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I might Win a Tablet but I might just get rich trying
Well adding GBP to my trading has yielded results. I have traded GBP before and I quite like it but I was originally going to stick to EUR attracted by the narrower spreads. Of course the EUR has this quality because it lacks the volatility of the GBP. Sometimes that lack of volatility can by an advantage and sometimes not.
In any event I had a short trade on the EUR, wound the stop hard and ended up with another 1 pipper. I had a better GBP trade that made 22 pips even though it didn’t go as originally planned.
I did have a few problems keeping my eye on two charts at once (I nearly missed the GBP trade because it was so hard on the heels of the EUR trade) I’ll have to see how I do and maybe still pick one or the other because I’m definitely not a juggler
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I see that Mwinfrey has won the iPad and all credit to him. It was a good comp with prizes that far outstrip the immediate material one. All the competitors should end up winners if they continue to approach the journal in the right way. I feel I am getting some benefit even if it isn’t showing in the bank yet. It does leave me with a fairly dumb name for a journal though but luckily it contains two goals in the headline so having missed out on the first I’ll just have to concentrate on the second.
I had Internet problems Wednesday afternoon that took until Thursday am to sort out. In the end it wasn’t a satellite problem but my own router needed re setting. Something I could have fixed myself in 5 seconds if I knew what I was doing. Gives me another hing to add to my list of things to do before calling the help desk.
Today I sat down at the end of an up trend and couldn’t seem to find a trade in real time even though some are obvious after the fact. Some evenings I am not in tune with the market it seems and I tend to sit on my hands when I feel like that because the alternative can be very expensive.
Well It’s Saturday and sunny in Tasmania. Autumn is about but the weather remains remarkably balmy.
I was out all day yesterday being lectured about soil organisms so no more trades for the week. That means all I had were two trades for a net 1.3R gain.
I’m still trying to get my head around some of the Al Brooks stuff but I can see some applications in my trading. Specifically I am attracted to the false break of minor trendlines play and the use of separation from the MA in a channel. I can’t quite fathom the H1, H2 stuff yet but given time I can see how it’s another way of looking at my with trend trades. I will persist with it and it will probably creep into my trades.
I wasn’t on song for this session. I felt tired and indecisive, not a great state to be trading in. I did one trade and closed it for a 0.1R profit for no good reason then got phased by a massive hammer which seemed at the time to come from nowhere. In the end I couldn’t feel engaged by the whole thing so I did no more trades.
I do get days like that. Often it’s because I haven’t been looking after myself and this was no exception. I’m still recovering from a horrendously late night Saturday (If 6am Sunday still counts as Saturday night that is) I could do that sort of thing when I was 20 but not now.
On the bright side at least I recognised what was happening and stayed out of the market after that first one. I did miss a good trade later on but I’d rather do that than cop some really dumb loss.
Today was a little better but three news evens within half an hour of each other means you have to be a little careful.
Both the EUR and GBP had been in a narrow range all day and by the time I was at the screens it seemed to be at that “is this starting to trend or are these false breaks of the range” stage
I did two trades, one small loss that was pretty much textbook according to my rules and one slightly larger profit. That profitable trade was a bit of a missed opportunity. I was targeting the old high and BB area but I didn’t put in a hard target because it may have gone further. It very briefly hit those levels and I saw a 1.1R profit disappear into a 0.4R profit very quickly while I was unable to get filled. I think the lesson here is to use hard targets when price is still messing around the range rather than trending strongly.
This was a strange session for me. The EUR broke out of narrow consolidation and just kept going. I just couldn’t seem to find the right spot for an entry. Several times I almost hopped on but little differences between what was there and what I like to see kept me out of the trade. Stronger trends tend not to pull back right to the EMA 20 and after the session I remembered that going down to the 2 or 3 minute chart can be a better way to trade these.
In the mean time the pound was looking quite ugly with long wicks and tails all over the place. I did one trade off a fairly bad looking reversal and thought for a minute or so that I was going well as it bolted off on the right direction but the next candle reversed the whole thing. I got out because that and news coming up and I was very glad. The announcement of no interest change took 70 pips away in very short order and I was happy to be sitting on the sidelines. Funnily enough at the same time the EUR was heading the other way for a change.
All up a small profit and a slight feeling of “what might have been”
I hit the screens to find EUR and GBP in a rising trend and no news for a couple of hours. GBP retraced to the 20 EMA and gave a reversal signal. I bought the break up and used my stop distance as my target. It went to the target then repeated.
Looking at the trades now they look like charts you see in trading books – just tipping the EMA, a low(ish) MAE, not too long before the money rolls in. I guess that has to happen sometimes but it still surprises me when it does.
After this, there was two lots of news coming in half hour intervals so rather than wait for an hour and then potentially mess up a nice day, I quit.
A close reading of this journal so far will reveal that I have gone from no targets to using targets. As a confirmed trend trader in my other life this has been a bit of a change for me. My normal approach on stocks is using daily and weekly systems. I want to risk 1R and make as many multiples of that as possible. Like Dave Landry says “ My favourite hold time is forever”
Day trading currencies so far has shown me that a slightly different approach works. My aim is to make an average 1R+ or lose an average 0.5R per trade. So I am using a target of 1R and moving my stops aggressively to try and minimise my loss. I also fully intend leaving a portion of the trade running for the higher gains but as Easter was coming and I will be off the screens for the next 4 or 5 days I thought I would save that one for later.
Well that was a much better week. Mostly driven by the two winners on Thursday but still quite pleasing. 5 winners, 1 loser and up 2.6R for the week. More of the same please
I will do this by keeping a small portion of each contract open whenever a trade hit’s my target in the direction of what I consider to be the bigger trend. I will run the stops on that last portion as the trend progresses. Initially, I want to at least make as much as the rest of the trade did then maybe the same again, but, after that I will use the weekly PSaR in an attempt to catch some of the multiple big figure moves available on the currencies. If the S.E.X. lines roll over I will tighten the stops to the daily PSaR.
At the moment, in my opinion, both the EUR and the GBP are long on the daily time frame.
Back in the seat after the Easter break. I was only half inclined to bother this week because Monday was a public holiday, Friday and the following Monday are public holidays and this Thursday I’m away. That left Tuesday and Wednesday as potential trading days – Almost like a reverse style week really!
Never the less I got stuck in and found two 1R winners in the space of an hour and a bit so I called it quits.
I decided to leave the run on portion in the backpack until after the UK long weekend.
