The psychologist's chair

Hey, it's done via an EA. I look forward to your reply.

Interesting week for my account and not in a positive way! The range bound price action has whipped me out a few more times than I would have liked, but I've survived, which is important in this game, so I can play another day.

I need to go back to the dream factory and try and find a way to identify more profitable setups, whilst keeping me out of losing trades.

I'll be back next week with another journal update.

Good luck everyone!

I've been on holiday and just let my EA do it's thing and it's nice to see that it has had a nice run-up from the draw-down two weeks ago, though I'm still down for the year. If I AUM then I think my clients would be pulling money out fast from the fund.

I've also had time to experiment with different filters to see if I can reduce the amount of losing trades I experience, and though they have reduced losing trades, they have also reduced profitability, so I guess it is back to the dream factory again for me.

Time for another update on my journal to keep me honest and let the world know my thoughts.

This month has been a turnaround for my account as in January it was slowly losing money. Although intra-day ranges for both January and February were similar, it looked like market players were playing it safe and buying the dips and selling the rallies, keeping the moves muted, relative to the equity markets, which have seen their best start of a year since 1991.

EUR$ has been quite a laggard, with the Greek PSI weighing in and the cheap money from the LTRO did little to boost risk appetites. I'm hoping there is going to be some stronger follow-through momentum otherwise it's shaping out to be a lack lustre year .

I was asked what the best performing currency was last month, the other day and it turned out to be PLNJPY, though what was slightly more amusing was my guess that it was UGX. It turned out to be one of the worst performing and within moments of me mentioning UGX, the Ugandan central bank was stepping into the market trying to stop the depreciation of their currency.

I've been studying more programming during my spare time, as well as tweaking some code at work and developing my skill in this area. I've created a simple dashboard for my trading account in MT4 and will be testing this week. Hopefully, at some point, I'll be able to build my own execution platform rather than relying on MT4.

Good luck everyone and I'll probably make another journal entry once March is over.

It's the end of the month, so time for another update on my journal! The last 3 weeks have been good, since my last update, and the return I have for the first quarter of this year has not been too bad, at 8.1%, with all-time profit of about £6k. There are some changes, which I will write about next, in regards to my account and trading.

The first thing I want to mention is the start date of my account. I've been told by FF that my trades have been archived from last year by OANDA, which has resulted in my account showing that it was only opened on 01JAN2012, giving the impression that I haven't ran this strategy for long, which is not the case. I opened my account back in JUN2011.

The second thing that I'm changing is the amount of risk I'm taking per trade. Although I was spooked by the simulated draw-downs when using 2% risk, I've decided that, as this is the riskier part of my portfolio, I should be taking on more risk. I also like the idea of making a 100% return.

The third thing, I've added another £10k to my account because the account has been profitable for the first quarter. I'll add another £10k, if the account increases in the next quarter.

I've noticed that with the larger trading lots, the percentages for SL's and TP's are slightly out, because I don't dynamically change them to keep them close to the percentages I defined, so I will modify my EA to check and readjust the lot size.

Good luck to everyone and I'll provide another update at the end of April, unless any readers ask questions.

Reflecting on the last month, it was clear I was overly-confident in my ability in enduring a large draw-down, at the higher risk levels. After losing just under 20% of my account from the peak, I've decided to change the risk parameters, so it is a tiered approach based on the profit on the account, so I don't repeat my stupidity of last month and give back almost all my profit.

The key lesson from last month was capital preservation and the tough part was realizing I had to reduce my risk, otherwise I was going to give everything and more back.

Now that I'm taking less risk, it will just be damage limitation until the end of the year, as I try to slowly get back to the same profit level as I was at the beginning of this year. I also don't see myself adding more capital to the account.

I will provide another update at the end of this month. Hopefully it will be more positive!

I've been looking at the losing trades in the last month and I've decided to pull the plug on my system. I'm going to quit whilst I'm still ahead and withdraw the funds from my account.

I haven't lasted as long as I would like but I'll take this as a learning lesson.

Good luck people, you'll need it!