Price Action Swing Trading - The PAST Strategy

[stuart1984]

Well it has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride in the markets for me today.

Firstly my SP500 trade discussed last night was stopped out at BE
My EURJPY trade from last night was also stopped for BE

Today I took the Gold trade short that I have been waiting for. It quickly moved in my direction and my stop is at BE. I took out 1/4 of the position at 1290. This profit has paid for all my losses over the past week and a half. The remaining 3/4 of the position will be kept open to see if the market will drop again after the current retrace, here is the chart:



S&P500

After being stopped at BE during the night, I was eager to look for another entry short. Price made a move to touch the Daily/H4 trendline I have in my charts and quickly looked like it was going to reverse so I entered off the 5min chart. Price proceeded to drop like a stone and I took off 1/4 of my position when price approached the rising H1 trendline,price has since reversed again as quickly as it fell and the remaining 3/4 of the position has been stopped out at BE. I will continue to monitor my trendlines to se if we get another short opportunity. See chart:



EURJPY

I took another short on EURJPY but was stopped out again for a small loss. The hourly chart is looking a bit like a hedgehog with spikes everywhere and I will be stearing clear of it until it makes a bit more of a decisive directional move.

Russian 30

I am beginning to think that your taking partial profits method has some serious merit. By taking off 1/4 on my XAUUSD and SP500 trades I have more than covered the cost of any losing trades.

In total since starting this strategy less than 1 month ago my account is up by 12% realised profit and 38% unrealised profit taking into account floating positions on XAUUSD and EURAUD. Not a bad start!!!

Cheers

Stuart

 

[russian30]

I'm a bit out of the game this week as my parents have come out to visit me for a holiday.

I made a commitment not to trade while they are here. Roll on next week!!

I also noticed that I just missed the rejection on the GBPUSD!! gutted!!

Good lucK all.

 

[stuart1984]

I'm not able to post a chart at the moment but NZDUSD is looking like it may finish with a nice Bearish weekly candle following a strong preceding trend. The reason I am highlighting this today rather than at the weekend is that price is currently hovering around an H4 trendline. The next trendline is not for another 60 pips and it is very flat, more like horizontal support.

Price has already broken the most recent bull trendline and I think we may have an opportunity to jump the gun and get in before the weekend.

Anyone looking to trade this should also exercise caution because of the quiet market conditions and low liquidity due to the bank holiday.

Just thought I would highlight this for anyone that is interested.

Stuart

 

[stuart1984]

Hi all, I hope everyone had a good Easter weekend. Here is my analysis on what I am watching this week.

I am still short EURAUD and will continue to monitor my charts periodically to see how it is playing out. I actually added a position to this trade today on the break of a trendline which you can see in the following chart:


I am also still short XAUUSD and I also added to this position this afternoon, see chart:


My main focus this week willbe watching the development of the NZDUSD trade I mentioned on Friday. I was stopped out for a loss on Fridays trade but the charts are looking poised for further bearish movement. We are approaching a more significant trendline and if it breaks I will be going short without hesitation.

NZDUSD Weekly:


NZDUSD H4:


Hope these help some folks, would be great to hear what everyone else is watching.

Thanks

Stuart

 

[Nigel Price]

Hey guys, hope everyone is keeping well! I'm just away on an Easter break at the moment and am keeping screentime to a minimum. Looking forward to getting back in the saddle next week though! Will do some more PAST posting then - all the best, Nigel

 

[stuart1984]

Hi folks

Hope everyone had a good weekend. In continuation of my focus last week, I have still been watching the NZDUSD and was pleased Nigel highlighted this setup in his weekly report.

I have taken a short this morning on the NZDUSD, Entry @ 0.85615 with a stop at 0.85877. I'll move to BE as soon as soon as I see a good opportunity to do so.

Also on the radar for me this week is AUDUSD and AUDCAD.

I'll post some charts this evening.

Happy trading PAST traders

Stuart

 

[Nigel Price]

Hi folks

Hope everyone had a good weekend. In continuation of my focus last week, I have still been watching the NZDUSD and was pleased Nigel highlighted this setup in his weekly report.

I have taken a short this morning on the NZDUSD, Entry @ 0.85615 with a stop at 0.85877. I'll move to BE as soon as soon as I see a good opportunity to do so.

Also on the radar for me this week is AUDUSD and AUDCAD.

I'll post some charts this evening.

Happy trading PAST traders

Stuart

Thanks Stuart - I promise I wasn't copying you on the NZDUSD with the report, I hadn't actually read your posts until this morning! But fantastic to see great minds thinking alike

Will post a chart or two myself this evening

All the best!

 

[stuart1984]

Thanks Stuart - I promise I wasn't copying you on the NZDUSD with the report, I hadn't actually read your posts until this morning! But fantastic to see great minds thinking alike

Will post a chart or two myself this evening

All the best!

Absolutely!!!

Quick update, NZDUSD has moved nicely over the course of the day so my stop is now at BE. I now have a risk free position that may or may not survive but I have only 1 small loss form last week establishing this position in my attempt to catch a nice big move. To me that is a good days trading.

Also entered short AUDUSD @ 0.9265 with a stop at 0.9288. This has made an initial move in my direction but not yet given enough to move to BE. I will monitor this before I go to bed and if we are still in profit come NY close I may consider moving to BE for the night.

Stuart

 

[stuart1984]

I also wanted to do a quick post as I know there are other members of the forum who also have a day job and find catching the trades a bit of a challenge sometimes. Thought I would share how I have come to manage this and maybe this will help some folks.

- Conduct main market analysis over the weekend and make a short list of possible trade set ups for the coming week.
- Write everything down so I know the levels I'm looking for
- I start from scratch each week and re-draw my main trendlines and any other patterns S/R levels that I feel will be relevant in the coming week
- I then go on to Netdania and draw these trendlines again and save a profile for that week. I use Netdania because I can access it at work and it also allows you to set free email alerts on your actual trendlines rather than having to guess where the relevant horizontal level is for the future
- This means that I have a clear picture in my mind of what I am looking for during the week, If a trendline is hit, I will receive an alert and I can do a bit of quick analysis and see if I am ready to take a trade
- If I do take a trade, I enter it on my mobile having done the analysis on a proper platform. I then set another alert to inform me when price reaches an equal reward to the initial risk. I'll quickly check the charts and will most probably move my stop to BE.
- In the evening, I will go through my charts again in more detail and see if there are any adjustments that need to be made to trendlines and will also have a quick glance through the daily charts to see if there are any daily setups in play.

All in all, I am very rarely actually looking at a chart during the working day for more than about 30 mins.

This system works well for me, obviously, not everyone will even be able to spend even this minimal time checking charts but if you can, I would recommend this minimalistic approach, it is a really very relaxing way to trade.

Thanks

Stuart

 

[stuart1984]

Here are some charts with my thoughts, first up is NZDUSD:

Monthly (its always good to keep your pulse on the higher timeframes:


Weekly (anchor chart providing initial signal):



And finally the hourly to show my entries:



It's nice to be in a position now where all that can happen is a BE trade or further movement in our intended direction.

Stuart

 

[stuart1984]

Sorry folks, don't know what has happened, looks like my free screen capture software has expired. How do I go about posting charts the way you guys do it?

Thanks

 

[stuart1984]

One last try:

Monthly:



Stuart

 

[stuart1984]

Ok giving up for now. Stuart

 

[Nelson35a]

Hi All,

I have been following this excellent forum for a while now and thought I would say hello. After struggling to get a profitable forex strategy that I can try to trade around a full time job, I find the PAST strategy fits in with my work schedule nicely. Firstly, once a week analysis to give me a short list of pairs to watch in the coming week doesn't take too long. Secondly, I find it easy to follow a few pairs for trade signals of breaks of trend lines or break of s/r during the week.

I did a search in the forum to see if I could find a answer to the following but couldn't find anything so apologies in advance if it's already been answered - I use the PAST Anchor Chart Indictor to help with weekly analysis which I think is a great tool. I use the default settings for every setting that can be set in the indicator, as I think the default settings were chosen to best fit in with the strategy across a range of market scenarios. Can anyone please advise if there are some tweaks to the settings which are better for different types of previous trend, (i.e. parabolic, steady rising/falling, short trend range bound) or is it best to just leave the default settings for everything?

The indicator makes it easy to see potential reversals which otherwise would need to be found by manual analysis. Whether using reversal signals form the indicator or manual analysis there are times when the signals given conflict across the monthly, weekly and daily timeframes. If say the monthly signal indicates a possible bullish reversal, while the weekly indicates bearish and the daily bullish, which signal do you use to determine the anchor timeframe and hence the reversal direction? Is it just a matter of selecting the timeframe with the best prior trend and also using trend line/support/resistance analysis for each timeframe to see which timeframe is nearest to potential turning points?

Thanks

Nelson

 

[Nigel Price]

Hey guys, just taking a look through the posts while I was away and I'd just like to offer the following comments:

Whilst this has not been a very profitable week trading this pair, the great thing about this strategy is that it has also not given me any significant losses. It could be a while before I catch another really nice winner but when I do, I will wipe out these small losses in the blink of an eye.

That's exactly the philosophy we're after. With some patience we know opportunities will come, and as long as we manage our way through the tricky periods, we will be around and ready to take advantage. Same goes for missing an opportunity for whatever reason. We know another one will come along again soon. Never underestimate the power of knowing these things - it creates a really relaxed and unforced environment to trade in and that is what gets us the results. We won't see profit every day, or even every week or month, but over the sustained long term, we will come out on top. That's what we are after.

However as we know with this strategy, we do not presume to know what is going to happen, we only put ourselves in a position to maximise our profits if right and minimise our losses if wrong.

Exactly

As usual, my analysis is far from technical and maybe doesn't fully embrace all elements of the past strategy. However, I work with the principles of trend lines, major support and resistance areas, tight stops with a long term view on returns (super high Risk:Return ratios). These I feel are the main foundation of the PAST strategy. So hopefully my commentary adds value.

Spot on russian30 - take the principles and twist them into whatever way works for you. No-one can tell you what the best way is for you personally to trade - sometimes people will want to take partial profit, use a different type of technical indicator or whatever, it doesn't matter. It's that you are trading with an appreciation of what it means to control the relationship between your risk and your reward, that's what matters. That's what puts us a position to generate profit in the markets. Great comment, thanks

Around 10 days ago I started logging the details of every trade I make in a spreadsheet. Since working on the lower time frame, I've managed to reduce my average stop loss to around 8 pts!!

If risk v reward is the top thing I moan about, statistics must come a close second! Nothing will make you take leaps forward more than knowing your trading stats inside out.

If your average loss is 8 points russian30 - say for instance your average winner is 50, which is totally achievable, I personally would be targeting far more, but let's just for argument's sake say 50 for average winner. What strike rate do you need to be profitable? Somewhere around 14-15%? Totally achievable.

When you trade like this for a while and your stats settle down into nice averages, your relationship with the market, and trading it, changes. Instead of sitting down to the screen with a sense of uncertainty or worry - i.e you don't know what the market is going to throw at you today and whether you will be able to turn a profit or not - instead you are relaxed and smooth, nothing needs to unsettle you that much. It is much like just going into work to do your job - you know what you have to do each day and you just do it. Some days are profitable and some aren't. As long as we keep doing our job right, the profit comes.

 

[Nigel Price]

Just a general point here for anyone who is reading this and might be finding their trading tough right now:

Congratulate yourself for the small victories

These are really, really tough markets to trade in right now. For many traders, simply not blowing up during these periods should be counted as a victory and you should be pleased with yourself if you have managed to stay alive at all. The first goal is survival, profit comes after that.

So even if you have been finding things tough recently, and you might not be seeing the results you'd like to see, there are many more traders, far more qualified than us, that are finding things very hard right now. So we should all give ourselves a pat on the back for just still being in the game at all!

Remember - small victories!

 

[Nigel Price]

I also wanted to do a quick post as I know there are other members of the forum who also have a day job and find catching the trades a bit of a challenge sometimes. Thought I would share how I have come to manage this and maybe this will help some folks.

- Conduct main market analysis over the weekend and make a short list of possible trade set ups for the coming week.
- Write everything down so I know the levels I'm looking for
- I start from scratch each week and re-draw my main trendlines and any other patterns S/R levels that I feel will be relevant in the coming week
- I then go on to Netdania and draw these trendlines again and save a profile for that week. I use Netdania because I can access it at work and it also allows you to set free email alerts on your actual trendlines rather than having to guess where the relevant horizontal level is for the future
- This means that I have a clear picture in my mind of what I am looking for during the week, If a trendline is hit, I will receive an alert and I can do a bit of quick analysis and see if I am ready to take a trade
- If I do take a trade, I enter it on my mobile having done the analysis on a proper platform. I then set another alert to inform me when price reaches an equal reward to the initial risk. I'll quickly check the charts and will most probably move my stop to BE.
- In the evening, I will go through my charts again in more detail and see if there are any adjustments that need to be made to trendlines and will also have a quick glance through the daily charts to see if there are any daily setups in play.

All in all, I am very rarely actually looking at a chart during the working day for more than about 30 mins.

This system works well for me, obviously, not everyone will even be able to spend even this minimal time checking charts but if you can, I would recommend this minimalistic approach, it is a really very relaxing way to trade.

Thanks

Stuart

Great advice for the people amongst us that aren't in front of the screen all day. In fact, it's good advice for everyone, because sitting staring at price doing nothing is not good for your results. As Stuart says, set an alarm or something, go outside if you can, only trade when price is in an area you are interested in. The majority of the time, particularly recently, price does very, very, very )) little.

 

[Nigel Price]

Hi All,

I have been following this excellent forum for a while now and thought I would say hello.

Welcome to the thread Nelson35a, great to have you on-board!

After struggling to get a profitable forex strategy that I can try to trade around a full time job, I find the PAST strategy fits in with my work schedule nicely. Firstly, once a week analysis to give me a short list of pairs to watch in the coming week doesn't take too long. Secondly, I find it easy to follow a few pairs for trade signals of breaks of trend lines or break of s/r during the week.

I'm much the same - I see little point in jumping around lots of different instruments all week, trying to locate different opportunities. Far better to identify one or two good ones to keep an eye on at the beginning of the week - if they work out, great, if they don't, there's always next week. Jumping around markets is very very difficult to do - anytime I tried it I always found myself missing stuff and generally just chasing my tail

I did a search in the forum to see if I could find a answer to the following but couldn't find anything so apologies in advance if it's already been answered - I use the PAST Anchor Chart Indictor to help with weekly analysis which I think is a great tool. I use the default settings for every setting that can be set in the indicator, as I think the default settings were chosen to best fit in with the strategy across a range of market scenarios. Can anyone please advise if there are some tweaks to the settings which are better for different types of previous trend, (i.e. parabolic, steady rising/falling, short trend range bound) or is it best to just leave the default settings for everything?

I personally just use the defaults myself Nelson35a. You can adjust the settings to specify whether you want a stronger preceding trend or different reversal candles and so on, but we tested it to make sure it struck the best balance possible between picking up reversal signals that were good quality, and also identifying fairly regular trading opportunities. It's important to note that there will be signals it doesn't pick up and there will be signals it picks up that don't work. It's just a good way of quickly scanning a lot of pairs to see if anything is jumping out as a good potential reversals. It's how we then trade them that matters most. The indicator assists us, it doesn't replace us!

Thanks for the kind comments, by the way

The indicator makes it easy to see potential reversals which otherwise would need to be found by manual analysis. Whether using reversal signals form the indicator or manual analysis there are times when the signals given conflict across the monthly, weekly and daily timeframes. If say the monthly signal indicates a possible bullish reversal, while the weekly indicates bearish and the daily bullish, which signal do you use to determine the anchor timeframe and hence the reversal direction? Is it just a matter of selecting the timeframe with the best prior trend and also using trend line/support/resistance analysis for each timeframe to see which timeframe is nearest to potential turning points?

Generally if there is a conflict between timeframes I would tend to pay more attention to the higher one rather that the lower one. Not just because the higher timeframes sometimes tend to be more reliable, but also that they offer the potential for the biggest movement. A daily reversal could be the start of a couple of hundred pip move, but the monthly could be the start of a multi thousand pip move. I know what pitch I would rather be playing on!

Thanks

Nelson

No worries! If you have any other questions don't be afraid to pitch in! I know the thread is very long at this stage, it's probably getting a bit too long to expect people to read it all now! We might have to try to do something about that... Don't worry if something has been talked about already, important stuff merits repeating!

 

[stuart1984]

Stopped out of NZDUSD at BE. Daily chart is looking a bit bullish, I think I will wait it out unless I see another clear opportunity to get short again.

Stopped out of AUSUSD at a small loss - I should have moved this to BE on Monday but didn't, lesson learned.

Stuart

 

[stuart1984]

On the plus side, the part of the EURAUD trade that I have left open looks like it may be making a turn lower again.

Stuart