Sailing Deusa

I'll try to maintain this thread as best I can. Hopefully with your input it can survive. My story is an unusual one.

I have traded for many years in many different ways and have been a member of Forex Factory, (FF), for a long time. Mostly I read rather than participate. a few abandoned threads are surely stored in FF's archives.

I decided a couple of years ago to sail the world. Of course, this begins with a dream to do so. Then a plan has to be made as to how this can be a possible reality. And of course with that comes the finances. Well, we managed over many years to build enough capital to pay us enough to do this. But it's marginal. So can trading supplement this?

First, here is how you can follow our journey:
Our website, www.sailingdeusa.com or on facebook sailingDEUSA
facebook is far more up to date at time of writing due to the work load. I'm responsible for the website!

So after working full-time refitting the boat, a total overhaul, for about 15 months she was trucked from 1300 meters above sea level and a distance of around 700 kilometers, to the coastal town of Richards Bay, South Africa. Here we had to take a break. Six days a week work with no income and expenses that only boat owners understand made us rent a cottage for a month while we ready her for the water. I haven't been able to trade during this intense time and I wanted to use part of this month to get back to this. So here I am starting again. But this is not trading as a hobby or just for fun or to see if I find the holy grail. This is now trading for the purpose of income.

I thought this might interest some and I thought I could run a journal here. Perhaps others could benefit and advise.

So I have two elements. A plan and a method.

I'll build this thread as I go, I think, as there are days which I need to dedicate to the boat and days which I'll dedicate to trading.

To begin; the trade plan. I think that is the really important part. Can I make $10 from $100? Yes! I have done that so many times. That's 10%
So if i do this and compound it and raise my lots as neccessary to keep this achievement going while keeping risk as low as possible then how long would it take me to turn the $100 into $10000 with a 10% win each day? Answer turns out to be 50 days. So the first 5 days were absolutely perfect and then on day 6 I hit a miss and things went for a ball. Here's a snip of my plan:

So you can see that I didn't start with exactly $100 but that's beside the point because I also won't end up with exactly $10000. If I do at all!

Well learn from the failure, (non-farm employment), rookie error! And carry on. Try to make it up or extend the plan.

The method. I have made a system which I think of as the Heiken Ashi Cloud. It's quite simple and visually intuitive. Here's a screen shot. By the way I trade DAX, (GER30), and Gold, but will mostly talk about DAX here. So this chart is M1 DAX.



So what you see in this chart is Heiken Ashi, (HA), applied over three different time frames, (TF).

First the white is applied to the TF that is current, the M1 TF.
Second is the orange and light blue, which is M5 TF
and the big red is a H1 TF

So really we are looking for trend and how to trade the trend. I guess you could do this with moving averages too. The HA is just better visually and I think paints the picture well. The arrows are generated on the changes of HA.

Well I guess it's clear. Sell on the Orange against a background of red.
Buy on the light blue against a Dark Blue background.

Simple enough. But check to the left. Notice how we would have to have a bit more insight to stay out of the flat prices or know how to use the white HA in those periods and those fail quite a bit!

There is always that element of knowing your market. That's the hard bit. And of course it's the market turns and bad news that destroys the best of plans!

Also, how to deal with trades.

Mostly I like to run a Stop Loss, (SL), up behind price as it advances until the trade is in profit and keep trailing price until it's hit and you Take Profit, (TP).

But when price isn't running or I'm unsure, I place the trade and immediately set a TP for 500 points. The 500 points come from observation of a signal and a price movement. It's not always successful, but it's not bad at all. Sometimes part of that, "unsuccessful", is not failure, it's that price does actually run and I could have done much better!

How do you get the HAs to show up like that?
Chris

Hi Chris.
Here is the indi and a template. Not sure if the template will apply the indi settings. If your screen doesn't look similar let me know and I'll post you the settings.

Hi Derek
Thanks, not quite the same...
This is what I've got.
Chris

Oh, ok Chris. Apply another instance of the HA indi to your chart. It will default to the M1 TF. I changed the colours of that one all to white. I think that should do it.

Here's my current position. Recovering slowly from Day 6.

Gold still running....

Going to keep an eye out for an oil reversal.

Gold Long took profit. Waiting to see if there is a long re-entry. Not likely, I think, in which case a short.

Gold gave me a sell signal.

The DAX has been so flat today. Don't think I have ever seen it like this. But Oil... Ho Ha!. But I wasn't in it!

It is a pity that this thread has stopped. It was promising!