The Dollar Cost Averaging Pivot Point Trading Method

Out of EUR/GBP short for 27.9:

Ewwwww .... . The demo is looking somewhat brutalized at the moment ... , as is the live ... .

Live Current Open Positions

EUR/AUD short at 1.47751/TP 1.47551
EUR/CAD short at 1.41402/TP 1.40404
EUR/JPY short at 147.424/TP 147.224
EUR/NZD short at 1.60217/TP 1.60117
GBP/AUD short at 1.85944/TP 1.85744
GBP/CAD short at 1.79419/TP 1.78000
GBP/NZD short at 2.02254/TP 2.02054

Penders

EUR/USD short at 1.23211/TP 1.2000 (Good for Day)
EUR/JPY short at 149.413/TP 147.224 (Good for Day)

Notes

Shortly after the New York close, I added legs to the EUR/AUD, EUR/NZD, GBP/AUD, and GBP/NZD shorts, since they were at or nearly at daily highs. I would naturally like to exit these positions (preferably at a small profit), and devote my leverage to more worthier causes (or, in the alternative, catch these pairs at better entry points than I did, particularly the EUR/AUD and EUR/NZD shorts). I am perfectly fine with settling for 10 or 20 pips in many cases where my strategy has proven unproductive; this may seem like an awful lot of effort for 10 or 20 pips, but it adds up over time ... .

In light of these additions, my usable leverage is kind of at the maximum of what I consider ideal (10 x equity or less; it is right at 10 x equity right now), so I naturally want to limit the number of additional positions that can open up while I attempt to close the currently open positions I've got, so am limiting good for day penders to EUR/JPY (which has fallen quite a bit off last week's high) and my old standby -- EUR/USD, which I want to get back in after having my rarely asserted SL hit last week after Draghi's talk ... . I feel sort of stupid setting my SL in so tight, getting stopped out, and then having price move in my direction after the post-Draghi spike ... .

All that being said, experiencing days like the past few can be discouraging, regardless of the method you're using. All of sudden, you're in a bad streak, and you begin to question what you're doing, whether you should continue doing things that way, or whether you should make drastic modifications to what you're doing. Don't panic, is what I tell myself. If necessary, shut down your platform for a few hours, step away, do something else. It will be there when you return. Think about what's occurring with your trades, but don't be so hasty to change the way you've been doing things merely on the basis of a couple of days of poor performance, especially if what you've been doing in the long run has been profitable. By the same token, be prepared to question whether what you are doing is fundamentally sound, especially if it has not been working over lengthy stretches of time. Additionally, review your trading plan (you should have one) and ask yourself whether you are adhering to the rules you have established, especially when it comes to risk management. Good risk management will allow you to weather fairly significant trading mistakes ... (which is kind of what I am doing now -- "weathering trading mistakes").

Huh, this is encouraging (but not an actionable trading idea ... yet, and that is even though I jumped the gun on anticipating the return of some strength in the Yen): http://www.forexfactory.com/news.php?do=news&id=516884 (The title of the Bloomberg article is "Yen Rallies Most in 7 Weeks on Speculation Decline Too Steep").

For example, EUR/JPY did come off of last week's high, but price has yet to break the 1H 200 Period SMA, so I wouldn't get really excited about the possibility that EJ, UJ, and GJ may suddenly plunge ... . (Please, please, please ... ).

I would also note that the demo is on the verge of being "overexposed" given my guidelines of 10 x equity maximum exposure to the market; it appears to be at 11 x equity right now, and there are orders in the hopper that may increase that ... .

youl make it bro!! keep your head up

Getting absolutely savaged by the AUD downturn ... . Lol. Just to have to endure the drawdown ... .

... but also still playing with house money from October/November gains, so it's all good ... (for now).

As an aside, I notice that the FXCM demo still only keeps 60 days worth of trades or so, so I'm glad I kept track of October and November's gains ... here somewhere ... (ruffles about desk).

... also, still got plenty of time left in the month to hit the 6%, although it appears that some lost ground will have to be covered at this point ... .

... But it's interesting how quickly the tables can turn on you, even if you're being fairly conservative. But this particular strategy, which does not use stop losses as a general practice, requires a bit of fortitude, since you may be riding out some of these trades that are headed away from "the mean" for several days, if not weeks. But if the last few days are any indication, things can turn as quickly in your favor just as quickly as they turn against you ... .

liquidity in the markets will have a drastic drop from the 16th due to holiday season, take that in mind.

It will make things somewhat odd ... . Things could go in any direction for no particular reason ... .

On the live side, out of the EUR/JPY short for 20 odd pips on the net position:



Oddly enough, the chart shows an 8/34 EMA cross, after which there is a break of the 1H 200 SMA that I should have waited for before entering short. However, it may not be ready to reverse its bullish course; that huge wick by my exit is down to last week's low; there are buyers there (at least there were .... ).

Went to bed around the middle of the Asian session somewhat concerned ... . Woke up this morning, and things look a whole lot better (not that they're great, mind you). I love it when things turn around when you've done nothing more than set your target prices and let the whole thing run ... . (Although I did close out the USD/JPY short positions manually ... .)

Looking at the demo, 3300 pips of movement in a day ... . Absolutely ridiculous ... . That would be like my best month in my live ... .

This is just a reminder to myself as to what this month's goal for the demo was:

Current Equity/Balance: $56,978/$60,321
This Month's Goal (Percent): 6.0%
This Month's Goal (Dollars): $61,389
Distance to Goal (Dollars) from Equity/Balance: $4,411/$1,068
Next Compounding Increase (In Lots): To .15 lots
Next Compounding Increase (Dollar Level): At $60,000

From the balance perspective, I am somewhat close; from the equity perspective, eh, not so much. Naturally if I can get to having the open positions move as a whole to the goal, I'll close everything out and call it a day ... .

But to keep things in perspective, only the closed trades really count; the open positions could go nowhere or, of course, go quickly south.

If my math is correct on the demo side, the trades closed today represent about 875 pips in gain:

On the demo side, the closed represent 108 pips or so:



The primary reason for the difference between the demo and the live is the demo is more conservative in the sense that I didn't do something as foolish as tripling up in Yen cross shorts ... . Naturally that paid off in the demo, but it is not something I want to generally do as a matter of course. If you're going to take a position as questionable as shorting a Yen cross on the notion that a correction is overdue (which is basically where I was going with those Yen cross shorts), then you should probably limit it to a single cross. If shit hits the fan and the position moves against you, you're not tripled up and can potentially hedge against your bad decision by going short Yen in one of the other crosses (for example).

On the demo side of things, I have moved up the TP's to BE + 20 pips for the net positions represented by EUR/NZD, EUR/AUD, GBP/NZD, and GBP/AUD. (You can have an EA calculate the average value of your net position in MT4; use a spreadsheet; or do it manually; Trading Station does it for you, so it's a bit handier that way.)

Some of the positions are getting quite long in the tooth in terms of the number of entries taken, so the TP's will now be somewhere other than at a "3" of the 3-Level ZigZag Semaphore indicator. Naturally, I could exercise patience and see if price moves in my direction all the way to the next "3" level, but it is sometimes better to take less, reduce your exposure, and then move on to attempting slightly better entries ... . The past few days have been quite volatile, so if I can get out of these positions for +20 pips on the net positions plus the swap, I'll consider myself both lucky and happy.

The EUR/CAD, GBP/CAD, and EUR/GBP positions I'm leaving alone for now, as I've just initiated entries on those ... .

Out of my live EUR/NZD and GBP/NZD short positions for 265.8 pips:



I would note that the order at the very top was an entry order that was a mistake on my part; it was a buy when it should have been for a sell entry ... . Always check your entry orders twice ... . The 10.2 USD/JPY short was a scalp during last night's Asian session.

That f'd up EUR/NZD order kind of pisses me off now that I looked at the chart ... . Could have picked up a few extra pips with that entry ... .