Yet another journal

This will be a journal to record my progress, a place to analyse the best and worst trades in order to try and improve my trading skills and a space for other random thoughts on forex.
I trade mostly because I enjoy it but unfortunately don't have much free time to seriously dedicate to it. Because of the lack of time I haven't traded for about a year. So, this will also be an attempt to keep me going by stating some objectives while hopefuly also having some fun and keep learning along the way.

I'll start with a very small account size so any initial mistakes won't be a problem and probably will be adding to the account along the way.

Starting account balance: $103 (14 June 2010)
Target: 20% Growth / month for the fist 12 months

Because of the extremely small account size, maximum risk per trade will be 5% of the account value. If all goes well and the account starts to grow this will be lowered to 3%. This also means I'll initialy avoid taking risky trades and cherry-pick what I believe are the best risk/reward trades.
Although I do not impose restrictions on the currency pairs traded, at first I'll be concentrating on EUR/USD because of the reduced spread.

The target of 20% is agressive, but I believe it is doable. I will be posting weekly balance updates with P&L, comissions (I'm trading with an ECN) and total number of trades (each open and close of a position counts for a trade).

Ok.. so here is my first weekly balance.
Monday was very good as it allowed me a great kick start exceeding in a day my monthly objective. EU was trending nicely along the day and keeping my long open with tight stops and reentering at corrections paid off.
Friday was very choppy and probably I shouldn't even have traded at all, as it was futures and options expiration day. I was down about $12 but still managed to cut that loss in half.
All in all, a very good first week.

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/3123/week1balance.jpg

Account balance: $183,60
Monthly growth: 78,25%

For the time being I will try to keep my daily commissions below $1 in order to avoid over trading. This is approximately 15 microlots ($1000 lots) maximum per day.

Just posting a trade I'm looking for (as you can see by the standing orders). I usually don't chase classical patterns such as triangles much, but the risk/reward is just too good to ignore.
Risk is 13 pips for a target of 100 pips (filling the gap). Let's see if the limit order gets filled and it plays the game.

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/8742/trade2z.jpg

As always, this is a place to register some of my trades so don't follow my personal opinions as trading advice. You have been warned.

PS: Had to delete and repost message because I forgot to remove my account number on the graph

Guess I was too agressive on the limit order and didn't get filled. I don't really like the way I entered the trade but here it is. I Shorted 2 microlots on the 15M break. It's still risky but we'll see:

http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/8193/trade3.jpg

This will be my last update today.

So far, this has been a textbook trade example. Even though I haven't yet closed the position my overall opinion is that it was a good call but with poor execution regarding the entry. Sizing wasn't perfect either, but taking into account the entry point it's not that bad either.

Below is a 5M chart just to explain where I've set my stop loss and why. The white candles signaled by the arrow is a common trend continuation pattern for traders that use japanese candlesticks. It is called the "Falling three methods". After the continuation of the trend I used the top of that minor retracement to set my stop loss. As the tick volume became too thin after the US close anything is possible so I'm looking to lock in a small profit and avoid turning this trade into a possible loser overnight.
I'll let the trade run during the night and will update the outcome in the morning.

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/6500/trade4h.jpg

NOTE: The text on the image is wrong. It is FALLING three methods

Good morning.

Got stoped out overnight on the AUD/USD as seen on the snapshot below. It wasn't unexpected but I'm not very fond of overnight positions so I opted for not allowing any losses on this one:

http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/7269/trade5.jpg


This morning I just got in on a 5 micro-lot short on EUR/USD. Some more comments on this one later:

http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/4...rusd23jun1.jpg

I was stopped out of the trade I posted yesterday. Next time I'd better wait for confirmation of reversal even though the shooting star on the trendline looked good enough for an entry.
This is a trade I'm at the moment on EUR/USD. You can see where I entered. My target is 1,22 (if it breaks 1,225 at all) though I'll be keeping a tight stop loss above any retracement.

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/3...rusd24jun1.jpg

UPDATE: Stopped on the news swing.... Still a profitable trade though