(binned per thread starter's request) The big... IF

Tbh, i think you are second guessing yourself. Why sell at B at all? The up trend hasn't been broken yet. Sell A is the first retracement after the lower low and i think that that is the best place to sell.

There'z nothing like encouragement !

....and that was nothing like encouragement.
Read the text properly.

Lol. Yea ok, i wrote that after a glass of wine. My bad.

Today I let the pressure get to me. The pressure came from other things demanding of my time, as they have most of this week, and resulting in my trying to make up for the slow start.

This was fatal. Particularly I let one trade run up to nearly a 2% hit. Some on the forum would say that was just tough, however I have not been letting bad trades get anywhere near that figure - so an error on my part

Down 2.4% on the week so far, and with some things to do tomorrow I may just sit it out from here.

Well, after yesterday's mess-up I recovered just a little, but not enough to get excited about. So with no disturbances planned for next week I look forward to resuming an upward trend. Down 2.36% on the week.

This is turning into another bad week. Yesterday I made a small mistake and lost GBP25. Not a huge loss but my trade volume was so large that the fees took me down by 1%.

Today I made two mistakes. I am slow to learn the first which is to set an appropriate SL. Short in cable I had an internet connection malfunction and PA had moved too far against me by the time I recovered. Expensive.

The second was to pay attention at all times. Maybe this is also partly SL related but also I was being stupid or arrogant and paid for it. Not as much as the internet cost me though, down 0.8% in EurAud.

Now for some stern words with the man in the mirror.

After some re-focusing I have had a couple of days making small profits. These are in line with my stated goals in post #1 and maybe I lost sight of that in recent days. I am finished now to watch the Greek elections...!

Down 5.9% on last week. I have to turn this around.

I just downloaded the last few weeks trading data to look at where my big losers were badly executed. When I get a few minutes over the weekend I will put the entry and exit points on a chart and think about the plays.

Thank you very much. The rate setting statement said just the right things to send the markets whipping up and down, a situation that I find profitable to trade - and good exercise for my sphincter.

Unfortunately I was still in that mode when the FED's economic statement was published and that has a much more considered reaction. I got out even from that mis-read so just a little sweat was lost.

Today I made nearly 2% which recovered Monday's disaster. Need another 11Gbp to break even on last week's close. Should be simple - but I've said that before.....

Well done, nice win.

Here is an interesting quote (it comes from poker, but it applies here):

Don't try to get even, you are always even.

Actually, that is a pertinent observation.

Ok, firstly there is an amount of luck coupled with being able to feel the market movement. I (try to) never trade these movements unless my gut-instinct is supporting my assessment of what is actually happening. Secondly, as I have written elsewhere, don't trade the move - trade the aftermath if you can understand it. So here goes....

I watch the 5-minute chart for these events. You can see the same information on a 1-minute chart but personally I find the 1-minute chart too distracting whereas the 5-minute chart shows the PA and lets me feel the market sentiment.

The FED said 'no-change' on rates and QE. This was obviously a surprise to some who bought USD with a passion. Cable dropped 70+ pips within minutes of the announcement. Then it started to come back up.... So I entered into two trades of very short duration. Each one making about 10 pips.

Edit: I stopped trading cable at this point because PA had come back to 50% of the move and I was not convinced that there was no commitment to continue down.

Then I switched to EurAud and made another 11 pips in 2 trades, which were more of a fight than I was expecting. The main winner was open for 3 minutes and turned about 10 pips profit. The other trade I thought I had lost at one point but managed to close it for 1 pip (after fees) after 10 minutes, which is a long time when the market is jumping about as it was.

For those wondering about making trades with targets of 10 pips or less I remind you that 11-pips represents 0.5% of my account value, so a few of these every week is enough...

Yesterday I discovered an interesting wrinkle. The computer that I normally use for news-browsing died, it was pretty old and low-tech. As a result I traded the morning blind. I did better than a typical morning but realised pretty quickly that I had better be aware of impending news releases just so that I could be out when it is prudent.

So after another hour trying to find one of the kids' laptops, installing the WiFi dongle to get around the router access list (which keeps the kids off facebook) I am back up and meddling.

This has been a useful lesson for me that I should concentrate more on my screens and less on the forum.

BTW does anybody have a list of the IP addresses used by MSN? I need to get that onto a time restricted schedule also.

This week started with some promise, and today I screwed up somewhat. However I am still up 0.5% on the week which is nothing to be overly pleased about. Worse, on average my account has been contracting.

In contrast my other account is up 5% by equity on the year. Recently I have been building some carry positions in AudJpy, and AudChf, and they are now fully protected by SL. I run very low leverage on these positions which are typically 1:3, that means for 6k in my account I will typically open a position for 2k units. I have 4 positions open in AudJpy and 2 in AudChf. The AudChf positions have TPs which should collect any day now, the AudJpy positions do not have a TP but do have SLs in profit.

I also have 3 small positions in EurChf which are waiting for a big lift on the pair. However with all that is going on at the moment it would take a revelation about Swiss debt or something to shift the price enough.

I have had to wait months for some trades to come to their TP (a questionable entry then...) but the beauty of such low leverage is that I can wait a long time, watch a position go against me by 500 pips, add to it maybe...

Today I manually closed a small position in EurAud, in profit, because who knows what might happen within the EU summit into the weekend. There is something I can learn from trading this second account and apply it to my other struggling account. ....hmmm

I was beginning to wonder how much volume I needed to trade to reduce my account fees. Well over the weekend I received an email telling me that my volume commission has reduced, a bit. I should not complain - every little helps.

The volume accounting would appear to be performed on a month-end basis (....awaits mid-week email to the contrary) whereas I thought it was on a rolling month basis. My account statement shows that I traded about 15m on the last month so maintaining more than 10m should be quite easy. Getting to next reduction threshold, 25m, is something of a challenge.

Computers are such liars.

Last week a laptop running some special communications software from VW-Audi Group (Vagcom), being attached to the service port hidden behind the ashtray, declared that the MAF sensor was mis-behaving. So a new MAF was procured - no change. So the dashboard was stripped out exposing the ECU, and all the wiring checked - no faults. So.... anyway the ECU ended up at a test house to check why it was unhappy - it was not unhappy.

.....eventually the cause was traced to a perished turbo control pipe, which was leaking so badly that the turbo was doing nothing, and causing the ECU to detect no boost pressure. Why that came out as a disconnected MAF is anybody's guess. Like I said, computers tell such lies.

Anyway I'm well on my way to topping 25m volume this month if I keep this up. Just need to improve the profit margin a bit....

In fact the whole week has been up and down. Up 1% on Tuesday, down 2% on Wednesday, and then back up 1% on Thursday. So no change on that round trip!

....and then I was smitten with the need to go long on AudUsd this afternoon after the NFP was published. The first chart shows my entry which might look odd, but it corresponds with support lines off left screen somewhere. Most of the rest of the world did not agree with me, and so I spent a while clawing back some of the loss with hedging positions in the consolidation episode which occurred during the hour after the NFP.

Then I looked away and before you know it I was down another 20 pips! So I contemplated what to do next, and after looking back at previous Friday closing hours behaviour I thought there was a good possibility of the position coming back to me. The first chart also shows the agonizing wait and draw-down before things went right again, the red horizontal line represents my break-even close price after some hedging.

A couple of hours later I had just got to the point of deciding to roll-over the position, seeing as I was now only 6 pips away from break-even, when I realized that there was another hour to go. So I hung on in there.

The second chart shows my exit (trade marker has disappeared) with a few pips above my red line. The line was actually wrong by a couple of pips but being determined to not make a loss on the day I closed for about 3 GBP profit on the day.

This is all useful training, but I really must get on with making some money now.

....so after all that above I have mixed feelings. Relief that I salvaged some nasty mistakes, and disappointment that I made nothing on the week. So now for a beer and some more self-analysis.

Well, you are not losing so you are halfway to winning. Just have patience.

Well today I have not placed a single trade, I have had a few distractions and I just do not feel right. So rather than dump my profit for the week so far I am not opening any new positions.

So far this month I have traded 6.5m volume, so that will keep my reduced trading fees if I trade in similar fashion to the end of the month. If I manage to not lose tomorrow then I have cleared 2%.

Exodus, with all due respect (seriously), an experienced trader does not go through the emotional roller coaster ride described in these pages. I know I don't, and neither do my serious Stairstep students. If you really want to learn how to trade without all the lagging indicators and emotional drama and second-guessing, come spend a few weeks with us. Hope to see you there.

Best of luck in what ever you decide...

FxH