$500 to $100,000... The Inspiration Thread

Both the Aud/Usd and Gbp/Chf trades finished positive. The Aud/Usd pair hit my original take profit level, and I closed out the Gbp/Chf pair about 18 pips in profit after a pin bar appeared on the 1 hour and was forming on the 4 hour.

67 pips and 4.5% return yesterday only risking 3% per trade. Now its off to the day job and back to trading later tonight!

New long placed on Usd/Jpy

Price @ 89.007
Stop loss @ 88.8
Take Profit @ 89.6

Note to self for future trades: Wait until candle is closed to base price action off of it. It looked like a good signal on the 1 hour chart to enter long, but this was taking into consideration a candle that hadn't closed yet, and still isnt.


http://scottbprice.com/wp-content/up...013/01/t20.png

Long Gbp/Usd order.

Price @ 1.6075
Stop Loss @ 1.6055
Take Profit @ 1.6129

These are my two trades for the night. I'm going to lay down for a little bit but get up in about 4 hours and see if my stop loss's need to be adjusted to break even.


http://scottbprice.com/wp-content/up...013/01/t21.png

Both the Usd/Jpy and Gbp/Usd trades hit my stop loss. These are the first two trades I've lost using price action analysis trading using James16 style analysis (minus the trades I'd blindly entered out of emotion and then immediately exited).

Looking back on these last two trades they probably weren't the best trades to take. James16 preaches on taking trades with the best set-ups, and being extremely picky about the trades that you enter. I was not picky enough about these trades, had I been, I wouldn't have taken them.

Two trades opened and closed so far today. I bought the Eur/Jpy because I thought we were going to rebound from a strong point of support, but the support then broke 10 min. after my trade was entered and fell right toward my stop loss.

Eur/Jpy long @ 117.75
Stop Loss @ 117.5
Take Profit @ 118.2


I also opened a sell order on the Nzd/Usd. I gained 16 pips on this trade.

Nzd/Usd sell @ .8416
Stop Loss @ .8426
Take Profit @ .84

So I'm negative today so far. Which is in addition to having two losing trades yesterday. So a little demoralizing but the account is still up, so I'm ready to look for some better and profitable trades.

I had made two more trades yesterday after the first two. They can be seen in my list of closed trades in my trade explorer.

I currently have 5 open trades which can be seen in my trade explorer. If you have any questions about them feel free to ask. I'll review them later as these are trades opened based on price action on the 1 hour time frame and I'm currently still monitoring the market.

Added one more position to one of the losing trades because price action tells me we've just got a retracement going on before we continue to the down side (Eur/Aud).

All other trades except for the Eur/Usd trade have been moved to a break even stop loss.

If I'm near the computer when some of these trades get close to the take profit levels I may adjust the take profit and stop loss levels to let the trades run (let your profits run is what the experts always say).

So far so good today.

So in addition to my rule of not entering trades blindly (i.e. not doing enough research and having clear cut take profit/stop loss levels). I also want to add that I'm never to add more positions to a trade. And also to take advantage of the forexfactory news calendar which says whether news is high impact or not.

More lessons learned

My Eur/Aud trades (2 different positions) have stopped out. I've entered a new sell order on the Aud/Cad.

Closed out all my trades for the day. 65 pips profit. It would have been more if I hadn't doubled up on one of my losing positions right before major news release, but lesson learned.

I'm still trading price action as I said I have been, but I think I'm going to continue trading like I did today, where instead of looking at the weekly, daily, and 4 hour charts for set ups. Instead I'll be looking at the daily, 4 hour, and 1 hour charts for set ups. And occasionally the 30 and 15 min. time frames if I'm looking for a good entry point.

I'm going to do some price action studying tonight (a book I just started reading), and I'll be back to make some more trades tomorrow.

P.S. I've been trading smaller lot sizes to get a good method/routine going before I start risking 2-3% per trade and really start growing the account. I wanna prove to myself that I can grow it first, without incurring major losses in the process.

Trades entered for the day. You can see them in my trade explorer. I'm going to read a book on technical analysis and come back to the trades in an hour or two and see how they've progressed. No point in staring at them at the moment.

I accidentally set a stop loss on one of the trades too closely and it hit it so I re-entered. So I'm already "officially" out 10 pips so far but oh well.

If today turns out to be profitable then I'm going to increase my lot size next week from .01 to .02. If next week is unprofitable then I'll go back to a lot size of .01.

I'm going to continually increase my account size with deposits to get the ball rolling as long as I continue to profit on a monthly basis. I'll also continually increase my lot sizes as I'm profitable and as my account size allows it.

So I was selling the Aud/Usd pair and it looks as though it came up and just barely (and I literally mean just barely) hit my stop loss and is now falling straight to the ground. I'm kind of kicking myself in the face for this but I guess it's just another lesson learned.

You can see from the red line where my trade went. What got me is that here I am looking at this chart of the bid price, and I set my stop loss according to that price, and didn't take into consideration the extra 2 pips or so for the ask price. Those 2 pips got me...


http://scottbprice.com/wp-content/up...013/01/t22.png

I didn't have a good trading week last week. Specifically my last day of trading.

I went against the rules of James16 and switched to smaller time frames. And I also wasn't doing a very good job of my technical analysis.

I'm going into next week with a clear cut trading plan. I already have an idea for it, just need to get it finalized and into writing. I'll follow through with this plan for two weeks and then re-evaluate.

What I'm going to do is make only 1 trade per day based off of the weekly, daily, and 4 hour time frame. I will be checking for the absolute best set-up I can find and will be entering the trade sometime after the Asian open.

I'll go into more detail in the next post, and give clear cut instructions for my trades that must be met to be entered.

P.S. Since I'll only be entering 1 trade per day I'll get back to posting charts along with clear cut reasoning for each trade entered, and reasoning for the stop-loss, take-profit levels.

Well good luck with that.

I have seen to many times people say 500 to 100,000 only to lose their first 20 trades and dissapear form the forums forever.

The only thing you said that made any sense at all is your last post. ONE trade per day. Be VERY picky and do proper analysis. Perhaps focus on ONE pair only.

The EUR/USD make enough moves in a week to make you plenty of money.

Learn the pair inside and out and learn its personality. How can you hope to beat something you don't understand. If you can't make money with one pair adding 20 others isn't going to help or make it any easier.

You know that was of course just my 2cents. I do 100% agree with making ONLY 1 trade a day if that. Wait until all your analysis is speaking the same language.

GOOD LUCK my friend.

Thanks for the good luck, I'll surely need it! Yes the last post does make the most sense. As I said in a few of my posts I figured I'd go though a "noob" stage again since coming back, because I never truly got out of it the first time I traded. But now it's time to throw all that behind me and actually make sense of things

I'm finally now looking at the markets on a Tuesday morning. Completely unacceptable. This is where some people would say that they didn't have the time, or were too busy, but if I want to become successful at forex I need to make the time, and prioritize it to come first.

After doing some analysis I've entered a long on the Gbp/Usd. Chart and reasoning to come. As well as trading rules which I said I'd post this past weekend. I really need to work on my self-discipline.

As you can see I've been failing miserably. As I've said before it's simply my discipline. I can't stick with a style of trading for more than a few days. And I simply jump right in and start trading live.

My recent 600 pip/$60 loss was due to trying out basket trading.

This stops now. I vow to not take anymore trades on my account unless it follows the james16 style of trading. And I will be following this exact methodology:

"Here is an example of why trading smart can be a door to success. At the start of the month you decide on one or a set of pairs you want to trade. Your goal is 100 pips for each pair for the month. The first and all trades you take whether it happens on the first of the month or the twentieth will be the best set up your system can give within reason. No fudging, no borderline trades for that pair until you reach one hundred pips. now this is going to help you in several ways. If your system is not viable you are going to know it very quickly. If it is, you are going to build confidence and train yourself not to shotgun trades. If your system is any good at all you will have at least 4 or 5 winners from the first set of trades. You trade like this until you have the 100 pips per pair. For 20 trading days a month, not counting sundays, thats 5 pips a day. This is not hard if you take only your very best set ups regardless of how rare during the month they may be. Once over 100 you cannot drop below that 100 you have banked. Lets look at the numbers. With a 10,000 account risking 3 percent per trade with a 30 pip stop on your trades will allow you 10 mini lots.Trading 6 pairs at 100 pips each for the month will grow your account to 16,000. Now why not try 50 pips or even 25. 25 equates into a 1500 profit. The main point is this. You can grow an account quickly and at the same time trade in a conservative manner. The best of both worlds."

-James16

No more shotgun trades.
No more trying other methods.
No more trying to find a "holy grail" system that works on probability of past data.

I'm going to be smart and conservative about this from here on out. It is not my quest to do so, but my responsibility.

My first task is to pick 6 pairs, and I will only follow those 6 pairs.

My six pairs that I'll be trading are the:

 

1. Eur/Usd
2. Usd/Jpy
3. Gbp/Usd
4. Usd/Chf
5. Usd/Cad
6. Nzd/Usd

Currently doing analysis on each of these pairs.

New long entered on the Usd/Chf.

Price @ .9297
SL @ .9255
TP @ .949

Why did I take this trade?

A trendline has been broke on the weekly chart.


http://scottbprice.com/wp-content/up...013/01/t23.png


We're currently sitting at a support level and the 38.2 fib level of the previous low to high on the daily.


http://scottbprice.com/wp-content/up...013/01/t24.png



Stop loss is sitting below the support and fib level. Take profit is located just below the Novemeber 13th high.

WoW... After looking at your "Trade Explorer" I hardly know what to say.

I think it should be back to the drawing board for your trading...

Trading is not easy (i'm sure you have heard that before). You must have a solid system/methodology and solid risk management.

Also, not every system is right for every trader.

With FOMC & NFP this week I recommend caution & solid analysis....

I look forward to your next post and I am hoping for some good news

I want to be inspired

Regards

Jeremy

Yeah I've made some very bad trading decisions since starting this live account. But I'm feeling good about this next week as I'm actually going to be smart about my money management, trades I enter, and I'm only going to be trading on the higher time frames.

The biggest reason for the loss of pips/account balance is because I wasn't focusing on just 1 trading plan on the higher time frames, and tried out basket trading and different trading methods on the smaller time frames.

Good things to come though, and I'm actually going to start posting my trades here since I should only be taking about 15-20 trades per month.