My Trading Journey thus Far

Hi all,

I’m really overdue to do this. I’ve been wanting to write about my brief Trading Journey thus far , for some time now but have never been able to put pen to paper due to a lack of confidence and self embarrassment.
But it’s time to come out of the closet and share my thoughts, experiences and views on this wonderful pass time.
I want to be completely open and transparent, and as silly as what I have to say may sound I need to say it.
By starting this thread I hope to meet some like minded traders as I don’t have any friends who are interested in Trading and this creates a bit of emptiness within.
I feel a need to share my views and opinions and hopefully with experience get better at the job.
I absolutely love trading btw even in my short time I feel as though I have found the Job I want to pursue for life.
I’ve been an avid reader of the FF forums for a long time, but my few posts that I have made come out all wrong and dumb sounding so I thought that it would be better to say it all in my own thread.
I will post all my trades, though sometimes it may be after the fact. The reason being I’m a full time carer of a 1yr old baby boy so Trading is that little bit more difficult for me.
Win or lose I will post for discussion.

So my name is Con, I’m 44yo, married with 3 children. I live in Melbourne, Australia.
I stopped working full time in Sep 09 to help my wife look after our new born baby, she has since gone back to work so I am now MR Mum.
We own our house, have no debt, so I have the luxury of learning to trade at my pace with no financial pressure which I feel is of the utmost importance.
My hobbies are AFL football, Horse racing, tinkering with Computers, Motorcycling, Cars and drinking.

So how did it all begin?
Well August 09 while slaving away as a humble Clerk for a unappreciative Transport company on Night Shift I would hear a jingle on the radio. “ Learn to Trade, it’s money making money”
It’s not often that I really care about jingles but I’ve always been curious about Trading but never understood it.

A few years prior while working for a Big Brewing company the word “ Day Trader “ became very much a buzzword.
The Herald Sun started a weekly column, everyone was talking shares, our company was also giving away company shares on interest free loans.
My work friend and I were curious as his friend was apparently a successful trader.
I remember coming home one night, setting up an online trading account with my bank and funding it with $2K.
Once it was all setup, I purchased stocks in 3 companies. A telco, a mining stock, and a new online trading company. Well to cut it short my $2K became $300 a couple of months later.LOL
In fact I remember the Telco ( Onetel?) going bust, the mining stock went from 3c to .05c and that was that. WELCOME TO TRADING !!

OK that was my intro, no homework, no recommendations nothing just jumped straight in, not even charts….
Fast forwarding back to Aug 09, I filled in a web form and was sent a dvd. I was completely stoked, loved it, the concept, the charts, the terminology, I felt like a reborn Wall Street broker. LOL
I was about to throw $3K on a 2day weekend course but I didn’t. A little voice in my head was telling me it’s a waste of money. I mean I spent $3K doing a Comptia A+ tech course which taught me nothing at all that I didn’t all ready know.
It was really just a rehearsal of knowledge needed to pass exams.
Hence I thought I should research this further before committing.
Then I found Baby Pips, a wonderful intro to the world of Forex from A-Z.
The banner links led me to FXCM, my 1st broker and a demo account was born.

So I began demo trading knowing absolutely nothing at all apart from the Baby pips school. Well how easy is this ??
The game plan was simple…A pair of Bollinger Bands were the tool of choice.
Look at the charts for 15 mins before leaving for work, place 2 trades. Come home in the morning cash them in and place another 2 trades, go to sleep, wake up cash them in and open another 2 and so on.
All trades were 100K lots and by the end of week 1, I made $1200. Week 2 I made $3000.
This was so damn easy why did It take me all my life to find this…HELLALUYA BROTHER !!!
I strung 15 or so wins in a row !!!!!! Money for Jam !!!!...... LOL

I demoed for about 1 month I think, so it was time to go LIVE. FXCM was the only broker I knew of apart from GFT. Since GFT was being referred to as a bucket shop and FXCM was a real “ Non dealing desk “ broker they got the nod.
I opened up a $500 mini account on 200-1 leverage. I loved the sound of leverage. To control $10K with a mere $50 sounded like a dream come true.
At this point of time I felt really nervous about putting on my 1st trade. Don’t know why I use to have a few bets on sports and Horseracing all the time with pretty good results, a few wins a few losses but usually around even or slightly infront so I’d think.
Ist trade lasted 2 mins and I won $10.
WOW a win, I was glad to get that out of the way. No prizes for guessing what was to follow……..
I blew the account, 1st Margin Call I read about on Baby Pips, in a little over a week.
That frightened the life out of me. Not that $500 meant much to me, I mean I’ve blown thousands over the years on cars, motorcycles etc. But just the way it all fell apart after a successful stint at demo had me pondering WHY??
And all so quickly…I did the maths and thought I can’t afford to blow $25K in 12 months.

PlanB was in order…learn more and demo more!!!
I did a course offered by FXCM which was free for account holders. This was a slight step up from Baby pips. I read a book, “ Currency trading for Dummies “ great title, and some more demoing. At this point of time I was experimenting with time frames. MA’s, all the bells and whistles. Again I was having great success with Demo, $2K a week no problem.
OK ready for another shot. This time I thought $1K account was better, room to breathe so to speak.LOL

At this stage I began to observe news events and massive moves in short duration. I know you guys know where this is going, haha…
BUY the spikes was a no brainer. LOL
OK a few more failed trades. Then the big one in which I still haven’t recovered from. I know you need to move on, but 1 big loss relative to account size can leave deep wounds. This one still haunts me even though I understand why I just can’t let it go!!!
After observing AUD moves with RBA meetings, and making some good cash on the demo with this strategy I was going live.
I had convinced myself that Interest rates were NOT going up that day. EURO dramas were beginning and a bit of fear was creeping into the markets.
My plan was 5 mini lots buy or sell depending on the decision.
Eyes firmly focussed on the FF calendar, hands were shaking, nervous as… The result came out and it was a black figure, AHA I was right, ‘SELL” !!
I wanted 100 pips, I thought it was a given. It actually went my way for over 20 pips and then began reversing. Nah it can’t reverse, IR didn’t go up so I held, watched my gains go from plus $110 to minus. I told the wife what ever I say don’t let me cancel the trade…My stop was above yesterdays high, it can’t break that impossible!!
Needless to say I lost $500 in one swoop in a little over 1 hour.
I couldn’t understand till the evening news came on TV saying IR went up, WTF ???
AHHHH my mistake, I looked on the FF calendar and took the expected increase as a it didn’t happen. Looking for a red or green figure it was just black and I assumed they didn’t go up. Neglected to notice the expected column.
With my new account dwindled down to about $100 I took another dumb trade on the USD/JPY, my most hated and costly pair and saw another margin call.

OK 2 accounts trashed, demo good, what’s going on??
I can’t answer that, it still plagues me.
Method, Emotions, so many problems. They say the Markets will work out what sort of person you are and that’s dead right.
At the time I felt like a torn apart emotional wreck, these days sometimes I still do.

The problem here was that I couldn’t and still can’t replicate demo results in real accounts. So what is the solution to that??

It’s obvious isn’t it ?? SACK YOUR BROKER !!!! LOL

Not that FXCM were to blame specifically for my flaws but I felt that my account with them was cursed. Infact that was my reason on their account closure form.
A few things I didn’t like: The platform, while nice and easy to use, the EMA’s would move to a different position if you went back a few days to look at history and come back the EMA was in a different spot. WTF ??
If you refreshed it was good, but go back a few days and again it moved, how do I know which is correct??? It was obviously repainting depending on periods on your screen but it was enough to peeve me off!!
Amongst other things were I’m sure every traders pet hate, taken out by 1 pip only to see price reverse, don’t you just hate that !!!
I felt like they were gunning for my 1 mini lot. LOL
It took me a while to work out that I was putting my stops where my limit order should have been. Instead of buying or selling from that point and waiting for a retest of price, I would use stop sell or buy orders under or over the price action and putting my stop loss where the retest price action would occur.
This drove me nuts…..thankfully I don’t do that anymore, well maybe sometimes but not as regular. I was a sitting duck for the market to take me out regardless if I picked the right or wrong direction. Not to mention the risk reward ratio would be horrible with this tactic.
Please note I’m not specifically having a go at the broker only expressing my feelings and thoughts of my journey thus far.
I’ve got a lot more to add but I’ll leave it here for now and continue when I have some more time.
I hope I haven’t bored too many people…..

Just a Hi from another Novice "to be trader". You have very nicely outlined your trader evolution. Congratulations and appreciate that you have courage for opening live account right away (probably success in DEMO pushed you to do that). Do you use metatrader or tradestation on your demo account? I had bad experience with FXCM trade station and they do not allow metatrader for live accounts less than 5000 dollars. Tradestation kept on freezing to the point that it crashed my computer. Sometimes it does not show proper indicators or tabs.

I am also learning and have blown lots of demo accounts till now. Havn't have courage to really open a live account. Right now working on emotional stuff of trading and trying to control this thing between my ears (my brain) to control emotions in trading.

A question by the way. ...What really do you think is causing this significant difference of results between your DEMO and live account. Do you think this is related to emotions, do you use the same strategy for LIVE as well as DEMO account?

Hi Jillsaab,

Thanks for your reply. I don't want to harp too much on this particular broker but yes I too was experiencing crashes while trying to close down trades. Some weird error messages too.
Ironically I never blew any demo account. I was trying to keep the whole thing as close to real as possible.
I don't demo anymore. I have a lot more to say in continuation of my first post but I use Metatrader with a micro account as one of my accounts.
Yes the emotions are self sabotaging. I don't know why they have manifested, I never really ever worried or thought about losing money in any other area of my life but with Trading it haunts me in bucket loads.
At this stage I probably consider myself to be a much better analyst then a Trader. Perhaps a common beginning for most.
As far as strategies go, I have had too many. Chop and change a lot, mix time frames up. I now just wait for a good candle to be the trigger but I'll get more into that later.

I think I skipped through a few bits before I dumped my broker. Firstly it was back to demo mode again. Again I was doing OK. I wanted to complete a full month this time with regular weekly profits. I accomplished this quite easily. All I did was basically watch all week as I wasn’t happy to trade while a move was underway.
One big psych problem I had and still have is the ability to buy. I can’t buy, I just can’t. I much prefer to sell. So I guess I’m a Bear. I can see prices going up or trending but I can’t identify where to step in. Buy on dips they say. To my eyes a dip is a reversal. So I tend to sell instead. Probably not a good thing but it works a treat on most Friday’s.
So the pattern at the time for that month was early sell off Monday morning Asian session, then up she goes. This was mainly for the AUD/USD pair that I was following mostly. Euro and GBP were a little different but if they were going up too I left it alone. Like I said can’t buy.LOL
Anyhow by Thursday evening the tied would turn, the pairs wouldn’t go up much more and it offered good opportunities to sell. Friday evening London session was a smorgasbord of selling opportunities.
Just wait for a MA crossover on the hourly and dump. A quick 50-100 pips would follow before the retrace.
This stuff still happens now but my approach is different. Possibly because Friday is busy and I enjoy watching the Football, also too tired to stay up too late. Most moves come between London-US open and that is our evening. Dinner time, relax time etc.

I guess the Demo difference was also lot size. 10 minis on a demo cost you nothing and 50 pips were $500. A nice take for 1 hour work. Unfortunately in the real world my account size doesn’t allow for such desirable trades and if it did I’m not sure that I’m mentally fit for that either. Watching a big drawdown is sickening to me. I know you need to embrace a drawdown sometimes but I just don’t like it.

Around this time I thought that I should give myself a thorough education on everything Forex. This included Trading plans, market psychology, macro and micro economics, correlations between markets, lots of chart watching, observing patterns, focussing on news releases, observing market response to these releases. I read quite a few books. Included “ Master the Currency market by Jay Norris, he is one of my favourite traders in whom I thoroughly enjoy watching his webinars’ and reading his articles. I also find him humorous. “ Super Trader “ by Dr Van Tharp. His methodology I found to be too complex, he mainly talks about money management and state of mind. He is very thorough in his analysis but I think you need a PHD education to follow his philosophy. “ Taming the Lion “ by Richard Farleigh. A great rags to riches story, a self made billionaire who came from a very poor foster parent background. “ Spread betting “ forgot the author’s name but some nice weekly swing trading strategies. “ Free Lunch “ by David Smith , a nice explanation of how economies work. I also read a few dummies books on Futures, options, stocks and currency. “ A beginners guide to charting financial markets” by Michael Khan.
There are probably a few more that won’t spring to mind but all were freely available from my local library which was great.
Also read the forums relentlessly and still do. Some nice threads, lots of game plans. There is a wealth of information freely available to us all and some really nice people giving their time to help us on our way. The James 16 thread comes to mind. Casey Stubbs is a good read and so to is Jason from 4XTL. I also enjoy the ForexLive website for up to the minute market news.

As you can see I am really persevering and investing a lot of time into this venture but that still doesn’t guarantee success or satisfactory results at least not yet.

So after copping an information overload to the point of getting headaches and dizziness I put another $3K in to my account.
Now I became gun shy. The money was in the account and I couldn’t pull the trigger on any trade. I watched setups come and go and did nothing about them. I actually still do this today, it’s damn depressing!!!
The fear of losing is constantly haunting me. I know you must lose, but accepting that fact and getting on with the Job is another matter.
Anyway I spent 2 weeks staring at the screen and then I just had to pull the trigger on something, anything….LOL

What’s the best way to overcome your gunshyness ?
Obviously pull the trigger….even better is point the gun at yourself !! That’s right jump in front of a speeding train! I remember observing the AUD/JPY wanting to take out a new high. At the same time the AUD/USD was hitting a brick wall and slowly reversing. So why not follow the AUD/USD down ? I don’t know, the move already started so I thought it better to pull up the runaway JPY train.
It took me for a 100 pip journey the wrong way and I jumped off. Mind you it pulled up at the platform not too long after this but I’d had enough…
So that was the final straw, I pulled the pin on my account and withdrew my remaining funds back into the safety of my bank account.

I sat and pondered for a few days on my next move, looking for a new Broker and platform. I didn’t want an offshore account because converting money and losing on the exchange before a trade is even placed didn’t make sense. At least not for me, my level of experience or transaction size. My choices of Brokers in Australia were limited. I then stumbled on “ GO MARKETS “. I liked what I saw. A small spread on most pairs, smaller then FXCM. I could also trade in micro lots. 10c a pip sounded great. I thought that I wouldn’t care or fear losing as much with a 10c micro lot trade. They also had XAU/USD as a trading pair. Awesome trading Gold sounded exciting. Best part was getting to learn the Meta Trader platform. Everybody on the forums uses it, it has squillions of custom indicators etc. I thought it was a really positive move. I put $100 in the account and began to trade. I explored more systems, played with a million indy’s, it’s a great little account. My losses stopped, kind of….
What does that mean?
Well I’ve had this account for a few months and it’s gone back and forth from $100-$85-$100-$120-$110-$125-$100 etc. It’s currently sitting at $115. I’ve placed 120 trades with a winning strike rate of around 65%. 11 consecutive wins and 4 consecutive losses. Maximal drawdown is 29.46%. Largest profit trade is $7.23, largest loss is $21.10. Average win is $1.82, loss is $3.01. I’ll try to post the html page up if possible otherwise I’ll take a screen dump of the summary.

OK well the results aren’t flash but at least I’m in positive equity and have been for a few months. This is a experimental account whereby I trade all different strategies, time frames etc. You can clearly see that I have a money management problem. Take profits to quick, let losses run. Let winners become losers or small wins. Let small losses become big losses. My typical win has been 1 micro lot and I lose on multi lots. My equity curve resembles your typical currency pair. LOL
You can see where just recently I made a double top, couldn’t break it and down I came. I did find support at the 99 level which has held up more then once. Very Funny stuff indeed !!!!

All for now but I have much more to say.

BTW I had a quick look at the charts and can see mega reversals that started on Friday about to continue into next week. A bearish week coming up. I hope to find some trade setups to follow through…..

Now if only I was a complete trader with confidence I could carry out my thinking with no fear or remorse. With my life being so busy with the baby it's hard to focus on Intra day setups which I like as I enter and exit like a jack rabbit .
As you need to trade to suit your lifestyle and personality type this to me is a classic conflict of interest.
I need to focus and plan some long term trades. days or weeks if possible. But in itself it's like telling a junkie to rest up on the gear for a few days.
I'm hoping by recording all my thoughts here that it will force me to stick to my plan win or lose.
Easier said then done I know but you need to start somewhere.
Here is a weekly AUD/USD.
Triple top, fall, retracement, failure to penetrate the 8860's. It's really setup to take another dip towards the 8390 mark which is 61.80 fib weekly longterm top-bottom.
Look deeper and knowing that currencies like to make higher highs or lower lows and the 50.00 fib at 7933 looks likely and ultimately 7700 seems like a destination but possibly weeks away. All confirming indicators are bearish. Your stop loss would be 200 pips, Target potentially 1000 pips.
Risk reward awesome, in terms of money mangement i would be risking 4% of my account. I can only use 1 mini lot unless I find a better entry then the break of the low. Decisions, decisions, thoughts anybody ????

Daily shows confirmed top and even more bearish, trendline break possible retest of trend line or 50% retracement of Friday's candle.
These trades do go, but sometimes not straight away and maybe not to their full destination but it does look good.

Another setup I like for the kiwi. I like these setups. They may be considered counter trend but they are short term reversals in my book. A spinning top on thursday, a nice reversal bar on Friday cutting through the trendline and an important support line at 7160. Support once broken becomes resistance right? The weekly looks even better. Price in a channel, tested a break and formed a nice pin. While some think this is a bullish move and it maybe, first it's coming down for a taste of shallower waters.
7160 looks a good entry on a retest of the support line. 7035 looks a good short term target a 61.8 fib level of the May high-low. Stop would be above the high of Friday's candle. RR is a little better then 1:1 but this should play out quickly a day or two imo.

OK I'll continue with my Journey a little later. I have put pending orders on these 2 setups. Screen dump shows the setup. The trades conform to my trading plan which I'll post later as well. My current broker is IG Markets. I chose them for a host of reasons which I'll discuss in depth another time.
One thing I like about this broker is the ability to put pending orders on the market while the market is closed on weekends. Both these pairs closed very bearish on Friday along with just about every other pair and equity market too. Chance of these gapping down on the open and my pending orders not being triggered. I have had my fair share of missed opportunities due to this nature of trading but I'd rather miss a trade then enter one at an unfavorable price which gives me a worse then 1:1 risk reward. If this is the case and price never revisits my order price I may hunt down a 4hr bar on retracement. We'll see how it goes...

Well that's interesting, both my trades took off from the open so my thinking is in the right direction. Problem is they forgot to pick me up on the way out. Even worse is the kiwi got to my exit point obviously without retesting my entry point, spent 3 hours down there and is now bouncing. Ozzie bouncing also. OK so this tells me one of three things. That was the down move and it's going to make a new high.LOL
It's going to retrace a little and come down some more without triggering my orders or it's going to do as my plan suggests become short term bulls and capitulate. Asia and London like to do things different so that's ok.
I have chosen a trade based off a daily candle so this might take time. I'll check back in 19 hours and see how the next candle closed and whether or not the boat picked me up.
Hopefully which I know is not a good word in Forex it doesn't decide to change course and go Melb-Darwin instead of my Melb-Tassie destination.

While I’m waiting for my trade to happen or not I’ll get back to my story. So armed with a Go Markets account and some success at trading I thought I should re load some more funds and give it another shot. I was still deciding in which broker to enrichen.LOL While I still retain the Go account as a micro account I wasn’t sure I wanted to trade this account as a mini. Why? Well it’s probably just me but as much as most folk like Meta trader and there is no denying it has more bells and whistles then anything else I’ve seen to date it did have its flaws that I wasn’t sure about. I loved all the templates and trading plans that members have designed to fit straight on the platform but I really disliked how you couldn’t scroll the chart up, down and sideaways. Maybe you can but I just couldn’t work out how with all my fiddling. I was use to FXCM trade station which allowed this. Also a dislike with both mentioned platforms is that you draw a trend line or fib and it shows up on all time frames and makes the chart too hard to see. I know with meta trader you can change the properties to a certain time frame but it’s a little fiddly especially when your watching all the pairs. Another bug bear was that the connection would disconnect and reconnect frequently with the server. Not a drama for long duration trades but since I was scalping and playing with 5 mins timeframes and no stops sometimes as I was watching, it would be a little discerning.
Execution was ok, a slight pause but it never crashed even though it seemed it wanted too.

Not entirely happy I went on a broker expedition. I suppose this is what we all do at some stage. I came across 2 brokers that intrigued me. CMC Markets and IG Markets. Both have offices in Melbourne and do daily talks on Sky business channel so imo are both reputable. The other alluring thing was that they do CFD’s. So this opened up a whole new range of products. Shares, indexes, EFT’s, bonds, commodities, livestock, soya beans etc. Like a kid in a lollie shop I loved the thought of having access to a multitude of markets even if I don’t trade them now I may well do in the future. Which one to choose? Well why not give both a go? LOL

Now this newbie who can barely trade and with less then 12 months experience in the markets has a choice of 3 brokers. LOL
I thought each one would serve a different purpose. CMC were running a promotion that was to enticing to not have a go in. Join with $500 and get a full week of free trades on the TIQ Aussie200 index. They wear your losses and you keep your winnings.
2 mini lots per trade max, hours were melb time 10.00-4.00pm. Fantastic!!!! My chance to be a full on day trader with their money, how ludicrous, I’m going to clean up were my thoughts. LOL
At the time the wife was home too so I said in a couple of weeks I’m a full time day trader no disturbances at all please.
I was so looking forward to this, flashes of star trader, biggest winner ever in the competition were flying through my thoughts…
As we know dreams take a back seat to reality. When the opportunity arrived I had far too many commitments and things going on that week to even take it seriously. But I had a game plan: Let the first hour decide direction, then put on your 2 minis and see what happens at 4.00pm. After this closing time all trades are shut down. Now I only had $500 in the account and at 200-1 leverage and a 48 hour reimbursement turnaround I could not be completely reckless or I’d face a few days of no trading if I blew the account. So how did I fair ??
Well it was quite dismal, after the week I dropped almost $200 but because you were reimbursed after each day so hence your profit loss was calculated daily and rolled over I actually ended up a winner by about $80. LOL
It was a slow week but Friday was the big moving day in which it moved almost 100 points but I picked the wrong direction. LOL
While CMC offered products that I was interested in and even sent out DVD’s and trading literature their whole trading platform was a disaster imo. Very slow, both the web version and desk top application. Placing a trade, adjusting it and stopping a trade was a terrifying experience. I placed about 4 trades outside the TIQ competition with them and had to call the helpdesk each time to close it down. Hard to fathom but by default a trade was 50K, you had to toggle down for smaller lots. Then to get out you had to buy or sell a different order was launched. It got really confusing as if you sold 10K aussie to get out you had to buy back 11K USD for example. Gold even more confusing by the ounce. Perhaps this is all easy for old timers, to what I had experienced to date it was a nightmare. I made mistakes by selling 10K and buying back 50K and I knew I couldn’t win with a platform that just wanted to make life difficult for me so I gave up and withdrew my funds. So that was Broker number 2 on their way…..
Which brings me to my current broker IG Markets. Why choose a bucket shop? Well they offer all the products I want or may want in the future. Even if I don’t trade the other markets I like to see what risk appetite is doing. I can guage what the dollar index is doing, Gold, Bonds, the VIX index which is beginning to climb up btw indicating some volatility up the road. A one stop shop. Their spreads aren’t the best for most pairs similar to FXCM but not as good as GO MARKETS but I’m trying to get away from Intra day and 2 minute scalping practices so it doesn’t matter to my small mini lot trades. As I mentioned I can place trades outside market hours, I can even take out a guaranteed stop on my trade for a small fee in case the market gaps or moves savagely against my position. The whole trading platform is web based, all your data is saved on their servers. Best part about this is the ability to trade from any PC terminal and all your fibs, trend lines and templates stay put. My favourite thing is their trading application Pro-Realtime. It’s a professional software package that does it all, including features like Auto-chartist that scans all the pairs and tells you any patterns that are forming or have just formed. Any trend lines or fibs you place on any time frame stay as you put them and are not visible on other time frames. I really like this as I can leave my lines on and not lose sight of the big picture when I return to smaller time frames I can see how moves played out, left a channel, re entered etc. You can create your own custom indicators and back test. OK I’m not using half the features but they are available for future use. The one draw back is you need to pay $60 per month for the privilege. I know what your thinking but all you need to do is place 2 trades per calendar month and it is reimbursed. They just want to make sure you actually trade with them. Execution has been good, no crashes, trade from charts if you want to, Drag and drop etc.
They have a nice entry into the world of trading with a program that steps you up over 8 weeks from 5c pip, 10c, 25c and then a mini lot.

Anyhow this where I’m at. I have deposited $5K in the account and I’m having another crack at the market. I have a trading plan which I’ll discuss next time. I want to stick to my plan ( well as close as possible ). I will only place trades that conform to my plan. I will see them out, win or lose. If I lose more then 20% of my starting account then I will stop trading and identify why. I have the micro account with GO Markets to fine tune my plan if it falls over.
Ok I’ll check back in around 10 hours and see if my trade has triggered. If not I need to see how the Daily candle closed and if my pending order entry is still valid……

Checking my trade set up this morning and still neither trade has triggered. The Aussie closed with a bullish candle but closed under another resistance line on my chart at 8700. My pending order is 8760, 70 pips away at the moment. My order is just under the 200 ema so a good chance today with some news due that it will make a dash for it and I'll be in. My indicators stochastics and macd are supporting a fall I just need my order to come into play. On the otherhand it may not go over the 8700 line. It's wedged in between all my EMA's so no doubt it has some thinking to do.

The kiwi is further away from my order 100 pips away. It closed bearish candle, actually hit my limit too. Pretty good support line where it bounced off. Not sure if it's going to retest my entry point. stochs and macd supporting a fall.

At this stage It's awful tempting to place new sell orders underneath the price action. That would guarentee I'm in the trade at some point. But if I do I'm compromising the safety aspect of my setup. I'm very confident that price will not revisit my stop area for quite a while. It looks to me that both these pairs are going to be slammed, perhaps new limits will be designated if my orders get hit.
Then again I could be completely wrong
Oh well I need to stay patient and wait, not sure how long to wait as my setups usually fire up straight away.
OK stick to your guns, I'll re assess things in 23 hours time.

OMG I'm in the trade. Panic, fear....

Ok so some bullish RBA minutes gave the bulls some joy and off she went, I suspected as much.
Now this happened last week, some good news got the aussie going but was unable to hold any gains.
All last week's bull moves were on very light volumes, last Friday's party crash were on higher then average volumes. Sky News business channel is my source of info.
The kiwi is also making a bull run based off the aussie good news it's 40 pips from my sell order where I'm sure a big pack of bears will be awaiting.
OK I'm glad I'm recording all this stuff as I'd usually change tact at this stage. Hold firm is the order of the day. Let's see what tomorrow's candle brings....

Hmmm I wake up this morning to see the closed candles and its not good. The Kiwi trade triggered with a massive bull bar 130 pip day exceeding the 12 period ATR of 92. Not good for my shorts. The aussie even worse almost 200 pips daily exceeding the 12 period ATR of 111.
OK I'm doomed no doubt about it, how do I minimize the collateral damage?
Today been Wednesday is a bad day for shorts, I have observed that within the following 24 hours prices go up as the triple roll kicks in on Thursday morning barring any global catastrophes that is.

Ok what to do, last night before sleep I had a sneek peak and I was 20 pips up. The old me would have cashed that in and lived another day but it defeats the purpose, I need to stick to my plan.

OK i'm honing in on Intra day chart to see what I can do. The kiwi has formed a base on entry terrific.
Well at this point my trades look doomed, the setup has changed so it makes no sense in holding them open. Even if they change course and they might it is not worth worrying about. Preserving capital is the name of the game when your wrong.

A new hourly close above yesterdays high and I'm bailing and there is still some chance for a small retracement, giving me a chance to get out with less loss. Wishful but maybe!

Another dumb trade gone wrong. I've killed the trades. The way the daily closed on the aussie suggests to me its going to make a new high. On closer inspection after deleting my invalid lines scribbled all over my chart the aussie is in a pattern. An ascending triangle. A continuation pattern usually. For some reason I did not see this before placing the trade. I just looked at the previous few candles and it looked like a top and Friday's candle a reversal. Now quite possibly I could have nursed this back to break even but I panicked. The story of my trading career up till now. Well emotions kick in and kill a trade. It doesn't matter as it was in hindsight a bad trade to take none the less from a daily chart perspective anyway. I'll be watching what happens from here onwards on this pair. I'm still bearish but possibly prematurely. I'll watch and wait. My thinking which has lost all credability at this stage suggests a fake break through the top side and then a decline back in the triangle.

I killed this trade too for the same reasons as the aussie. Again could have nursed back to a small profit but I'm a lousy trader. The weekly shows a decending channel which it broke to the upside last week but closed back down. Now it looks like re testing it. The daily was looking like a fall back to the trendline and turned around. The daily candle closed above 7150 which was clear resistance in June. It completely freaked me out. I guess this is market psychology which I am not coping with at the moment. I'm also entering these trades at the wrong time of where they are going and counter trending. It's got to stop.
I'm still bearish but I can't think and see clearly right now.

Hi Oz

Do you think that volumes may be significant decision factor during the consolidation/ accumulation / distribution phase

I think the markets are being severely manipulated actually. All are waiting for these Euro stress test results, everyone wants to crash the markets. Hence as all are in short it provides great liquidity to the big money movers to go long and clean up all the stops. Also psyching out the mentally week like me . Apparently summer holidays in the northern hemisphere is also keeping players out. I'm thinking of a long play right now but It's purely a get back at the market tactic, not a good play even if it works out.

" EMOTIONS ARE KILLING MY TRADING "

A new day a fresh mind, maybe not... So I awoke to see that my self sabotaged trade is actually doing ok. The aussie is a little in profit and the kiwi about 50 pips in profit. It matters not as I cut them on the basis of a powerful looking daily candle which was threatening to take out my stops and set new highs.
I have done this time and time again, especially so on long time frames. If any of you readers are psychiatrists or psychologists please chime in…
Now what, I’m tempted to re enter but my risk has now multiplied by 2. Not a professional game plan but a frustrated attempt to get back my losses.
I killed a Gold trade a few weeks back in the same way, incurred a small loss when it went all the way to my target. Last Friday I was in a frustrated mood and deliberately set out to seek a bad trade. I took it, it lost and I was happy. I was happy that I let it hit my stop loss without intervening. But they say cut your losses short, this is very difficult to comprehend as unless it hits your stop loss you haven’t really lost even though your trade may be travelling in the wrong direction temporarily.

At what point do you give up? Does a bad candle that goes against you constitute a failed setup ? Well this time I did and it was premature. To think that had I left it for another hour, the whole thing changed back in my favour but I didn’t.
I even stated that a closed candle above the previous high would mean I cut it. Well the Kiwi did so I cut it, the aussie not so but I killed it anyway.

I think self imposed trading bans are in order. Maybe I should let the rest of the week go, wait for the stress test results, and see how the week closes on the weekly candle. I can re enter a new setup that I like?
Another idea is to stop trading my mini and go back to micro?
It’s not the failed trade but my emotions are not giving me an opportunity to let a trade play out. I guess this is what 9 months of scalping does to you. I can’t scalp, no time. I’m also really wanting to participate in some long duration moves. Well at least a day or two for starters. And definitely not kill a trade till it’s at least in profit and not going anywhere.

OK time to look at the charts and have a think…….

OK I'm a sucker for punishment.
I like this setup on the Kiwi.
An hourly chart. It looks like a little head and shoulders. It needs to retest the 7150 zone to create the right shoulder and you can see the take profit line. I think Target 2,3,4 will play out over coming days,weeks.
I'll be watching this for now.

Well lucky I didn't convince myself into that last post's move. The kiwi and aussie just took off like rockets. I'd be further in the red.
The trend is your friend is the moral I need to adhere to. Very hard for a contrarian thinker like myself. I drew some basic trend lines on the 4hr and daily and said your not going short unless these move sideways and deviate and thus saved myself some money and pain.
Why not buy on the bull move?
I actually saw it setup, 4 x hourly candles with long wicks rejecting lower prices. All my indy's were supporting the move to as were in oversold territory. It was within my trading plan which seems to work better in Intra day.
Answer:
Well I don't want to play intra day as I can't monitor my trades. I also have a bearish outlook permanently entrenched in my head which I clearly need to rectify or I'll have no success as a trader.
Looking at the economic calendar a string of good euro figures seemed to add spark to the move. However this move started 5-6 hours before the figures were released which means people out there know what's going on and get in quick. A corrupt market for sure..
So what we have here is USD weakness amongst global uncertainty. Hence the USD will weaken on good figures and strengthen on bad news. However some good US data will also strenghten the dollar too.
Or is just a big stop hunting tactic, I wonder??

Friday today. I think I showed discipline in not taking any more trades this week. Reflecting back on my 2 losing trades this week in hindsight I went against the trend. My emotions intervened at a time when even though my direction was wrong I still had the opportunity to make a small profit instead of a loss. I need to remember that even if a trade goes against you, if it was placed near an important Sup/Res area as I did, then the market will give you a chance to get out at break even or slight profit. If I had let it go I would have lost a lot more so reading the candles is very important too. Looking ahead at potential setups, USD/JPY looks bullish but again this is counter trend play. GBP/CHF also looks set for reversal. I have been watching the last 2 weeks. Double bottom on Daily but can't break above 1.6100. Again a counter trend trade. The other majors have all picked a direction and going along nicely but are all due for a retrace. See what I mean I just can't shake the contrarian out of me....hmmmm