Basic EMA Retract Plan

So this journal, like many others on this site, is mainly here to keep me honest. My thinking is that if I HAVE to post every day's trading for people to see, I'm less likely to do something stupid. Less...

You see, I've been trading for over a year now, but I recently managed to give back a year's profits in 3 months. It was gutting.

However, I'm determined to learn from this mistake (or series of several mistakes, really) and have made changes to how I trade. The system is still as simple as ever though;

-At the start of a new daily bar (10pm BST - usually) look for prices well above or below the EMA(5).

-Do not buy into a currency move more than ONCE. If you're LONG USD/JPY, you can't go SHORT EUR/USD.

-Set the TP at the EMA(5).

-Buy as many lots as it takes for TP to = 0.5% of the account value. If I have an account of £100, then I'm looking for 50p on the trade.

-If this is the fourth time you've had to 'buy' into a trade, you cannot open any new trades. Once a trade has existed for 4 days, it's high risk and needs to be settled ASAP. Clear margin from any other trades that are positive.

-No stop loss.

-At the end of the day, move TP and buy more lots if needed to ensure that when the price hits EMA(5), 0.5% is gained.

So, it's not perfect, as the 'no stop loss' might anger a few folks on this site. Which I understand, but what I will do is manually manage these trades and exit them if I see that they're taking too long (anything longer than a week is usually worth exiting).

So with that said, let's see how this goes!

Well, I went and did it again.

I've now updated my 'rules' to stop myself making this same mistake over and over. I see a price that I convince myself is 'well too high/low' and I deem it to be true. I then go and create more trades based off this belief and it bites me in the arse.

This time, it was the AUD. I would have been fine if I'd just had one trade open, but I had 3. This meant I had to sit and watch 3 trades turn to poop and could do nothing to pull them out of their funk.

I've also not posted my trades as I've been doing them! The entire point of me creating this thread.

Let's hope I learn my lesson and put this forum to good use.

Matt

I found that the markets were making some moves during the day - what with being furlough atm, I have more time to check! The first trade I did actually came in before the end of the day. Held for less than 24 hours, which is rare for me.


The other two required me to move the TP and add to positions at the end of the day. Will not open any further trades until these two are closed.



I'm also happy to say that you'll not see the same currency twice in any of my pairs. I'm hoping I've finally learned that lesson!

Will update once these two are done (one way or the other).

A nice way to start my weekend early!

The two trades mentioned above have come in. As I'd hoped, I only had to enter them 3 times each before they hit the TP.

Another lockdown weekend finished! Hope you guys aren't losing your minds.

I had a look at the open last night but didn't see anything I liked. No big moves and the spreads I saw on Oanda made any trade near impossible.

I had a look again this morning and placed some orders for where I'd like to enter a trade and left it at that. If those orders get placed, I'll put them here. Still sticking with my rule to not be exposed to the same currency twice!

I did, however, take a look at commodities this morning. They look like a good fit for my system and so entered a trade on Oil. Here's where that's at.

Hopefully I'll post again tomorrow with some more trades that I've Actually entered!

Good luck!

Matt

Hope you all had a good Monday. Mine went as well as I could have hoped.

I managed to close my NZD/CAD trade. This was nice as it came in whilst I was asleep. Always good to wake up to some green results.


However, I woke up this morning and saw what looked like a good move on CAD/JPY, so I went in on that. By the time I'd had my breakfast, it looks like I'd have been better off to wait until after my Frosties!

I'm sure it'll sort itself out soon enough though. Will probably not enter any more currency trades until this is done.

I say 'currency' trades because I'm already involved in a commodity. Some black gold and it's been a rough start to the week for oil. But I'm in it now and will see it through. Odds are this might get bumpy, so I'm clearing the desk of anything else. I'll not be entering anything else until these two trades are sorted.


That's it for today. I probably won't update day by day on these trades. Will just jump on as they 'finish' and let you know how they ended. Still hopeful for a 1.5% week though.

Laters.

Hello again.

I've not got any screens to show this time - mainly because I've been entering a lot of trades because things have changed.

You see, I've noticed that oil (Brent Crude and West Texas, as offered by Oanda) is more volatile and requires less of my margin than pretty much any currency pair.

I've also started looking at smaller time frames (thanks furlough!) and seen that the 10 minute frame offers so many opportunities for trades. I basically trade the same way I did on the daily, but do it on the 10 and only with oil now.

I'll have a think about what to post in this diary. The other issue is that the 10 minute chart I look at is only on my phone. Oanda's web platform doesn't have it setup the same...

Will go away and have a think.

GL all!

Hi everyone.

So the last couple of days were great. So far, (10am Monday morning) I have over 1% increase on my account - will let you know how the day finishes!

I'm hoping that I can get 3% on the day - but more importantly I'm hoping that I can stick to my plan and not get emotional at all.

I'm still stuck in a Sugar trade, which is eating a little bit of margin. Here's what that looks like.



Like I said - I can't really get screens easily from my phone. I'll continue thinking about it. Will post at the end of the day to give a final snapshot of how my trading went.

Good luck all.

Wow! Today was pretty crazy. Brent Crude Oil absolutely took off on the 10 min chart today - I was able to hold on though and made a nice profit. It's nice to see that being disciplined and pretty emotionless during the surge meant I was able to cash in. Let's hope I can keep that mentality up!

This means that I was done for the day all before lunch. So with an 8% day today and a 5% day yesterday, I'm looking alright for this month as a whole. Not bad considering I started this journal because of my mistakes at the start of this month cost me so much money that I decided on starting this journal in the first place!

One slight problem - I'm still stuck in a crappy Sugar trade. I'm kind of tempted to lay off the trading until I clear this one off the books.

I'll keep you posted as to what happens. Will likely post again at the end of the month (AKA Friday).

Peace.

Phew! I'm out of that crappy Sugar trade! Hooray! It worked out well in the end and I'm now in full control of all of my margin again!

Here's how it went;


Aside from that, I've had some more success today. It's only 11:20am, but I'm up 3.3% on the day. This is amazing, as I set 3% as my 'dream' amount to hit every day whilst I'm furloughed. Maybe I'll hit 4/5% by the end of the day - who knows?

I've had moments where the 10 minute chart has gone against me and each time I've not panicked. I've let the price go against me, safe in the knowledge that I have enough margin to get myself out of bad trades. I'll have a look at getting a screenshot or two uploaded from my phone. I figured that I'll just upload screenshots to Drive and work it out from there.

Peace. Probably post again tomorrow morning or evening. End of the month happens tomorrow, so excited to see how it ends!

Holy. Crap.

I did it again. I got greedy, failed to stick to my own plan and it bit me on the arse again. I'm surprised I've got any arse left, TBH.

As you can see from my Trade Explorer, I went and got myself in a pickle with Oil and have now gone over the threshold - I have less money in my account than what I put in. I'm finally in the red!

However - yet again I can see where I went wrong. Ideally, this will be a learning opportunity (though I would have hoped that'd be true of the last time this happened!).

Oh well. I'll keep chugging along. I feel like this system of mine can work. I just need to know how to take the L. When do I get out of a trade? I can never seem to identify when a trade's gone bad. Perhaps I do need some Stop Losses...

Something to ponder. Peace.

Howdy. I'm still standing - and trading!

So I've moved away from the 10 minute charts I was looking at before. I'm confident this is a good move because;

1.) When I go back to work I can't be looking at my charts every 10 minutes!
2.) The volatility on a 10 minute chart is too great. Some of the moves on such a small timescale are insane!

So I'm onto an hourly now and I've also got a rule where if I haven't entered a trade by lunchtime (about 1pm) then I'm not going to be in a trade that day. My reasoning is that I need to give my entries enough time to get out. I don't want to be staying up until 3am waiting for a trade to come in (again)!

I'm going to give my new system another month, and if it's still working out I'll start posting some daily updates to show you what I've been up to. Until then, you can have a look at the indicator at the top of the thread to see how it's going!

Best of luck.

I'm still here and I'm still standing!

I'm now doing a combo of the hourly and 8-hour time frames. I'm looking for much smaller gains from my trades and this seems to be working OK for the time being. It's great in the sense that I'm not looking at charts as much though. I feel like the more I can do to 'get out of my own way', the better.

I still don't want to go into too much detail about what I'm doing as I'm yet to stick with a new system for long enough to say if it's working or not. I plan on giving this new system 3 months before I really commit to it and make this diary something I actually regularly update. I've come to learn that 3 months isn't a long time in the world of trading, so am hoping this new patience I've found does me good!

Speak to you guys in about 3 months or so - assuming all goes well!

Be lucky,

Matt

OK - things have slightly changed again as this month draws to a close, but I'm beginning to think that a little bit of 'tinkering' now and then doesn't mean you're a bad trader - I think it's part of how I trade? It's very slight changes - like not looking at 8hr anymore and switching to different timescales.

So I said I'd be back in 3 months and start doing this again 'properly' and that's still the idea. I'm pretty confident that I can stick to the system this time. I had an 8% month in July and currently, in August it looks like I'll top 10% - which is insane! Let's hope that September is kind to me too!

One think that I want to get off my chest about this place - why have a trading journal and not show your Trade Explorer? Do people worry about linking as a security issue? I'm always suspicious of journals that hide how their account is 'really' doing. You'll see some people bang on for 100 posts and never mention a single bad trade!

One thing's for sure - you won't get that on this thread! There's plenty of bad trades to have a look at!

One more month to go and I'll be journaling properly with screenshots and weekly updates. If you're not looking forward to it (and my subscription count of 0 says you aren't) that's fine - because I am!

Get Them Pips.

Matt

Who wants to take a guess at how things have been going?

If you guessed that my plan has changed - you win! What do you win? Nothing!

Basically, I've been looking into automating my trading. In fact, I've more than looked into it - I've done it. I've not got an EA running on an MQL5 server somewhere in New York. At least that's what the website says - who knows where these things actually are. 'The cloud', somewhere...

So far, so good with the EA. It's only been about 2 weeks, but it handles 'big moves' well enough and it's better at taking small losses and moving on than I am. It's also better at trading 24 hours a day, on a 5-minute chart. Which is nice. It basically means I'm now working on a much smaller time-frame and I'm also trading much more often. It's a case of 4-5 small wins rather than 1 'big' win again.

Anyway - I'm going to give this thing a full month before setting it loose on my live account. This has all been done on my demo account so far!

So - I'll be back at the end of the month. Will show screens of the EA's performance and, HOPEFULLY, be ready to press the big red button and get the ball rolling on some real money.

So it's been long enough on the demo and I can say for certain that my algo doesn't work.

I've not given up, though (never!).

I now have a new algo. Like everything I try, it's very simple. It involves 2 EMAs - one quick and one slow.

Essentially I wait for the price to be near the slow EMA. I then wait for it to move +30(ish) pips one way or the other, and take that as my signal to enter or exit. Simple enough.

I then use the slow EMA as my stop loss UNTIL the quick EMA has moved into a profit securing position, at which point it now acts as my trailing profit. Make sense?

As before, I'm going to give this a month and see where I'm at. My demo account has never seen so much attention! :')

Did you think I'd quit?

New algo time. I don't want to explain it but basically, it's more EMA retraction action that I'm looking for. This time - there's some loss taking embedded into the rules and it works on a much smaller timescale (15 mins).

I'm going to wait until it's had a full month on the demo and I want to see a 10% increase with no more than a 10% drawdown. If it can hit that - I'll bring it onto my live account and start journaling again.

Odds are, I won't post again until the end of Jan. So have a good Xmas (or whatever you're into) and see you on the other side.

2021, here we come!

Hey - new algo is working nicely, but it's only been about 20 days or so.

I'm happy with using the 1 minute time frame as it means I don't get stuck in trades for too long. I think the longest I've been in a trade is about 4 hours.

Also, the algo takes profits on its way to closing out all positions and it closes losing positions if their open position gets caught up by the EMA.

I'll keep an eye on the process - hoping that I won't need to alter the initial variables (1 minute time frame, 0.01 lots and using the EMA 400).

If anyone gives a crap, I plan on uploading all of my failed EA attempts and sharing them through Google Drive. Hopefully, some of you might find something of interest in them?

Will post that up in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed my EMA hasn't exploded by then!

Hahaha. These markets will always keep you humble!

I've decided to upload my EA onto the MT4 Signals marketplace - and literally, the very next set of trades are a loss! Ah well - I never trust any signal service that 'only' has winners, so it'll look good in the long run! Should you be interested - you can subscribe to it here... https://www.mql5.com/en/signals/924169

I've also gone and uploaded all of my previous EA attempts into a Google Drive folder. Like I said, I'm not too sure who's going to find them useful, but if any of you do - just feel free to say hi! Any questions on them, pop them in here too.

That link... https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...qm?usp=sharing

Alright. Let's see how this full month of trading goes. Let's see if I can get any subs to my signal service too!

Peace

Well - the EA dream is dead.

I can make an EA that works fine, but when it fails, it fails spectacularly!

I just can't seem to get my EAs to fail with any sort of grace.

As a result, I've gone back to manual trading and I'm still working on my scheme. I have an idea of what I want to do, but I'm going to give it a month and see how it goes before I bother posting in there again.

I may not be on the forums, but I'm still trading!

Never give up!