So, after lurking for months, I have finally decided to start a journal. The reasons are that I really need to keep track of my trading to learn something and currently just watching what I did for the day is not providing that much insight. Besides, I'd like to get other people's opinions, in case they know something I don't. With this idea, I will post charts of all my trades.
About me:
I am a 30 year old guy. I've been trading demo and reading stuff about trading for years now but never had the guts to really try at this. Recently I lost my job and decided to give this thing a go. With this idea, I have set up an account with 500 euro that I intend to trade until I become profitable. In case this account loses too much capital, I will set up a new 500 euro account, and so on. If at some point I start getting profits, I will progressively grow the account to one day be able to live off of it. I really like trading, so I will fully dedicate myself to this learning process. I hope achieving my goals doesn't take too long, but I will not give up any time soon. There are traders in this forum that have proven to me that it is possible, so I feel like becoming profitable is just a matter of time and experience.
My trading:
Of all the stuff I have seen everywhere, the most convincing method I have seen so far is trading breakouts, so that is what I will be doing. I will not be using indicators for this, as I don't really believe in completely fixed rules to enter or exit trades. I think it is experience that will tell you whether you should enter or exit and not some indicator. I will use however support and resistance lines on the chart (obviously, since I'll be trading breakouts)
Broadly speaking, this is the plan:
- I will trade only forex, all pairs that result from the combination of USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, AUD and CAD.
- Every night on a 1H chart, draw support and resistance lines on all the charts, to have them prepared.
- Set up sound alerts right above and below the lines that might be broken.
- Every morning, wait for the price to cross one of the lines and trigger one of the alerts. Once this happens I'll switch to a 5M chart.
- If the crossover happens in the direction of the trend (the trend will be determined subjectively), wait for confirmation (a pullback or a growth in momentum) and then enter the trade.
- If the trade is going well and not losing momentum, re-enter the trade every time a new maximum/minimum is reached.
- All open positions will have a stop loss and a take profit. The stop loss will initially be just behind support/resistance and the take profit just before support/resistance. The idea is that the price has to break support/resistance to hit the stop loss but doesn't have to to hit the take profit.
- As the trade develops, the stop loss and take profit will be moved according to my feeling about what's likely to happen.
- If one day I lose a 1% of the account, I stop trading for the day.
So far I haven't had a lot of success with this, but the experience has also told me that it is potentially profitable. The main problems I have encountered so far are:
- Fake breakouts. I hate those, but when I wait too much to enter, it becomes too late and eats up all my potential for profit.
- Monitoring the breakout and seeing it gain momentum, then think that there will be no pullback. Then the pullback does come and I have a losing position right from the start. I can just stay in but this makes me risk more than I'm comfortable with. I can't believe how many times this has happened, but it keeps happening.
- Overtrading. As I feel really eager to test my system I spend too much time watching the charts and try to enter a trade just anywhere. In the future I'll try to control this a bit better.
I did have one profitable week (out of 3 so far), and I think the reason for this was simply that I didn't overtrade (I opened 3 or 4 trades a day)
And that's it, I will be updating this every day. Feel free to comment with absolutely anything you want. All advice, criticism, suggestions, praise or whatever is welcome, as I am a beginner and need to learn as much as possible.
About me:
I am a 30 year old guy. I've been trading demo and reading stuff about trading for years now but never had the guts to really try at this. Recently I lost my job and decided to give this thing a go. With this idea, I have set up an account with 500 euro that I intend to trade until I become profitable. In case this account loses too much capital, I will set up a new 500 euro account, and so on. If at some point I start getting profits, I will progressively grow the account to one day be able to live off of it. I really like trading, so I will fully dedicate myself to this learning process. I hope achieving my goals doesn't take too long, but I will not give up any time soon. There are traders in this forum that have proven to me that it is possible, so I feel like becoming profitable is just a matter of time and experience.
My trading:
Of all the stuff I have seen everywhere, the most convincing method I have seen so far is trading breakouts, so that is what I will be doing. I will not be using indicators for this, as I don't really believe in completely fixed rules to enter or exit trades. I think it is experience that will tell you whether you should enter or exit and not some indicator. I will use however support and resistance lines on the chart (obviously, since I'll be trading breakouts)
Broadly speaking, this is the plan:
- I will trade only forex, all pairs that result from the combination of USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, AUD and CAD.
- Every night on a 1H chart, draw support and resistance lines on all the charts, to have them prepared.
- Set up sound alerts right above and below the lines that might be broken.
- Every morning, wait for the price to cross one of the lines and trigger one of the alerts. Once this happens I'll switch to a 5M chart.
- If the crossover happens in the direction of the trend (the trend will be determined subjectively), wait for confirmation (a pullback or a growth in momentum) and then enter the trade.
- If the trade is going well and not losing momentum, re-enter the trade every time a new maximum/minimum is reached.
- All open positions will have a stop loss and a take profit. The stop loss will initially be just behind support/resistance and the take profit just before support/resistance. The idea is that the price has to break support/resistance to hit the stop loss but doesn't have to to hit the take profit.
- As the trade develops, the stop loss and take profit will be moved according to my feeling about what's likely to happen.
- If one day I lose a 1% of the account, I stop trading for the day.
So far I haven't had a lot of success with this, but the experience has also told me that it is potentially profitable. The main problems I have encountered so far are:
- Fake breakouts. I hate those, but when I wait too much to enter, it becomes too late and eats up all my potential for profit.
- Monitoring the breakout and seeing it gain momentum, then think that there will be no pullback. Then the pullback does come and I have a losing position right from the start. I can just stay in but this makes me risk more than I'm comfortable with. I can't believe how many times this has happened, but it keeps happening.
- Overtrading. As I feel really eager to test my system I spend too much time watching the charts and try to enter a trade just anywhere. In the future I'll try to control this a bit better.
I did have one profitable week (out of 3 so far), and I think the reason for this was simply that I didn't overtrade (I opened 3 or 4 trades a day)
And that's it, I will be updating this every day. Feel free to comment with absolutely anything you want. All advice, criticism, suggestions, praise or whatever is welcome, as I am a beginner and need to learn as much as possible.