Wednesday, December 30, 2009

" FRACTALs " Technical Indicator

Many people believe that the markets are random. In fact, one of the most prominent investing books out there is "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" (1973) by Burton G. Malkiel, who argues that throwing darts at a dartboard is likely to yield results similar to those achieved by a fund manager (and Malkiel does have many valid points).

However, many others argue that although prices may appear to be random, they do in fact follow a pattern in the form of trends. One of the most basic ways in which traders can determine such trends is through the use of fractals. Fractals essentially break down larger trends into extremely simple and predictable reversal patterns. This article will explain what fractals are and how you might apply them to your trading to enhance your profits.

What Are Fractals?
When many people think of fractals in the mathematical sense, they think of chaos theory and abstract mathematics. While these concepts do apply to the market (it being a nonlinear, dynamic system), most traders refer to fractals in a more literal sense. That is, as recurring patterns that can predict reversals among larger, more chaotic price movements.

These basic fractals are composed of five or more bars. The rules for identifying fractals are as follows:

* A bearish turning point occurs when there is a pattern with the highest high in the middle and two lower highs on each side.
* A bullish turning point occurs when there is a pattern with the lowest low in the middle and two higher lows on each side.

The fractals shown in Figure 1 are two examples of perfect patterns. Note that many other less perfect patterns can occur, but the basic pattern should remain intact for the fractal to be valid.

The obvious drawback here is that fractals are lagging indicators - that is, a fractal can't be drawn until we are two days into the reversal. While this may be true, most significant reversals last many more bars, so most of the trend will remain intact (as we will see in the example below).

Applying Fractals to Trading
Like many trading indicators, fractals are best used in conjunction with other indicators or forms of analysis. Perhaps the most common confirmation indicator used with fractals is the "Alligator indicator", a tool that is created by using moving averages that factor in the use of fractal geometry. The standard rule states that all buy rules are only valid if below the "alligator's teeth" (the center average), and all sell rules are only valid if above the alligator's teeth.

Figure 2 is an example of such a setup:

Figure2
As you can see, the primary drawback to this system is the large swings that take place. Notice, for example, that the latest fractal had a drawdown of over 100 pips and still has not hit an exit point. However, there are countless other techniques that can be applied in conjunction with fractals to produce profitable trading systems.

Figure 3 shows a forex trading setup that uses a combination of fractals (multiple time frames), Fibonacci-based moving averages (placed at 89, 144, 233, 377 and their inverses) and a momentum indicator. Let's look at a recent trade setup for the GBP/USD currency pair to see how fractals can help:

Figure 3
Here is a basic rule setup that is used when using a chart with a four-hour time frame:

* Initiate a position when the price has hit the farthest Fibonacci band, but only after a daily (D1) fractal takes place.
* Exit a position after a daily (D1) fractal reversal takes place.

Notice how the fractals pinpoint meaningful tops and bottoms? This helps to take the guesswork out of deciding at which Fibonacci level to trade - all we have to do is check to see if the daily fractal occurred. We should also note that the trend strength began increasing at the sell fractal, and topped at the buy fractal. Although we lose some pips with the confirmation, it saves us from losing out on mere market noise - 139 pips certainly isn't bad for three days! (For further reading, see Trading Without Noise.)

Things to Consider
Here are a few things to remember when using fractals:

* They are lagging indicators. They are best used as confirmation indicators to help confirm that a reversal did take place. Real-time tops and bottoms can be surmised with other techniques.
* The longer the time period (i.e. the number of bars required for a fractal), the more reliable the reversal. However, you should also remember that the longer the time period, the lower the number of signals generated.
* It is best to plot fractals in multiple time frames and use them in conjunction with one another. For example, only trade short-term fractals in the direction of the long-term ones. Along these same lines, long-term fractals are more reliable than short-term fractals.
* Always use fractals in conjunction with other indicators or systems. They work best as decision support tools, not as indicators on their own.

Conclusion
As you can see, fractals can be extremely powerful tools when used in conjunction with other indicators and techniques, especially when used to confirm reversals. The most common usage is with the "Alligator indicator"; however, there are other uses too, as we've seen here. Overall, fractals make excellent decision support tools for any trading method.


--- by Justin Kuepper / investopdia ------

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Forex Software Review : LMT Forex Formula

Recently I was invited to beta test the new LMT Forex Formula system by Dean Saunders, the creator of the immensly popular 10 Minute Forex Wealth Builder. I am a great fan of the 10 Minute Forex system, so I was very excited to see what this new product was all about. Is this system worth buying? I believe it is..see my full review below.
The LMT Forex Formula promises to be the perfect solution for the part time Forex trader - a trading system that is 100% mechanical, 82% accurate and only requires 15 minutes of work every day. What exactly is the LMT Forex Formula? Let’s start by looking at what this system is NOT. The LMT Forex Formula is not a Forex Robot that trades automatically. It is Not a robot that trades for you. They have a software which shows you the trades but they do NOT place trades for you. You will
manually make the trades which keeps you informed on your trades.

This system is designed to earn 100’s of pips per trade.
It is good for real traders who want to have control over the
trades that you want to make.

This system comes with special indicators that alert you when trading opportunities occur, but you still place and manage the trades yourself. This means that you are not tied to a specific broker and always remain 100% in control of your own trading.
The second thing that the LMT Forex Formula is not is a scalping or intraday trading system that requires you to place many small trades every day. This system is all about large movements in the currencies and is designed to earn hundreds of pips per trade. You will get around 2-3 trades per week and sometimes stay in these trades for days before taking large profits.

What I like about the LMT Forex Formula
I have only tested the LMT Forex Formula for a short while, but the beta testing results I have seen so far has been very impressive. Those who trade actively with this system frequently report large winning trades of more than 300 pips and conservative results show that it is possible to easily make around 500 pips per month by only trading the one or two best setups every week.

Another great thing about this system is that you can use it with ANY broker, you are not forced to use a Metatrader broker like you are with all the Forex robots. The custom indicator requires Metatrader, but you can easily use a free Metatrader demo account for your trade signals and charting while doing your actual trading at a different broker.

The launch price is very affordable. Just the money management techniques that Dean teaches in this system alone is worth this price and if you consider that the product comes with a 60 day money back guarantee, then this is really a low-risk purchase.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Any Forex product by Dean Saunders is always worth investigating and the LMT Forex Formula is definitely one of the the easiest, most accurate Forex trading systems I have ever come across. If you are looking for a system that is almost 100% mechanical, but still under your full control, then I definitely recommend that you check this one out. Once you feel what it is like to take 500 pips profit in one trade off the daily charts you will never be interested in short term scalping methods again.

---- by:fxtradingreviews ------

SEE...FapTurbo Forex Robot Review and Free Download...Forex Trader Reveals : What you must know before you buy Forex Robot.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Forex Trading System

a Simple One That’s Proven and Made Millions
Enclosed you will find a free Forex trading system with one rule which is simple and has made savvy traders huge gains for over 25 years. Let’s take a look at how you can use it for bigger Forex gains…

Of course you can buy a forex trading system but most sold are junk and only have simulated back tested results - this one on the other hand has made gains for over 25 years and will continue to do so.

The system was devised by one of the trading greats - Richard Donchian who is considered the grandfather of modern trend following and his insight on channels and the 4 Week Rule (the trading system below) are two methods all traders should know about.

Let’s take a look at how it works and it’s based on one simple rule, here it is.

Buy a new 4 week high and hold the position, until a 4 week low is hit then liquidate the long position and go short. Keep doing the following - buy new 4 week highs and sell new 4 week lows thereafter and always keep a position in the market.

You can’t get a much simpler system than the above and you don’t even have to think about what to do, the rule is clear and objective, you can simply follow it and it works; here’s why.

Forex markets tend to trend for long periods and these trends can be for many weeks or months. These trends tend to start and continue from new market highs or lows, so this system will put you in on every major trend and help you get a good chunk of the profits.

Don’t worry about its simplicity - forex markets are best suited to simple, robust systems. The trader who complicates his trading strategy normally will see it fail, as it has too many elements to break.

While the system is simple and works, most traders can’t follow it.

It takes tremendous discipline to follow long term trends and they prefer to use shorter term systems which make them feel better or safer - but of course don’t work. They also follow for the myths perpetrated by vendors, that you don’t get drawdowns in Forex - but you do, even the best systems have them. You have to trade through them, learn to take short term losses and look at the big picture which is longer term gains.

This system will never go out of date and is simple to understand, it also doesn’t take long to operate about 15 - 30 minutes a day and the rule tells you exactly what to do.

If you are looking for a long term Forex trading system that’s proven, rather than a simulated one which has never been traded and won’t work, then check out the free Forex trading system which is the 4 Week Rule and you maybe glad you did.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Forex Indicator - Accumulative Swing Index

Trading with ASI indicator involves the following details:
ASI has positive value — uptrend.
ASI has negative value — downtrend.
ASI trend line breakout — validates a breakout on the price chart.
Details
What is Accumulative Swing Index
Welles Wilder, the creator of ASI indicator said, "Somewhere amidst the maze of Open, High, Low and Close prices is a phantom line that is the real market." The Accumulation Swing Index shows this phantom line - the line of the real market.
The Accumulative Swing Index uses a scale from 0 to 100 for an up trend and 0 to -100 for a down trend.

How to interpret ASI indicator
If a long-term trend is up, the ASI has a positive value; and if long-term trend is down indicator appears in a negative value. During sideways moving market, the ASI moves between + and - values.
Accumulative Swing Index is widely used to confirm or deny trend lines breakouts on Forex charts.
Trend lines are drawn on both: a chart and indicator’s graph and then compared against each other to confirm/dismiss trend line breakout signals.

How to trade with Accumulative Swing Index
Welles Wilder, developer of Accumulative Swing Index indicator, describes in his book "New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems" why ASI can be used for trend line breakout confirmations. He said, that ASI is able to show the real strength and direction of the market and since Accumulative Swing Index is heavily weighted in favor of the close price, daily upward and downward spikes do not adversely affect ASI.
Here is a quote from his book:
"When the Index is plotted on the same chart as the daily bar chart, trend lines drawn on the ASI can be compared to trend lines drawn on the bar chart. For those who know how to draw meaningful trend lines, the ASI can be a good tool to confirm trend-line breakouts. Often erroneous breaking of trend lines drawn on bar charts will not be confirmed by the trend lines drawn on the ASI. Since the ASI is heavily weighted in favor of the close price, a quick run up or down during a day's trading does not adversely affect the index."
Signal Buy with ASI occurs when indicator exceeds its previous Swing High.
Signal Sell occurs when ASI dips below its previous Swing Low.

Accumulative Swing Index chart example


Since ASI line represents real market price, Forex traders may effectively use classic technical analysis methods on the indicator itself:
- identify support/resistance levels,
- trend lines and true market direction,
- swings high/low,
- breakout setups
- and divergence between indicator and regular price charts.
Accumulative Swing Index indicator formula
ASI = ASI formula

Where:
C = Today's closing price
Cy = Yesterday's closing price
Hy = Yesterday's highest price
K = The greatest of: Hy - C and Ly - C
L = Today's lowest price
Ly = Yesterday's lowest price
O = Today's opening price
Oy = Yesterday's opening price
R = This varies based on relationship between today's closing price and yesterday's high and low prices
T = the maximum price changing during trade session

---- by; Forex Indicators / ASI -------

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Forex; Trend line Strategy

Forex Tips & Strategy : How To Draw Proper Trend Line
Drawing trend line is sometime that is very subjective for most traders. From those trading books that are in the market, trend line is drawn by joining 2 or more swing lows or 2 or more swing highs. However the problem lies with there are a lot of swing highs and lows in most chart and which one should you use and which one should you ignore?

This is a topic that is suggested by one of our active newsletter subscriber who is a fellow trader. Therefore I am going to spend some time on this post to go through how you can draw proper trend line.

Basically there are 2 main types of trend line you can draw and they are

1) Common Sense Trend Line: This type of trend line is the most commonly used by traders and it basically makes use of 2 or more swing highs or lows to connect to form the line. Swing lows are formed when there is a candle that has 2 higher candles on its left and right and swing highs are formed when there is a candle that has 2 lower candles on its left and right.

Since there are quite a number of swing highs and lows in a particular chart, you need to be able to prioritise which are the more important ones.

Swing low usually forms a V-shaped pattern while swing high forms an N-shaped pattern. For swing low, the one with more higher candles on its left and right will be more significant than the one with lesser higher candles on its left and right and it works the same for the swing highs except that you should be looking for more lower candles.


When drawing common sense trend line, you will try to connect a few points and the line that has the most points connected will be the line you should be using to trade. The more swing highs or lows you manage to connect to form a trend line, the more powerful it is because there is more time the market is trying to break the line but failed and it will serve as a strong support or resistance.

One more thing to take note, if the trend line is breached by a candle, it will be no longer useful and you need to redraw another new trend line.


Personally I use a mix of these 2 ways of drawing trend line. The common sense trend line sometime serves as a long term trend line for me while the Tom Demark trend line serves as a short term trend line for me and both of them works rather well so far.
Hope that this post on how to draw trend line is useful for you.

--- by ; Kelvin / forex tips

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Forex ; Trading Double Tops and Double Bottoms

Trading Double Tops and Double Bottoms
No chart pattern is more common in trading than the double bottom or double top.
In fact this pattern appears so often that it alone may serve as proof positive that price action is not as wildly random as many academics claim. Price charts simply express trader sentiment and double tops and double bottoms represent a re-testing of temporary extremes. If prices were truly random, why do they pause so frequently at just those points? To traders the answer is that many participants are making their stand at those clearly demarcated levels.

If these levels undergo and repel attacks, they instill even more confidence in the traders who've defended the barrier and, as such, are likely to generate strong profitable countermoves. Here we look at the difficult task of spotting the important double bottom and double tops, and we demonstrate how Bollinger Bands can help you set appropriate stops when you're trading these patterns.


React or Anticipate?
One great criticism of technical pattern trading is that setups always look obvious in hindsight but that executing them in real time is actually very difficult. Double tops and double bottoms are no exception. Though these patterns appear almost daily, successfully identifying and trading them is no easy task.

There are two approaches to this problem and both have their merits and drawbacks. In short, traders can either anticipate these formations or wait for confirmation and react to them. Which approach you chose is more a function of your personality than relative merit. Those who have a fader mentality - who love to fight the tape, sell into strength and buy weakness - will try to anticipate the pattern by stepping in front of the price move.



Reactive traders, who want to see confirmation of the pattern before entering, have the advantage of knowing that the pattern exists but there's a tradeoff: they must pay worse prices and suffer greater losses should the pattern fail.


What's Obvious Is Not Often Right
Most traders are inclined to place a stop right at the bottom of a double bottom or top of the double top. The conventional wisdom says that once the pattern is broken, the trader should get out. But conventional wisdom is often wrong.

Leaving the trade early may seem prudent and logical, but markets are rarely that straightforward. Many retail traders play double tops/bottoms, and, knowing this, dealers and institutional traders love to exploit the retail traders' behavior of exiting early, forcing the weak hands out of the trade before price changes direction. The net effect is a series of frustrating stops out of positions that often would have turned out to be successful trades.



What Are Stops For?
Most traders make the mistake of using stops for risk control. But risk control in trading should be achieved through proper position size, not stops. The general rule of thumb is never to risk more than 2% of capital per trade. For smaller traders, that can sometimes mean ridiculously small trades.

Fortunately in FX where many dealers allow flexible lot sizes, down to one unit per lot - the 2% rule of thumb is easily possible. Nevertheless, many traders insist on using tight stops on highly leveraged positions. In fact, it is quite common for a trader to generate 10 consecutive losing trades under such tight stop methods. So, we could say that in FX, instead of controlling risk, ineffective stops might even increase it. Their function, then, is to determine the highest probability for a point of failure. An effective stop poses little doubt to the trader over whether he or she is wrong.

Implementing the True Function of Stops

A technique using Bollinger Bands can help traders set those proper stops. Because Bollinger Bands incorporate volatility by using standard deviations in their calculations, they can accurately project price levels at which traders should abandon their trades.
The method for using Bollinger-Bands stops for double tops and double bottoms is quite simple:

1. Isolate the point of the first top or bottom, and overlay Bollinger Bands with four standard-deviation parameters.
2. Draw a line from the first top or bottom to the Bollinger Band. The point of intersection becomes your stop.

At first glance four standard deviations may seem like an extreme choice. After all, two standard deviations cover 95% of possible scenarios in a normal distribution of a dataset. However, all those who have traded financial markets know that price action is anything but normal - if it were, the type of crashes that happen in financial markets every five or 10 years would occur only once every 6,000 years. Classic statistical assumptions are not very useful for traders. Therefore setting a wider standard-deviation parameter is a must.
The four standard deviations cover more than 99% of all probabilities and therefore seem to offer a reasonable cut-off point. More importantly they work well in actual testing, providing stops that are not too tight, yet not so wide as to become prohibitively costly. Note how well they work on the following GBP/USD example.


More importantly, take a look at the next example. A true sign of a proper stop is a capacity to protect the trader from runaway losses. In the following chart, the trade is clearly wrong but is stopped out well before the one-way move causes major damage to the trader's account.

Conclusion
The genius of Bollinger Bands is their adaptability. By constantly incorporating volatility, they adjust quickly to the rhythm of the market. Using them to set proper stops when trading double bottoms and double tops - the most frequent price patterns in forex - makes those common trades much more effective.

--- by; Boris Schlossberg / director of currency research at GFT Forex. ----

Friday, December 4, 2009

Forex Trading System

Profitable Trading System
Open any chart for any currency pair, any time frame. I will use EUR/USD 1H as an example.
Next, attach Bollinger bands and OsMA indicators. Default settings for both.
What we are going to use here is a classic trading method called Divergence trading. divergence simply happens when the indicator and price are going in opposite directions.

The indicator we are going to use for Divergence is the OsMA indiactor.

To avoid false Divergence signals, we are going to use Bollinger bands. Valid signals are only the ones that happens when price hits overbought – oversold levels of Bollinger bands.
Images1


When that happens we should know that price will reverse. In the above example, price was going up. So we are waiting for a sell signal. If price was going down, that means we are waiting for a buy signal.


Entry Rules –
Buy signal :

1 – Divergence
2 – Price hits Bollinger band’s oversold levels

Entry signal:
1 – when price starts to reverse up from the oversold level
2 – OsMA forms a new bar above 0 level.

Images2

Entry Rules –
Sell signal :
1 – Divergence
2 – Price hits Bollinger band’s overbought levels

Entry signal:
1 – when price starts to reverse down from the overbought level
2 – OsMA forms a new bar below 0 level.

Images3


Stop Loss :Last support/ resistance level.
Target :You have the choice to exist your trades when ..
1 – price hits the opposite Bollinger band’s level Or
2 – an opposite signals is generated

This system works great on 15M time frames and higher. Not recommended for smaller time frames.
The system is not to be used with major news releases.

It’s not the holy grail, but it’s a very good start. Try it and remember that practice makes perfect.

----- by ; Forex Warlord -------