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Hello everybody - I am new to this forum but not new to trading.
I log all of my trades already and therefore a trading journal is nothing new, but I don't really ever make it public and put some of my musings for people to read. Therefore, I figured that I would start doing that.
Trading Style
I have two main strategies that I trade. One of them is currently being tested now on a small live account and the other is already in full trading throttle.
Below is a picture attached that has the equity curve for the new system that I am developing. It is a breakout strategy currently only trading the EURAUD but is soon going to be expanding into other pairs as well. Feel free to ask me questions about what I am doing but I will not explain the entire methodology to anyone (sorry in advance).
I will also post thoughts about my trending strategy as that continues to play out. It is primarily traded on the Daily time frame although it does work very nicely on the 4 hour as well. (It does well on the lower time frames but, quite honestly, I just don't want to sit in front of the computer to manage it )
Statistics
The attachment may be a difficult picture to read as it is just a screenshot of an excel sheet, but I will list for you a few of the figures that are important to me for the Breakout strategy (this is the one that is being tested):
Start Date: April 16, 2013
Total Trades: 60
Win%: 61.67%
Profit Factor: 2.12
Max Drawdown %: -4.74%
Average Drawdown: -1.92%
Growth to Date: 29.40%
Approximate Average Monthly Profit: 7.35%
On the Breakout strategy, I currently have 1 Long and 1 Short active trades and one trade pending.
I suppose that in a future post I will write a bit more about my trending strategy (which I like to call the Duisburger Trade - since Duisburg, Germany is the city that I live in - although I am American)
That is probably enough for now.
Have fun!
Jason
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Here I will state where I have entered, the direction and where my stop price is for my current open positions. When the trade closes I will fill in the close price as well as how
Entry Date: 12 August 2013 Direction: Long Entry Price: 1.45471 Stop: 1.44444 Exit:
Entry Date: 13 August 2013 Direction: Short Entry Price: 1.45462 Stop: 1.46128 Exit: 1.45462 Pips: 59.6 Profit: 0.64%
Entry Date: 14 August 2013 Direction: Short Entry Price: 1.45557 Stop: 1.46070 Exit: 1.45048 Pips: 50.9 Profit: 0.54%
More Records
Simply so that people can see the actual stats from a 3rd party instead of my from own excel sheet, I have decided to put screenshots of my MT4i account. I don't generally like to make this stuff public, so this is a bit of a stretch for me - but I am just trying to push myself into new areas. So below you can see the screenshots.
Have fun!
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Today I want to spend just a bit of time writing about Confidence.
Introduction
On the journey to trading success, it doesn't take long for people to hear that they need to have confidence in their trading - in fact, when reading a profile about what a good trader looks like, confidence is always high on the list.
As I was learning how to trade & develop my strategy, I kept asking myself, "What the heck is confidence? How do I get confidence? Since I am normally a pretty in-confident person, does that mean that I can never be a trader????" I was so confused by this concept and how confidence would actually lead to profits. The other questions that would run through my mind were, "so what do I have confidence in? Myself? How does that benefit me? Does it mean that I just push the "buy" button without fear, but that doesn't mean anything if I am still losing - it just means that I am confidently losing!!"
Yet now, several years later and making confident trades knowing fully well that I will profitable, I actually understand what this concept of confidence is all about. The reality is, is that most people do not know what confidence is, nor where it comes from and therefore they can never actually develop the necessary confidence to trade (or do anything else in life that they want to do).
So what is confidence and where does it come from? I will start out talking about where it comes from and then it will be a little bit more obvious about what it is. For the purpose of this, we will assume that somebody is trading only with money that they can afford to lose (which is most of the time not actually what is happening. People are learning with money that they can not afford to lose. This poses a huge problem and destroys traders who otherwise have an incredible amount of potential.)
Where Does Confidence Come From?
Confidence, contrary to popular belief, is not something that we muster up from within us - that is courage. Courage, in the face of adversity, rises up within us and says, "I will move forward anyway, despite the odds, and I expect to see success." Confidence is different - it is a gift that is given to us by the trustworthiness of someone or something. By way of example, I will use an airplane. Anyone who has flown has experienced turbulence and, undoubtedly, it was a bit nerve-wrecking the first few times that it happened. But, after a few experiences, we come to realize that the plane is fully capable of passing through turbulence without risking our lives. The ability of the plane to get us to our destination, in the midst of the turbulence, is what gives us the confidence to continue to fly. We believe that the plane has, both, had the capacity to reach its destination, and will continue to have the capacity to reach its destination. It's ability gives us the gift of confidence.
The same principle holds true in trading. We need to believe that our system is a profitable system and that it has the capacity to continue being a profitable system - but that is not something that we develop within ourselves - it is a gift that the trading system gives to us.
If we have a trading system that has the capacity of being backtested, then it is well worth our while to spend the hours doing so in a systematic fashion - if possible, testing 1,000 trades. (some systems only run on the Daily charts and therefore it may be impossible to obtain 1,000 trades due to how long the instrument has been trade-able.) Where most people go wrong is that they only "eye-ball" an idea for a 4-5 trades and determine if their idea is profitable or not and then start trading it with live money. This then leads to losses and all the while they are telling themselves that they "must be confident" without ever realizing that they haven't spent the time getting to know the strategy in order to naturally develop the desired and necessary confidence.
I am fully aware of the pitfalls of backtesting; but they do not stop me from taking the time to test anyway because I am even more aware of the pitfalls of not intimately getting to know my strategy. For example, I was working with a trading student not too long ago and he told me that he had stopped trading his strategy because he determined that it does not work. I asked him how he determined that and he said, "Any strategy that loses 5 times in a row just doesn't work." I took him then to my live trading records of the breakout system that has graduated to testing on a small live account and showed him that the current maximum consecutive losses is 5 - and then I showed him that it is currently profiting an average of 6.4% per month. I then took him to the backtesting records and showed him that the maximum consecutive possible losses during backtesting is 9. I did not even start talking about the possible max consecutive losses when a Monte Carlo analysis is added to the mix.
I was not advocating that he should continue trading his strategy, and in fact, it really was not a very good one, but the point was that he had no idea what his strategy was capable of with regard to losses. He made an assumption and called it a trading plan. We make good trades, not fickle assumptions - and that can only be accomplished by spending time to get to know our methodology.
There is more to this discussion, but that will come later.
Now For My Trade Updates
Still the Short trade from 12 August has not closed. Currently at a loss.
Two pending orders set on EURAUD. One to go long and one to go short. If the trade triggers, then I will update this post and give the entry and stop prices.
Update
EURAUD entry has triggered.
Entry Date: 15 August 2013 Direction: Short Entry: 1.44668 Stop: 1.45403 Exit: 1.45403 Pips: -73.5 Profit: -0.77%
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This is just a very quick update as I have a wedding to go to today.
The EURAUD log position from August 12, 2013 is still in play. I expected to wake up this morning with it having hit its profit target as their was a strong surge in the Euro last night causing it to quickly move back into positive territory and I figured that the Australians would have continued that move. Unfortunately not and the trade is now back at break even territory.
I have placed a long and a short order for today but neither have yet been triggered.
For those who may be curious, I place a trade on the EURAUD every single day of the week and it is to be placed at 08:00 UK time. It is a true "set and forget" strategy. Sometimes I place an order to go long, sometimes short, and other times it is an OCO order where I do not care if it goes long or short and when one side is triggered it will cancel the other side.
If one of the trades get triggered then I will update this post with the entry/stop prices.
Have fun!
Short Trade Triggered: Entry Date: 16 August 2013 Direction: Short Entry: 1.45345 Stop: 1.46348
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Taking a bit of time to recap what happened during the week of Aug 12-16, 2013.
Needless to say, I followed my plan. There is absolutely no reason not to. If people spend the time to develop a quality plan, then why not just follow it? Pretty pointless otherwise in my opinion.
I put the above in italics because I genuinely want people to see how easy it is to follow their trading plan. We are taught that it is hard to follow our trading plan. We are taught that emotions will get in the way and keep us from being profitable. Traders, we do not need to live like that - WE are in control of ourselves, our emotions are not in control of us. Be empowered to live like you have always wanted to and just follow your well thought out plan!
The trades from August 12 and 16, never closed from last week. I also discovered that I can not edit my posts after a certain number of hours and therefore I can not update the posts with trade information like how I had originally hoped. Therefore I will change the format just a bit so that people can see the trades that I place.
Return: -1.1% Pips: -67.9 Total Trades: 4 Wins: 2
In the attachment you will see the weekly breakdown since April 16.
It is never fun to have a losing week but it does not bother me. I know that my strategy is successful and I know that I am more than capable of trading my strategy. I do not care about what the market does, I care about my strategy and following that.
Every time I place a trade I have no guarantee that it is going to win and I do not care if it wins - I am perfectly okay with having losing trades....lots of them. But, my well organized statistics tell me that placing these trades, every single day, will make me profitable. There are only two reasons why that would not be the case - (1) my strategy is bad, or (2) my statistics are bad. Neither one of them are bad and therefore I keep trading without fear and without being upset with myself. This makes trading a whole lot of fun!
Have fun!
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I did not write in the previous post that the trade from August 12 had finally closed out overnight. And, after I had posted this morning, today's trade has triggered and already closed out at a profit. Here are the details from these two trades:
Entry Date: August 12, 2013 Direction: Long Entry Price: 1.45471 Stop: 1.44444 Exit: 1.44444 Pips: -102.7 Profit: -1.22%
Entry Date: August 19, 2013 Direction: Long Entry Price: 1.45170 Stop: 1.44369 Exit: 1.45971 Pips: 80.1 Profit: 0.86%
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Yesterday's trade triggered long and today there is an OCO order pending to go long or short. Here is the information for yesterday's trade:
Date: 20 Aug 2013 Direction: Long Entry Price: 1.47685 Stop: 1.45995
Yesterday and today are classic examples of how my head tells me one thing but the strategy tells me something different. My head tells me that I do not want to go long and that we are well overextended in this trend and therefore all long orders should be ceased - but my strategy says otherwise.
A beginner trader, and possibly an intermediate one as well, would start to listen to their head thinking that they are making astute observations and adjusting the market accordingly. At this point one of two things would happen - their trade would win or it would lose. If it wins then it confirms their "market analysis" and they feel as though they are on top of the world and really beginning to master the markets. They then go on to tell all their friends about how well they are starting to do now. But, if they are wrong then they ruthlessly beat themselves up and cruelly convince themselves that their is something deeply psychologically wrong with them and will probably never amount to any kind of a good trader.
Additionally, if the beginner/intermediate trader says, "Nope, I am not going to make an adjustment outside of my trading plan. I am JUST going to trade my plan," and he rightly puts on the trade according to plan, and the trade fails, then he will once again enter into a war within himself as mentioned above. I know this all too well because I just described myself several years ago.
These scenarios need not to happen. One of my biggest trading mantras, especially in a day like today when my mind tells me to do something else is, "Don't think, just trade." When it comes to trading, my brain has one job and when it is not time for my brain to do that single job then I turn it off. Its sole purpose in trading is for strategy development - and during that time it works very hard. When I am creating a strategy then there is a lot for me to think about such as entry & exit points, draw down, money management, risk management, wealth management, personal funds, client funds, etc. But, as soon as these issues are settled, I turn off my brain. It has no place in the actual trading environment - I just simply trade...period.
Life, for all of us, is way too short for us to dink around and change our methodologies in the moment. We want to trade and make money, not develop an expensive hobby. Therefore, I refuse - unlike hundreds and hundreds of other traders, to not follow my well designed trading plan.
Life is very good - so have fun!
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The problem with creating a system that is designed to be completely automated with set profit targets is that there will be those occasional days that the price gets excruciatingly close to the profit target and then turns around and loses. Well, the trade from Aug 20, has not yet lost - but it has gotten so very close and then started to turn around. It is a well known fact that a trader can make more money if he sits in front of the market to manage his trades rather than allowing it all to be mechanical, but that is just not my goal with this and therefore I will allow it to stay on until it either wins or loses (I have seen several times that I wanted to take the trade off as it looked like it was going to turn around, left the trade on instead, and it continued on to my profit target.)
By way of update, yesterday's trade was whipsawed. The price literally went down just far enough to enter a short position and then turned around, stopped out that trade, went up within a few pips of the profit target from Aug 20, and is now just kind of dinking around.
Date: 21 Aug 2013 Direction: Short Entry: 1.47924 Stop: 1.48897 Exit: 1.48897 Pips: -97.4 Profit: -1.03%
Have fun!
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