I have always loved MAs for their simplicity, I started using them when I first started trading with a good deal of succes but then migrated to other approaches over time because I had a hard time filtering out the bad crosses - that would be those crosses where you are only going to make a few pips or loose a few. If people want an approach that is easy to use and not a lot of smoke and mirrors here it is, if you don't like it don't trade it, if you have snide comments I don't want to hear them, if you want to contribute please do so. I would also expect that everyone be respectful of one another at least on this thread.

The focus of this thread is to teach a pretty simple method of trading MA's. The setups are pretty simple I use a 5 and 13 EMA and the COG indicator. I use the COG indicator to filter out the bad EMA crosses.

I am primarily a technical intraday trader and trade hourly charts, but it the trade looks promissing I may hang around for a few days. I actively trade 9 pairs so there are always at least 3-4 good setups a day which can result in a few hundred pips each day. I do not trade around major news events and I tend to pay attention to my trades. I typically do not set stop losses unless I am going to be away for a while, if I do I only set them at 20 - 50 pips depending on the pair I am trading, gbp/jpy gets 50 the rest 20. I don't want to hear all the crap about setting stops etc etc etc, I think stops are a good thing but if you are picking your entries well and paying some attention to your trades you save yourself a lot of money. This approach works on any timeframe from 5 min to daily. To answer the inevitable question of why don't I trade this daily or weekly the hourly charts best fits my personality, you have to remember trading is more about the person than the system in my opinion.

My money management system is as follows I only trade what I am willing to loose, I purposely keep my account balance low so that I am not tempted to do stupid things and I have fun with it. Trading is something I truely enjoy, for those of you that are just in this to make a quick buck no system will help you, you have to treat this like a business and it helps if you love what you do. If I loose a few hundred bucks on a trade big deal, you loose a few and win a lot.

The Setups are as follows:

Buy:
Bar closes below the bottom Green line on the COG followed by the 5/13 EMA cross. You can close the trade at the next EMA cross or use just wait for price to move to the opposite side of the COG indicator

Sell:
Bar closes Above the Top Green line on the COG followed by the 5/13 EMA cross. You can close the trade at the next EMA cross or use just wait for price to move to the opposite side of the COG indicator.