Journey to consistency

do you also agree with the statement the moment you're ready to quit is usually the moment right before the miracle happens ?

trading is a strange thing: a full margin call will cause you "quit" (ready or not), and leaves no room to a miracle ( can restart but that account is gone)
thus protect your equity if you want to find a miracle...
but then, once you succeed protecting your equity, the miracle almost becoming a self fulfilling profecy, isnt it?

as long as you've got your capital you can claim your rewards (miracle)
but no capital there's going to be no reward

preservation of capital should be number 1 rule for every trader not xxxx% of gains.

My account is 14 days old. And I have traded nothing but DAX and Nikkei.
Initially when I first started this thread I had high hopes, I wanted to resume trading live from Jan 18 if things go all well.

We're halfway through Dec and stats do speak for themselves, I lose more than I win and when I lose I lose more than I make = negative expectancy guaranteed. I've had 8 consecutive losses but only 2 consecutive winners.

I think it'd be far too shortsighted to conclude that I simply can't trade. Losers were partly from my lack of knowledge and experience trading Nikkei and DAX but also from lack of discipline which then resulted in overtrading.

But I think these 2 are equally correlated you take more trades than you need because you lack experience because you don't know enough. I think this is where I'm at. And given my 14 days of exposure on Nikkei and a little longer for DAX I don't want to be too hard on myself. But given my 4years of track record I think I could do well and I will.

Bottom line to come out on top I should know when to trade, and when not to trade. From my brief period of training on Nikkei I have found certain times to be "better" for tuning in for entries and holding that trade for xxx. Now this isn't a solid fact, could always change BUT I do think this will happen more often than it won't noticed the same thing with DAX. So I'm going to use this for my advantage like I kept saying in my mind the last few days.

I'm only allowed 3 entries, anything more will be considered overtrading.
I'm only allowed to make entries around my golden times give and take few minutes anything after or before is not allowed.
If I don't get any signals around these 3 time slots from 7:30 - 11:00 it's a session without any trades better than taking losses.
Run your good trades for recommended xxxxx long.
Before the session gets going, MAKE UP YOUR BIAS without one you're going to be like a sailor sailing without a ship.

From tomorrow it's going to be the next phase : the next 14 days.

Let's see if I can stick with my rules and keep discipline and emotions under control.

Did some scalping net result for the day +13pips.
I'll keep this running on my nano live account that I don't mind losing.
It's going to be a good practice run.

Who knows. Maybe if I'm going to be better at this I'll add more and keep trading.
But in the meantime I'll juggle Nikkei in the morning.
But then again if Nikkei gets going obviously the pay off is going to be much larger so is the drawdown unlike currency trading.

I'll keep these 2 running both at the same time.
And hopefully we'll see some progress on either one , if not both.

So I just found out that this week i or this month is a rollover week month for future contracts so this mornings Nikkei mayhem (confusion) was slightly well more than slightly expected.

I should know these dates, just to be prepared.

If price acts out of the ordinary its probably rollover or expiration period. I'm going to stay out.

Alright so the contract end months are June, September, December and March - I have to be cautious now that we're nearing not only the quarter end but also the year end. Things might get messy around late Dec, but I will stop trading by then. I don't know the exact expiry date but I think as we near closer to the end things could get hectic. It's a new experience. I'll play with extra caution.

Golden times are passed for Sydney and Wellington.
Price is acting funny moving with large gaps still but the Sydney open wasn't as chaotic compared to yesterday.

I'll wait on Tokyo open now.
No entry.

3 entries attempted.

What a mess !

I don't think it's a good idea to keep trading Nikkei for this month, even on demo (I need the stats)

Done.

In the meantime I'm running a NZDUSD short on my nano live acc.

If you choose to trade index eventually, focus on Dax. Together with EU and UCHF. Both pairs are somewhat interlinked and related to Dax, reasonable volatility, good spread, high liquidity, less spikes and good daily moves from an hour before Frankfurt open to London close. Both pairs are suitable for m1 tf.

Appreciate your suggestion !
I used to trade DAX but then I decided to settle with Nikkei because it moved 80pips average daily.
Last few days Nikkei has been acting up, maybe because its rollover week or maybe its showing its wild side.
I just haven't been able to trade profitably.
I'm going to give it some time though until Jan or Feb.

Nikkei no more.
And I'm nowhere near trading indexes on a live again.

But I will keep it on demo for a little longer than I initially expected.

No signal for the AM 9:00
Next slot London 16:00

Discipline.Systematic approach.Flexibility

Few words for myself.

I need to stop gambling.
I have to take this seriously, as if I'm working for a bank or for someone.

I lack patience, discipline and focus.

Dec goal

: No more empty promises, keep your word (stick with EURAUD, GBPAUD, EURNZD, GBPNZD, EURCAD, GBPCAD and 1h chart)
do not go looking for other ponds, grass isn't always greener on the side.
: To end the month flat currently floating at -7.09%
if my nano acc crashes I'll restart again from Jan'18 but the goal extends to Jan to end the month flat () no loss

Price either trends, or ranges.

In a trending market price tops, bottoms, reverses and trend continues.

In range price reverses in between 2 points - horizontal channel.
Then once price breaks to the either side it can become a trending market. Or a trending market top or bottom can turn into a range between 2 points.

Now the easiest and the most hassle free way to trade would be trend continuations (Cat has repeatedly stressed this on TA and only now I truly understand what he meant).

The focus has been decided.

I will trade trend continuations only on 1h TF across the board crosses, majors everything.

I'm not interested in range or choppy PA if there's a clean cut trend I'm ready to go in on a retracement. But again to succeed timing is everything. And onto the next few posts I'll be working towards establishing a guide for an entry for each continuation pattern I'm looking to trade. And lastly I'll have to come up with a n exit plan. Because again if I keep cutting my good trades I will never come out on top.

Trend continuation is the only way I enter the market. Why ? Because it's low risk and the market sentiment remains stable with market direction(trend) clear.

The challenge for traders is what is the market direction(aka trend) ? Assume we are day traders of GA, what is the trend for today ? Can we know right now whether the trend is up or down or no trend(range) ? Or when if ever can we know any of that ?

If we are not able to answer the above question, then this notion of trend is meaningless to us. Pullbacks or trend continuation do not exist if there's no trend determination first. So, that brings us back to this most important question as day traders, what's the market direction(trend) of GA today ? And for every other day.

Watchlist

1. NZDJPY long
2. GBPNZD short
3. AUDNZD short
4. NZDCAD long

bunch of NZD longs.
no signal just yet.
but things are looking good for these 4

I might stumble a bit as I haven't yet mastered this technique, but everything that I've learnt up to this point hopefully will enhance my performance. This is still a learning curve. But my goal is to erase my loss on my demo by the end of Dec., Ambitious I know. But I need it right now.

Better come back kiwi.

Now that I've determined how I'm going to trade, I feel at ease. It's strange but I don't feel the urge to constantly jump in and out of trades. I'll just wait here patiently until the price comes to me. But heck kiwi you're going too far.

the direction ?
well I think we can make it as complicated or as simple.

as for me, I'm going to do it the Cat way, I've got my 200ema, 100sma and 20ema plotted on hourly chart across the board, as long as they're in their correct order and price has made at least 1 HH or LL to me that's a viable trend. Sure they can be slow to act, the 200ema and 100sma cross and you will miss some of the move but from what I have observed you still get a decent chunk of the meat.

If I can deduce the probability of losing trades I would be highly satisfied having a small bite. Nonetheless if you made your entry prior to the correct alignment of MAs you risk losing your position and PA may transition into choppy behavior. So waiting for correct alignment I think will put me out of these risks. Sure you get to go in early but you also risk losing your position. It works like leverage I think. But I choose to settle with the waiting game. I don't want to deal with negative expectancy anymore.

I'm also going towards "trend continuation" and nothing else.
Enough with catching tops and bottoms (in reality went against the trend) no wonder I kept blowing account after account.

On direction I wanted to add you should be good sticking with whatever TF you're operating from and determine the trend or the direction within that TF. I don't like to overcomplicate things. So don't recommend multi TF analysis. It can confuse you more than it can help. If there's something wrong on higher usually it shows on lower TFs I think. Some people argue TF is something we constructed or broker and price is price. So that's what I think. What do you think ?