Harvest More Pips Today With MT4 Trailing Stop

Have you faced the following situations:

1) Feeling under pressure to let go of the trade when you are high on profits? 2) Do not know the 'perfect time' to exit your trade? 3) Hanging onto losing trade in hope that it might turn back in your favour? 4) Do not know that there is actually a trailing stop function on MT4 platform?

Well, if you have encounter of these situations, you are not alone. Many thousands of traders at some point do go through these situations even the seasoned traders. There is nothing to be ashamed of as the only shame about this is not finding a solution to your problem.

There a number of traders whom I've encounter do not know the existence of a trailing stop function on MT4 platform. Well I can tell you that it is a great tool to have if you want to trail your profits while keeping your stops tight.

But the downside is that you have to specify how many pips you want to trail at a time. Why is this not so good is that you do not know when the market trend might fade and that market condition is changing continuously, you might end up exiting the market prematurely.

The best way is to let the market decide when to move your stops and when to exit. Be reminded that I emphasize only on trending situations here. Trailing stops work well in such situation and save you the time of having to constantly monitor the market.

On the MT4 platform, the trailing stop function is insufficient to allow me to trail the market in the way I want it to be and that the trailing function might have its own hiccups during operations.

Therefore I have work together with a team of traders and bring up this idea of incorporating different exit strategies to allow me to pick and choose which are better to suit my trade for now.

As MT4 has its own programming language, I made use of the Expert Advisor to create an exit strategy EA suitable for manual traders who want to take control their trade and want automation for their trade exits without the need to constantly monitor.

With the development of 11 exit strategies:

1) Partial close 2) Break even stop 3) Time stop 4) MA trailing stop 5) ATR trailing stop 6) Parabolic SAR trailing stop 7) 2 Bar Low 2 Bar High 8) Equity stop 9) Channel Stop 10) N pips stop 11) BB trailing stop

The combination and customization of these exit strategies allows me to decide which strategies are suitable for my current trades and most importantly, I allow the market to track the trend and trail stops for me instead of me having to babysit my trade. Therefore, freeing more time and harvesting more profits.

Download free trailing stop EA at www.forextrailer.com

Candlesticks Or Technical Indicators For Exits

In the field of trading, I am sure all of you should know the candlesticks and technical indicators provided in trading charts. Many of us have our own unique style of trading the market. Often those who used technical analysis, most definitely or likely will be using candle charts.

Candlestick charts provide much more information and is pictured easily for traders to identify candle stick patterns. These candlestick patterns allow traders to spot turns before potentially large moves. For technical indicators, it is a reflection of the movement of the past candles and provides another wealth of information on past history patterns of the market.

So you may be thinking, do I stick to just candlestick trading or using just technical indicators for analysis? Well, for a start, most people are using candlesticks in a wrong manner. One of the most dangerous and misuses of candlesticks is trying to use them as a standalone trading system. Candlestick by itself is just a trading tool and not a trading system. That is why there shouldn't be a preference of candlestick or technical indicators.

Both of them must be used together to gather information and also as confirmation for your intended trades. Well it is true that some people whom I've met are better at just using one of these tools but it is just the minority. If you are just starting out, you may want to incorporate both of these tools into your trade analysis where you will be sharpening your foundation in recognizing common candlestick trend reversal patterns together with technical indicators patterns.

With experimentation through your demo account, you can find out a set of suitable technical indicators that you are comfortable in applying to your trade. Candlestick patterns and technical analysis not only helps you in identifying trade entries but also trading exits. These trading exit strategies must be learned and developed by you to suit your trading plan.

Though in general, there are many ways to formulate your exits like for example having a take profit target or shifting your stop loss manually closer to the price action in order to secure profits, it is often a tedious way to do.

Having the combination of candlesticks and technical analysis, you can pick out the perfect spot to exit your trade without risking too much of your profit lost to the market and riding the trend till it dies out.

So in short, always have your foundation built up in candlestick patterns and technical analysis, experimenting with several combinations to develop your set of entries and trading exits strategies.

http://www.forextrailer.com

Winning Forex Trading With Trailing Stops

Many traders attempt to lock in profits as the market moves in their favor by trailing the market with various trailing techniques. Personally, I use trailing stops every time I trade a trending based system. When these trailing stop strategies are used correctly, they manage the stop loss level such that they convert floating profit into 'earned' profit. Trailing stop by its nature have these two features in-built.

1. Pip Protection Mechanism

Shifting of this stop loss level for the purpose of locking in earned pips acts as the pip protection mechanism and secure your profits even before a forex trader closes the trade. In addition, it provide a plan for traders to exit their trade when the trending market become exhausted.

2. Pip Maximization Mechanism

A trailing stop will exit the trade when it detects that market has some form of trend exhaustion while at the same time maximizing the potential of profit from a trend. This is what we called pip maximization mechanism.

However, when trailing stops are not used properly, a trader will end up adding volatility to his results in terms of risk to reward ratio and return of investment. This is because using trailing stop will some time allow the trade to exit prematurely due to noise resulting in a stop out. After a stop out occurred to a trade, price seems to consolidate and continue trending again.

The value of a trailing stop order is obvious. Because it prevents the forex trader from leaving after achieving a small profit, he will have a plan to ride a trend for as long as it is profitable. He will only leave when trend exhaustion is detected as market goes into consolidation phrase and no more opportunity to capture more pips from the trend.

While trailing stop has their limitations, we believe that their advantages outweighs their limitations and it is very important for beginning traders to apply trailing stop strategies to their trading system where they are just starting and have not have a solid plan for risk management. Trailing stop provides the discipline and a plan for traders to exit and cash in their profits rather than risk having to give back to the market.

There are many techniques to manage a trailing stop. Traders often start moving their stop when their positions have earned twice the amount risked. Another popular technique is to trail the market with a stop placed near the high or low price over the last 2 candles. Both of these techniques are effective for short-term trading or otherwise called intraday trade.

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The Power Of Forex Technical Analysis by using Forex Trailing Stop

In the world of trading, the worst enemy to encounter is oneself. The emotional impulses stem from a person normally will win over the rational mind which results in bad trading decisions. Technical analysis is there to help us to put objectivity and rationalization back in place.

Forex technical analysis is a study of price action through pattern recognition and indicators to help us in the aid of forecasting the move of the market.

As technical analyst assumes that all fundamentals aspect of the market will be reflected in the price, all he needs to do is to focus of the price action of the market. The collective power of the market psychology is the force behind the movement of the market and often shows in a patterned way reflected in the charts.

History always tend to repeat itself and these technical indicators are in place to gather the past data of the market and make an indication for traders like you and me to unlock the codes to the possible market future behaviour. You do not need to worry about having to listen to so called expert on the prediction of the market through constant fundamental analysis and more often than not it is mostly their own opinion of what is happening.

What technical indicators do is to pick out the truth of the market psychology through the analysis of past data and present that to you. All you have to do is to find how to use these technical indicators to extract the information needed to support your trade decision. No emotions or unnecessary advices to steer you away from reality.

Human nature always present itself in patterns and cycles which is always reflected somewhere in the history of the charts. You have to spend time to decipher these data and make them useful for you. Do take note that although having indicators to aid you in your trade will be helpful but having too many indicators cluttering up your chart is a no go.

When you have too many, its like having lots of advisers telling you what to do and what do you do? You end up analysing most of the time and you lose your chance to trade. At most you should have only three to four indicators on your chart in that way you can fully harness the power of the forex technical analysis.

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