Bob Volman Price Action Scalping

[vanica]

BLS, what do you think about the squeeze in your RB trade at around 7:04 your time? There didn't seem to be enough bouncing between the barrier and ema for me, so I thought I would skip it. This was the reason I hesitated entering.

 

[samich1262]

BLS, what do you think about the squeeze in your RB trade at around 7:04 your time? There didn't seem to be enough bouncing between the barrier and ema for me, so I thought I would skip it. This was the reason I hesitated entering.

I was watching that too, but the EMA was a little far away from price at the break. I use the EMA to keep me out of tease breaks on RB's, but I don't necessarily stay as strict on IRBs and BBs. It seems like the RBs in the book have a tight squeeze but there's more flexibility with the EMA on the BB and IRB setups. Setups dead in the middle of two 20 levels like that have to be very clear for me to enter too. I was watching this one closely, but I didn't think it was quite ready when it broke the first time.

 

[vanica]

One more question. Do you guys have any sort of daily stop loss? Maybe dollar amount or particular number of losing trades. I was just thinking it may be useful on early stages, when a trader is more vulnerable because of the lack of technical/psychological skills.

 

[BLS]

One more question. Do you guys have any sort of daily stop loss? Maybe dollar amount or particular number of losing trades. I was just thinking it may be useful on early stages, when a trader is more vulnerable because of the lack of technical/psychological skills.

I'm trying my best not to keep track of my daily P/L because my emotions seems to rise and fall with my account balance . Just trade with the smallest volume possible.

 

[samich1262]

I'm trying my best not to keep track of my daily P/L because my emotions seems to rise and fall with my account balance . Just trade with the smallest volume possible.

I don't either. But I do skip a lot of valid setups after I lose one or two, and it will take me 2 days or so to take another trade. I think I'm going to come up with some kind of way to punish myself if I skip a valid trade. Like pour a bucket of ice water on my head. Hahaha. Classical conditioning.

 

[shotgun77]

Got completely chopped in the morning range.I would be grateful if someone could comment on the first trade (it was a RB).

This is hindsight bias but here's what I observe: a change in behavior on the leg up compared to the other countertrend legs up.

That leg up was strong enough to visually change the slope of ema to up.
It also had 7 bull bars and no bear bars, showing bull pressure. Its swing high got above the prior swing high.

So I'd be watching the test of the low to see if bulls are exitting there.
You get the retest, which some may even call a triple bottom and a little bounce at that same support line, so possibly bears exitting. Now you enter your short which seems aggressive despite the ema squeeze.

 

[shotgun77]

One more question. Do you guys have any sort of daily stop loss? Maybe dollar amount or particular number of losing trades. I was just thinking it may be useful on early stages, when a trader is more vulnerable because of the lack of technical/psychological skills.

In my early days, I would not look at my pnl except at the end of every quarter. Now that I'm not as emotional, I can look at it daily. I do usually quit after 3 losing trades, especially if they are consecutive. I quit because I realize I've lost my focus. My thoughts are more about trying to analyze why I was losing than what the price action is doing.

If they are not consecutive and I think the trades were valid, I'll keep pressing on if I feel like I can continue reading the price action objectively. So you have to be able to observe yourself and honestly assess whether emotion is in the way of an objective read.

1-3 centering breaths can help: Slowly breathe in for 6 seconds, hold for 2, slowly exhale for 7 seconds.

 

[cha-ching]

I don't either. But I do skip a lot of valid setups after I lose one or two, and it will take me 2 days or so to take another trade. I think I'm going to come up with some kind of way to punish myself if I skip a valid trade. Like pour a bucket of ice water on my head. Hahaha. Classical conditioning.

I know one trader who uses vinegar shots to punish himself if he takes an invalid trade.

I don't look at P/L either, since my problem is undertrading instead of overtrading. When I become able to see more setups I'll probably use a 10 ~ 12 pip stop loss rule, and a daily target of about 12 ~ 15 pip or so.

 

[samich1262]

I know one trader who uses vinegar shots to punish himself if he takes an invalid trade.

Oooh that's perfect. It must be more unpleasant than losing!

 

[stehlikpetrmsncom]

Oooh that's perfect. It must be more unpleasant than losing!

Piece of candy for valid setup, shot of vinegar for invalid one

 

[shotgun77]

I did slides for weeks 38-40. No time for weeks 41-42. See BLS pdf for those. Thanks, BLS!

For the weak setups, I show the slide but don't show the result covered up like in the strong setups.

I had to use zip format because .ppt didn't seem like an approved format.
Attached.

Powerpoint view or openoffice can open them. But if needed, I could create a pdf.

 

[samich1262]

I did slides for weeks 38-40. No time for weeks 41-42. See BLS pdf for those. Thanks, BLS!

For the weak setups, I show the slide but don't show the result covered up like in the strong setups.

I had to use zip format because .ppt didn't seem like an approved format.
Attached.

Powerpoint view or openoffice can open them. But if needed, I could create a pdf.

I actually organized them all into files according to setup type, but when I tried to upload the zip files I keep getting a weird error from the site. Will try again later.

 

[shotgun77]

I actually organized them all into files according to setup type, but when I tried to upload the zip files I keep getting a weird error from the site. Will try again later.

I think that is a good idea because then you can use your graphic viewer to flip through. It is how I organize my own screenshots. I name the file at the time of the screenshot and put the type of setup in the name. Then at end of day, it is easy to copy to the right folder for that setup.

I did the slide show just as a "test" to see how useful it'd be to eval the setup without seeing the result on the chart -- I covered the right edge.

I do that with my live screenshots and find it very useful for review -- the setup then the result.

 

[TonyIommich]

Re: performance, what I like to do is run a video capture while I'm trading. Then at the end of the session, I go back and review each trade and analyze it, talking through it on video (Oanda lets you display all your past trades). I enter statistics into Excel like P/L per trade, maximum favorable and adverse excursions, and number of bars. I total the daily P/L and I just go by day to day P/L, each day I start at 0. At this point its all about defining the methodology in my head.

At the moment I'm fine with taking aggressive trades, even though they cost me, because I learn from each failed setup. If I'm just looking at a chart it doesn't give me that feeling of involvement, where your emotions come into play.

The hard part is going to be moving from the experimental phase to the money making phase. Right now I am trading with such small size that a loser doesn't really hurt badly. That encourages me to experiment. However, once the size comes on I'm going to have to stick with the setups I know and trust.

Another thing I do is I take "mini-trades", with Oanda I can use a size of 1 if I want. That is basically the same as trading demo. That way, I can do crazy things like countertrend setups. It helps with generating ideas.

My target is to develop a methodology using Bob's ideas where I can average, long term, 4 high probability setups every day for the NY-London overlap session (8 am - 12 pm EST), be right 50% of the time, and have an expectancy of 2 pips per trade. If I can make those stats and risk 2% of my capital I will have a solid business model.

 

[samich1262]

Ok, here's a link to all 5 weeks of Bob Volman's extra charts organized by setup type. I had to post it on my mediafire account, I kept getting some weird error on the form. Weird because I can post charts just fine. Anyways, if you haven't organized the charts yet or are new to the forum, these are really helpful.

Charts By Setup Type Wk 38-42.zip

I also had another tip that I found helpful. We all have slightly different chart setups with spacing and color coding. I know those are little things, but it could make a difference in the learning stage. So what I did last week after Bob sent us his charts for the week was find all of those setups and mark them on my own chart. Seeing them that way made them a little more clear to me. It's just a little thing, but it might help.

 

[shotgun77]

Ok, here's a link to all 5 weeks of Bob Volman's extra charts organized by setup type

Thank you, Samich. Very helpful.

I also had another tip that I found helpful. We all have slightly different chart setups with spacing and color coding. I know those are little things, but it could make a difference in the learning stage.

The spacing does throw me off. I have to really focus to see if I've matched up the charts correctly with other's posting. I have that problem during the day when reading the forum too and comparing different posted charts. I'm surprised spacing can make a chart look different but it does. So maybe if in doubt when trading live, you should increase/decrease bar spacing to see if that changes the picture???? Something to think about.

 

[samich1262]

Thank you, Samich. Very helpful.


The spacing does throw me off. I have to really focus to see if I've matched up the charts correctly with other's posting. I have that problem during the day when reading the forum too and comparing different posted charts. I'm surprised spacing can make a chart look different but it does. So maybe if in doubt when trading live, you should increase/decrease bar spacing to see if that changes the picture???? Something to think about.

Yeah, I'm not sure. I may try to adjust them to look more like Bob's just so that everything is the same, I probably should, but I'm so used to having the candlesticks all touching from when I used to trade stocks that it feels weird. I'm sure I'd get used to it though.

 

[cha-ching]

Re: performance, what I like to do is run a video capture while I'm trading. Then at the end of the session, I go back and review each trade and analyze it, talking through it on video (Oanda lets you display all your past trades). I enter statistics into Excel like P/L per trade, maximum favorable and adverse excursions, and number of bars. I total the daily P/L and I just go by day to day P/L, each day I start at 0. At this point its all about defining the methodology in my head.

At the moment I'm fine with taking aggressive trades, even though they cost me, because I learn from each failed setup. If I'm just looking at a chart it doesn't give me that feeling of involvement, where your emotions come into play.

The hard part is going to be moving from the experimental phase to the money making phase. Right now I am trading with such small size that a loser doesn't really hurt badly. That encourages me to experiment. However, once the size comes on I'm going to have to stick with the setups I know and trust.

Another thing I do is I take "mini-trades", with Oanda I can use a size of 1 if I want. That is basically the same as trading demo. That way, I can do crazy things like countertrend setups. It helps with generating ideas.

My target is to develop a methodology using Bob's ideas where I can average, long term, 4 high probability setups every day for the NY-London overlap session (8 am - 12 pm EST), be right 50% of the time, and have an expectancy of 2 pips per trade. If I can make those stats and risk 2% of my capital I will have a solid business model.

I view trading loss at this stage as tuition I pay to learn trading. Compared to those so called forex courses I think this is worthwhile. So I do trade live with a few mini-lots and enter trades very carefully because it's my money.

Regarding setups during NY/London overlap I'm afraid it's difficult to see 4 on average each day. I just finished counting Bob's setups by hour (which is long overdue) and found that for the past 5 weeks (24 trading days since Columbus day doesn't count) there were 56 setups -- 2.3 per day -- between 8 and noon (EST). If you trade from 6am (the earliest I can start) to noon you get 78 which is 3.3 per day. Maybe you'll find more trades in other months, but 2-3 setups per day is fine with me.

 

[TonyIommich]

I view trading loss at this stage as tuition I pay to learn trading. Compared to those so called forex courses I think this is worthwhile.

You can say that again!

Regarding setups during NY/London overlap I'm afraid it's difficult to see 4 on average each day. I just finished counting Bob's setups by hour (which is long overdue) and found that for the past 5 weeks (24 trading days since Columbus day doesn't count) there were 56 setups -- 2.3 per day -- between 8 and noon (EST). If you trade from 6am (the earliest I can start) to noon you get 78 which is 3.3 per day. Maybe you'll find more trades in other months, but 2-3 setups per day is fine with me.

Thanks for doing the count and sharing, I was thinking of doing that myself but you beat me to it.

I was also thinking of trading the EUR/USD in the first half of the day and then maybe working on developing a strategy to trade the S&Ps in the last two hours (2-4 pm EST). I wouldn't want to be trading FX in the last half of the NY session, its just so dead, the moves are so weak unless there's news. I also wouldn't want to wake up and trade London. I've experimented with biphasic sleep and it just doesn't cut it for me.

 

[Giorrgi]

Yeah about the trading hours. I noticed that the best hours for trading are London morning, the last few days have been quieter on London+NY and then even worse on just NY.

Edit: this is important to me since I'm in Law School and I'm trying to pin point the best moment for trading leaving the other half of the day for studying.

Edit 2: Reminds me we've already discussed this but the last time the consensus was "trade everything" xD.