Trend/Breakout Trading with Bullbear80

Good evening Traders,

So today saw me go Long on Facebook. Facebook has been trending North on the M,W,D charts and more recently has been ranging with a slight Bullish bias. I also took a Short position on Starbucks. This trade did not trigger, and even pulled back slightly. I will review again tomorrow but I dont think I will hold on to the position. The reason being, my risk appetite is not there now that FB has opened. See below.

My other open positions are performing well, barring my Short S&P which has retraced, currently carrying a .5% loss.

BUY NDQ.FB @ 78.60 with a Stop Loss @ 75.01

Talk tomorrow folks!
Bullbear

Hello All,

Well Friday is upon us once more and another week of trading draws to a close...

This week my portfolio was up and down like a yo-yo, finally levelling off today in pretty much the same position as at the beginning of the week. A small 1.1% return has been recorded. Quarter-end next week although results wont be published till next month, so I'm not sure what impact next week will have on my equity trades. My 52 Long on JNJ was stopped out today, a 1% loss taken there. The price has since recovered to yesterdays close. My 21 on JNJ continues in to further profit. Just under 2% with .6% locked in by the trailing stop. Two new trades taken this week, Facebook Long and S&P Short. Both hovering around break-even. Tech stocks took a bit of a battering this week, but the trend in FB is good, so next week will be an opportunity for this trade to push on.
I didnt place any further FX trades this week. I didnt spot any markets that I could take a trade with any confidence. I do want to get back into EUR/USD Short but my rules dont allow it at this time. I am seeking clearer guidance on my - 6ATR / Last theoretical trade - entry rule and I should have a fuller understanding at the beginning of next week. This will ensure I'm only out of a market for the minimum amount of time.

Well that's a brief summary of this weeks trading activity, any questions / comments, fire away. If not, I'll leave it at that, I'm smothered with a cold and drinking hot whiskey. Hopefully it will clear asap or I might have to drink the bottle ha!

Anyway, have a great weekend folks and roll on Monday!
Bullbear

When you are using such a strategy, you will face the drawdown at the end of the move when usually it goes parabolic and quickly reverse, giving back a chunk of what you made. One way to avoid that is to have a taking profit lurking above the market. You could use few standard deviations above the market.

Thanks systematicfx. I did some research on parabolic stop and reverses so I have added them to a couple of my charts to see how they play out with my other indicators. I'm afraid I dont understand the meaning of "...taking profit lurking above the market. You could use few standard deviations above the market." Please feel free to explain further. I am not long in this game and the trading universe is so huge, that a lifetime of learning may be required. In general though, I do not use a Take Profit at all.

Good day all,

Well I have not made any journal entries since Friday and in the meantime I have positioned two trades. A Short on EUR/GBP and a Long on GBP/AUD. Neither has triggered but as you can see I do expect Sterling to keep getting stronger and both EUR and AUD have been weakening of late. I have also been positioned Long on Crude at 95.88 for over two weeks now. We are closing in on this price so a re-check of the trade was performed today. The position size and stop are still valid so the trade still stands. No need to modify or re-book. I also closed my S&P Short at Breakeven. I didnt get the break south I was looking for and trade no longer looked profitable. I only manually intervene on open trades in rare cases. Generally my only adjustments to open trades is the stop and that is only to respect the ten day trail.

My open trades are carrying over 25% in equity which is a milestone, very happy about that. My account equity is moving towards 20% which will also be a milestone. Next I will want to see my balance start to move. It will in due course as my trades close out. I'm obviously hoping my trades continue to grow as opposed to getting stopped out anytime soon. Two-thirds of my open trades are profitable so no downside. Also good news. I am going to spend the rest of this week searching for good quality trades to enter. I will keep you posted.

If you remember my post from Friday, I was having an issue with re-entering Short on EUR/USD after being stopped out with a profit. I sought further guidance yesterday and there is no deviation from the 6*ATR / LTC rule. So no way back into that market for the foreseeable future. I will look elsewhere now for new trades. It was good to get confirmation though. Cements the rules in my head.

Enjoy the rest of the trading day folks!
Bullbear

Hello Bull Bear, been reading your thread, very good.
Are you still short on the AUD/NZD, if so, you should be doing real good.
Keep up the great work and good luck!
N2FX

Hi N2FX,

Hope all is well. Thanks for taking the time to read the thread. Just trying to keep a document of everything I do. Maybe I can find good and bad patterns in how I trade and hopefully increase performance! Plus it gives an opportunity for people like yourself and Systematicfx to give input which should allow me to see things from different perspectives.

I'm actually not Short at all on AUD/NZD, I only positioned for the trade but it never triggered. I read your post on another thread updating your own AUD/NZD position, congrats! Nicely done.

Cheers,
Bullbear

have not forgot you.. a bit busy will answer you next week....

Cool, thanks, talk then.

Good day traders,

Today will be my last journal entry for the week as I will not be at my workstation at all tomorrow.

So a busy week. Five trades have closed out after hitting their stops. The trades were all Long and the victims were JNJ, CAD/JPY, EUR/JPY, GBP/JPY and GBP/AUD. The three trades in bold, were profitable. Total profit of all five was 2.9%. My overall account equity now stands at 12.6% and my trades are carrying 16.4%. This is a decrease of 6% this week after closed trades are accounted for.

This is quite a heavy pullback. It's not unexpected though. When eleven trades are carrying 25% of your account value, a correction is likely. Having said that and after reviewing my remaining open trades, (the majority of which are profitable), I will now, immediately begin the process of stacking up my trades again. Patiently of course and obviously within my risk tolerence.

Three trades which have already opened and are all Short. S&P, Rolls Royce (LSE) and M&S (LSE). You will be aware that I closed S&P earlier in the week at breakeven. At the time I didnt like the make-up. I've been pretty indecisive with regards to trading S&P. I've taken the trade again, but I wont be afraid to shut it down again if the market doesnt perform for me. RR and M&S fit my favoured trade entry criteria. Both W,M charts are trending south and as you can see on the daily charts below, both have broken down out of a recent range. M&S and other high end retailers are being dragged down by Tesco and loss of market share to discount retailers such as Lidl and Aldi. Back in August I advised that I wanted to, but could not take a Short on Tesco due to my entry rules....did anybody out there review it and take it? If you did, I'm sure you're laughing all the way to the bank at this stage!

So that's it for another week. After a month of solid gains, the first week of October will record a loss. Still, plenty of time to ensure that this month is profitable and with an abundance of fresh trades to take, no doubt I will.

Have a great weekend folks, talk soon.
Bullbear

Good evening Traders,

Monday done, another tough day in the market. Recent Shorts on M&S, RR and Morrissons are yet to find traction, so currently just managing those trades and absorbing the volatility. The trades are still very much viable and I expect them to continue trending south. Hopefully the retracement being expierenced wont be enough to knock out my stops. Will just keep monitoring for now.

Gold, Silver, AUD/CAD and AUD/USD also retraced today, but these are all well established trades and are 'locked in' profitable so I have no concerns here.

Not much more to report this evening, time for a bit of shut eye, back at 6.

Best regards,
Bullbear

Hello All,

Today our AUD/CAD and AUD/USD Shorts were stopped out. This provided a 5% gain in account balance, finally pushing the balance into positive territory of 2%. Equity stands at 11% and open trades are carrying just under 8%. New trades that opened up today, Shorts on Juniper, CAD/JPY, Sage (LSE) and Thomas Cook. That's a total of nine new trades in the last seven days. Most are in negative territory as they are so recent, but that is already looking like it will change. They are pushing on breakeven, but it will be at least 10 days before these trades mature. I expect I could lose four of these trades due to the nature of the strategy, but if even five of the trades catch their trend, it will be a profitable month. I have thirteen trades open at the moment, four of which are profitable. I intend my new trades to make up the backbone of Octobers business, but we shall wait and see how they progress. My risk appetite has been satisfied and I wont be taking any new trades untill I am carrying an adequate floating profit. So it's time to play the waiting game once again. I'll continue to watch the markets so I know where I'll be entering when the time is right. I'll just manage my stops for now and continue journalling and reading up on new ideas.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted, but for now, it's goodnight!
Bullbear

Good evening traders,

Since my last journal entry on 07/10/14, we have had Gold, Silver and USD/ZAR trades stopped out for a combined profit of 6%. This leaves only one of my last batch of trades still open. This is a Long on USD/NOK currently carrying 2% with 1% locked in.

My new trades are beginning to get traction. Over half are now in positive territory, only slightly of course, but it's the confirmation that the entry point was good that's important here. If the trades can build momentum with the trend, a profit is likely. They carried negative 2% combined yesterday whereas today they are carrying positive 0.2%.

My account balance continues to grow, now standing at 7.8% with equity pushing it to 10%. This is down from equity of almost 20% on the 30th of September. This decline has not gone unnoticed and I am going to continue to find a way to determine when a trend has ended, faster than the 10 day trailing stop, In this regard I am going to add the parabolic SAR to all my charts so that I can test the indicator and get more attuned to this method. I will continue to use my trailing stop rule until I have the results of the SAR testing.

Any questions or comments, fire away. Happy trading folks!
BB

Good afternoon all,

Well the month had started very slowly, but things finally began to take shape again at the end of this week. We lost Facebook for a hit of 1% but my remaining trades are all positive and are carrying 8.6% as at COB Friday. My overall account equity has pushed back up to 15.6% and my account balance stands at just over 7%. I'm satisfied to be seeing growth now in both my account balance and account equity. I can't stress enough that it's still early days for my open trades and the chances of taking a loss on a couple more are still high. Having said that, every day the trades move further into profitabilty, the less likely a negative stop is.

It's a long learning curve and its heading in the correct direction. I am confident of becoming a successful trader. I'm putting in the work and I'm sure I will reap the rewards of my labour! How did I get to this point? Well in Autumn last year, I took a foundation trading course and in December I took an advanced trading course. In January I opened a demo account and worked on this for 6 months. I can't say, with any great success.... I felt I really had to get a live account open and experience trading in the real world. From June to August, I traded in a similar fashion to the way I traded the demo account. Using some of the rules of the strategy I had learned, but being impatient and also trading the market as if I could predict it. By August the writing was on the wall. I was either going to make only just enough money that this project would not be worth my while, or more likely, I was going to lose my account, slowly but surely. So I regrouped, got the books out again, studied the strategy I had been thought and came back in. Now I am mechanical with my rules, but far from invincible. I believe if I stick to my strategy in its entirity, I will see the results. I am certainly beginning to see the long term potential now and my confidence is growing along with my account! Long may it continue. I must say I really do enjoy trading, I have always had an interest in economics and Financial Markets, so maybe that helps me. Then again, I am a technical trader! But fundamentals and technicals are all part of the one puzzle in my opinion!

Anyway, that's a bit of useless information, but hey, it's my journal and it's for all aspects of my trading journey!

Have a great weekend folks!
Bullbear

Hello BB - Nice to see your thought patterns about your approach to trading, keep up the great work!
Cheers

Thanks N2FX, I appreciate the feedback. Hope all is well.

BB

Hello Traders,

Today saw losses incurred at the beginning of the month, cleared. My open trades are carrying just under 10% and account equity stands at 16.8%. Three trades under review, shorts on Morrisons, Rolls Royce and Sage. They have been open for over a week but are yet to gain traction and it may be worth closing them down and allocating resources elsewhere. Tomorrow I will make a final decision on their status.

Pending orders to shutdown, a Long on Crude and a Short on EUR/GBP. I missed the Short on Crude. Again a case of believing that oil would not continue lower as it did over the last couple of weeks, should have stuck to the technicals. "Take the trade when the opportunity presents itself". Lack of discipline that time. Noted.

Good start to the week all the same. Back tomorrow
BB

Hello BB

The EURGBP does look tempting, I do not have that pair on my radar, but I put it on and will watch for it. thanks

Hi N2FX et all,

I closed my Short position on EUR/GBP as I was looking to get in at around .7760. I can see where you would be looking to take the Short entry, on the pullback, is it? I would be looking to go long at todays price, but I dont have much of a trend on my side for the weekly and monthly, so I will leave it for now. EUR/GBP is also my worst performing pair historically.

Two trades I am positioned on today, Long Gold and Short USD/CNH. Neither have opened. As you can see in the chart below, I am waiting to see if USD/CNH can break thru the floor it's on and sink lower.

In my previous post, I advised that I would make a decision on the status of Morrisons, Rolls and Sage. I have decided to keep them. I have the stops there to knock them out at 1%, so if I close them now I will be acting prematurely.

That's it for this evening folks, happy trading!
Bullbear

Good evening Traders,

Pretty wild couple of days in the markets. My percentages have been up and down like a yo-yo. At one stage today I was 3% up and now as of writing I am 1.3% down. Both my Long on Gold and my Short on USD/CNH opened yesterday. Gold is loitering around Breakeven but I lost my Short on USD/CNH for a 0.7% hit. Retraced thru my stoploss before settling. My other trades have absorbed the volatility in the markets so I'm happy enough. I suppose I would have liked to see my Shorts on UK stocks continue trending down this week, but after a good move south this afternoon, they returned to their earlier prices. M&S even reversing further into negative territory. It seems these equities are in a consolidation period. I am expecting them to break lower, just patiently waiting for the trigger.

So it's a been a mixed bag today. No need to jump the gun and do anything rash, just ride it out and see where we go!

Enjoy the rest of the evenings trading!
Bullbear