Would it be too much trouble to pay me back my $20,000, my sexy darling?

It took 11 hours for this order to trigger, and it nearly stopped out before turning back in my direction and giving me another win. here is the analysis for direction and entry level and my broker chart with the trade marked

awesome trading today

8 trades
6 wins
2 losses
75% win rate
2.4% account gain

A couple of psychological mistakes were made which, although no harm was done, shows room for improvement still.

Mistake 1
I need a rule that forbids me from re-entering trades after a stop out. I do it because I am sure I am right and I dont want to be right and still lose. Thats ego. I increase risk on subsequent trades to make up for the losing attempts, sometimes it works, often it doesent. I won the trade on the third attempt and was 0.4% better off this time. I would prefer to just take the initial loss and wait for the next opportunity rather than punching on with the market.

Mistake 2
After I was proven right and regained some of the losses, I took less risk on the next trade to protect my gains - thats fear and cost me 0.5% on that trade


The highlight for me was the order that took 17 hours to trigger - I placed it in the morning before going to work and it triggered after I went to bed that night. If I only did these trades I would improve my win rate

Here is the chart with trades and errors marked

Another very good week with 10% return.

32 trades
21 wins
11 losers
65.6% win rate
120 pips
10.4% return

Using support/resistance levels to capture bounces means I am always trading against the current momentum in the market. It can be with the direction of the longer term trend but, at the time of entry, the market is always moving against the direction of the trade. Unless I pick an exact top/bottom which is very rare, I will be counter-trend trading.

In hindsight you can see I would have been better off in the other direction but I still won every trade and made 4.4% in 10 hrs

Here you can see that a previous S/R level combined with the R1 pivot for the day capped a strong upward move and handed me my 1% return. I usually wouldnt fade price action like this but the order was placed many hours earlier and I was sleeping at the time it triggered

Hi MacDoug,

Good to see you're still going strong and setting such a great example of how should be done. Keep up the good work!

Hey you
Whats it been, like 5 years or something
You kicked arse with your significant levels back in the day. We were both still noobs back then, Thinking we were so cool - or at least I was thinking that. Cant use the noobie excuse anymore though

Great to hear from you, I hope you are well and happy. if your anything like me, the trading career hasnt exactly gone to plan. It was a stupid plan anyway

If you ever want to chat about technique or psych or anything feel free to drop me a line. Let me know if you find any hot spots, ill re subcribe to your journal so I dont miss anything

Glad to see you back x

Thank you!

Well what happened to me is events just conspiring up to the point where I had to stop. Life was throwing one financial emergency after another at me, plus I lost my job and in the end I had to withdraw all of my account because I needed the money. Everything's cool now though and back to normal, so I funded my account again earlier this year and so far it's been going pretty well. I've improved (I hope) the significant level method although it's still the the basis of all my trades and it still kicks ass in most market conditions Also, I notice your technicals are hot lately! You seem to be doing very well and I'm really happy for you I'll subscribe and we can share knowledge, ideas, etc

As I was analysing my charts this morning I was thinking of dropping the weekly and daily charts and just concentrating on more recent levels using the 4hr chart and below. I wanted streamline my analysis and save time and effort.
I found a level from 2008 on the weekly chart 1.2329 It was 20 pips above the current price so I placed an order to go short if price should reach that level. Price moved down all day(Asia) away from my order but I was able to get capitalise on two good opportunities using S/R created during the day. I had finished trading when price spiked 50 pips to trigger my order and take me in short for another winning trade.

Ill be keeping my analysis regime as it is and not taking any short cuts

When is this b*tch going to pay you back? I bet she has a lot of intrest to pay for all this time she's holding your positions? How far are you currently in regaining the money?

Excellent question! she is dragging it out a bit

well, I dont know. She has taken 30k. I am not trying to get that money back, it is gone. I am just trying to be the best trader I can be.

The good news is most of that was lost in the first two years and now if you average out, the bitch only cost me less than a hundred bucks a week. I have forgotten my losses now and havent added any funds for two years. It cost me nothing to trade now.

30k is not expensive for 7 years re-training into a new profession. If I never become professional, $100/week is not that expensive as a hobby either.

If I had the funds I would put 100k, trade conservatively and aim for 30% within a year to reclaim my losses.

I am trying to refund my account with 5K but something has always come up and I havent been able to do it as yet. I am close now.

If I try to chase 30k losses with 5k, if thats the mind set, failure is almost certain. If I try to trade well, lots of patience and good risk management, I stand a chance of making a profit. Anything better than bank interest puts me in the top tier of traders, thats a fact.

If I can do this, for two years, I will be employable in my new profession as a trader. I can seek employment as such, or I can just keep trading my own little fund as the best investment available to me.

I took the challenge and put up an awesome fight. Win or lose I have no regrets about that

I like how you see things in perspective about forgetting the past and moving on; seeing things as a long term investment instead of a revenge game. I believe it's a very good attitude indeed to become more detached from the market and regain control of your situation and not letting things depend on what you expect or hope for. I still have some things to learn in that matter.

Keep it up, it looks like you're on the right track to... "inadvertedly" pickpocket and eventually drain the bitch's wallet in the process! An excellent side-effect of a solid trading methodology, without making it the goal.

I have two active trading accounts with Oanda and a practice account with go markets for the mt4 platform I use for analysis. I always open the mt4 platform first to look for trading opportunities. Yesterday I opened up the mt4 platform and noticed price sitting on support which I wanted to trade long. I hurriedly opened up the Oanda platform and it automatically opens the small account first (one I tanked and abandoned two years ago). I placed the trade in that account first and quickly changed to my main account and did the same. Here is the difference a few seconds can make in fx

Below is a comparison of my two accounts over the same time period. The first example takes one trade, win or lose and thats it for the day. The other allows me to fight on after a loss using my trading expertise to win back my losses. Both made a profit but I think there may be a lesson here http://www.forexfactory.com/attachme...1&d=1344118415 http://www.forexfactory.com/attachme...1&d=1344118415

I noticed the same pattern in my trading and here's the policy I adopted : a maximum of one directional entry per trading session, and I stop trading completely if my losses reach a certain quota. I also noticed that I had many more daily wins than losses but one day of losses can take out one year of profit if my mind goes on tilt and refuses to accept the earlier tiny loss.

This journal hasn't been updated in a while... How are things going? Are you still trading 1:1 risk reward? It is something I have been thinking about and would be interested to see how it is working for you..

Thanks for dropping by. I have only been trading spasmodically I am perfecting my system for when I refund my account which, as it happens, I am finally ready to do

Firstly, I am mainly concerned with short term intra day trading or scalping

1:1 risk reward is the closest thing I have found to the holy grail of fx trading.

If you can win 60% or better your good to go. You will win more often and have shorter losing streaks, therefore you can risk more than a 1:2 or 1:3 systems. You are also able to compound more frequently as the account makes higher watermark more frequently. These two things make the profitability of 1:1 unbeatable.

Most importantly, it is also psychologically easier if you are winning regularly and dont have to trade through long losing streaks. The market prevents a system from performing much better than 30% at 1:2. That means long losing streaks and losing months. I cant get a losing month using 1:1 with a >60% hit rate and Im usually only ever two or three losers away from a winner.

I know people disagree with me on this and I know the experts are saying you must be targeting at least 1:3 and I agree it is counter intuitive but, this is what I have found to be true and believe me I have looked very, I mean VERY hard.

Even trading a "with trend breakout strategy" which by definition is a trend continuation ploy and therefore should be targeting much higher gains, will perform better with just 1:1 risk reward because of more wins, larger position sizes and compounding. The market is not the same as it was in the Turtles day. The old school rules no longer apply.

This is my opinion. In the end you have to do your own work to find out whether what I am saying is true and will work for your trading techniques

Great update Mac, hope all is well.

Thank you for the update! That is what I am starting to lean towards. I have a system which seems quite profitable and from what I have seen has about a 65% strike rate.

The only issue with 1:1 is recovering from draw downs. For example I had been doing really well for the past few weeks and then Monday I took 5 losing trades out of 6... Now this is the biggest losing streak I have ever been through with this system, but psychologically it seems like a mountain to climb now just to recoup the 5 losing trades.

What is your experience with this? How many losing trades have you experienced in a row? How do you go about recovering it?

Thanks

Emporia

I dont know what to say to this. It is a difficult thing to lose I know. It is hard not to react and revenge trade and try something different to recoup losses which nearly always ends in tears

Without trying to sound to cliche, I try not to focus on growth or loss but rather on my performance in executing. If I execute on valid signals and follow my trade and money management rules then I am happy. If I continue to do this through a losing streak, without deviating or reacting to my loss then I know I have done very well. I would rather have 5 losses perfectly executed to get that one win than 5 lucky wins that cannot be reproduced

Speaking of difficult to lose, Hows this for a bit hard to take