Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
After a damn long time the Beer Fund is starting to perform again, although it doesn't look as though I will be making very merry this Christmas, at the moment. I opened another EJ long a couple of months ago and scored 186 pips (?) so that has averaged down the remaining longs a bit. They have TPs and I will just leave them to see what happens.
I sneaked a 1% score on Cable whilst the Scottish independence referendum was happening. An interesting trade for me - I looked at the resistances and scheduled a buy if a level was broken to the upside, with a TP about 100 pips higher. To my amazement it scored! It is in the trade list if you are interested, there are not many Cable trades in there, possibly only one this month.
The other surprise to me is that my long AJ position has engaged. ....why did I take that? Well I was fed up with paying rollover on EJ long positions. Yes, you read that correctly, I was paying about a pip per week to hold long EJ positions - and some have been open since January.... So I scheduled a buy at an attractive level and left it about a week to engage. I'm in, and in profit, although the main reason for holding this position is to counter the costs of holding long EJ positions. S'pose I should stick a TP on it now, something like 200 pips perhaps. I might open EJ short (when the longs have closed) just to see if I get paid for holding that kind of position.
I expect Oanda are happy too. They probably thought I had forgotten about the account.
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
I am trying to decide if it may be prudent to shut down my trading machine and start the weekend early. After a few ups and downs last week was mostly flat, but this week I am up 3.8% in my JForex account, mostly thanks to the Japanese market which suddenly drove UJ up whilst I was asleep.
The best kind of dreams....
edit: in the end I was unable to spend time at the trading terminal, for various reasons, and so there I finish for this week.
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
Dear Mr. Market, thank you for giving me back my account.
So this last week I screwed up with some long positions on Cable, and slightly larger position than I normally would, i.e. the same as my UJ trades.
Not only was I wrong side of the movement but I miss-clicked buy when I should have clicked sell (hedge) and then just watched like a frightened rabbit. In the end I closed out and gave back my 3.8 %. This was in fact an ace move because if I had still been holding then I would have really been kicked today.
Today's NFP and unemployment % and PMI and ISM figures have reversed UJ back to a profitable position. Along the way I made a few extra pips with some sneaky counter-trend shorts, and now I'm in the happy position of going into the weekend with no open positions.
Also the account balance is back to neutral. This is a bit frustrating when I look back at the charts because I see some places where I should have been buying extra into losing positions purely on the shape of the charts. It would have given a few %. However I am back to the positive position of having more in my account than I put into it, including the fact that I took some profits out a month back - that makes me still ahead. Time for a look in the mirror.....
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
It is ages since I posted in my thread. I had a cash-flow issue in October and pulled all the cash out of my JForex account, and of course it coincided with being down a few pips on some long UJ positions which would have come in nicely if I had had the time......
For those interested, I had no problem getting my cash out, and I will be putting it back in a month or three.
May to September I was taking part in a competition (http://www.traders-cup.it/). By the time it came to September I had forgotten all about it, and was pleasantly surprised to be told that I came 2nd! I think my overall gain was more than indicated, because I think that somebody missed this withdrawal (http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=7741272#post7741272) and that would have pushed my score to 11%. ......I would still only have come second. I expect the competition link will become ineffective in the near future so there is a screenshot below.
Until my cash goes back into my JForex account I am back with LMAX, and paying a bit more attention to the screen.....
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
Sometimes you just have to succeed at something, and this week it was replacing the display panel in someone else's laptop.
I was elated to discover that it was really as simple as the video guides on eBay (and other places) depict.
The machine had not been used since May, and so there were gigabytes of updates to install - well nearly.
....and anti-virus issues ...and the registry is partially screwed
...if you want to know how to slow a machine to a crawl, that is where you must fiddle.
So now SilverLight will not un-install, and it will not update either.
So maybe I will risk manual ferkling now that I have the data backed-up.
Deep joy!
However the machine runs an i5 dual-core so it is worth the effort.
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
This week I thought I had dropped the ball.
A few positions went underwater somewhat, but judicious use of a knife and fork got me out of the mire.
It is apparent that I am nearly there with detached trading.
The size of the account is having an effect upon me, but less so.
Unfortunately, managing a large stock portfolio is causing me to have difficulty shorting when I should.
Also I have started paying more attention to what I am doing, needs tend to focus the mind like that.
End of October I went back to LMax temporarily with a £1200 account.
I really don't like the charts; when they work they are fine, but they find all sorts of reasons to not work.
This week the broadband connection was upgraded to fibre, so now we can down load crap and spam much faster!
A few other things have also improved - but when I switched to my backup wireless broadband dongle through the brownout.....
"You have been disconnected because you clicked twice on the button, or attempted to connect using more than one machine"
Eventually I realized that it was because of the change of IP address, and I was screwed for 36 hours!
Not only was the wireless broadband IP address different, when the fibre-broadband came up the IP address was different again!
Fortunately there are some free charting sites around the web.
Equally fortunately the excellent LMax trading platform doesn't care whose charts you are using.....
I closed out all my trades so that I can go into the weekend with a flat account.
I made 10% on the month! you will have to take my word for it; quite a while since I managed that.
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
What a frustrating week! I did not get into the mahusive moves on UJ, more than 200 pips!
...and even when the NFP printed I was just too slow hitting the buy button as UJ dragged down, and then gapped-up about 60 or 80 pips.
It leaves a rather deflated feeling.....
Despite that, and despite not hooking up for what might have been a huge return on the week, I nearly made 6%.
I just have a little EU position that needs to come back on Sunday night....
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
I lost the whole of last week due to visiting family, in fact one particular member of family.
I had a UJ position open the whole time, and finally managed to close it today.
I had to (chose to) dump my EU position for a loss, and traded a few positions to recover.
Made a bit, lost a bit, and finished in a slightly better position than I was on 6th.
....and it was such a good start to the month!
So finishing ahead 5.8% .....< sigh >
Anyway ..... some pagan festivals now get in the way of doing much more, so here's to a hefty EU short at 0700 GMT on 5th January maybe.
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
Surprisingly.... today was quite profitable; but not as profitable as it would have been if I had remembered that at the year-end most traders are repatriating funds, and it seems as though most of the funds are US$. So I didn't hold my UJ position.....
Ahead 7.9% on the month. That is an Ok amount and I should not complain. Happy New Year to all readers....
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
For those of you losing the will to live..... here is a little something to think on.
LinuxMint seems to work really well.
Installing it alongside Windows is a standard feature, so I can still boot XP if I wish - or presumably W7 or W8.
Due to some technical difficulties I am not running the Cinnamon skin, but I think I will try that because it looks more interesting.
The MATE skin is useful, allows use of your Windows files and has some Office features included. Naturally they are not MS Office features
I gave up trying to install/test from a USB stick and went for the Live-DVD test and install.
All the drivers installed without intevention, I only had to specify language locality and stuff.
I will also be trying the PCLinuxOS product to see what I think.
LinuxMint runs Java from within Firefox (with a plethora of warnings about not running Java) and therefore runs my trading platform.
Anyway, enough of this post because the battery is just about to croak.......
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
2 months since my last post here !! Unfortunately an indication that my trading has contracted.....
Ok, I tried PCLinuxOS. It works but does not seem to support the laptop environment as well as 'Mint'.
So my choice will be LinuxMint going forward. Mint runs 'Wine' which is a Windows emulator, so one can run Windows packages under Linux.
As a seasoned engineer I expect there to be some special situations yet to be discovered.
Wine should run on any Linux version, and I confess that I have not tried it yet.....
Also, I just kinda prefer Mint over the other versions I have tried. Each to their own
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
It is time to bail out of UK house-builder stocks. IMHO
I still have a few left to dispose of, but I have cut one company to zero-holding and the other still about 35% of peak holding.
That will go in the next few days.
So now I'm doing a Warren Buffett, sitting on a cash pile while I think what to do with it.
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
I am now completely out of house-builders.
Currently checking out the oil and gas producers, however I believe it is still a bit soon to be leaping there.
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
Well here's a thing, JForex appears to be more responsive on IcedTea Java (under Linux) than it is on Winduz. IMHO of course.
So yesterday I spent more than an hour struggling to put LinuxMint (17.1) onto the nearly most powerful machine in the house.
I frigged around with disk partitioning, spare storage capacity, the number of partitions.....
The result? It beat me. LinuxMint will not (easily) install on a system with RAID-0.
WHAT??
A bit of googling and it seems that I am not the first to discover this.
It runs from the Live CD with no problem, peeks around in the (RAID-0) NTFS directories with no problem.
Executes .jnlp files from same, and loads the workspace descriptors (so I don't have to re-specify all my chart setups).
In fact the screen redraw and data-set loading (new chart data) seemed more spritely than when using the Oracle product......
So what to do now? I have a W7 copy ready to install, shall I revert to non-RAID so that I can pack in Linux wherever there is a few Gb spare?
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
...well, the latest JRE for Windows (version 8.45 from Oracle) seems to have made an improvement in performance. Not only does the fan not wring its spindle to death, the whole thing seems to just work a bit better. All this is good news now that I'm back trading JForex. It is however sad that what was once a respectable piece of kit with dual-core fast-ish clock (aka my laptop) is now a little under-endowed for running a trading platform. Fortunately I have the RAID system available with the option to insert quad-core or hex-core and 4GHz cpu. However the laptop works Ok for now so I shall stay with it, and the preferable work environment....
Linux with RAID
A quick look in the AMD RAID installation manual ( ...now who would have thought of looking there ? ) indicates a few Linux distros that are supported by the AMD RAID-tool. By inference that implies that the RAID drivers/subsystem will also work, otherwise why bother? So if you were thinking about going the Unix/Linux route and have a bent for maximum performance etc., choose your OS after a peek in the RAID manual. I'm still waiting for Linux Mint.
AMD RAID works fine with Windows and an AS-Rock motherboard. I have run it with XP and Windows 7, in striped RAID-0 (on XP) and currently in fully redundant mode (RAID-1) with W7. Never had a boot issue. Never had it forget which disk was which. Happy to recommend.
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
Stock market has been really distracting me. This week I missed a load of exits and entries due to not concentrating....
Slowly I am building some Oil E&P portfolio positions. The smaller punts on the more dubious positions are up 25% already! Typical....
Larger punts on less dubious companies are still awaiting the right entry point, or just awaiting me taking the plunge.
Also I am trying to exploit the QE in the Eurozone. So far I have a number of slightly bigger bets on EZ focused investment companies. Too soon to make a comment on that, but some are up and some are not. They will move more slowly than straights bets on any one company. They should pay out in a year when the full effects of EZQE are felt, so long as I'm not already behind the curve.
It looks like Greece will be making efforts to stay/comply/accommodate with the EU and its lenders, that will be good for stocks.
I hope the rumours about Russia and the Ukraine are wrong, conflict is bad for everybody, except possibly for Putin.
Joined May 2012
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Status: CoC'd again !
|8,539 Posts
Now that I am back on JForex, and struggling to focus on FX instead of the stock markets, I closed the week down 3.30 currency units.
That is approximately $5. My broker on the other hand is very happy with me, having made at least $20 out of me from commission.
I now have to shed the captivating equity markets, well my portfolio is nearly re-positioned for the next 18 months, and concentrate on FX.
It is interesting to me how quickly one can go off the boil when away from the FX charts.
Particularly since some of the missed opportunities were rather obvious.