PABO Live

Ok, so following on from my PABO strategy which was in demo- i know the system, how it works, how to enter, and the rules for my trade management and bank management.

I also am well aware of the R:R and the success factor that i am looking for with the trades.

Anyone worth their salt in the forex market, knows that Demo is easy. I am starting up a small Spread bet account (using MT4) and i am going to be trading the system live.

A system will only show the results of the system, and not the trader. I am deleting the demo PABO strategy and starting the live one as my only TE.

Expectations of the system/me:

I am looking for 4/10 trades to be correct - a 40% success factor, and i think i will be making about 5 trades a week. This should net weekly a 4% increase in my bank. That is in my mind a rather respectable return.

My point per trade will 2% of my bank set at the start of the week, so starting of with a risk of £5, looking to win £10, if i achieve 4% in the first week, week2 will be £ 5.4. Simple really... If i achieve more than that, then the bank will be set accordingly.

I am EXPECTING a 2% increase in bank per week though.

Entry is based on a super secret formula that i am not sharing - this is not my strategy to share. (and i am joking about the first part... the formula bit not the sharing bit...)

Exit is based on going to profit, going to Stop loss. At 50% in trade profit, i am setting sl to B/E for a risk free ride one way or the other.

That's it really... I will give updates at least weekly, or randomly within that...

Thought I was there with a decent broker, but unfortunately, I need to find a new one. I believed the leverage available was 1:200, which would allow me to trade happily - £1 per pip, but leverage is only 1:30... So new broker time.

Bit of a shame, as the spreads were amazing! But pretty pointless if I can not grow my account sucssesfully. Anyway, I had deposited £260 - £10 worth of 'testing space' which I lost the first trade to the tune of 3.6 or so. but that was a test in any case. Not a problem, I have withdrawn and looking for a new broker.

It was a spread bet account, but that is not important... hopefully looking forward I can get a decent spread, and get a decent broker who offers more than 1:30 leverage!!! That is just not enough, I can only risk 1% per trade...

hmmm, shows how long I have not traded on a live account, as I so far can not find anywhere that offers UK clients higher than 1:30 leverage. Talk about incredibly sucky.

Once again, the governing powers have no sense. I trade 5 pip stop losses. my risk is only ever 2%. Leverage does not even come into it. This is really frustrating for the simple fact that I could risk more of my account on 1 50 pip trade than I would on my 5 pip trade... and they thing that leverage protects me? fucking idiots the lot of them.

So first week down, after only two days of trading. Obviously I had the first loss on the account on day 1. One of the 'getting used to it' trades. It went a bit crazy, but out for about 3.4 GBP lost on that trade. I withdrew planning to go to another broker, found out that it was a waste of time, and then re deposited 260... from now on this is what I will refer to, as it is just easier to match up to the TE.

Today I had 2 trades (shows as 3, but it was only becuae the second trade was split into 2... .4 lots and .1 lot.) The first trade was subject to some pretty wild Spread changes which stopped me out... going from 1.3 to 2.5! If that had not happened, the trade would have been a winner.

I entered straight away again, as I was pretty certain it was a good trade.

The entry was not quite as good... and again, this would have been a winner had it not been for the slightly worse entry... it went to about 99% to profit, but retraced to BE.

So first 2 days trading (first week) breakdown:

1 loss
1 BE

Both trades were on the USDCAD

Overall result.

-1% on account.

I always think it is important to have small goals.

Mini goals, that are both achievable and realistic (Smart goals effectively... simple, measurable, achievable, realistic, time measured) help to achieve the bigger goals... the phrase every mickle makes a muckle... as in pounds are made up of pennies.

It also keeps you focused on building up and keeping your sanity intact. Trading is something where this is especially important.

One of my Smart goals was met yesterday, with my first live money trade that won.

I thought it would be worth sharing my ultimate goals, and the mini goals that will support them.

1) Make a full time living form trading.
2) Be able to take a chunk of change from my account at any time to buy nice thing for my family and for me.
3) Have enough of a trading account to take an income and increase the account balance at the same time.
4) Run multiple accounts - 1 income, 1 wealth building (pension basically) a few fun accounts that can be blown at will - ie, have a higher risk percentage on the account.
5) Be successful enough to trade for others- whether directly, or by trade copier.

Mini goals that will support these targets:

1) win first trade - BIG milestone
2) win 4 out of every 10 trades in the next 3 months
3) win 5 out of every 10 trades in the next 6 months
4) compound account to 10% of starting bank in the first 6 months
5) compound account to 50% of starting balance in the first 9 months
6) 100% in first year of trading.
7) Maintain consistency - ongoing against 2 and 3
8) explore ways of increasing account profitability- spit testing conditional entries and exits - multiple TP's, different time frames etc - ongoing
9) Have 100% hit rate of trading rules. Not trading wins, but follow my trading rules 100% to maximize chances of success. To be attained in the first 6 months
10) Add more funds to account on successful implementation of 2 and 3


Going from 4 out of 10 trades to 5 out of 10 trades would result in the following:

4 trades at 2% win = 8% gain
6 trades at 1% loss = 6% loss
Overall= 2% net gain on account over 10 trades

5 trades at 2% win = 10% gain
5 trades at 1% loss = 5% loss
overall = 5% gain

By getting 1 trade difference in net wins, would enable me to achieve an extra 150% gain in profitability... That Is huge.

you can do the maths for 6 trades... or 7 trades

This is also why it is so important to maintain discipline in trading.. It may be a numbers game, but it is better to have better numbers than more numbers. Better for the old grey stuff as well...

So a few of my thoughts!

I had one loser yesterday, which was really frustrating. Not for the obvious reason of 'frustrating' but because i knew the trade was not the correct set up. In actual fact, i had set a pending order ready for the trade and delteted it, because it was not right. Price moved to the right entry zone and i took it.. off a whim, and not because it was the right set up.

Anyway, it barley traded at a profit, retraced and took me out... no surprise there.

I think i am going to start updating based on every trade, because in the early days of trading this system - going form demo, which was reasonablly successful - ie anticipated results.. to a live account, where results have not been as expecting so far means that i need more accountability.

It is going to be a case of going back through the trading rules, setting the right mindset again, an dpushing on to make the correct trading decisions and looking for only the optimal trade set ups. I have an idea in my mind that i should be making 2 trades a day, and there are certainly opportunities there, but maybe they are not quite the 'right' opportunities.

I want to try to avoid trading below £250, as i had the intention of having £10 (4 net losses!) as a 'trial and experiment' bank.

The takeaway is PERFECT set ups.. PATIENCE. Something i dont really have in too much abundance... but i need to improve it!

2 trades today, and i am signing off for the day.

One on the USDJPY. Not sure i shoudl have got into this trade, setup 1 was very choppy, although easily decipherable. The fact that it was choppy should have stopped me from entering. Anyway, i exited gracefully at a very small profit - effectviely break even, and was happy. The trade went to a couple of points of being a full loss, and never really traded anywhere close to full profit - reagrdless of when i exited, it would have been a break even trade.

Next was the AUSUSD. Set up 1 looked really nice, but price had started to slow down, so not much of an indication that it was going to trade higher. Set up 2 was quite good in terms of entering my pending order. It is debateable whether i could have just cancelled the pending order before it was triggered, as the setup started to break down a little. As it was, it dropped in value quite a bit and was close to SL, but turned round to hit 50% profit target. I was in a meeting when this happened so did not get a chance to move to BE. Subsequently it dropped through the entry, and into loss, but came up to retest the 50% mark again. I manually closed it with a profit of 15p! So again, another break even.

I am ok with this, as i accidently opened a trade yesterday by accident which shows as the 40p loss... i closed it straight away. So this is now showing as Neutral, bar 10p!

Learnings from today.

PERFECT SETUPS. I did miss a trade on the EURUSD and of course that woudl have been the winner today! haha! Due to the leverage on the account, i can only open one at a time trading 1% risk with a SL of 5pips.


I could move TF's which would enable me to trade more positions with the same P/l in terms of monetary value... These stupid rules though are a pain in the arse for me and probably need to look for a non EU broker...

I am also looking into a script/EA that will manage the pending orders (need 50 points difference to place a pending order, so sometimes I have to open manually) and it would also manage my SL move to BE on 50% profit.. I am just trying to set it up so that it actually works!

It does mean that i can literally set and forget. The other thing to remember is that it ONLY manages the trades, not the entry. Bu tit manages it in the same way i would.

My brokers really are crap though... These rulings really dont help to trade a successful account... considering i would be just 1.23 below where i had started if i could place the pending orders as i want to, and place more trades as i would want to.

Right, All change (AGAIN!)

I am updating the TE to a new broker. I listened and took action thanks to a bit of advice on another thread. I have opened up another account with an Aussie broker - not such great spreads, but I will be able to open more than 1 position at a time. Leverage of currently 1:100, but have requested 1:500.. I think 100 should be enough, but if i want to increase my risk per trade to a (relatively) standard 2% i will need the extra leverage.

Let me make this clear though, my Risk is only ever going to be whatever i choose it to be... currently 1%, aim to go for 2% and maybe in the future to a MAXIMUM of 4%... however that is a LONG time in the future. My risk of going broke is still relatively small - ie I wont be going broke on position sizing, but only trading ability.

There is still an awful lot of confusion about leverage and how it puts your account at risk. For instance if you trade at 1% risk per trade, you are only ever risking 1% per trade, regardless of the amount of leverage you have.

My issue is that at 1:30 leverage, and call it 3.33% margin, i could only ever have 1 position open, as the margin and leverage meant that i could only borrow so much per trade- trading at 50p per pip, however my SL was at 5 pips... risking 2.5 per trade. I could have 10p per pip and have 100 pip SL, which would be risking £10 per trade... or 2.5%.. and i could have 5 positions open... risking 12.5% of my accoutn at any one time! How stupid is that.

It just shows how much the regulators know about risk - diddly squat! Leverage has little to no bearing on whether you are a successful trader, it only allows you to trade bigger lots, or more positions. If you trade at a set risk, then leverage has no bearing on whether you will go broke.

Anyway, rant over.

I will update the new TE, and have deposited $250 (less than my original deposit, due to exchange...)

Right!

FINALLY back in business.

My TE is now set up (Again, Again). Really annoyingly I had massive issues with the broker in Australia, but thankfully have now settled upon what I hope is my LAST broker set up.

Major issues with just getting my card verified... so far 5 days… and have not heard a jot from them yet. New broker, all set up within 6 hours (and that includes me sending proof and verification in).

So I have set up and deposited $260 in. This gives me $10 to play with again...

The great thing about all this, is that my spreads are much lower - nearly half form the other broker - so their loss ultimately!

So form tomorrow, I should be all set to start my trading properly. I have my other trade journal all set up, and will update here after every trade as well. Lets rock and roll!

Also TE has been made fully visible other than pending orders - don't want anyone getting ideas and copying my trades!

A little more about the system I am using.

As far as I am aware, it is not a common trading strategy. There are lots of other strategies that have something in common with this - after all it is based on price action (sort of) but I would say it has more to do with structure and understanding the structure of the markets than anything - yes I am still learning this, but it is better to learn this on live markets than it is to learn in a demo.

I have been on FF for about 4 years, and have traded actively before then as well - mainly options. I hated the volatility of options, and was always looking for something that is a bit more standardised shall we say? Hence I came to Forex. I might have mentioned that I had a system called the Moes which was somewhat successful - the details of which have been lost to time.

Anyway fast forward to the here and now.

This system is profitable - of that I am 100% sure. The success of which is largely down to broker spread and following the rules. I only need 4 trades out of 10 to be quite happily in profit. I am at the moment concentrating on perfecting the setups - ie MY trading psychology to stay out of the market at the right times. I am going to try to control this through my journal . The system itself is made up of two setups, of which I wont go into, but I will try to give an overview of entries I have not mastered this by any means, which is why I am so reluctant to reveal the details of the system.

Setup 1 - this signals that there is an opportunity
Setup 2 - this signals a potential entry.

They are both very much interlinked, so for each entry, there needs to be 2 set ups. They happen sequentially, so it may be that I say that Set up 1 was really good, but set up2 was not. There is however no set up 2 without a set up 1.

This will explain my terminology. so if you read through the next X years worth of posts, it may help you to understand that when I say set up 1 and 2, it does not mean that they are different systems or trades, they are just macro and micro entry methodologies, but I will only ever enter on a set up 2 that looks good.

I should also add that I am not concerned with the amount of pips I make. The ONLY reference for success/failure here is the amount of money I make. Pip counting is great for people who are not bothered about cash. That is the MAIN goal here, is to make money.

I trade bigger lots (hence the big issue with leverage for me) however I also trade LOW stops. My goal is to risk 1% (maybe rising when I get more trades under my belt!!) to win 2%. My risk will sometimes go past 1%, the risk is set in terms of lot size at the start of each week. This allows recovery during the week, so risk percentage may go to 1.5%, but will still be the same lot size in a given week.

I am looking for 2% gain per month, but EXPECT it to be bigger once I have nailed the entries and learn some patience!!! For instance I would be expecting at least 1 net trade win per week... that would give me an increase of 2% per week If I am going to be doing about 10 trades per week, that means that I need 4 winners and 6 losers.

Lot size to begin with in that case will be 0.05 lots - or c. USD $.50 per pip.

Targets will always be 5 pips SL and 10 pips TP.

Timeframe wise, I will not divulge!

Once I have this nailed, which I am setting myself a target of 3 months (goal number 2 of my mini goals) I will be looking to do some other things with my account.

I want to start feeding into my account c. £500 per month to add to available account to trade with.

I want to also add some more accounts

1) main trading account 1% or 2% risk
2) pension account 0.5% risk
3) income account - 1% but would need a big account for this, and this is way off into the future!
4) fun account/money builder - 5% risk
5) It would be an awesome dream to have a client account, where I could trade for other people, but let's face it... hahaha!

So some of my dreams for the future!

1, 2, 3 and 4 accounts will all be based on the same trades, on different accounts with a trade copier of some sort.. Why? for psychological reasons, as it would be easy to combine into 1 and make a spreadsheet (a big hobby of mine!) to spit out the correct lot size needed. As a trading principle though, it does not appeal.

I want to say however, that these are my dreams.. we will need to see if I get anywhere close to them. I am starting with $250 (well 260 really....) so ANY thoughts of getting an income from trading are very very far off in the distance... however I also believe that if you don't have these dreams broken up into mini goals, then you are planning to fail.

First nearly trade of the day - EURUSD.

Set up 1 is good.

Set up 2 however... not ideal. I am 50/50 to take it. One of the major issues is that it is coming into some major resistance. The idea of the strategy however is following the trend and capitalising on the fact that the setups are such that they will make new highs. However, the actual setup puts the TP way past this resistance. If i could lock in a Breakeven trade at the level or just below this resistance level then i think it would be a bit of a slam dunk of a trade, and would be entering it without hesitation.

As it is, i don't lose anything by staying away of gambling, so i am going to let this one go. On top of that, we have the EUR refinancing rate in 52 min (as i type) so i don't know whether i would be confident at this moment in time whether i would be able to lock in a BE trade going forward. Looking at the screen now, the trade would not have been triggered, but the movement of price is showing indecision, so will wait this one out.

So, the EURUSD trade above would have been a BE, but the news event had it crashing down, so all good...

I do have my first trade pending thourhg on the EURUSD.

Setup1 is good, and Setup2 was good when i put the pending trade on... may be a bit of a reversal going here but we shall see, worst thing that could happen is that the trade does not get triggered.

Also missed out on a GBPUSD trade. It was perfect, but was setting up my trade when it blasted through and went to full profit in about a minute. Such is life!

The EURUSD trade was cancelled, as price moved away from my take trade area.

Nothing on the radar yet for today, and I am out tomorrow, so this will be my last trading day this week.

Damn it.

Order opened up on the USDCAD. Instead of my lot size being 0.05 as it should be...

Managed to open up with 1 standard lot. Super. The question was, do I close for an immediate loss of $15, or let it run as usual?

I have opted to let it run, The trade is fine as a trade, and I am happy with the trade being open. I just have to face facts that it could go to a full loss and the account will be down c. $40 dollars from the off.

How did I manage to open a 1 standard lot size? Simply I hit the wrong button when putting my pending order in, and then it triggered before I could change it.

If it does go to a full loss I will be funding the loss to keep the account at $260. Trade explorer will still show the full history.

A quote I heard a long time ago (with regards to poker) is that one of the differences between Pros and Amateurs, is the pros don't misclick. I think that it is true here as well...

Obviously regardless of whether this wins or not, this is not the standard way my trades are supposed to work! A big difference in lot sizes!

Oh well, it is what it is. I am going to treat this as any other trade. Why? Because it is.

Yeah,

Stuff that.It went into profit, I took it! 1.5 profit

It was a mistake around the lot size, and thinking about it, I am more than happy to take a small profit than a big loss...

The trade set up is good, so re entered with the correct lot size this time on a pull back!

phew!

USDCAD stopped out at break even.

A little bit disappointing, as it was bouncing around this area for a while, and then it shot up to full take profit.

Take away's from this trade:

1) check your trades before firing them off... 1 lot... That could have killed it before it had even started.
2) Stick to your rules
3) Be positive - the sentiment was correct, but trade rules are there for a reason.

On to look for the next set up.

Waiting on another USDCAD trade to trigger.

Set up1 is very good
Set up2 is perfect.

even better my TP is someway below the overall structure high and very little in between

Trade cancelled, as price moved away from my entry zone

Bit of a frustrating week so far, no set ups that have been worthwhile taking as of yet.

There was one set up on the GBPUSD yesterday, but it was so choppy that i elected to stay away. it was one of those 50/50 type trades that could go either way. i think in the end it ended up as BE in any case.

Looking at my charts, there seems to be a lot of choppy sideways movements, and quite a lot of news events around any time a set is occurring that means i just wont trade it.

AUDUSD, a big movement down earlier which has just gone into a consolidation zone. With any luck, there will be a break out that will present a decent trading opportunity.

EURUSD: A choppy movement upwards, and there seems to be a reasonable retrace (off the back of German economic statement) but price is prety strong downwards, it may even be a sell opportunity as opposed to a retrace buy...

GBPUSD: Interesting formation forming. Sell oppprtunity maybe on the cards. Not an ideal set up1, but will have a look at a set up 2 to see what happens. may even target an entry round bouts a NSL. I would have done, bu

USDCAD Big move up, but and some nice waves, but it is really slow moving which leaves very little to trade from with any confidence.

All in all, a bit pants.

In wiritng this, GBPUSD made a strong move down, waiting for it to retrace a bit to look for a decent entry...