Howard and the 1000 trading adventures (2014)!

Just closed the eurjpy trade for a few pips, not any concrete reason for that, just feeling.

The pair went up of a thousand pips in the recent weeks, i don't think this trend is sustainable in the medium-long term, said this, the trade actually do make sense, however i just follow my sixth sense.

If any eurjpy bull is reading this, good luck with that one, it have potentials!
For me it is enough profit for today, will get back tomorrow with a fresh mind.

Cheers

Hi Howard, you seem to know how to read the trend very well, and most of the times you take advantage of that as you had shown already...
So i have a question if you don´t mind, as i tend to get confused with the trend stuff, i never know wich one should i refer to (daily, h4, h1).

For trend qualification do you refer to every HH-HL for uptrend LH-LL for downtrend or just the major ones?

Thanks in advance
Luis

Hello TheNew, yes i mostly watch for the overall market structure in terms of HH and LL and clearly there is not only "one trend", there are a number of trends that happen simultaneously, one inside another.
I also use a simple template for get an idea of what's going on, as you see on the image two simple moving averages (ema) 25 and 50, a macd (25,50,9) and a classical macd 12,26,9.
I don't have any rules nor any system, but the situation is not soo complex after all.

You can see on the 4h chart we was on a downtrend/correction, and on the classical macd we had a nice divergence, good for the buy idea.
However on the 25-50 macd i did not see any divergence, and it was still below 0, and considering that the jpy pairs have an erratic volatility distribution (can stay on a 50 pips range for a week, or can move 300 pips on a few hours without reason), and considering our stoploss on a 100pips distance (that can be a high distance on a eurusd trade, but not on eurjpy), and considering the 4h picture not fully bullish, well you can guess why i just decided to close the trade.

On the other hand, look the 1h picture, perfectly bullish.
Daily picture too, maybe there the momentum is starting to fall down but so far i would say bullish.

So, about the trend, on every trade you may have the trend on your side on a particular timeframe and a trend against you on another timeframe, when on all timeframes you have the trend on your side that is what i call an AAA trade!

About this one, i see on asian session eur went up of 60pips from our entry, for now it was a good trade, however there are many things (like, right now a bearish divergence on 1h classic macd) that still let me a little bit cautious about this, maybe i just don't trust the jpy.

Good morning!

Ok, getting back to eurusd, we're in again, we look for a continuation of the yesterday action, an entry perhaps aggressive as we've not yet confirmation of a bearish resume, just trying to pick an intraday top.

Lotsize 50x (10 lots), stoploss above tuesday highs and tp way down 230pips below the entry.
So far there is a reverse-risk (temporarily lack of momentum), but we have also good chances of success, the leverage is not excessive and the stoploss not too far, so not really a dangerous trade.

As always, let's see what happen.

Cheers!

Eurusd

After a 30pips drop, price is getting up again probably going to hit the highs of asian session.

I don't really drink this buy interest, if price break asian highs we're probably going to add some sells.

Let's see..

Update:
Just added a little around highs (not yet broken), it's not 100% sure that the highs are going to break, so let's add a little bit here

Added again after the CPI release, the plan now is just wait and see how it develop.
Seems not really a movement's day today, pretty boring till now.

Thanks Spaceduck

Price is spiking on the unemployment and inflation numbers.

I'm watching it..
Yet for now, plans remain unchanged, we hold the line.



Update:
Price just broke asian and london session highs, here we entered our last sell, with a total leverage now at 65x, no more adds for this trade.

Soo much bullish pressure on the eur in the past few hours, regardless the negative news for the eur and the positive ones for the usd, the market is buying eurusd.
I was expecting price to take out the stops above asian/london highs, but it seems this is something more powerful than a simple stophunt.

However, i still see not really a strong reason for the market to go up, i don't say it will get down, i don't know.
In this case, we stick to the original plan (hold the line once again).

All this is slightly weird, this is not a boring day anymore, many up and down, very interesting so far.

Good morning, some update about eurusd:

Yesterday it reached the lows after bernanke speech, however lifted up again soon after in what was a well bidded mini-recovery.

Asian session flat.

I was thinking about take the profits on yesterday lows (yesterday), however i had a feeling to keep it open and aim for something bigger than 30pips, so here we are today, still on the trade.

As for technicals, the situation is slightly less good than yesterday, the bear momentum is slowly fading away, some risks start to getting stronger.
However, as for this moment, the short-term trend is still on our side, momentum can get back at any time, so not really a bad situation.

Ok, all we can do is relax and see what happen today.

Cheers

Ok, price break the lows of this week, time for secure our positions, stoploss moved below the lowest sell.

I see some big news are coming for the dollar in 10 minutes, this can bring more fuel to the bearish move as i hope, or can reverse the situation.

The current plan, let profits run, in the worst case we're going to end up with a tiny profit.

Of course if we find some sign of reverse we're going to just take profits.

Update:
Not really a positive news for the usd, however the market seems to not care too much right now.

hah. what do you mean by "the burst?"

The burst, is the term used in the investment world usually associated with a bubble (like a stock bubble), the burst of the bubble means that all or a big part of the gains that a stock did had on a period of time, get wiped out in a powerful and fast loss.

As my accounts do usually follow this pattern (huge exponential profits followed by a big loss), "the burst" mean in this case the big loss, the one that wipe out big part of the account.

Considering the leverage being used on every trade, such loss may happen at one point.
Of course i do keep a control of the overall risk on each set of trades at any given time, so when the burst is going to happen, that would mean maybe a 40% max 50% drawdown (huge drawdown, but not a total wipeout).

High risk trading for sure!

The eur is loosing ground, regardless the various not-soo-good usd news today, the sell pressure is a reality, at least untill now.

Plenty of opportunities to take the profits, however..

I'm still waiting, if we can take out the lows of last week, the payout can be a good one! (perhaps some stops popping making some nice drop)

On the other hand, price can get back up again at any moment and eat our floating profits.

What can we do, hold the line once again, and wait a little bit.

And we are out.

Probably too early, the january low is just a few pips from here, but.. that's ok.

I guess that's all for the week, have a nice weekend everybody

Update:
Yeah profits taken early on this, just a few minutes before the break of january lows and stops-popping.
That's fine.

A little summary about this second trading week of 2014 that is just ended.

Not bad, we had a return of 80%, once again it was another high leveraged trading week, with all the risks associated.
(i hope nobody is looking to this journal as an example of how to trade responsibly, or at least if doing so, doing it on a demo account)

We had a gbpusd trade that went a little bit wild, missing our stoploss for just 5pips, even if the stop was technically correct, i don't rule out a good amount of luck on that episode.

Then we had a eurjpy trade that was looking technically good, but somehow our sixth sense forced us to get out a few hours after the entry for a few pips profit, the day later such trade would be revelead a disaster, of course there was many red-flags about the riskness involved there, so we just did the right thing exiting from it early.

Then what, some pips left here and there on the table, but overall a good trading week.

Some ideas about next week possible trade opportunities, right now i'm looking at nzdusd that seems targeting the lows of december on the medium-short term, and usdchf responding to our original usd medium-term forecast, aka targeting november highs.
Both situations looks good, of course we will need to get an eye on them with calm, after the market opens on moonday, but as for now both seems possible trade-candidates for next week activity.

An eye also on gbpusd, right now having a strong bullish momentum, but if sometime during next week such momentum would fade, we may look out for some bearish trades out there, however right now gbpusd is a no-touch pair, we just need to wait a little bit and get a better picture before even consider the idea of taking a trade.


Cheers!

Trading is an activity where loneliness manifest itself in all its shine.

It's months ago that i've opened my first thread, the clarity thread, somehow looking to fight the loneliness that arise in the life of a retail trader, and in the same time give some contribute to the trading community.
It did not worked out as expected, and here we are, with this journal, the second experiment.

Sadly, this too is not having the results i was hoping for, let's be clear it is not about this website itself (that is pretty useful and nice) and the users (which are wonderful people), i just do what my feelings tell me to do.

Cutting the story short, i am looking to stop the journal, and get back to my planet (if you've seen the movie "Howard the Duck", you know that at the end the duck get back to his own planet; if you haven't seen that movie, give it a look that's a funny movie).

But not yet, one more week, the final one, i have still a few things to share!

The message, the purpose of this quick journal, is not to give any technical teaching (as it would be useless) about trading, but simply to show you that the number of possibilities in this universe are infinite, and with the right amount of dedication anybody can achieve any results.

Ok, let's enjoy this week!

Hi SpaceDuck,

Glad to have read a decent journal with astonishing results. Keep up the good work.

Looking the economic calendar, today is probably going to be little bit boring day.

Anyway, never say never!

We've bought usdchf as per weekend-plan, nothing big, we're just starting little on this, testing the waters first.

Nzdusd is way too low to attract me, i would like to see it around the highs of NY session of friday in order to start selling it.

A slow start this week, relaxing one.

Good morning everybody!

P.s.
Thank you usasa, glad to read your post.

With a good half of our buy/sell power still available, this gbpusd is getting more attractive from minute to minute, mmm...
For now it's just a platonic attraction, but i keep eyes on it.

Here we are, gbpusd.

We've sold on what looks like a nice opportunity, after the surprise of friday, the whole asian session was flat, not a bad sign for sellers.
Said this, the possibility of further up-moves is real and i would say also probable.
On the other side, this up-move haven't impressed me so far, seems that friday some stops popped, shorts got squeezed, but overall i'm not sure that this is going to the moon anytime soon, the original old plan (same as one-two week ago) on gbpusd is still in play, that's why the current prices are attractive.

Classification of trades:

I would say, UsdChf Class A- (lack of momentum and overbought, but still a good trend on our side)
Gbpusd Class B/C (not really a low risk one).

Ok, let's see what's going to happen today


Update:
I'm thinking about get out of usdchf when(if) it goes into profit territory, buy here sell there seems like things get a little bit out of hand in terms of leverage (actually around 80x 93x used), nothing to worry about seems like today the risk aversion is pretty high, but it's always better to not abuse of leverage.
More to come..