My Journey to a $1,000,000

keep going dont ever let people stop you from your dreams,,,,,

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m.../gold-4-15.jpg

You'd think being in the midst of summer with skyrocketing gas prices the price of gold would actually be going up, but it continues it's descent. How far will it fall? Here's what I see from this morning and had I actually been awake at 2am I would've been short by now from setting up a limit sell at 668.05 which would have been a full dollar below the low of pinbar I've pointed out. I'm going to hold off for today taking any positions as it's moved too far from the point I wanted to sell at and a close tommorow underneath daily trendline support will strengthen at least a short term view of a short position. If you look at your daily charts (I'm a fan of fibs BTW) you will see we had a nice bounce at the beginning of May at the yearly 76% fib level ($671) it's been hovering around that area for the past four trading days or so and right now looks to be heading to the yearly 61.8% spot at ($658). A daily close below that key level would suggest in my mind a further pull back to 50% ($648) and then 32% at ($638). In my opinion the best spot to pick it up right now would be the $658 level (if it reaches there and does not have a daily close under that price) and to go along with the yearly bull trend which is intact.

Good luck my friend if you will make 5% a day your journey will end in one year

Good Luck for your trade

This was one of the latest signals given from FX Insights (they also gave another signal at a lower price later on if anyone is keeping tabs on them) which tested the patience of many people but today has come to fruition for a +292 net gain and avg gain of +31 pips on each position. This equates to a 9.9% return of $28.26, which puts me at about $5 in profit on the year (woohoo, I'm in the money...)and the realized P&L on the account at -$3795.97 (Just remember only -$2000 of that is mine and the goal is to get the account to zero or in profit by year's end). I'm also eyeing a long on gold at this point (think I'll wait to see where the daily close is) as it seems to have made a double bottom of last week's lows near $666. If you had been paying attention to the 3 hour candles you probably would've taken a long based on price action at $670.85, unfortunately I was taking a nap. That's it for now.
EDIT*** - Long gold 1 unit at $673.70. Another position will be added if we hit $674.57.

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...o-05-15292.jpg

Well, if you followed my call on gold (a buy recco at 658) which I couldn't even do because I'm just trying to free up margin at this point, you wouldn't be doing too bad going into the weekend. Here is in all honesty each position I have taken. Most of my gold longs are only because I took very poor positions at 686.85 (played price action on a small time frame, not going to do that anymore) & 673.70(took this one too late in the session and noticed a day later it did not break weekly highs) and now am riding it out. Hoping to catch a swing on gold back up to at least 680 or higher.

Current open positions, let's see where these go.

Gold: Long 1 unit a piece @:
-686.85 (2 units)
-673.70
-667.90
-667.60
-666.50
-662.95

EUR/USD: Long positions @:
-1.3538
-1.3534
-1.3525
-1.3516
-1.3489

Carrying them over into next week (negative interest, D'oh!)

Also, I'm developing a new system for gold based upon Oanda's 3 hour bars. Starting 2am on Tuesday mornings I will be playing a break of that 3 hour bar to take new positions. (Let's hope it's a buy signal, for my sake) The break will be a limit order that is triggered a full dollar above or below that bar. As soon as the order is triggered and if I am awake stops will be placed at relevant places (such as the bottom or top of the bar or a weekly high/low). The first limit order taken on tuesday will consist of two units - one which will be closed at a certain profit point during the day or at the end of the day and one that we will let ride. This same process will be repeated on Weds and Thurs mornings (at 2am) and all positions will be closed at the end of the day on Thurs. OK, for those of you wondering, "Hey that sounds great but what if it reverses on Weds on Thurs?", well my only thought is that should we get stopped out on Weds or Thurs then we should take the same trade only in the other direction. Not sure how well this will work in choppy market, but right now I'm seeing definate trending markets so I think it may work rather well. Just go back a few weeks and test it yourself to see the results. Until Monday, "that's all folks!"

Well, for anyone who's wondering, I am still long all those positions and a few more.

Gold: Long 1 unit a piece @:
-686.85 (2 units)
-673.70
-667.90
-667.60
-666.50
-663.94 - late entry, but per rules of the system for playing the break of the 2am Tuesday bar
-662.95

The system I had layed out in the previous post would have given you a long at 664.32 and even though they turned into pinbars later I am seeing many signs of the exhaustion of this mini-bear trend. (The awesome oscillator has turned green on the daily chart and there is bullish trendline support on daily) I will be buying all the way to 650 if it reaches there. I would be cautious to buy any further below that major psychological point. The 663.94 entry will be closed at 670 if it reaches there and the 662.95 will be kept open with all the other entries as I will folllow my system of closing 1 unit at an important psychological and keeping the other open, until we get a clear reversal signal, I'm looking at 680 being some major resistance. Of course, some of you may have noticed on Wednesday we had a break of the 2am bar to the downside but you should take note it did not break the weekly low, and that is somewhat important in my mind as the rest of the week finishes up.

EUR/USD: Long positions @:
-1.3538
-1.3534
-1.3525
-1.3516
-1.3489
-1.3465
-1.3444

These may be closed rather soon if I do not see some sort of strong bullish turnaround in the EUR soon. Hopefully though if my analysis on gold is correct the dollar should be going down due to the fact they are highly correlated.

Also, (not that I even trade it anymore...) Does anyone else expect the GBP to go above 2.0000 again somewhere in the near future? I'm thinking with the 9-0 vote and an almost guaranteed raise in interest rates the GBP may just take off and not come back this summer.

And finally, if my account is doomed so be it, this is my analysis and journal I accept total responsibility for my account. But not yours, so I guess I should put the obligatory disclaimer:

***These are not reccomendations or trading advice (even though I recommended buying XAU at 658) make your own decisions and do not take signals based solely on my analysis.

Hi HowManyPips.

I would like to point you to the article that discusess UK interest rate in the near future, I hope that helps

P.S. Thanks for detailed descriptions of your trades, it really helps me a lot to improve my trading

Please follow this link: http://www.moneyweek.com/file/29923/...rest-rate.html

Of course, I am not selling anything, just trying to help.

Happy Trading

Thanks Dexis for the informative article.

Well, it's been about 2 weeks and is almost a new month and I am still holding all my positions. I've also been working on a new system that will be based mainly on psychological levels (plus minor techincal analysis, price action, trendlines, closes, etc) for E/U, U/C, and XAU, that I will be forward testing in demo and am probably going to post into the "trading systems" forum.

The Euro certainly made a major move today of almost 100 pips. I think we can safely say that a bottom area of major support has been established at the 1.3410-1.3415 area. I will be looking to close some, if not all, of my positions soon and re-work my exit take profit and stop strategy so I do not put myself in the position of a large drawdown again. I am almost thinking of switching entirely over to my new psychological strategy, but I think first I will just likely test it out. I'm not entirely sure if I want to take long term swing trades or just get into medium-term intraday day trades. I will be going through a thorough process of tweaking with things until a find a stable enough system for my likes.

An update on my goals. I have added money to the account as I am financially stable enough to play with a bit more margin. the account balance now stands at approximately $539. And as much as it sucks to post stuff like this my honesty is keeping my humble. A drawdown of over 20% right now is telling me that I have a long way to go to acquire proper money management technique, as I need to use less margin, take less trades and find a system that suits my personality, but I still feel I'm well on my way to finding the right one and have many ideas in my mind as to what could potentially work. Mainly the positions I've taken in gold are fueling that drawdown. Also check out the 2am Tuesday pinbar on gold if you followed the system I've posted on gold in an earlier post you would've caught a nice $4 move on gold today. I think I'm coming to the point where I realize it doesn't take much margin to make a lot of money and if you keep yourself out of bad drawdowns and realistic goals in check you will succeed out there, but the quest for knowledge and learning is never-ending and this market is very dynamic and keeps changing so I will just keep trying to adapt.

What a difference a day makes. A majority of our gold longs have finally paid off. I have exited most of my gold longs for roughly $60 profit at 668.95 which were approximately 9 positions ranging from 664 down to 656. I will look to re-enter more long positions on next week's open. After a rough drawdown of over 20% since the second week of May I am now at breakeven factoring in the floating P&L of the account's current open positions to date:

Gold: Long 1 unit a piece @:
-686.85 (2 units)
-673.70

EUR/USD: Long positions @:
-1.3538
-1.3534
-1.3525
-1.3516
-1.3489
-1.3465
-1.3450
-1.3444
-1.3436
-1.3425
-1.3419
-1.3400

Now some of you may be asking "Why didn't you just close all your positions on May 29th when the EUR reached a high of 1.3521?" and that is a very good point. There may have been several reason for that but the main one probably is that I was expecting a bottom and a point of no return, and that along with general laziness and lack of focus has given me a long boring period of waiting time until the position turned around again. A stop loss should've been set on that day and a TP point would have been a very good idea seeing as how it was apparent watching Entrex that the boundary had been reached. Oh yes, I may have also forgot to mention I use Entrex 1 and 4 hour along with Trend Manager which I think comes as sort of a package deal when you download it. It is often times accurate but does not account for strong trending moves that breach the outer boundaries of the tunnels for days or weeks at a time. My plan for these EUR trades now is to hold until I feel the EUR bears have taken over. Or until I get sick of and can't withstand the drawdown, whichever comes first. But that will be a long ways away seeing as how these are very small positions scattered throughout the range. The most important aspect now is figuring out an exit strategy for the rest of the gold longs I've taken. I'd like to just switch over to a daily strategy but don't think I'm really ready for that just yet. I'm more a fan of the 3 hour OHLC price action. They are extremely accurate if you play them right and combine them with a few other simple things.

As for the goals of bringing the account to zero for the year, here are the stats since the close of the latest positions:

Realized P&L on the account (since I've started trading, app. 16 months): -$3737 (-$2000 is mine - the cost of my forex education )
P&L on the year: $65 (that's after blowing the $300 mini, so really it's +$365 since the last blown mini - not bad)
Account Balance: $595.87 (app. $241 added recently)

Also, I've been watching Kharvell's thread with great interest lately and admire the results he has been achieving. When a system does as well as his has done recently and is performing good it is worth exploring. (Or at least copying)

Alright, I closed all my EUR trades yesterday. A majority of them that were in profit were closed at 1.3492, the rest that were not in profit at the time I closed the other ones and went to sleep hit my TP point early this morning at 1.3545. I may be eyeing going long on EUR again sometime soon as it looks to have made a bottom for May, but not until after this interest rate decision comes in.

Alright, onto what's left of my open positions. It's going to be interesting figuring out the exit strategy on these.

Gold: Long @:
- 686.85 - 2 units
- 673.70 - 5 units
- 672.90 - 1 unit

Gold still appears to going strong as most of the higher time frame MAs have crossed over. If we look at Mondays and Tuesdays action we can see basically gold has been stuck in a tight range between 670 & 674 with yesterday's daily bar forming a pin that I imagine most people will be playing a break of on either side but only time will tell so let's see where this ends up.

Here are the stats since the close of the latest positions:

Realized P&L on the account: -$3724
P&L on the year: $78
Account Balance: $606.49

I already posted it in the James 16 Chart Thread but I thought I'd also share it in my journal as well - a few reasons I think gold is looking good for the longs. Of course I could be completely off my rocker but I think my analysis is somewhat sturdy. http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...Trades/XAU.jpg

Well, I can honestly say I thought that daily pinbar was going to be something nice. Now my account is once again in jeopardy of a margin call. Over-leveraged with no stops = bad idea. All it takes is one big move against you and your in the doghouse. Boo-urns...Should that happen I will go back to paper trading for three months to see if I can work out something profitable on a new system, with a focus on money management which I think I am still definately lacking. It's sad to say I have all the tools to make profits in forex but either my greed, impatience or un-disciplined skills in money management have taken me out from time to time and dwindled my account. (I think too much screen time may also be a factor in my losses) At least the pain of losing money has been diminished to an extent, and in my mind it's basically become DEMO trading with the money not even really existing until hits the inside of my pocket. Anyways, I have just recently been offered advice and guidance from a mentor whom I've known and met with personally over the past 2 years while on vacation, he has done exceptionally well in his career trading the financial markets so hopefully he will bestow some of his great knowledge upon me. I hope this journal has aspired some traders out there to reach beyond their own means to experiment and persist through the tough trials and tribulations, set some realistic goals, and find their own profitable system out there. This is not goodbye and will not be the last of my postings. I am here to stay as long as I feel I am contributing something useful to the community. It's just too bad my analysis isn't always the best or right.

And it never will be "always the best or right". That's why you use stops and proper position sizing.

Another thing that jumped out at me was that you plan to demo for 3 months to come up with a workable system..... just in time for the market characteristic to change again. I think what you come up with during the summer won't be a very good system in the fall.

As far as blowing accounts, I think it's safe to say that every single trader out there has blown accounts.

Anyone who would attempt to trade for a living is confident, entrepreneureal, a risk-taker. The same traits that make us tend to be impatient, overconfident, and therefore we blow accounts. This might be the main reason why almost all traders fail -- the personality traits that are probably necessary to get us into it are the same ones that make us lose as traders.

I don't mean to come off as the expert, just offering what I hope is constructive criticism.

hi there
i am so happy with ur journey howmanypips
somehow u inspiring me ~

i'm wishing u all the best

I'm guessing he wasn't very successful since the last update in the thread was in june....

Or he is already lying on a beach somewhere..

ohh
i didnt see the date at 1st~ silly me
*it's like my 220.99 is going to collapse too

Darn... I was going to call him on the date yesterday... but I didn't want to burst his bubble... !!!

And yeah... I think 220.90 is gonna hit the dust too...

I wonder how many lot u open per position and how is ur leverage ratio lik?

sonic