This is a red letter day. Please look at the attached chart, which shows the amount of profit in my live account, and see if you can figure out when I started getting the hang of this Forex game. I am netting around 3/4 percent a day since last March 17.
I have been working The Old Beast for some time, took some serious hits in live trading, but today I finally broke even! While just breaking even may not seem all that great to the casual observer, to me it really is. I could never get The Beast to work worth a hoot for me in demo, so I just kept at what I knew, working TOB.
You can see for the first part of the year I had several bad hits. I was trading TOB but would incur these losses when the program suddenly closed out my losing trades. I never really did get a handle what was wrong in the settings.
In February, I made a change to the input settings and I seemed to be doing better, but then then came the Japan earthquake. I watched helplessly as my account plummeted until the dreaded margin call happened and closed all trades at a big loss. Since I am in the USA, I only have 50:1 margin.
One thing I had learned on Steve's threads, I did learn that what plummets now will probably come back up, so within seconds of the margin call I scrambled to place some buy orders with what equity I had left. What do you know? I recovered a bit.
That is when I had the epiphany about lot sizes. I had been trading larger lot sizes, so I resolved to cut them way down to .01 lots/$1,000 of equity. On that date you can see how the change in my thinking resulted in the change in my account.
I also didn't let TOB run unattended. If I saw a trade make a few bucks, I would frequently close it and take a few safe bucks off the table. Sometimes I would place my own recovery trades. (I run the conservative 1.1.2.4) As my account recovered and the equity grew, I would increase the lot size. Note, that I do have FkMinimumMarginPercent set to 600%, a number I can live with.
Also not seen on this chart are a couple additions of capital, which helps me increase the lot size faster.
The DD monster is still out there, and I have had some scares, but I tightly held onto my B.O.S. and stayed the course.
I am very pleased with the changes I have made in my trading and am so grateful to Steve : and all you crazy posters. Now that I have finally broke even, the sky is the limit (whilst always looking over my shoulder for the next gremlin).
Thank you!
Murph
I have been working The Old Beast for some time, took some serious hits in live trading, but today I finally broke even! While just breaking even may not seem all that great to the casual observer, to me it really is. I could never get The Beast to work worth a hoot for me in demo, so I just kept at what I knew, working TOB.
You can see for the first part of the year I had several bad hits. I was trading TOB but would incur these losses when the program suddenly closed out my losing trades. I never really did get a handle what was wrong in the settings.
In February, I made a change to the input settings and I seemed to be doing better, but then then came the Japan earthquake. I watched helplessly as my account plummeted until the dreaded margin call happened and closed all trades at a big loss. Since I am in the USA, I only have 50:1 margin.
One thing I had learned on Steve's threads, I did learn that what plummets now will probably come back up, so within seconds of the margin call I scrambled to place some buy orders with what equity I had left. What do you know? I recovered a bit.
That is when I had the epiphany about lot sizes. I had been trading larger lot sizes, so I resolved to cut them way down to .01 lots/$1,000 of equity. On that date you can see how the change in my thinking resulted in the change in my account.
I also didn't let TOB run unattended. If I saw a trade make a few bucks, I would frequently close it and take a few safe bucks off the table. Sometimes I would place my own recovery trades. (I run the conservative 1.1.2.4) As my account recovered and the equity grew, I would increase the lot size. Note, that I do have FkMinimumMarginPercent set to 600%, a number I can live with.
Also not seen on this chart are a couple additions of capital, which helps me increase the lot size faster.
The DD monster is still out there, and I have had some scares, but I tightly held onto my B.O.S. and stayed the course.
I am very pleased with the changes I have made in my trading and am so grateful to Steve : and all you crazy posters. Now that I have finally broke even, the sky is the limit (whilst always looking over my shoulder for the next gremlin).
Thank you!
Murph