Dan's Self-Honesty Journal

gold is stuck between 1196 and 1185. not moving any direction. every time it came to 1195 area i shorted with tight sl,tp and made nice pips

well, that was effective.

1:1 R/R, 2% gain

ALSO, USDCHF stop is at B/E, Lets see if price gets to my target (1.1720).

I attached that oil demo trade

that's not at all how I trade, I look at the BIG picture, and trade from that.

current live trade in a bit of draw down. I'm thinking the 60.00 may keep me safe for now. 2% risk

out at b/e.

I got whacked for 2% loss on this.... unexplainable whip up right through the 60.00.....

I moved my stop up on gold to 1182.80 (below the low of todays daily bar)

Nothing exciting to report.... I took the I17B on GBPJPY last night, and came out at B/E.

My gold trade started to retrace off the 50% fib, which was so close to my T/P, that I just closed it manually when I figured the position was done, Good trade overall.

this week I'm barely up overall (including demo commodity trades of oil and gold)

I am looking very deep into futures trading. It is a very expensive venture, but I have enough capital to get the ball rolling on it when I'm ready. The only problem I see, is that 3 months of demo will NOT be enough when I'm going to start trading a full account live, when the training wheels come off. I may need to prove even more to myself before going live.

the currency market is so incredibly cheap to trade, it's obscene. I can see why so many new traders come to forex first (myself included), although I think it may be one of the most difficult markets to trade.

MONTH OF MAY, 2010

Week, 2nd-8th:
+1.8% LIVE
+5.1% COMMODITIES

Week, 9th-15th:
-2.1% LIVE
0% COMMODITIES

Week, 16th-22nd:
+0.8% LIVE
+1.4% COMMODITIES

Week, 23rd-29th:
-2% LIVE
+2.9% COMMODITIES

Total:
-1.5% LIVE
+9.4% COMMODITIES (demo)
=+7.9% TOTAL.

The commodity trading was SOLID. I can say that the wild volatility in the currency markets was responsible for my gains, and also for my losses! I was relieved when adding up my losses on the currency account, that I had only dumped -1.5%. Also note that I did not include the NZDUSD demo currency trade to my totals, I would never realistically take that trade in real life, so I just left it out, although it would have added 1.8% to my monthly total profit. Maybe next month, I will more closely monitor my demo trading on the currency side of demoing, and give a bigger scope of things.

Also, I hope to improve this journal with each week, as I continue to become even MORE detailed in my analysis and re-cap of the weeks, and months. Like, next month I will try to post the number of trades I have executed, and the win/loss rate, and R:R for every sing trade. Basically I want this to be VERY thorough. I am so excited to have tracked myself THIS WELL during the month of May, and I wish to continue this extreme tracking for the remainder of my trading career.

Today on the radio I heard Dave Ramsey say that every person should track what they do with each and every dollar that they earn, and log it. He said that is exactly what a SUCCESSFUL business would do, so why don't you do it? Trading is one of the most difficult businesses to run, and the only way anyone will get better is with honest logging of all your trades. I feel as though most people are afraid to do such a thorough tracking of their work, because it will expose all the holes in their mentality, and method. I see this journal like an extremely fun homework assignment that I have given to myself.

My trades get marked into a physical calendar organization book, and also posted in this thread.

Also, I guess it is pretty easy to do this when you're winning

great going dan !!! nice explanation of the trades

You ain't seen nothing yet! I want this to be at least TWICE as thorough by the end of June

so does it mean we should consider fib levels for TP ?

on something like gold, the 50% fib is extremely valid. I chose that fib as my T/P, but price missed it just barely and started to go down, so I shut the trade. In hindsight, it did come back, and pierce through the 50%, but I'm not taking that chance if I am able to stop it!

Interesting, This is the same technique that Paul Tudor Jones used to predict the 1987 crash.

This month coming up, I'm going to just post a very brief explanation of trades as I take them (entry, S/L, management, T/P), then on the weekend when I have more time I will go deeper into each trade. I think this will be the only way I can do it through June as I will be a bit busy to keep this journal running on a day-to-day basis. Stay tuned for weekend re-caps for the run down of my trades.

Awesome. Thank you Dan, good work, your improvements have been out standing. Like when I watched Ghous and Benji greatly improve.

I have placed my first pending order for the week/month (I consider this the beginning of my "June" journal .

Several things I want to talk about.

1. Last month was a losing month in currencies because I was too fast on my S/L. For a long time I have thought that moving the stop to B/E so fast seemed good on one hand, and not so good on the other hand. It is good for pyschology, and bad for results. In the past I have looked at alternative management methods that seemed to make more sense to me than the general J16 super tight management method. ALL I NEEDED WAS A MONTH LIKE LAST MONTH TO SEE THAT I MUST FOLLOW THROUGH WITH A NEW MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUE. If I had been a bit looser on my management last month, I would have had a positive end result of the month on currencies, also, you may have noticed that my management on commodities was a bit more loose than on currencies, and I had a great month on them!

For June, I am going to mainly use a trailing stop, that activates immediately when the trade is triggered. the trailing stop is going to be the size of the PA bar in which I am trading. so if I have a 150 pip pinbar, my trailing stop will be 150 pips, and will begin trailing as soon as the trade goes 1 pip into profit. I am already going to apply this to my AUDUSD trade that I have attached to the picture here. my trailing stop will be used in conjunction with profit take targets (almost always taking full profit at a certain target).

I feel as though this breathing room will make up for the losers I will incur by losing 1-2% when the trailing stop gets taken out for a loss, because my trades that win will compensate, and then some (just as they would have last month, had I been using this technique). This isn't a sudden revelation, I think it's just me deciding I can finally handle the drawdown in anticipation of the trade hitting my target as I believe it will (and as it usually does).

2. I cannot trade CADCHF, but The I4B on 1.10 is beautiful! We'll see how that plays out. I may demo it.

3. the AUDUSD trade attached is based on oil's trending, also retracement here looks good, BRN, just a great place to catch a short. management: 154 pip trailing stop effective immediatly. That's it!

demo gold, daily pin over the 1,200. i will buy gold with almost any daily PA that allows me to place a S/L in a safe spot.

immediate trail for management.

Not much to update on this week, my AUDUSD trade got stopped out for a 0.3% loss. I'm happy to say the trailing stop method calmed me in such a big way, I love it. I felt like I was saving myself from getting a big loss, and at the same time giving my trade room to get to where I thought it was going.

The gold trade is still going, although it was closed up when I dragged gold onto a chart window that accidentaly had the J16 EA on it, which closed the trade up, so I just re-opened the position.... that one almost got stopped out today.

Tommorow I will close up the gold trade, because friday is NFP, and I don't want ANYTHING going for that. I'm also not taking any trades today, or tommorow.

We begin trading again on monday. This week was pretty sideways, I was slightly anticipating that actually.... The way things look across the boards, s&p, dow especially look to be sideways (although I was anticipating crude to take a dive this week).

Maybe next week there will be better opportunity.

Also, if you haven't already, go buy the book MARKET WIZARDS, INTERVIEWS WITH TOP TRADERS. It's an insanely amazing read.