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First, let me say thank you for all your posts- enjoyable and informative reading for sure. I may have missed it, but which platform are you using for testing out Forex with FXCM? have you had a peek at their Mirror Trader platform by any chance? And if so, any comments on it?
I have a "max down", but not a "max up" I quit if I have a decent win. I know I am almost always good for one decent trade per day. Sometimes I get it at the open, and may end my day by 10am, other times I poke at it all day, waiting for that one move that takes.
If I start out down, I get more conservative relative to what I was doing before until I get my loss back under control. For example, if I took a $300 hit, I look for opportunities to repair that equity damage, even if it is only $50 here and there. That gives me more room to go for another trade. And if I am wrong about a market three times in a row in a session, I am done for the day.
Some traders go for high percentage wins, but allow a trade to move against them and hold through it. If it comes back, it does not show as a losing trade on their statistics. My win percentage is only 50% mostly because I will drop a trade very fast. I know I can make up a small loss easier than a large one, I know that if I get enough shots at it I will eventually find what I was looking for. And my rules about losses and max down allow me to "stay in the game" until I do. I view my percentage wins as each day is a "trade", so my belief says I have 90% wins.
That may be me telling myself what I want to believe. But, I have had 90% wins as far as the trade platform reports it, and still been upside down at the end of the day due to small targets, commissions, and one decent hit. What really matters is not how much you make, but how much you keep.
It took a couple weeks between the platform and the broker, but they stayed at it and have allowed me to use Sierra with FXCM to trade forex. I looked at the other platforms, and traded live on MT4 some, but I really like Sierra. I am still tweaking a few things, and one negative is SC does not seem to have a function that calculates available margin, which matters when you trade a $200 starting balance. But I spoke with FXCM about it and we came up with a temporary fix. Also, I use an Account Balance indicator instead of the SC window, and it does not read anything after it receives the starting balance of the day, so something is not communicating on that indicator, and that says there may be other issues I discover.
Another thought that I may not have shared. I came back to trading this year with almost zero concern about being profitable. I saw it as a "live practice" field, and the purpose was;
1) To see how I FELT in various conditions
2) To observe how I RESPONDED
3) To feel out what I was CAPABLE of
4) To work on any CHANGES that I thought were required
I doubled the account, then drew it down, then brought it up, then ran it down. I added funds even.
I did not care as long as there was something in that account to trade with. That wound up being my final EXERCISE before I made the claim to go full time. It was great to not be concerned with losses, it was great to be allowed to push as hard as I wanted to. I started to drop a lot of the baggage that causes us to trade scared.
When I felt I was ready, practice was over, and this was the time to pull everything together that I had learned over the past 5 years into a single comprehensive approach, one that fit me and my psychology, and knowing now that play time is over, that I have put in so much work to get to this point, and the outcome is all on me. So far, I have had one instance where I had to get up and walk away. But I recognized it very fast, because I had practiced allowing it to happen. Intentionally.
If I was going to make it, I had to get back in touch with whatever caused my melt down last year. I would have thought the thing was to avoid that, to deny it access to my trading. But shoving emotions down only works for so long. And just dragging them out and working through them was not enough. It had to also be while I was trading, if I was going to be sure I closed or rearranged that brain gate.
So I allowed myself to run free somewhat, figuring it would come out eventually. And it did in a decent drawdown just this year. And I felt like I had succeeded, and just sat there in that feeling, allowing it to be ok.
That is why the last thread got so silly at times, why I was not sure if I should even call it a "journal". It was just a place for me to be while I played around, waiting. And once I found it, dealt with it, found it again... I just kept doing it until I could see it coming, until it had no control anymore. And then I started this thread.
And changed my avatar. I had been a pirate during that transition, an image I felt was appropriate for searching out something so dangerous, but with a great treasure if I succeeded. Something representative of my disregard for following the "normal" path.
I had tried that already, but it did not quite get me to face the scariest parts of the journey. It caused me to want to control them, not eliminate them.
I had a fear of flying years ago. Being able to control that well enough to get on a plane was completely different than not having the fear at all.
"Discipline" is misleading sometimes, and I believe a poor substitute for "Knowing".
Think of it as any other sport. A team does not have to win every single game to win the Super Bowl. A boxer does not have to completely avoid getting hit. A driver does not have to stay in the lead for every lap. You just need to be in the right place at the right time when the game or the season ends.
Think of it as a game show. In trading, you get to decide when it ends. Deal or no deal? Do you want what you have, or what is behind door #2? (that one is old school)
Hypothetical ending stats of a football game. Team A scored 5 times. Team B scored 3 times. Team B won. Team B played such good defense, that Team A was only able to get close enough for field goals. 5 scores x 3 points = 15. Team B played such good offense that they made 3 touchdowns.
There are so many ways you can decide to view what you need to view to make your style of trading work for you.
Thanks for the info, and I look forward to hearing about your experiences with getting into forex. I'm just starting out in trading and have taken FT71's advice to begin live trading in the micro futures instruments as a learning tool. Being that the M6E is the only micro that trades enough to be usable, I'm looking to add a small FXMC account to my mix in order to learn more about currency trading in an affordable way. Thanks again for all the great posts.
