Ramblings of a Forex Junkie

Just watched it all. A few points, the guy completely disrespects the student with the hair when he holds his head down. I found it hard to take him seriously after that. Not laughing at this guy Eric, just being more critical of his statements and questioning his motives. Second, the music made this a very difficult watch for me. Too intrusive.

Having said that there is definitely a valid message here and that is to be highly successful in any endevour you must put a shit load of effort into it. Everyone is guilty of not taking things seriously enough. We all at times like to take the easy road or not put the effort in. Will this big guy shouting for 15min in my ear (on headphones) change me? Maybe.

I think the real point from this (the story is not original to him) is that to really be successful you have to want it as much as you want the air you breathe. You have to be willing to do whatever is necessary including not getting any sleep.

lol. I can see how you relate to it on that level. But lets remember for us that may not work because no sleep = lack of attention. No browsing the web while you are supposed to be trading I get.

Your really over analyzing this

Interesting development. I find that I am worrying about the stats in my new account as I trade. Normally I don't even think about win-loss ratio or win size vs. loss size. This is a whole new set of mental challenges to overcome. I knew there would be some new issues with trading in an account with some public scrutiny but I expected it to manifest itself when I increased the funds or began trading with other people's money. This is going to turn out to be great training. On the positive side I have a 3% gain for the week and can sleep for the next four nights. I still don't trust any stats until I have a hundred trades but my risk of ruin is now down to under .01% across the board. My average win is too small (bigger than the average loss but not by enough) but that is a result of missing the train on Monday and having to scalp off some wins due to sleeping through European trading. Next week back to the normal start time and normal trades. I hope to get the RR up to my historic level around 1.6-1.7/1 by the time I have a couple hundred trades. I have had to take more trades than I like to the past three days due to my poor timing but this happens to me occasionally.

Please everyone have a safe and happy Easter.

Chris

Performance anxiety...as expected, nothing's wrong with that. It keeps you on your toes.
Your positive attitude is endearing. Will be following you with great interest.
Good luck on your endeavor!!!

Thank you!

The account stats will be made public here soon. It doesn't take that long to get to 100 trades. I am not happy with my RR at this point but I haven't had any trades this week that had a prayer of making the targets. The RR is currently at 1.31/1 but a few "normal" trades will take care of that. I am very happy with the size of my average loser however and the profit factor is at 1.71 so not at all bad. My timing has been simply horrific this week. I slept through the short entry Monday and didn't trade Europe today when both Yen pairs were perfect. I am hoping after next week when the start time goes back to normal I will be able to stay awake to do normal business. The extra hour is a killer when the two time zones are different.

It's interesting, I thought I would be way past nervousness about my trading but since I decided to try to move to the next level all the old insecurities come back to the surface. I think its good that it is happening now as I will be able to learn from this and will develop the necesary tools do deal with this. I certainly don't want to go through the same thing when (if) I get to manage money for clients. Funny how a simulation can be just as tough as the real thing.

Good Day

Not shown- Had a loss on GU for 16 pips. Hanging onto EU a bit longer

I traded dollar cad some this week. Looks pretty good. I will spend some time this weekend doing a little historical work on it. The stop right now is thirteen pips at 20% so I can double the lot size for the same percentage risk. It seems to act pretty predictably so far and when oil moves it can make this pair go hard. Means good RR if you are on the right side.

EU bounced on a weekly demand zone with only a ten pip drawdown. You might be happy you held for a while. Tough to say with this pair right now, their banking system could collapse for real if the citizens get the idea that their money isn't safe in the banks any more.

Quick visit,, simulations are nothing like the real thing. plus you have to be heartless or insensitive as using other peoples money is a lot easier than ones own. I am surprised you have not been contacted by a broker as i was last year but maybe you have, i wish you well but you will still have to change somewhat. i am taking my family away to southern spain in a few hours for easter break AND stopping at an old students place i trained,,, wayhay. Have a good easter or what ever celebrations are going on.

this has a good message about what's involved in becoming a craftsman in your chosen endeavour

http://www.1channel.ch/watch-2734282...reams-of-Sushi

It's time to call it a day/week. I finish the week with +11.2%. All level trades, no breakout trade this week for me.
Now my family is first priority until I start trading again next Tuesday.

Happy Easter to all of you!

I am done too. I took one GJ trade last night long from the previous week low. I have only four percent for the week but not bad considering I missed the best trades.

Happy Easter to you as well.

The account is real. The simulation I was refering to is the unexpected bit of self awareness about my trading stats now that I have an account I plan to make public. I find it odd that I am suddenly making trade management decisions with a bit of an eye to what it will do to my stats.

Still holding? If so I would probably take profit at weekly level.

A question you won't like, but I suppose you do expect so maybe I'm not being a jackass after all...
Look, I am VERY embarrased to ask this question since I truly admire your work and your contribution to the thread and specially to my trading. But it doesn't leave me alone - so I just have to ask:

Really, I gave it a day, and then gave it another, hoping this will go away, but it doesn't...
(and also I'm quite sure you are expecting a question like that... so hopefully you won't kill me for it)

Why the heck a guy like you (a great trader, a fantastic researcher and an exelent teacher) would want to go and trade other people's money? Isn't that for thoose who don't really know how to trade? Why would you want to create for yourself a job when you have a great way to make a living? It just boggles my mind...
And above all that, you said you are thinking about maybe a signaling service until you find a job as a cta? Come on... (or maybe that was a joke?)
So, yeah, since I really really respect (not to say love) you for what you gave us here, and truly believe you are a good guy... I'll ask you the same way I would ask my friend before he would go have sex with someone and ruin his marriage...
What are you doing man?

You said you can't wait to get to the point when you can trade without leverage, and that you've built your account from a small account (you have refered to it in one of your posts)... so what is this ?

With great respect,
Yours
rdsl

A valid question and one I expected.

First there is a misconception in the question. Good fund managers are the BEST traders. To attract real money, millions of qualified investor dollars, you have to have steady gains with low draw down. If a money manager doesn't cut it he or she will lose their clients. Hedge fund investors are notorious for having short attention spans. If you don't make enough they will drop you. If you have too much draw down they will drop you. Having said all this if you can make it it is like having a giant call option on your trading performance. My main acct is 2xx,xxx. Say I make 60% in a given year. I would make 12x,xxx in profits before taxes. Now add investor funds and make the total five million. Lets drop the performance down to 40% due to the size of the funds traded. Now lets do the math. My 2% management fee is 100,000. The performance fee is (20% of gains) 400,000, and I make 80,000 on my own funds. Now I haven't done anything different with regard to the actual trading but I now make 580,000 before taxes. Now I can take my salary out of the investor funds and keep my money invested for maximum growth. This is how Paul Tudor Jones, Scott Cohen, John Paulson, George Soros, etc got so wealthy. Can't really do it into the billions without OPM.

Now the signal provider question. I wouldn't actually be a signal provider. I am interested in the auto trading part of the business. Signal providers generally do not have happy clients. Their signals may be fine but by the time the trader enters his position, then sends out the e-mail/text msg., and the client gets the notice time has passed. Then the client opens the trading platform. Then the client spends some time thinking. By now the price has either moved too far or the trade is in draw down and the client is afraid and opts not to enter. Auto trading avoids all this. The trades are instantly (within milliseconds) repeated across all the accounts of the clients. The clients don't have the option of skipping signals unless they turn off the service. The client retains full control of the money in their account and can choose the lot size and resulting leverage for each trade. Most of the auto trade providers are paid only for winning trades or at worst paid per trade. The client does not have to pay monthly for a string of losing trades or a bad provider. Many of the bad traders who are trying to make a quick buck are the ones looking for a few hundred a month and hide their open trades to show a nice growth graph. It is easy to fake a growth chart by taking profits only on winners and holding losers forever while only showing account growth and hiding equity and open trades.

Most fund of funds investors who allocate to CTA's and hedge funds want to see a history of trading OPM. You can have great records of your private trading but the bias is that it is different from managing commercially. The view is that the trader may have blown many accounts before hitting a winning streak and that the good gains could be short lived. Even six months of successful trading in a completely transparent account while managing even for small traders is better than six years of personal trading in an account that may or may not be the first attempt at profitability. In addition if you are good and earn well for the auto trade clients the profit potential is quite good.

The only area where your skepticism might be justified is if I suddenly announced that I was opening a teaching site and for the low, low price of xx per month you can learn all my "secrets" and make gazillions per day with only trading for ten pips per day during the fifteen minutes before you leave for work. I am not doing this. Nor will any of you ever get a PM from me asking for money of any kind. I live just outside of Washington DC and there are plenty of qualified investors here looking for good management. I do occasionally consider doing a live trading room where I could train and answer questions during the trading session while calling trades. I would have to charge for this to cover the expense of the website and the webinar service so I am hesitant to even go there. If I did it as I have said before I would take my rightful place in the thieves forum and no one would ever be solicited here at all. I made the choice to do what I do here for free and that will not change.

I am not a great trader. I have said it in the forum. I am average at best. I do, however, get better each day and hope to some day be good. You don't have to be a great trader to do well in this business. You do have to have discipline. You do have to be selective. You do have to trade only at areas where you have a definable edge.

I am not going to change as a trader I would just like to diversify my income and be able to keep all my personal money growing and not have to withdraw to pay bills.

Chris

Bingo.

Hi SP,

Can you point me to a direction for studying your method? I may not follow it, but just curious to know about.
If it is possible, let me know which posts are good for studying.

cheers,
kk007