Trading with the Edge.

Sorry posted the wrong chart. This is the correct one. Position is still the same...long of 9882...sl 9884
Edit: Scratched +2

Yesterday evening i had a lucky trade. Well a serendipitous trade. Today i was waiting rather hoping for a silmilar fate. In the chart below i saw a nice rejection of price 207.40 and i thought if it gets up i will sell the retest of the UPL. So i put a sell order at 207.17. 2 bars later it was filled and i placed my stop above the swing high 26 pips away. After filling me the market has moved in my favour and i now have a breakeven stoploss at 17. Since it is friday evening i will not follow the market, i am off to ride my horse with a profit target of 206.50

Here is the update.
Nevermind, i enjoyed the ride.

Another trading month is over and another losing month. Total trades taken were 28, of which only 44% were winners( scratched trades were put in the losers column),naturally the figure for both expectancy and total balance has fallen further into red. Further analysis, 3 trades were responsible for 95% of the losses and these trades were taken in the last 6 trading days of the month. In 68% of the losing trades i did not follow my system rules.
My crumbs of comfort.
I have posted earlier in the journal that towards the end of the month my ego got the better of my rational self and in my ill attempt at trying to make the month profitable i increased the lot size. Thus bigger losses. Now few years ago i read the great Micheal Scumacher saying that every season he made at least one big mistake. Considering that he was a triple world champion(at that time)who had a personal performance coach as well as other professionals dedicated to him for his success. Yet despite that he still made a major mistake. When i compare my own situation to Schumachers then i think i can forgive myself for making the big mistake of increasing my lot size.
The truth is that we (Fx daytraders) operate in a real pressure cooker enviroment, where the mental toughness required to perform optimally under relentless pressure is immense. Again i think i can forgive myself for having failed to perform optimally and not following my system to the t in those 68% losing trades.
Sir clive woodward(England world cup winning rugby coach) once remarked that if you improve just 1% in everything that you do then you have 100% improvement. This shall be my objective for the month of March. I intend to be a little bit more patient, more selective in trade selection,less focussed on any particular trade, more focussed on risk/reward. Above all i want to enjoy the preocess of learning the skills to trade well.
Good trading to all.

Very well put zones.
Watching your progress over the past month, i'll make a perdiction. I bet anyone that march will be a profitable month for you. I can just sense it, you are very close to success. You almost do everything well. I hope this is the month for you.
Good Luck.
btw...keep up the honesty.....and let all the swankers make the kabulshit pips.

I like your spelling mistakes...did you go to the same school as the two ronnies or was it the monty python crew.
Thanks for your confidence. Don't bet too much as equity perservation is the mantra.:

I have been testing the GJ over the weekend. I have found that getting 60 pips in the geppy is far easier than it is in the cable. Of course historical prices and live markets are two very different creatures. There is only one way to find out and that is to trade it live. For the first week in March i shall trade the Gj exclusively. As my system is discretionary i think it will be difficult for me to follow two markets live trading on the 15 min chart. Especially as the two are not mutually exclusive.
I shall trade with the smallest contract size permissable on my platform. If i am successful than i shall trade with 0.5% of my equity. Lets see how things unfold.
My outlook for the pair is still bearish.

Zones,

You mentioned all the problems except the one that's been screwing you up. You keep moving your stop when you shouldn't.

On the last trade you went short at 207.17. It moved a bit in your favor and you immediately went to BE. After the move down to 206.70 the next three bars were inside bars and it appears you placed your stop on the UML. The UML is always being tested, it was absolutely the wrong place to put your stop. The best place would have been to keep the original stop until some consolidation had taken place, or what Morge calls coiling. It didn't happen and you got taken out on a spike to the UML. At the bare minimum your stop should have been around 207.30


That's it, you screwed up there. Everything else was fine, but that. Yet you don't mention that in your list of screw-ups. You've done this repeatedly. You're in such a hurry to cover your ass and not take a loss that you keep getting stopped out of good trades.

Then in response you decide to switch pairs. All volatility arguments aside, it's just a knee-jerk reaction because you're blaming your lack of success on the pair, not on your insistence of moving your stop when you shouldn't.

I strongly suggest you re-read all of Morge's stuff and focus on how to properly trail your stop because regardless of what you think, you don't know how to do it.

Hi Dopey,
Thanks for taking the time to write some very sound advice.
I agree with you on all the points accept the knee jerk reaction. The cause of my lack of success is not the pair but myself agreed. However, i am not moving to the GJ because i think it is an easier pair to trade per se and i will have more success. No, the reason is that it is trending a lot better than cable at the moment and based upon my experience i am more successful trading in a pair with a clear trend. Yes it is more volatile and less liquid(with my lot size liquidity is not an issue) than cable but, if you can be on the right side of the trend then profit levels are reached a lot easier than they are in cable.
Thanks for your valuable input once again.

A very much waiting game for me so far today. I missed the second bite of the cherry this morning at A. This is the same line that i sold friday evening. By the time i got to the screen and digested what had happened overnight the market was already 204 bid. Then after the news release i was hoping to sell the failure of a re-test of the red warning line. Now i am waiting to see if i get a chance to sell the black fork.

Possibly a ride upwards this afternoon???

Short of 204.85 sl 205.15 Profit Median line.
Edit: Profit Target 204.00
Market finding some support at 60 level. Profit taken manually at 204.67

I expected the market to go lower and it stalled around 61 level. There were two other factors which made me essentially scratch the trade.
1) US figure due in 45 mins.
2) Bars had started to form outside the fork, implying either i drew the fork with incorrect pivots or the market is no longer respecting this fork.

A nice profitable day today. As luck would have it, today i did not look at cable in the morning and as you will see in the chart below, it made a text book move to the median line. After the US data it fell quite sharply. Now, having followed it for a very long time i was more confident in shorting it than Geppy. I managed to sell a few contracts for a nice 102 pip profit. Coupled with 54 pips in the geppy a good start to the week. The most satisfying aspect of todays trading was that i was patient in taking a position and whilst in position i was very calm. So i guess apart from a modest increase in my balance the low expenditure of emotional capital was a real big plus.

Another very much wait and see day so far. Cable is in a very tight range. More importantly geppy has not given me an optimum signal so i am on the sidelines. This morning i didn't get a re-test so i let the trade go instead of chasing it. There was a buy setup on the blue fork in the geppy but, i was looking for an opportunity to sell the UPL of the red fork. A spike occured a short while ago and again i did not trade it as it was just a violent move. Now perhaps i might go long of the re-test of the lower parallel of the blue fork.

A rather uneventful day for me. This morning i failed to sell the spike at A. I waited patiently for an opportunity this afternoon. Neither B nor C went high enough to hit my offer and i didn't chase it. I feel good that i was disciplined enough not only not to chase it but also not to scalp at the median line. Something that i would have done before.
Dutchy, i know you like to quote old Bill so its for you...

Waiting for the news release. Saw a scalping opportunity on the red fork, scalped a quick 30 pip move to the lower parallel of the blue fork.

Another very much waiting day. There was a setup for a sale but with the bullish number from UK this morning and the way the market retraced yesterday. I let it go. Waiting for a clear direction out of this congestion.

Well,well, well.
We finally moved. I didn't trade the news release volatility. I have traded it in the past. However, i am now determined to only take trades where i think i have an edge. News release volatility is bit of a roulette to me. Don't get me wrong there are many who trade it and trade it successfully, but, it is no longer part of my game plan. Although, todays movement was clean, i had made up my mind not to trade it so i stuck with my plan. Another satisfying day. I was patient and relaxed through out the day.

A nice start to the day. This morning I sold the UPL of the red fork at 206.75 and got out on the median line at 206.30. Due to the minimum lot size of 250,000 USD(2.5) standard lots) on my platform i was forced to take few lots. All in all good start of more than 100 pips for the day.
Edit: The reason why i was looking to sell this morning was that after yesterdays big up move i though the market might retrace this morning and when i saw the action during Asian session i was reasonably confident that it will try to retrace to the 38.2% levle. Also the LPL of the up sloping blue fork was another target.