the more time you spend telling yourself that "This is the one" the more you get

attached to it and become emotionally involved with the trade, then if it goes bad you think you failed.

Screw it, after I put on the trade I put in my targets and see what happens win or lose does not matter lol.

That is true, what happens is someone starts with a good system, they make a few great trades, start thinking about a new car, new house all this great stuff. Then they lose, the next thing they do is lose a few more times, next up NEW SYSTEM TO TRADE, that is where people fail. I have had about 12 losses in a row it was just a bad run and happens on the 5min, may happen on the 4hr not sure yet, but I also had a run over 40 wins in a row. It's all odds you do not know when you will get a run good or bad but after 10,000+ trades I know it can and will happen just like flipping a coin or one time when I was watching roulette and it hit black *17* times in a row! Does that happen much, nope but I will tell you it blew away LOTS of people playing that where thinking that the odds get better per spin but they forgot it really RESETS the odds each spin just like a trade

Money and Risk Management

As far as taking about making 10% a month or whatever, it depends on how much money you really need. If I am trading a 3 million $ account I don't need 10% a month but I like to get a little more if I see good trades setup. Again you will have slow month where you may make 2-300 then some months will be 6-700+. I say don't set a goal just take the trades that look good to you because setting a goal could run you into problems say in the last week of the month you start pressing trades to make that goal. If you look back I had the +300 goal in about 4 days, but I did not stop trading because there were great setups. The only trades I took this week was Monday for +160ish because the rest of the week was crap or I was out. Try this take 1 trade, close 1/2 put a stop @ cost and walk away for 6-8 hours and see what happens. Also some of my best trades are when I put the trade on and go to sleep Hope this helps.

You get immune to it, I lose 20k on a trade if it's wrong and it's no biggie it's just a numbers game. My brother is a pro poker player and is down 60-80k at times, no biggie if you do it long enough you know you are going to win. If you still freak out on the money part you will lose over and over and over.

I was talking about the 5-6% as not being safe, as was as taking a so call "PB" when it was not. People rush into stuff way to fast, it fails for them in a few days and it's on to the next system, I spent about 3 years before I started to get even 2 more years getting better then I started making money and can trade any time any markets. If this were easy we would not have 900+ pages on this. But like 99.9% of the people they think they should be able to make millions with 15min of work.

If you have been doing this a while you should be okay, yes everyone is different but I am a HUGE fan of not risking more then 2% of my account what I am trading. Why do you need more? If 30-50k is not enough per day you have some bad habits, if you don’t have enough in your account to trade 2% and do okay get a better job, or a 2nd job to make it work don't up the risk.

Yep and people lose everyday on this thread doing it but they never learn. Once people understand how to trade a trend then they start to make money, until that happens they will lose over and over. I watched you post that trade and looked back and you can see 80% of the bars go lower so what makes you think it'justgoingtofliparound?

Dothistest

Take a rock, have someone throw it at you do you move? I bet you do because the TREND is not going to change for no reason, what you are doing right now is getting hit in the head every time by the rock.

Each trade is it's own deal; Think about playing cards it's the same thing, each time you get a hand it resets. This is ALL a odds game really nothing more but you can say it's the brokers fault, it's the markets fault, it's the dogs fault the only fault is YOU! I am not trying to be a ass here I just know what it takes to make it in this business and the 1st thing is saying if your wrong it's your fault but who cares take the next trade that looks good and get on with it, I will tell you I STILL have chains of losers, last run was about 12 and I do this for a living now but who cares because I know that the 10,000 other trades I took I win over 60% of the time so it all works out. When you win is it your brokers fault? Hell no because it's good and we take credit for it. This is all an odds deal and MM that is it.

Also it's compounded, I do 2% a trade and if I win I redo my risk every trade, if I lose it's 2% less. To be honest you can make as much as you need once you get over 500k. The problem you will find is you have to use a big broker or several as I do, DBFX is a good big one, and once you get a broker account things change. You get your own personal broker and lots of GOOD free TA from them that helps as well as better spreads and *0* BS spreads that all the small brokers hit you with. If you can trade with the small brokers cheating you and having 10pip spreads at news time then if you can grow that account you can get away from all that crap. You can even trade with no spreads and just pay comms if you like.

It really does not matter how much I make to be honest why don't you work on learning how to trade and learn what your faults are. Or you can be like the 4 friends I helped and they all LOST money with me TELLING them when to buy and sell, yes it did happen. I would make money they would lose.

You need to worry less of what others do and wasting time challenging what they do, if someone comes on here says they make 10 million a day who cares, how is that helping you is what you need to be thinking. You need to work on YOURSELF, I know I used to always think everyone is better or has something special or better then what I am doing but that is not the case. The only reason I post is to help people and maybe it will shave some time off of them getting this stuff down. Some people have good ideas that I add to what I do but I trade the same way the past 9 years because it works

BB as well as RSI divergence, it's higher risk and I get stopped out more so I use the 2% risk 6% reward, the nice thing is that you can run a VERY tight stop because it's at a extreme. Also that's all I did for years to make the money I have. Now I just trade whatever looks good if it's trend I do 1:1 or 2:1 if it's CT = higher risk = 3:1

You work as hard as I do and it's nice to see. I think I do get frustrated at times but that's just because I want people to look at the big picture and not have to do all the crap that I did to make this work. Keep a trading log and what I did was take a screen print before every trade I got into just so I could review it after it happened, again trading is not the problem in most it's having a clue about MM and how risk works, I know people that have a 1% edge and make well over 1 million a year and it's all about MM really.

Yep it all come back to MM, if your winning trades make 5-6x as much as the losers it work as long as the losers are no less then say 75%ish. My goal is to keep a 40-50% winning rate on whatever I do and let MM take care of the rest.

Wow great post, one thing I do want to add is about that taking profit at .5% risk. To me I would rather just get stopped out on all of it because it's going to kill my odds down the road. What I am doing now is just keeping them open "3" positions and just closing them at resistance, if I look at a trade and see I can not get a 1:1 out of it I skip it. I do not want to risk 100 to make 50 that's just not for me. If I can make 200 on 100 risk 50% of the time I will make huge money still. Remember my brother plays with a 1-2% edge and it's HUGE money in the long run, hell you see Vegas?? They run a 3% edge I think lol...

You guys doing 10% risk, let me know when you blow out your 1st account. Remember pros like myself that are doing this for a LIVING do not risk that much, if you want to do 10% go to Vegas and at least have fun blowing your money. Also if you have 10k in a account and risk 2k that's no biggie, wait until you risk 100k a trade then lets see how you hold up. It's a big difference when you start to trade money that means something even after doing this a long time, as soon as you hit buy or sell and you go -$1,000 it will make you go tilt very fast if you don’t not have you mind in the zone 100% of the time. I watched a old fellow trader lose 160k in one day and lose a 8 million $ account in 6 months playing options in 1999 - 2000

Yes I did and it works, and still works. I just have enough cash now that 2% is a nice BMW. Also nothing about pride, it all comes down to how you want to live. I don't need 100 million $$$ I do fine with what I have, what I value more then money now is TIME it's all you really have. I could make 100+ million I bet in the next 20 years then I die with more money and did NOTHING with my life but make money, what a waste if you ask me. Also look at my screen shots from this AM, shows my trades on a REAL account must be luck.

Yep all about R: R and M: M, if people spent some time on that and not 99.9% on the charts I bet they would make some money.

Trade Management

Not sure why you guys are trading all these crap setups but I am not. If you rush this you will NEVER make it in trading and this is going to be my last post about waiting for a good trade because I don't need the help and a few here keep trading crap. I guess that's the difference of me doing this for a living and other chasing trades and because they missed one last time they are going to force a trade this time and lose. I have been there I lost 50k in 3 years doing that and blew out 3 accounts so you can either learn from my screwup's or you can lose a lot too does not matter to me. Please don't take this the wrong way; I hate to see people lose money.

Again, I don't want to come across as an ass but there is nothing else that could of happened today to make it any harder to trade this, here is when the newbs come out to play and lose a lot. I remember Sept 11. 2001 I was long a lot and lost 7k that day, I will not let that happen again and it's foolish to trade today when even the pros are having problems. Sit tight tomorrow will be better. Seems 90% of the trades here are people having nothing better to do then trade so they take something and win / lose but it's a trade that should have waited. Sure you will get lucky and maybe a few weeks but you cannot make a living trading if you have no discipline in this market.

That is so true, in the past I have helped several people trade, I would make money they would lose and we both got in at the exact same price. I like low risk stuff that's why I closed before the news, getting 70% of a move is my goal.

NEVER go above, if you want I can give you the number to a friend who did this and lost 300k in one day because he was 95% right. Just keep building, you WILL have a losing streak someday and if you put up say 5-10% and start losing you will blow out an account, ask me how I know this . If you don't have the cash to trade as much as you want there is a reason, it's because you’re not winning. Start with say 2-5k and build it up, if you can't make money on 2-5k it really does not matter how much you trade or how big your account is. I have traded 100 contracts in the past on the @ES and it felt the same as I was trading 1, that really is the key. If you are trading to live and you have to trade more, well get a better job sell everything you own and save, I did it and it has paid off.

I think someone made an EA in the past, I would say just take the time to learn what works and what does not. If you try to trade the market off a system you have a very good chance of failure, maybe not this week or in 3 months but the market will change. I have found after putting it about 150 hours just on pin bars that the best ones are at extremes and have a huge tail. Mike, James, and several others have posted this but people keep trying to be lazy and look for a system. I have been trading just pin bars for the past few months and win about 80% of the time and I have 0 indicators on my charts just price. You really just have to get good at reading price to trade and as you get better you take more indicators off your charts. Making an EA to trade this market is like making a car that will drive itself.

You may look into taking profits are support / resistance area's. If you look to get in on S/R why not take some profits at that level too.

Yes and I think that is why a lot of people miss the boat. I have a spreadsheet that I can put in "units" and trade with Oanda so it's the same 2% risk if I my goal is 10 pips or 100 pips. So lets do the math

#1

$800,000 account size, with a 2% risk with 1 position and a 10 pip gain / loss would be

Risk
$16,000
eur/usd = 16,000,000 units
Price per pip =$1,600

#2

$800,000 account size, with 2% risk with 2 positions and a 50 pip gain / loss would be

Risk
$16,000
eur/usd = 1,600,000
Price per pip = $320.00

So as you see 2% is 2% if it's a 1000 pip stop or a 5 pip stop I have the same risk on every trade. So now how does a trade that takes longer to happen and make more pips make me more money trading this way?

True and I try to keep away from news, but most trades are about 15-20min so my risk is low as far as time in the market. I got hammered in sept 2001 and traded longer times back then so it can happen both ways.

Good post and so true, I think 99% of the people that come to the market have no clue. They think they can look at the chart and ring a few 100k out in a few months, that's just not true. Once you get this down can you make 100k a month, sure it's easy but the hard part is getting it down. I maybe against saying the 5min stuff is not okay for new people, it's okay for new people with CONTROL, if you want to put in 10k and do 10% per trade just starting it that's just stupid, if you want to put in 100$ and trade 10 cents per trade that's fine. The only thing the 5M charts will do is show a person who cannot trade the truth faster then the 4hr.

I know Oleman, was on avid trade for about 5 years. He is talking about the S&P market and yes I did CT for years and made money but the S&P is A LOT DIFFERENT then the futures market, the ES moves different, a LOT different as I have traded both now. I think the $$$ market moves in a more trending fashion, also yes I still CT some but not like I have done in the ES market. Just don't want to see people CT trading the 5min eur/usd and getting hammered. Also if you can look up Tepid2, he was the CT master and my mentor for this method of trading

Great post as always Mike, and the shorter the time gets the faster you have to act. Don't chase a trade just pass it if you miss it. The problem is if you miss a trade the next trade can be forced, then you lose on the one you took and lose on the one you missed so your just a loser j/k pass on the trade and FORGET about the one you skipped. Also once you start winning you may be slow to taking on a trade due to not wanting to have a loser, you just have to pull the trigger and follow the plan.

Poker is a lot like the market to be honest, I am lucky I have the brother pro poker player to thank I just went a different direction. If you want you can ring the register when it's hot, I used to over and over on the S&P my goal was 3-5 a day but sometimes I did 10-15, what I do now is stop after 2-3 losses so I don't go tilt.

In markets like this when I don't have a edge I may take 1 trade a day, spreads sucks + news driven + biggest moves in history = play VERY safe. This maybe the only time in the next 20 years like this so I can wait a month or 3, no need to force a trade. I will say once we get back to "normal" days I will be hitting 4-6% again per day to make up for this just because I can lol Also I may even CT a little when the market is flat haha

I watched 8-10 hours a day for 7 days a few weeks ago and took 0 trades, I don't think many people can do that lol. It's just how people work, I bet I could do the 4hr stuff but again it's not for me.

I would also like to add I lost for 4 years starting out using the 5min and this is with a

Mentor telling me what to do so no it's not easy even with someone holding your hand. We would take the same trades and I would lose he would win it was that bad. Take your time put IN your time into these charts, if you have a job and cannot watch it real time you need to watch it at night. Looking over charts is good but WATCHING how they move to get a feel for what is going to happen is key for me.

Thanks Jim and you are 100% correct, sometimes my goal is 10/10 20/20 or 5/5 depends on the swings.

Don't think so much, who cares if it's going up so much, if you have a good reason why it may go up more get into the move with a low risk trade. Play PB's WITH THE TREND for a change, that's 1 less think to have to worry about. Don't always look for CT trades, I play CT and Trend all day everyday, a good trade is a good trade as long as the risk is low and reward is high.

You hit it spot on, How many people do you know that are GREAT at what they do, everyone tells them to start their own business, they do then it fails..... It's poor planning just like how people trade. I see people posting up charts with 2-300 pip bars they would have to use for a stop, can it work sure but is it going to move 2-300 more to even make it 1:1 and are you going to just take 50 pips off and be happy until you get stopped out -300?

I think in risk that's it, that's all I do when I trade so I like the CT stuff of IB's due to the lower risk. I just see lots of people posting up charts and doing good TA but I really don’t see anyone making any money or posting what they are looking for in a trade, or how they manage it if it goes bad. You made 50 pips, who cares, how much risk was in it? Did you even take the trade? What was the target, what stop, what if it goes wrong?

Maybe I am asking too much but I have never seen anyone on here talk about what he or she do if a trade goes bad or how they manage a bad trade. For me I kill it if it starts going bad like I posted yesterday, I don’t wait for the stop if it's going sideways I kill it, then I got back in short again 2-3min later due to it starting to look good again... Here is the chart

I killed it when it hit a new high, then I had a nice long bar up that I got short off of, if you throw up RSI you will see the divergence on the 1min with BB as well.

If no one else trades or posts about how they trade I think I am wasting my time here, I like to help but I like to learn as well and if all we are going to do is throw up charts that's just bullshit and anyone can show a great trade after the fact, put up a REAL account showing the trade then talk about it.

Yes, just like my 5min stuff doing IB bars, with an 8 pip stop I can NOT be wrong much or at least more then 50% lol. Then maybe a stop at the top of the pin is not the way to go because that really kills your 2% risk, as you know %2 of a 100 pip stop vs. a 300 pip stop is HUGE. I may have to go back and see how often a pin fails at 1st then works out okay and how far it goes up. That is why I love the IB trades, very low risk with huge gains.

Most IB's on the 4hr stuff are maybe 40-50 pips, get 150 make that 300% then win 50-50 and enjoy the money machine.

I have been doing this a while and I will never look at a chart to tell me what my losses will be, I have had over 40 winners in a row as well I don’t see that chart Also how big are the losses, did you go tilt on the losses? Too much to take in to see what your "losses" will be. Just take good trades and don’t think, Okay 6 losses I have to win the next one the chart says so!

No need to miss sleep for the market, if you miss a few winners who cares as you missed a few losers as well it's a numbers game and you will come out on balance. If you have something that works just take them as they show up and get your sleep.

Lol, my mentor asked me how much cash I had, I said 10k he said 3-5min to build. If I had 10 even 20k and did daily’s it would take YEARS to build up and I would of not made it. What I think James wants to do is have people learn this stuff before they try to trade but I say let them crash and burn like I did, it works and EVERYONE I know who has traded has blown up at least 1 time even WITH a mentor.

I also would bring up MM and no one would ever go over it really on the charts, just kept showing setups and charts over and over LOL, I don’t give a shit about a winner, show me how you manage a loser and what about compounding and such. I got something that works great and it took a few years to get it down as far as trailing / building into a trade, no one really covers that ever. That alone will tell you we have very few if ANYONE that plays big money.

Was saying don't trade a 4hr like a 5min chart, I take 15-20 pip on the 5min the 4hr on the eur/usd I go for 130 on this trade not 20 with a 60 pip stop. Also don't look at charts because you will start screwing with your trade, plan the trade, place it and then do NOT screw with it. I bet your goal on this trade was NOT 20 pips....

THIS is the hardest thing about trading, getting in with a good setup is easy, when to take it off the table is the hard part. On the 5min it was cake and done in 15min so you did not have time to worry. I am playing with a trail stop right now and do not want to post it yet due to it getting changed until I find something that works consistently. I used to go to cost at 1:1 RR or you could take 1/2 off at 1:1, now I am @ cost when 1:1 and trail that up until I get 1:2 or stopped out on the trail setup, don’t really have BE's now. One thing also is nice is I trail my stop when it moves so if I get a small move up then it goes against me I did reduce risk some, but then again I could get stopped out and it take off but from watching this if that is the case it was not a good trade... I wish I had a clear-cut answer for ya but now I just go off how price feels and I never get made for taking money off the table EVER.

Stop is at the end of the pin, when I addin to a position I give it more room because I addin on pullbacks and sometimes they go more then I want but the goal is to ride the trend.

I trade lots of small crap PB's all day long, what I look at is risk, It's just like playing a inside bar to me, if it's 30 pips risk for 2% that’s great, I hate the HUGE PB's that need 150 pips for 2% because that's a huge run I have to get and 300 for 4% and that is not going to happen, just a different way to look at it. Also I posted I thought we where going to sell off as all the pairs where turning down at that time and my BB and a few MA's that I use to keep me in check of price said the same. Also no I am not going to share the MA's I use due to all the work I put in getting it setup.

True and now on the 5min I run different risk for different times, I have one setup that works about 30% BUT my risk is 3 pips, target is 21 so it's 7:1, right now I am doing the small PB's on the 5min with 5 pip risk 20 target so I can lose 50-60% of the time and do well, sometimes I win 50-60% so it works well.

The key I am finding out after years of doing this is add’ in into a winner not killing it, if I am in a trend trade and it's working out I will be looking at way to add into this position to make it work better and enjoy the run and use PA to add into the position, It's nice having a 2% risk trade make 15+%

I am starting to use the support and resistance, the thing is I am a gun slinger, I take trades that look like crap to everyone else but make me money and to me each indicator that will make me close a trade out too fast such as resistance and support I don’t really mess with. The BB and RSI show me if it's over-extended or not, if it goes over extended I CT it on the 5min as a hedge.

I just have my broker on a cell phone, also I always put in stops the same time I place my trade I have been burned before on that years ago and it was easy to fix. The only risk I have now is when I adjust my stops but over the years the GOOD brokers don't go down, In 1997-1999 Interactive Brokers had some growing pains Also you had to use math then too like 16 3/4 not 16.75 lol

Also about doing all that work, I am smart and lazy. I have a print out of what account balance = what risk and leave it on my desk, I have pre set stops and losses and I am good at math so if I have to adjust a tighter stop I just work the number in my head for the units, If you are trading say 2.5 million units and move your stop from 10 to 8 because that's resistance you just add 20% more so that's .5 then it's 3 million units, I round to the nearest 100k to make it easier but I also match the trade in DBFX because Oanda does not like you going over 10 million units and I like to hedge it too just in case something happens

Game Plan

RYANMCD – 5min tf

Note – to those of you that are new to this method it is strongly advised that you read the James16 thread first and get comfortable playing PA setups on a higher timeframe first.

SCREEN setup

21 EMA

50 SMA

18/2 Bollinger Band

RSI – 6

Within this method there are several plays depending on what the market is doing. The favourite plays are always with the trend, looking for pullbacks to enter.

With the trend

It's pure price action, J16 is PA and this is it's most true from. You can trade one setup but the market will change over time and that may not work as well as it did before.

You use the 50 simple MA and the 21 EMA to define the trend

The key to all of this is knowing what way it's going, you can use MA's you can use bar counts, you can use the ocean it does not matter but if you know the direction of the market getting into it off a pullback is the way to go.

SU – solid up

SD - solid down

The key to this really is to KNOW if you are going to have a trending day or a slop day.

1. Slop day = sideways all day no trend.

Most of the time you get a run and you can grab the pullback, if I look at the charts and see no trend I will grab a CT trade or a trade once it runs through the BB or whatever. Once we have a day like that I will put some notes into it, this SU stuff is cake and you really cannot lose....

You only get SU / SD days about 25% or less but the people that keep shorting a SU day get hammered and get hammered bad. You really only have about 3-4 kind of days for the most part, SU / SD or sideways of the up down up, or down up down day. I will post a few more charts each day and once you see the same kind of days it's the same deal over and over. Also one thing I see no one talk about is TIME, time is just as big as price to me but no one is talking time at all. 8:30, 10:30, 2:30 EST are HUGE price action times, 11:30 - 12:30 = slow a good bit of the time. Think about who trades these markets and they are human just like us, they go to lunch and at 2:30 they want to get finished for the day. Also I count bars.

I like to see a move that shows me it's going to stick with the trend, if it's a PB, or a engulfing bar or a spike, just something. If I don't get it I may still take it but I like to have something else on my side with the trend. Check out the down move on if you shorted the 21EMA every time it hit when in trend.

You use PA to buy dips/ sell rallies. If the PA set up i.e. pin bar etc is below the 21 EMA/bb you pass on the trade if trend is up. IF the setup is above the 21 EMA/bb and Trend is down you pass on the trade.

When you trend trade you take profit at 10. After you win 10 you stop for the day. I know you have some loosing days of neg 20 and assume that is your maximum loss for a day before you quit. You trade till one of these levels is hit.

Trade PB's that pull back on a trend and enjoy a winning 90%. CT trading is just stupid and a good way to blow out a account. Yes when I started doing PB's I CT traded them because that's when they show up 95% of the time. If I did not know what I was doing I would of been screwed many of the times.

Also people that say the 5min has more risk never traded a flat market, the 5min will always have a trend everyday, it maybe 30-60min but it will have one I can get my 10 in on. The one thing I dislike about PB's is 90+% of the time they are counter-trend on here, no one really takes one with the trend. PB's for me seem to work best when the market is NOT trending and going sideways and it's at a BB extreme.

Go back on the 4hr / daily, put up some BB 18/2 and look what happens when you get a PB and the bands are flat and the PB has hit a extreme on the band, it's money in the bank time after time.

Here is how I add it all up in my head, my trade soup.

Time = 20%
Long Term trend = 20%
PA = 50%
RSI = 10% *** Unless I am doing a CT trade then RSI is about 50%, price is 20% and TIME is 30%.

Stops are placed as per normal with the J16 PA setups e.g. if it is a pin bar going long then the bottom of the Pin.

Positive divergence between RSI and price action
- i really nice PB at bottom of bolliger band and all that in the direction of the current trend.

Counter Trend

You only trade counter trend with a divergence with RSI. RSI set to 6, you also like to see the bb flatten out. You set the bb to 18,2. When you counter trend trade you take profit at 10 pips.

If you are going to CT something you better have your charts correct and know that it will not be a long term move

You gotta be aware of the time frame you're trading in. When the weekly gets over-extended in its trend, it sets up a tradable countertrend move on the daily. When the daily gets overextended, it sets up a tradable ct move in the hourly/30 min. When the hourly/30min get overextended, it sets up a ct trade on the 5 min. Day traders make a big mistake trying to catch counter trend moves by referring only to the very short term (5,2,or 1 min) charts. That's gambling. You can trade with the trend by looking only at the 5 min, entering on every pullback, but if you want to catch the countertrend moves, you gotta know where you are on the bigger charts. This is all I do and have done to make a living for years, I just added some of J16 PA to it but it's nothing new just James rebadged old stuff.

Chart examples

Go back on the 4hr / daily, put up some BB 18/2 and look what happens when you get a PB and the bands are flat and the PB has hit a extreme on the band, it's money in the bank time after time. One last thing, I am not here pushing my stuff I just know what works and have been doing it for a while and like to see people make money. So many people spend so much time trying to get the perfect setup and it is never going to happen ever, everyday is different but price does not change.

Mike has a good point, think of playing the market like playing cards, only trade the rich decks and don’t screw with the 4-9 off-suite. If you are going to CT something you better have your charts correct and know that it will not be a long-term move. I went long off the 5min this am but if you read my chart I posted I knew I was against everything all trends on all times, BUT I had a setup with RSI divergence that I have traded over 2000 times and made a good living doing it for years so I did not even think about it when I jumped into it.

One thing you guys need to look at is trend, yes we do not trend all the time but we get some nice long month long+ trend moves, and this helps show what way we are going, sure you may have a day that is down when the long trend is up BUT you have to know that 80% of the time we are going to be going up.

Here is how I add it all up in my head, my trade soup.

Time = 20%
Long Term trend = 20%
PA = 50%
RSI = 10% *** Unless I am doing a CT trade then RSI is about 50%, price is 20% and TIME is 30%.

Take a piece of paper TAPE it on your screen and write down your rules, print out days you lost and go over them again and again, NEVER trade on emotion, if you get excited trading your doing it wrong.

You must be aware of the time frame you're trading in. When the weekly gets over-extended in its trend, it sets up a tradable countertrend move on the daily. When the daily gets overextended, it sets up a tradable ct move in the hourly/30 min. When the hourly/30min get overextended, it sets up a ct trade on the 5 min. Day traders make a big mistake trying to catch counter trend moves by referring only to the very short term (5,2,or 1 min) charts. That's gambling. You can trade with the trend by looking only at the 5 min, entering on every pullback, but if you want to catch the countertrend moves, you must know where you are on the bigger charts. This is all I do and have done to make a living for years, I just added some of J16 PA to it but it's nothing new just James rebadged old stuff.

Its ALL price action, what I trade you can trade off the TICK or off the MONTHLY does not matter at all; I traded the S&P futures with this as well as stocks years ago. If you don't like looking at 5min charts I can Photoshop in a 4hr over the 5min lol, it's really the same thing. Yes support and resistance is different but it just happens faster. A chart is a chart no matter the time.

It all depends. This is when you have to learn how to trade, what I posted is how I trade and it works, to say I do the same thing every trade is wrong. In fact I do most of my trade different depending on the feel.

1. Was the PB made fast? Did it happen in the last 30 seconds of the 5min bar? Did the last high take out the BB and how high did it go through the BB? What does RSI look like? Could it be a divergence? Was the last RSI low higher then the one before it?

When I take a trade I do about 10 different things and it's never the same, I look at the 1min chart as well and check out what the 30min looks like. Again I printed out 7 years of charts and went over every day on a 3min time, took me about 2 years. Is it worth it? Sure is.

What system? I just have MA's BB and RSI on a chart, the system is YOU the TRADER. ;) Show me any "System" and I will make money with it.

Good trend, lots of traffic. You should be okay but I am going to pass on this one :)

If you want post up some charts and put up your R:R and your exit if it works, or if it goes bad. What this does is takes you out of the trade, for me I want to think before I put a trade on not when it's going on, I want to know if it fails where it may fail, I want to try to make sure I have a good R:R and the bar is not huge or I will just pass it due to the stop being too big, I want to make sure my target is not going to hitting a PPZ or some long term resistance and if it does and stalls what I am going to do at that point... To me all the thinking is done before the trade and I NEVER change my plan because I took care of everything that could go wrong before the fact. The only time I got screwed was Sept 11 2001 when I get stuck long a few 1000 shares of CTXS.

LOL, I think of it like stomping on a bug or killing a weed, it's done and it's quick. Also sometimes I will even reverse on it if it was a PB that failed hard or something because if I did my TA right and it blows through a PPZ and a PB and wants to go why miss the train.

Oh about killing it and going to the moon, I have had many days when the high or low was MY trade getting stopped out on the S&P e-mini lol.

What I do and I am no pro on the longer times, is I put a stop above the high of the 2d

PB, any place else to me is high risk. If you wanted to try to reduce some risk you can wait for a re-trace into the Pb or say 38% or 50% but then you may miss it.

What I am thinking of doing is getting into the pin, if it does a retrace I will add into it.

I did the 5min pins and unless you have a divergence ppz and some luck you will work very hard. 4hr and daily seem to work well better then 60%, that and use good MM and that's all you need and the bonus is you have a life to do other things and not have to watch the charts all day.

I made LOTS of money doing ct trades due do the low risk I also know people who have been doing it 20+ years and still make enough to buy a new jet every year. It really depends on what works for the person, the one thing I like about CT trades is the LOW risk, you can run a tight stop on it and if you are doing 2 to 1 or as I used to on the spooz run a 2-3 handle for a 8-10 gain and run a 70% win it makes money.

I will say that most PB's are CT trades, if you look that is why I use the BB, the BB help me tell if a trade is slowing down as well as RSI, same shit I did 9 years ago on the spooz, same thing I did here 2-3 years ago on the 5min crap. The only thing that changed is the SPEED so I can have a nice life. Am I going to take a CT trade if the price is riding the BB up or down hard even if it's a perfect pin? Nope, a lot about the PB's before I even know who Pring or James was I used to trade a setup like this called a J hook and it's just like a pin and the reason it works is easy.

A PB is just a play on fear and greed at an emotional high.

I know some people look at the higher times and all that Jazz but to me all that does is talk you OUT of a trade most of the time from what I have seen, I really don’t play the Support / Resistance game either, I know it works but I like watching double tops triple tops with divergence and FLAT BB's so I guess that's some kind of S: R after all.

To me after using the BB for 9+ years that works best for me, I also throw up a MA to help a little and when the MA is inside of the BB you know it's flat, as well as the mid BB line is flat.

Taking CT's in a flat market lol the past week or two is all sideways , the BB are flat. I used to kill it when they went flat on the 5min and any hit of the BB was money in the bank. Same deal here.

It's funny because the more I do the 4hr the more I tie the old 5min crap to it, one nice thing about the 4hr is I now have a life

To me divergence > S/R. If you get into this crap too much you start talking yourself out of trades then you take one that is a loss then you blow up a account, happens a lot. For me I trade what I know and what works on what I have been doing now about 10 years, I just add pin bars into it. Do I worry about the next resistance point? Not really, did I take a trade Mike passed on and made money? Yep 2x the usd/cad, does that mean anything? Nope. I tell you the day I faded my mentor and made money because something he did not see opened up a new world to me. 2 people can take the same trade and one can win one can lose, or both can win with different ideas. For me BB and Divergence rule because after 10k trades I know it works, I have 0 doubt about the trade I do not worry I do not care I take it then do whatever I was doing, Don't think to hard on this stuff, I don't and I make a damn good living off it

Just a tip, when you play divergence trades such as RSI / MACD or whatever the LONGER the divergence is apart the LESS chance you have of it working, that is how I use some of the TIME crap I do when I trade. SO if you have 5 bars that make a divergence vs. 100 bars well that 5 bars has a better odds MOST of the time because once you go so far back anything can make a divergence. Look at this chart.

Now are these 100% textbook divergence trades? Nope but who cares nothing is

Exact in the market and the only reason I am here is to make money and that is what I do that works.

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Have a Great Trading Career

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