JFonseca Trading Journal

Hi,

This will be my first Online Trading Journal. I will not post trade by trade, but will share sentiments and thoughts about my trades and the FX market.

I have a small, very small, live account where I can trade for 0,01$/pip.

I think that now is a good moment to start to share my results for my live trading (the results before March 2009 were in my LIVE account which I blew up):

10-08 2,4%
11-08 -46,7%
12-08 -37,5% http://forexmoments.com/forums/images/smilies/mad.gif
01-09 -0,7%
02-09 -0,3%
03-09 -0,9%
04-09 -14,8%
05-09 43,8% http://forexmoments.com/forums/image...es/biggrin.gif
06-09 -15,5%
07-09 -8,5%
08-09 -8,6%
09-09 12,2%

My system is very simple. I buy when the price is High and close the position when the price is Higher, and sell when the price is low and close the position when the price is lower. http://forexmoments.com/forums/images/smilies/wink.gif

The truth is that in these last years, since I discovered FX I tried real hard to find te Holy Grail, because I was almost certain that it could be found, and that EAs and Technical Indicators were the right tools to find it. This search only brought me failure (blown out account) and dispair. I made a few months of pause in my trading (demo and live) and started again a few months ago. Since March I got rid of ALL indicators and trade only based in Price Action and SR levels. This method seems to be the right way of trading for me. Now I only need to get more disciplined with my Money Management, because I still brake my own rules sometimes http://forexmoments.com/forums/images/smilies/mad.gif My main goal is to being able to have a maximum risk per trade of 2% and to grow consistently my mini account for at least 10 of 12 consecutive months. If achieve that I will deposit in my Mini account the same value that I earned in that time. And then the process starts again.

If you want you can follow my live account at http://jfonseca.mt4stats.com/

JFonseca

Hi,

It's always the same story: I start to have a winning streak and I think I'm the King of the World and can predict future FX rates. With 2 trades I lost arround 25% of my account, instead of the 3% I would loose if I followed my own rules. WHAT A LOOSER!

Apart from these 2 stupid mistakes I had a great month, so I only lost 4,5% of my account.

10-08 2,4%
11-08 -46,7%
12-08 -37,5%
01-09 -0,7%
02-09 -0,3%
03-09 -0,9%
04-09 -14,8%
05-09 43,8%
06-09 -15,5%
07-09 -8,5%
08-09 -8,6%
09-09 12,2%
10-09 -4.5%


November (1 to 15th) 7,5% not bad

Good trades,

JFonseca

Hi,

This is what happened for the rest of this account history:

10-08 2,4%
11-08 -46,7%
12-08 -37,5%
01-09 -0,7%
02-09 -0,3%
03-09 -0,9%
04-09 -14,8%
05-09 43,8%
06-09 -15,5%
07-09 -8,5%
08-09 -8,6%
09-09 12,2%
10-09 -4.5%
11-09 3,1%
12-09 -38,4%
01-10 13%
02-10 0,2%
03-10 32,6%
04-10 36,5%
05-10 -99,8%


As you can see I crashed and Burnt in May. If I was not blinded by my success, I could have predicted that, because I made too many mistakes:
1- Traded with more lots than my trading style could handle
2- I got emotional with individual trades
3- I though: "Now it's impossible to go further against me!" Guess what? IT DID and I LOST ALL MY MONEY!!!

It was a micro account, but it hurts like if it was the real deal.

Now I'm back to Demo trading again and the plan is to start another Micro account if I get to 50% gain anytime or 10% gain in a year. If I get to 50% loss, I'll start again a new demo account.

You can follow my trades and my account balance at jfonseca.mt4stats.com

Good trades,

JFonseca

for persistence and honesty.

Do you think your emotional state is tied to your position sizing?

What have you changed to mitigate against the over leveraging?

Hi,

I'm 200% sure that the amount of money on the table has a tremendous effect in my emotional state. When the position goes to the negative side, even if pip wise goes a normal amount of pips, the doubts tend to multiply.

To correct my past mistakes I had to:
- Recognize what I did wrong
- Go back to 2000 to make the backward test of my strategy
- Act like if over leveraging is an addiction: allways beware of it, it can strike you in the next corner, so open your eyes.
- My position size now is always the same: 1% of my account balance corresponds to 100 pip. I use that number of lots, even if the SL is only 50 pips. (For instance, if I have 10.000$, I use 0,1Lots of my micro account, because 100 pips = 100$ = 1% of ABalance). I only thought about this today, so it will only be visible in my account from the next trade on. In this moment I have 2 opened poisitions (Bearish USDCAD and Bullish AUDUSD) that I used 0,2Lots, because the SL is 50pips,

Thanks,

JFonseca

Hi,

I needed to start all over again. The first days have been very bright but let's see what time can do to my trading results.

Now I also have an account at Myfxbook:

http://www.myfxbook.com/widgets/80793/mini.jpg

And still use the mt4stats.com website.

I hope this will be the last step before going to live again!!!

Good trades to you all,

JFonseca

http://www.myfxbook.com/widgets/80793/large.jpg

Hi,

The IBFX demo server that I was using stoped working

I started a new DEMO account, starting with 12.051$. This was the Account Equity I had in the previous account when the server went down.

Since January my position size now is always the same: 1% of my account balance

I already updated the MT4STATS and myfxbook accounts.

http://www.myfxbook.com/widgets/85796/large.jpg

http://www.myfxbook.com/custom-widge...hartbgc=FFFFFF

http://www.mt4stats.com/sig1/jfonseca.gif

Hi,

The first month of my return has ended and I'm almost convinced that this will be it, the first step into fultime trader

One thing that I forgot to mention is that, this time, I'm trading almost exclusively EURUSD. This was a major factor to my success. I also watch other pairs, but to undestand what's going on, if it's EUR or USD that is driving the pair. Sometimes, when I'm doing this and find a better oportunity than in EURUSD I also jump in, but only with GBPUSD.

The profit for this month is 29,88%, with maximum DD of 5,59%

In pips I made a total of 799,5 in this first month.

This is good, but not awesome. I'm convinced that I can reduce the maximum DD to 3-4%.

Let's see how the next month will go.

Good trades to everyone

Hi,

Today I surpassed the 50% PROFIT mark.



In fact I closed the trades for today with a 55,36% profit since I re-started this chalenge in January.

My original plan was to trade this demo account until one of this things happens:
- 6 consecutive months with profit or 50% profit (re-fund micro-account)
- 25% DD (re-start demo account)

Since this was too fast and not so dificult, I decided that it was to early to re-fund my micro-account with 1000€. So I will keep trading this demo until the end of March, or 100% Profit or 25%DD.

I hope this continues in this path

Good trading to everyone,

J Fonseca

Hi,

Now you can also check my performance in Forexfactory.

Just follow this link:

http://www.forexfactory.com/jfonseca

Good trades to everyone,

J Fonseca

Hi,

Today I had a major disapointment: I had a 12,14% DD . This is the biggest DD since my re-start.

These are the 3 major causes:
- Got a new Job, since last week, so I´m out of focus
- Increased my risk per trade to 1.5%
- Entered 2 extra positions when I already had an ongoing trade with a loss - This is against my rules

I hope this contributes to my learning curve in terms of emotional control and following my own rules.

Good trades to everyone,

J Fonseca

Good to see that you are admitting losses/mistakes. A lot of people I follow simply disappear I assume...when they start losing. I'll keep an eye on this thread...Good luck.

Hi,

I´m already getting on track now. My new job is starting to use less than 24h/day, and I'm starting to have some time for my trading.

I re-funded my micro live account.

You can track my live trades here:
http://www.forexfactory.com/jfonseca

I hope in 2 years time to start full time trading ;-D

Good trades to everyone,

JFonseca

Hi,

I had a bumpy start with my re-entry in the LIVE account. I have met with something that I almost completely forgot: Greed and the adrenaline rush. This is a very dangerous combination that resulted in a 20% DD before I got back to myself.

If I analyse my results here http://www.forexfactory.com/jfonseca , a very interesting conclusion can be made:

- I made 300 pips
- In my trading plan this amount of pips, results in a 10-15% profit
- The greed and the adrenaline rush made me trade bigger positions. This resulted in a few good trades and many bad trades.
- Instead of 10-15% profit I ended with only 5%

Let's see if I can tattoo this lesson on my brain!!!

Good trades to everyone ,

JFonseca

Hi,

Since my last post I lost 75% of my initial deposit and completely stoped trading.

My main mistakes were not following my own rules of trading and money management. I started really well, and after some real positive months I started to forget the rules and traded by feeling... what a disaster

This week I started all over again, with the same (real) account. Same trading rules, same money management, but with an older and wiser me

This account is a little problematic, because it is underfunded, but I cannot deposit any more money before I prove to my self that I can stay disciplined.

You can follow my journey here http://www.forexfactory.com/jfonseca or here

http://widgets.myfxbook.com/widgets/505096/large.jpg

My first goal, obviously, is to achieve the balance I started with (represented by the horizontal line)

Wish me luck

Joaquim

Week 1 Pips:+458 Profit:+2.7%

543 red pips

This is the week status for now, but I have a few open orders, so let's see how it goes tomorrow.

Maximum unrealised drawdown (equity) it's 825 pips

http://assets.forexfactory.net/nfs/c...tar32679_3.gif JFonseca http://assets.forexfactory.net/image...ser_online.gif
Member
Member Since Jan 2007

54 Posts


884 red pips

Maximum unrealised drawdown (equity) it's aarround 1200 pips

I want to record the maximum equity drawdown in order to estabilish the safety margin of my trading

Enjoy the weekend

I'm now sittting on 303 green pips but not closed yet

But I'm a little mad because I had 2 EURUSD sell stop orders, that opened and closed instantly in the market open due to the price gap, with a 7 pips loss in each trade instead of 120 + 60 green pips. If I used a 24/7 broker, this would not have happened...