April 1, 2010 FXCM Trading Station II (TM) Pivot Point Indicator Updated to Include Mid-Pivots

Disclaimer: Use at your own risk, I make no warranties on effectiveness and assume no responsibilities on any damages or trading losses resulting from use of this indicator.

I updated the previous pivot point drawing indicator I made to include mid-pivots.

Below are the original instructions, but modified to reflect the name of the updated indicator BTManualPivots.lua. I re-named the indicator because if replacing the original indicator with a like-named one can cause Trading Station II to crash (the first time indicator is replaced).

Here is the pivot point drawing indicator I made (now with mid-pivots for FXCM Trading Station II(TM):
BTManualPivots.zip

Instructions:
1. Download and unzip the .zip file to a folder, which you should verify contains BTManualPivots.lua and BTManualPivots.lua.rc (the source code and language description resource file respectively).

2. From within FXCM Trading Station II(TM), navigate to the Chart menu and choose "Manage Custom Indicators".

3. Click the "Load" button and navigate to the BTManualPivots.lua file to import the indicator. The indicator should produce no error messages. If there is an error message make sure first that the BTManualPivots.lua and BTManualPivots.lua.rc files are both in the same place.

4. Add the indicator to your chart and set the High, Low and Close parameters according to the previous day's High, Low, Close (or week's data if you want weekly pivots).
Hint: Click on the "Chart Elements" button at the rightmost side of the tool bar to navigate to the pivots indicator, because the default values 1, 1, 1 might cause the indicator to appear far off your chart area. I circled the Chart Elements toolbar button in the following screenshot:


The pivot point formula matches the same standard pivots as shown on the following site:
Pivot Points Site

What I do each day is key in the High, Low and Close from the Daily Pivot Point area of the above site for my currency pairs in to the BTManualPivots indicator which I have on the 5 minute charts for each currency pair I watch.

Another good site that has pivot points and OHLC data: FXCM Pivot Points

If you need to tweak the formulas to your tastes, you can modify the BTManualPivots.lua indicator source code file to change the local variables R3,R2,R1,PP,S1,S2,S3 as needed and then re-import the indicator per the instructions steps 2,3 above.

The following Web site has a pivot points calculator you can check your modifications against:
Pivot Point Calculator

Disclaimer: Use at your own risk, I make no warranties on effectiveness and assume no responsibilities on any damages or trading losses resulting from use of this indicator.

ORB Green Light for Monday, April 20, 2009

Friday is a NR7 day per MyPivots.com so we have a green light for the ORB (opening range breakout) today. I got a backlog of paperwork for journal entries from last week still will catch up later.

April 15, 2009 Wednesday Short EUR/USD and Short AUD/USD

Forex Trade 3 of Month of April 2009 - Shorted 10 microlots of the EUR/USD on failure of the daily pivot point, was faked out we had a buying spike (follow-through from bullish US session to the Asian session probably). Stopped out -43 pips.

Forex Trade 4 of Month of April 2009 - Shorted 10 microlots of the AUD/USD on a breakout failure of the yesterday's high level. Noticed that the MACD on several timeframes formed nice divergences with price was waiting for some sort of confirmation to get short. Failure of the magenta line (yesterday's high) was my trigger to get in. I scaled out 5 microlots at 28 pips and tried to trail the remaining 5 microlots for yesterday's low but saw the daily pivot point (yellow line) holding so just got out. Short AUD/USD 10 microlots +28 pips on 5, +36 pips on 5.

Trade 3 (Short 10 microlots EUR/USD Stopped Out -43 pips):
Trade 4 (Short 10 microlots AUD/USD +28 pips on 5, +36 pips on 5):
Trade 3,4 of Month of April 2009 Screenshot

Treading water today in Fx tonight, down...$10.55 USD :(

April 15, 2009 Wednesday Day's Trading Analysis

I had mostly the right trading ideas today, although too early on entries without waiting for good bid/ask volume confirmation. The VWAP was an excellent indicator, not because it acted as great S/R but because it was NOT respected, showing us the market's character was that of a Z-day (range-bound choppy day where fading extremes in price is the best way to trade).

On trend days the VWAP is well-respected. If you are lucky to get a pullback/throwback to the VWAP, that might be one of your few retracement opportunities to ride a strong trend.

The second trade was really the only one that didn't make much sense and didn't meet any of my criteria.

April 15, 2009 Wednesday Trade 4 Long 2 Contracts Stopped Out -2.25 Points

This setup was a bullish Gartley (it is basically a pattern where you have one big push up, two pullback waves back to the 61.8 or 78.6 Fibonacci retracement of the first big wave, then the upmove continues from there) fade the extremes, reversion to the mean trade. The setup idea was sound, but the entry was too soon to get in after a broken trendline support level (e.g. going long too near resistance) without very good volume confirmation to get in to the trade, therefore I was stopped out.

Trade 4 (Long 2 Contracts Stopped Out -2.25 points):
Trade 4 Screenshot

Following is a screengrab I did showing a better entry for the same setup idea and why it is better. Basically waiting for 3 minute bid/ask indicator to show several bars where buyers are control (green part of bar on top showing more big trades at ask), allowed you to take the same setup idea with a stop 2 ticks below 834 that would not have been hit (even though there was a pretty scary down bar after the volume confirmed):
Better long entry point screenshot

Note: Trade idea OK but entry too soon after a trendline break, so fighting really strong resistance in addition to not waiting for at least one 3 minute bar showing buyers in control. The price needed time to correct sideways and get away from that up-sloping resistance level where there are still tons of people selling.

This will be my last trade of the day. It has been a very tough options expiration week for me I think I will take the rest of the week off.