My Trade Journal - DCB

I am on the sidelines watching price movement. Waiting is the hardest thing for me. Looking at the USD/JPY I looked at it between 1:00 to 3:00 a.m. EST and saw how it was essentially not moving. I expected it was waiting for the US unemployment claims that was released at 8:30 a.m. and it was. Now it has wild swings. Usually one sees wild swings when price is ready to reverse direction, so I am still waiting to get an indication of what it wants to do.

I am still waiting to place an order. The USD/JPY has gone down to the 0.382 fib retracement line I drew. Will it pull back some or to the trend line I drew to continue down or is the 119.34 area where it will find support to continue up? I am not in a hurry and will wait. I also know tomorrow as the first Friday of the month we get job numbers that the market eagerly awaits.

4 December 2014.
The price moved up to the trend line I had drawn and it has stayed in that area. I am expecting it to move tonight.

4 December 2014
I am selling the USD/JPY. My open price is 119.742 and I have a limit order of 119.396. I believe the price will go back down to the 119.34 area.

I am watching the 5 minute bars because I am going to move my SL into the black until the price breaks below the 119.66 range. I want to make sure it will go past 119.66;

My decision to sell the USD/JPY was wrong. It did not go to 119.66 so it looks like that immediate low will hold. I will look to buy later tonight. I was stopped out at 119.829 for a 8.7 pip loss.

The Leading Indicators for Japan were released 1 hour ago so I entered to buy the USD/JPY.

5 December 2014
The price was barely moving so I tightened my SL for my long position of the USD/JPY. I was stopped out at 120.059 for a 2.1 pip gain. I may have better results when the London session opens.

I have been watching my pairs and I have decided to place a sell order for the USD/JPY. I was really hesitant to sell the USD/JPY, but I have decided to take a chance. Last night I saw an indication that it wanted to go down, but I waited. Time will show me if I am correct.

I closed my position, because I thought I was premature in my decision. I had a loss of 5.7 pips.

11 December 2014
I have been away because I have been thinking how to change how I execute trades. The reason I am thinking about how I execute my trades is to be more available for my family. My broker is FXCM and it offers their mobile trading station on a smart phone. I decided to use a smart phone rather than my computer and external monitors. This is a big change for me because with my computer and a second monitor I have a bigger view of a chart and I can draw trend lines or other things to help my decision to place an order. Since this is a big change for me, I have been trading using a demo account on my mobile trading station. I have had to change how I look at the price and how I execute my trade. In the past I used my mobile trading station to manage my open trades while I was away from my computer, but I placed my orders on my computer. I am convinced it will work and I will work to make it work for me. My only objective is to make money. Fortunately, I have had a lot of screen time which will help me make this transition to another approach.

15 December 2014
I am now comfortable with the mobile trade station and started trading today with my live account. I made a couple of mistakes in judgement, but I ended in the black. Here are my results for the day.

Tuesday 16 Decedmber 2014
I finished in the black, but I made some bad decisions. When I transitioned to the mobile trade station I decided to use line charts rather than the candlestick charts that I have been using for many years. My thought was all I care about is where is the price now and were do I think it is going. I tried to keep it very simple since I was using the mobile trade station.

Today I switched to candlesticks although I had been successful yesterday and in the beginning of today using the line chart. I switched back to the line charts and remembered to keep it simple and not to overtrade.

I have attached my results for yesterday and today.

17 December 2014
The market is waiting for the FOMC statement this afternoon, so I may sit out today. Many times it is difficult to have a gain on a day like this, so I rather not trade. Last night I had two more trades so I have attached my revised daily trade results for 16 Dec. 2014.

19 December 2014.
I have had one week using the FXCM mobile trade station on my smart phone. I switched to this method to have more flexibility, be more available to my family and to not be tied to a computer whether on my desk or having to carry a laptop that has to be booted up. Last week I used a demo account using the mobile trade startion to better understand and have confidence in the mobile trade station. This week is traded my live account using mobile trade station. I have been looking how I look at prices such as line charts versus candlesticks. I have used candlesticks for many years, but I was open to looking at prices differently. I have settled on candlestick charts with bollinger band with the moving average line hidden. I use the bollinger band to frame the price and it helps me know what action the price will take. I also use the relative strength index.

This week I only gained 57 pips, but what is important to me is consistency. I trade to make money to increase my life style. I am more focused on consistently gaining each week. Early this week I was up 69 pips but I finished with a gain of 57. That is something I will work on. Wednesday I only had one trade which was a loosing trade, loosing 9.3 pips. I did not trade until Wednesday evening since the FOMC was being released that afternoon.

Thursday the first two trades were loosing trades. When I became active in trading that day the pairs I were watching did not want to go very far in one direction so I several small gains as I moved my stop lose into the black. I finished that day with a loss of 5.4 pips.

Today I only had one trade. I was in a meeting this morning and after the meeting I had this one trade for a gain of 11.00 pips. I had a 20 pip limit order, but I opened the trade while I was in a store and since I could not manage the trade effectively I moved my stop loss into the black, and then hoped the price would continue to my limit order. It did not so I was stopped out with a 11.00 pip gain.

I do not plan to trade any more the next two weeks using my live account. I probably will use my demo account.

I have been to be away for awhile, but it was a productive time. I thought about my trading and my method. I was able to see clearly what I what I was doing and the mistakes I have made. I corrected these mistakes and changed my method of trading. I realized that I have had let others influence me when in fact I know as much as more as they. My goal is to make money for the needs and desires of my family and I know being consistent in my results is the key to my success. I know if I can consistently make 20 to 30 PIPs each day without loosing that or more the following days or weeks I will be successful. The week ending April 17, 2015 was my first week of trading with this method and with my new focus. I made too many trades last week, but I will work on improving in that area next week. I have attached the results of my trading for the week ending April 17, 2015.

I had a gain of 21.8 PIPs with 5 trades in the early part of the London session today. Although a gain of 20 to 30 PIPs is my daily goal I work to have a greater gain. During the early part of the U.S. session today I had 3 losing trades of a total of 17.8 PIPs. I regained that finishing with a 24.5 PIP gain with 11 winning trades, 4 losing trades for a total of 15 trades with a 73.33% win percentage. I do not want to have a large number of trades because although the commission amount is reasable, if I have a lot of small gain trades the commission will reduce my profitability.

Tuesday 21 April 2015
Today I only had 6 winning trades and 0 losing for a total PIP gain of 33.50. I have been trading the EUR/USD and thought it would have a major move around 1000 or 1100 EST. I was not confident of the direction so I stayed out an watched. It went up.

Wed 22 April 2015
I was definitely off my game today. There was a lot of opportunity, but I did not capitalize on it. I had a total of 23 trades today, 10 winning and 13 losing for a gain of 10.30 PIPs.

Thursday 23 April 2015
I had a bad start and I can only blame my poor trading. I deviated a little from my method of trading with a loss of 25.70 PIPs, but I recognized my error and made corrections. I was able to recover the 25.70 PIPs I lost and finished my trading with a gain of 24.80 PIPs.