The Ogre's Trading Journal

First, The Rules:
1. This is a trading JOURNAL, it is not my intention to teach anyone how I trade.
2. Journal updates will be 1-2 times per trading day.
3. Journal will run until the end of this year (2009). After the journal ends I will open it up for comments for about 1 month. Then it will be closed permanently.
4. Do not PM or email me about this journal, I will not respond.


Goals:
1. To prove to everyone that trading should not be a complicated process.
2. To show that a steady growth can be achieved with little effort.
3. To show there are other really good trading times OTHER than London.

Trading Method:
1. I DO NOT USE Fib's, Support and Resistance, Pivots, Stochastics, RSI, DMI, AO, AC, Price Action or any other indicator that gets in the way of seeing what is ACTUALLY happening on the chart.
2. I only use 1 moving average one set for the high and one for the low. Both are set for the same value of the moving average.
3. I only trade using the 1 min chart. I DO NOT CARE what is happening on the 5,15,30,60,4hr,daily,weekly or monthly chart. It has absolutely no impact on my trading so I do not clutter my screens with it.
4. Just because I trade on the 1 min DOES NOT mean I am a scalper. I have had several trades including tonight that go over 100 pips.
5. I trade two sessions a day. Asia and the U.S. I only trade long enough to get what I feel is the most out of each session. Typically for each it is 1-4 hours no more.

Why Did I Start This Journal?

I spend a good bit of time reading through most of the threads on FF. Quite frankly I have become disgusted with most of the threads. There are two types of people in the interactive trading section. First is the rooster who likes to hear themselves crow at every opportunity about how they are able to pick tops and bottoms and know days in advance which direction the market is going. The other type is the chickens who sit around and wait for the rooster to crow some new trading call. In the trading systems section you have people who with good intentions post their system. Very quickly you get people wanting to know what the win percentage is, if they trade it live, how long they have traded it and whether or not there is a freaking EA for it. Then some moron comes along with a super duper new indicator that will help to "filter out" the bad trades. Of course this moron has never even traded the original system. Within a very short period of time you end up with a system that is nothing like the original, 10 times more complicated and not even close to the same results as before.

The rest of the forums pretty much go unused. Don't believe me? Look at the number of people viewing the interactive trading and trading systems sections and compare that to the rest of the forums. There are far too many people waiting for someone else to make them successful. Of course if you just listen to roosters crow at least you can blame someone else other than yourself if you fail.

At the end of each trading session I will post the number of pips gained/lost. Maybe a chart or two to show how well the markets do trend even on the 1 min chart.

Updates will begin August 24th after the Asian session.

Looking forward to this - should be a good read

Kind Regards
Steve

I started to wonder about something today. I wondered why we seem to be hardwired to overcomplicate simple things. Then I thought back to my days of working with some of the big name motivational speakers. Quite frankly it is fear of loss. I remember one speaker at a sales seminar who said it best. "Fear of loss is the number 1 motivator." Think about the last time you worked with a salesperson. "I can only give you this special price if you buy right now." They are using that fear of loss to make a sale.

So, what does this have to do with Forex? Most people start with a relatively small account. Although I do not have the data to prove it, my belief is that most start with less than 2k in their account. This is mostly based on what I have read here on FF. For some, that 2k represents months of saving (or a nice chunk out of their credit card). Now toss in this mythical 95% failure statistic that shows up everywhere and mentally we make the connection that I have a 95% chance of losing this entire 2k. Now the fear of loss kicks in and you begin to look for anything and everything that will reduce the number of losing trades you make.

You begin tossing one or two indicators on your charts and yep sure enough they help to filter out a few bad trades. However, since you are in the fear of loss mode, you fail to notice that it also kept you out of that 200 pip winning trade as well.

Our fear keeps us from realizing that losing trades really do not matter so long as your method provides more winning pips than losing pips.

Each rule that you add to your trading increases your chance of making a mistake.

Anybody else do homework on the weekends? Not for school but for Forex. I will usually study for 8-10 hours on Saturday and maybe 1-2 on Sunday. Sunday is mostly for sleeping and getting ready for the next week.

I scrolled back to October of 2008 on the 1 minute chart. October was an incredible month for Forex. Bank troubles, TARP, recession, etc etc. That was a month that I believe any system would have worked remarkably well. If you get a chance you should look at your system during October. Fun stuff.

I don't want to get into making trading calls here. I really don't want the "chickens" to use this thread as their free trading call service. Not that I would charge for anything, that is not my intention for anything I do here. Many people know that I have written dozens of indicators for free for members of FF. So instead, each day I will post my results for each session and over the weekend I will post account statements from the two accounts that I will be trading. Both are live, demo is fun but you can't buy toys with the money you make on demo.

Each days post will look something like this:

Asian Session
Winning Trades_____________
Losing Trades_______________
Total Time__________________
Winning Pips_________________
Losing Pips__________________
Total Pips Gained/Lost___________

U.S. Session
Winning Trades_____________
Losing Trades_______________
Total Time__________________
Winning Pips_________________
Losing Pips__________________
Total Pips Gained/Lost___________


Risk will be set at 2% + or - 0.5% to account for varying market conditions.

How many pips do I expect to get per session?? 1.....that way it is easy to exceed expectations. LOL!!!

Trending or chopping? At the beginning of each session I ALWAYS consider the market to be trending. Why? A whole new group of people, banks and traders are coming online at the beginning of the session. I only switch to a choppy market if there are several small stop outs or break even stops in a session. The only difference is I go from a "let it run" mentality to a "grab and run" mentality. Naturally in a choppy market I will pull fewer pips during a session and I may have to work longer to make a decent return, but that is trading.

Looking forward to a great week. Hope everyone makes some serious pips.

Asian Session
Winning Trades 2
Losing Trades 0
Total Time 2 hours
Winning Pips 100
Losing Pips 0
Total Pips Gained/Lost 100

Weekly Total 100

Markets finally decided to move.

U.S. Session
Winning Trades 5 (includes one break even)
Losing Trades 0
Total Time 3.5 hours
Winning Pips 136
Losing Pips 0
Total Pips Gained/Lost 136

Weekly Total 236

Are people who trade Forex TOTALLY INSANE?? I am seeing more and more threads popping up that have 20-30 pip stops AND A TAKE PROFIT OF JUST 5 PIPS!! Unbelievable!! What the hell has people so scared?? Do they realize that for every time they are wrong they must have between 4 and 6 correct trades just to get back to break even!

Let me get this out right now..... I FREAKING LOVE A STOP OUT!!! Why? Because I KNOW within another trade or 2 a big runner is coming. Now I was lucky today and I didn't have a losing trade, big deal. Over the days and weeks to come you will see me take losing trades....30,40,60 pips or more total at times. I can guarantee you that on those days you will see 300,400, 600 pips in the winning column. Stop outs are just a part of the game. Get over your ego and your fear if you EVER want to see any success trading.

Asian Session
Winning Trades 2
Losing Trades 1
Total Time 2 hours
Winning Pips 161
Losing Pips 12
Total Pips Gained/Lost 149

Weekly Total 385


U.S. Session
Winning Trades 2
Losing Trades 2
Total Time 2 hours
Winning Pips 206
Losing Pips 24
Total Pips Gained/Lost 182

Weekly Total 567

I wish I could produce pips like you do Ogre.

You will, give it time.It has taken me 2 years worth of 16 hour days to get to where I am now.

Asia has come out to play this evening. Over 120 pips in 55 minutes trading EURJPY and GBPJPY. Usually after a big bump like this I won't get anymore signals but I will wait for a while you never know. Attached is an image of the GBPJPY trade, trade was closed right about where the space shuttle is pointing. Entry was red down arrow inside the green box. Signals outside the green box are not taken. EURJPY trade was nearly identical.

Does your green box signify beginning of down-trend?

no, just the beginning of my shift. I like to start 1 hour before Tokyo open. Most of the time there isn't a significant move until closer to Tokyo open. Tonight they just wanted to play. I take all signals inside the green box, outside of the box I ignore them. Usually not enough movement during those times.

[quote=magnumfreak;2979683]Anybody else do homework on the weekends? Not for school but for Forex. I will usually study for 8-10 hours on Saturday and maybe 1-2 on Sunday. Sunday is mostly for sleeping and getting ready for the next week.

What do you do when you do "your homework" ? Dan

[quote=todor113;2993539] >3. Journal will run until the end of this year (2009). After the journal ends I will open it up for comments for about 1 month. Then it will be closed permanently.


i have many questions too (one is related to yours question) but i think i have to wait.

Doing homework:

First thing I do is study the previous weeks trades. I look at both the winners and the losers. I keep a spreadsheet on all of my trades. I will look for statistical patterns. For example, I know that if I take a trade between U.S. close and Tokyo Open nearly 85% of the time the trade will either be break even or a loss. Does that mean that is a bad time to trade? It is for me and my system so why should I take the extra risk?

I will look at things like how did I react to the market. I always assume that the markets want to trend so I give it the benefit of the doubt at the start of each shift. If the markets get into a choppy mood, how long did it take me to react to that change. I look for ways to detect that change better. As I get more data in my spreadsheet I can start to look for patterns related to days of the week or specific trading days of a month. There may be a pattern that emerges that shows me the second Tuesday of month EURJPY gets grumpy and won't play nice but GBPJPY is super happy and moves very predictably. Just an example, I really don't have enough data yet to prove or disprove that statement.

I will then take my charts and expand them out to display as many bars as possible (that's found under tools, options). I scroll back as far as I can and look at each trade signal. I look for things that are common among the good trades and what is common about the bad trades. I look for things that can stop a bad trade but must not interfere with a good trade. Anytime that I make a change, the net pips gained MUST NOT GO DOWN. In fact, I won't consider it unless the net pips goes up.

Most people consider all of that boring, to me it is a treasure hunt. Finding little nuggets of gold that lead to big mother loads of gold.

Last thing I do is I run strategy tester in tick by tick mode and just watch price movement like a movie. Every time a signal shows up I am watching price movement and thinking about what I would do in this situation.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Ogre , good stuff, we all should do that routine .Do you plan to disclose some info about your trading system how are you able to handle this wild 1 min beast? Dan

Good journal. Am I simplifying it too much to say that you take a trade on a close outside the "Tunnel" and that is what the arrows are? For instance the demo trade I just took on GJ.
Cheers, Bogus