Que's Journal

This is the start of my trading journal. I do not have any trading background. I am an engineer at a satellite communications company, and for a short time I had to use poker to eat on. I am 29 years old and am still living paycheck to paycheck even though I make a reasonable amount of money.

In 2004, I was laid off of my job. During the interim of that and my current job is when my only source of income was playing poker. This was probably the lowest time of my family’s life. I had $4000.00 in my pocket and was living in an extended stay hotel. I moved to California where I had 2 potential jobs lined up, but had no way of knowing how long it would take for them to come to head. I ended up staying in that hotel for just over 4 months before I received a job offer from my current job.

After moving in expenses and moving my household goods out to California, I built up a bit of debt. I am just now starting to get out from under that debt and realize how fortunate I have been the last 2 years. It could have turned out very differently. I am now in a position where I can start putting money away for the future. I have vowed to never get into that position again. The stress it put not, only on me, but my family is more then anyone should have to deal with.

I have paper traded quite a bit and have decided to use the Bagovino Method, as it has brought me great success on paper trading. Now I am quite aware of the difference between paper trading and live trading. Being a poker player, I believe I have the money management skills and the psychology to succeed in this market. Although, the only way to know for sure is to actually do it.

My plan is to Deposit $300.00 into a mini account on Interbank FX (This has already been done). I am making a mini account on IBFX because I can trade 0.10 mini lots which is equivalent to a micro account. Each additional month I will deposit an additional $300.00 into the account.

Given time, I am hoping to first build enough money to have some sort of fallback in case anything happens with my current job. The second goal is to join the James16 group to bring my trading skills to the next level. The third goal is to build a large enough account to be able to trade for a living and have financial freedom and security. I do not know how long this will take, but I am in it for the long run. I am thoroughly enjoying every aspect of trading. I also know I am starting out much smaller then many of you started out, but you have to start somewhere.

I will keep this journal updated regularly and place my current trades, charts and reasons on here. At any time, you can view my progress by looking at the link in my signature. This is a published statement from MT4 of my live account and it updates every 5 minutes. I have altered the template to *** my account number and real name for security purposes, but this is the Detailed Statement from my live account.

This is the start of my long and foreseeably wonderful journey to financial freedom and becoming a professional forex trader. Thank you to all who give support and advice as all is welcome.

Id say good luck but I doubt you need it Que. From the looks of it you have your head in the right place and have a realistic outlook and plan. Not something you see too often around here Nice work.

300 Is more than enough to stop the persians from invading ancient greece. your $300 should be more than enough without depositing more if you truely are going to be successful at this game. Keep practicing with $0.10/pip. Don't be in a rush to reach the pinnacle. Best of luck to you and your family.

Well I have made my first trade and I would like to explain it. The trade is on the EURCHF. I was using the Daily Chart to determine if it was a good trade to make. As you will see from the attached file, the RSI crossed 2 days ago and the EMA’s crossed Friday. Now, I screwed up this trade because I bought .2 instead of .1 lots which means my correct stop put me outside of my 2% risk. This I reduced the stop to 30 pips and am monitoring on the H1 chart. When I hit break even (Bad because I bought at probably the worst time for the H1 chart, I will close .1 positions and move my stops correctly to what the D1 needs.

Newest Trade

Got stopped out of my first position

Third Trade

Forth Trade

Opps forgot Pic

So far this week has not gone the way I have planed. On my very first trade, I bought the incorrect amount of lots. Instead of buying 0.10 with a 60 pip stop, I bought 0.20. I meant for this to be a long term trade, but the H1 started to trend against me. I then had to reduce my stop to 30 pips to cover my correct money management. The final mistake I made with this trade was not closing the trade when the EMA’s re-crossed. I let it go all the way to the stop costing me an additional 12 pip loss.

My second trade went exactly as planned except for the positive pip part lol. I bought the correct lot (Changed the default in MT4), had the correct stop and when the EMA’s re-crossed I closed the trade for a small loss.

My third trade would have been a 12-16 pip winner if I had not shut it down early. I was watching the M30 chart and it started to re-cross. This however did not lead to the H1 re-crossing, and I missed out on some pips.

My forth trade was a replica of my forth trade after I saw my trend go the way I wanted it to go. Unfortunately, this was now at the bottom of the trend. At this time, I went to bed and I did not know it was the bottom of the trend, and it hit my stop while I was asleep.

My Fifth trade was on the USDCAD. I caught the cross on the One bar it went short. Given its past trend, I decided this was the perfect move and went in. This trade ended up stopping out as it never went short again that day.

This leads me to my Sixth and first successful trade of my live trading. The setup was good, so I committed to a short. As I was going to bed I put a 40 pip TP on it and shortly after going to bed I hit my TP.


I currently have 4 active trades, and all of them are looking good at them moment. We will see how they turn out.


I have learned a few things on my first few trades. First, this is not like playing poker at all. In most ways it is a ton easier. I do not have any problems losing money or having bad trades. I do not have others who can taunt me into going on tilt. The one thing I did not expect is the amount of time you have to make a decision. Playing poker you have no more then a couple minutes to make a decision, and I excel at that. The problem here is over analysis leading to long decision times leading to missed or late trades. This I will get over now that I have recognized the failure on my part.

So far this has been a great experience and I have been reading everything I can get my hands on. The future holds many things for me in forex, and I have not been this excited in years.

Que.

Hey Que!!!! I just wanted to wish you the best of luck (altho I really do not think that you will need it!!). You are a boon the chat group, this site, and a credit to the trading community in general!

Take care & happy trading!!

Spot

It has been a long time since I updated this journal. I have made a lot of progress in this last year and I now trade completely different then I started trading.

I now trade with only EMA 365, 150 and 62 on my charts. I draw trend lines and use fibs. I have also started trading only on the weekly and daily timeframes. I mostly use PA to determine my entries.

As I am making far less trades then before, I think I will keep this up to date with my trades.

So here is the only open trade that I have.

Had a sell stop at 203.00 with a Stoploss of 205.00.

I used a 2% stop and am currently +198 pips. This means that this trade is almost +2% at this time.

Hey Que,
Good luck and happy trading



“A man must believe in himself and his judgment if he expects to make a living at this game. That is why I don’t believe in tips. If I buy stocks on Smith’s tip I must sell those same stocks on Smith’s tip. I am depending on him. Suppose Smith is away on a holiday when the selling time comes around? No, sir, nobody can make big money on what someone else tells him to do. I know from experience that nobody can give me a tip or a series of tips that will make more money for me than my own judgment. It took me five years to learn to play the game intelligently enough to make big money when I was right.”
Jesse Livermore