hurvinek trading

Thanks, boxingislife. I hope I can keep it up. Or at least stay in the positive territory.

No closed trade on Monday. The range was too small, and I expected the euro go further up. It didn't. In fact, at the time of writing this, it came back 50 pips from yesterday's high. I have to be careful today. Lots of news coming out, and I don't want to run into big, multiple losses like last week. I plan to scale out from my positions slowly, even with a loss. (I noticed that the first week's lucky series weighs on me in a sense that I don't want to admit I made a bad decision with a trade, I want to wait until it turns positive. Needless to say, it's a very bad tactic. Let's see, if today I can take losses proudly and calmly.)

This day was about patience vs discipline. Whichever you choose you can argue you did the right thing. Both can result in a loss, but you kept a certain part of your system under control. Today I chose both. First patience and then discipline. I never complain about not winning more money than I actually do, because you can't be in every move from bottom to top. But today I was a bit out of luck. Just when I decided to be disciplined, and not hope for a breakout (that hasn't happened when good news were coming) on a day when bad news are out. So I knew there is a chance of the euro breaking through 1.2780 when I saw it recovering from the lows of the day despite the dollar-positive PCE and ISM, but I said to myself: you are heavily invested and were in minus most of the day. Don't risk another refusal, get out in time. Two minutes later the price broke through. By that time two out of three trades had been closed. But one was still running. Maybe I could have gained more with a little more patience. But that was only bad luck, and luck you cannot control. I am happy, because today I could control myself, and could close all my trades with a nice profit. 540 bucks. Shall I stop trading for the rest of the week? I won't, but time will tell. Maybe I should have.

EURUSD long @ 1.2733 TP 1.2775 +42 pips
EURUSD long @ 1.2749 TP 1.2775 +26 pips
These two trades were still from last week. As you can see it in my previous post, I expected to close them with a loss, and felt uncomfortable seeing all those dollar-boosting news coming out. I noticed though, that the dollar cannot get real momentum, cannot break through the range despite all the good data. I didn't expect that it would turn back still today, but I took it as a sign of overall dollar weakness, so I decided to wait. When we came back to the top of the range, I decided not to risk it going back down again, and took my profit for the day.

EURUSD long @ 1.2777 TP 1.2817 + 40 pips
Also a trade from last week. I entered on a breakout too quickly, and it proved to be a false one. These are the trickiest trades, because you suddenly sit in a position which you entered at the top of the range, and the price comes back, and stays inside that range. You hope the range breakout will be in your favor. The right thing to do is probably to admit your mistake, and quit when the breakout is refused by the market. But it's a very hard thing to do. So you just sit and wait. You draw the range on the chart, and hope. If you lose, you lose big time. You plan to quit when the price reaches your side of the range again. But when it does, you start to hope it'll break through this time. Only it doesn't. It bounces back, goes against you. "You fool" you say to yourself, and the whole game starts again. My game ended well this time. I closed the other two positions, and let this one run till the end of the day (9 pm, GMT+2). Then I took the money off the table in the hope that during the Asian session or tomorrow in the European we'll see some pullback, which opens new possibilities to enter euro long. Because, as usual, I maintain my short term view (euro bull) until otherwise proven.

Total for the day: +$540

This was again a day without closed trades. It seems that I am slowing down. I have two open positions at the moment, euro longs, both in a minus. Not much was happening on Wednesday, we couldn't break through Tuesday's high, so the price came back down. I kept my positions for better times. Hope to get out of them before Friday's NFP. I would like to get there with all positions closed, so that I can enter the news properly and ride the waves. But this needs some euro positive reaction after the ECB rate decision and Trichet's speech. Fingers crossed.

It seems that my latest post has become the victim of forexfactory's server upgrade. Thanks again to those of you who commented yesterday (hondakorn, witchazel). Your posts are gone, but not forgotten.
I will repost yesterday's results soon, latest over the weekend. I am now focusing on NFP. Good luck to everyone trading it.

So here's what happened on Thursday. I had two open positions on EURUSD, I entered them believing we are going to take out the previous high of 1.2835. It was stupid of me, I could have expected the market staying on the safe side before major news like ECB rate decision and Trichet speech, and NFP coming up. Luckily I could close one of the two trades with a slight profit. The other one I was planning to close before NFP to be able to have a fresh start when the news of the week comes out.

EURUSD long @ 1.2802 TP 1.2811 +9 pips
This was a trade on the first pullback right after reaching the high of 1.2835. I had to sit and wait patiently, the price went back to 1.2740, but I still knew the dollar is weak, so I just kept on waiting. The ECB rate decision was enough to push it back up above 1.2800, and after not being able to break through the previous high, I decided to close the trade. I was right, the price came back below 1.2800 before the NFP.

Total for the day: +$45

The day of Non-Farm Payrolls. Adrenaline playing boogie-woogie. I still had an open position, I couldn't close at a good price, so I decided to risk leaving it in for the NFP, as I believed it's gonna be weak. I played the classic game with the NFP, and should it have been strong, I would have exited 10 pips below the pre-release price, and at the same time would have entered short. On the other side, I had a stop order to add to my long position, which got executed with a 15-pip slippage (first time ever with my broker), but it is still profitable, so I can't really complain. This trade is still open, going over for next week.

EURUSD long @ 1.2822 TP 1.2901 +79 pips
Luckily the data came as expected, and soon my trade turned to be a winner. I let it run, waited patiently when it stalled for a while around 1.2860-80, and exited just when it peaked for the day. Well executed exit, but the entry a couple of days ago was a bit too early. The lesson I learned here is that I have to focus more on evaluating market sentiment. When the players are uncertain about a rate hike due very soon, it is highly unlikely that important highs are going to be taken out. Hesitation shows in range trading. In this case there was a definite euro bull bias that tricked me into the belief that the price will move steadily upwards. What I did right though is that when the price went against me, I didn't lose the longer term focus of dollar weakness.

Total for the day: +$395

Evaluation of week #3:
First of all I have to apologize. The account balance increase percentages I posted when evaluating the first two weeks, are wrong. I made a mistake in my Excel sheet, and only noticed it this week. At the end of the post I will show you the correct figures. The rest of the numbers are right.
Coming back to the results: this was a week of records. I had a record low number of trades, a record high of profit, and an unbeatable record of winning ratio (100 percent).
The only thing I can really point out as a mistake is that I don't always wait enough on pullbacks, and enter positions too early. This not only increases the risk of going into a loss, but also prevents me from entering the market on a much favorable price, because by then I am fully invested (and I am trying to keep the rule of not adding to a losing position). I seem to slow down as for the number of trades I enter a week, and it causes a bit of an unbalance in my trading. I enter positions as early as I used to when I was going for 10-pip gains, but now I go for much more, and sit in trades for much longer. This would require more patience on the entry side. I'll aim for improving on this next week.

Results of week #3
Trades: 5
Winning trades: 5
Losing trades: 0
Breakeven trades: 0
Winning ratio: 100%

P/L: +$980
Initial account balance increase/decrease: +21.9%

Cumulated results since 17/07/2006 (3 weeks)
Trades: 39
Winning trades: 28
Losing trades: 9
Breakeven trades: 2
Winning ratio: 71.8%

P/L : +$2145
Initial account balance increase/decrease: +47.5%

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Revised result of week #1
Initial account balance increase/decrease: +17.8%

Revised result of week #2
Initial account balance increase/decrease: +8.5%

(Note that my account is in euro, while my profits are calculated in dollar, so with the change of the exchange rate between the two currencies the percentages also change. That's why the week's results added up don't match the cumulated result.)

nice thread thanks for the updates i can relate with your experiences can you tell us what timeframes you are trading? (im not asking about your system thats your business )

thx,
mwbro

My system is a bit of everything, and so is my timeframe. As I wrote in my first post, it is very simple and discretionary. I use basic fundamental analysis to decide on the short term trend (usually until the next major news release), I combine the result with looking at the daily chart. My technical analysis doesn't go beyond support and resistance lines (mostly horizontal, I only draw major trendlines, and rarely base my decisions on them) and fibonacci numbers. The latter I use not because I believe in them, but because the market does. No other indicator at all. No price action or candlestick patterns.
Based on the simplified fundamental and technical analysis I decide which direction I am going to take, and stick to it. Then I go down to hourly and 15 min charts, wait for a pullback and enter.
This is the typical (and ideal) scenario, but I also trade promising breakouts and news. The time I keep a position ranges from a few hours to a few days, and I noticed this timeframe gets longer (look at the number of trades decreasing week by week).
So nothing fancy here, really. Feel free to ask for more details if you are interested.

Yet another day without closed trades. I added to my euro long position on the pullback, and now I am thinking what to do. Shall I quit before the FOMC rate announcement, or shall I wait for the result? My present view is that I count on a correction of the correction, and plan to quit before the announcement taking whatever profit I have, and then reenter. Maybe I will not close all my positions, but only 2 out of 3. I will see. I am bit uncertain about how the market will react to a pause (a hike is a definite dollar bull for me), but on the long run I still believe euro has to go up. As usual, I will trade into this direction until proven otherwise.

The painful stuff will come later. Because yesterday was an odd day with the whipsaw after the FOMC announcement. My subconscious expected it, as I was very uncertain, and did not take the trade as usual. I will dedicate a separate post to my thoughts on this, because I feel I need to clear things for myself.
Until the rate hike I did what I had to do and what I planned to do. I felt sorry for having to close a trade with only a slight profit that had 70 pips in it after the NFP on Friday. But a profit is a profit, and I can at least pretend I had a good day.

EURUSD long @ 1.2830 TP 1.2840 +10 pips
This was the trade with a 15-pip slippage after the NFP. I didn't close it at the top, nor at the end of the day. This is the second time I don't make optimal profit with this tactic, so next time I will keep this in mind.
With the exit I acted according to plan. To reduce my risks, I closed it before the FOMC announcement.

Total for the day: +$100

I am trying to get things straight in my head, so here is an attempt to evaluate the FOMC rate decision and the following market reaction.

The market was expecting a pause. Gave it an 80 percent chance. But at the same time there was a lot of uncertainty. Will the Fed hike or not? And if they don’t, what will be the rhetoric of the announcement? And how will the market react? Is a stop already priced in? Which is going to be more important? The number or the blah-blah around it? I felt the same uncertainty as everybody in the market. Well, maybe not as everybody, but as the market as a mass.

And then everything came as expected. The Fed stopped, and announced a statement that suggests a hope there will be no need for further hikes, but also an uncertainty similar to that of the market. They have no clue, so they will leave the door open. Bernanke, a new Fed chief is in a very awkward position, because he has to fight still increasing inflation, but growth at the same time seems to slow down. Now the Fed’s main concern is said to be inflation, but they also look at a longer timeframe. This long timeframe brings uncertainty. Have they done enough to control inflation? They’ll know next year for sure. After 17 raises in a row they had to leave the door open. A new chairman has to leave the door open. That’s why I say the rhetoric came as expected.

So how did the market react to the expected stop in rate hikes and the expected rhetoric? After a spike (which is always due to the pure number, and there is little thinking behind) it seemed that the market took the expected as a dollar relief. Which in my eyes means that there was a common fear of a more dovish Fed rhetoric, and the market was getting ready for the worst case scenario. Some analysts say the announcement was more dovish than expected, but I say it was still less dovish than it was feared.

Another aspect of the sudden relief resulting in dollar going stronger is the view that the dollar is oversold. The market has been expecting this stop since last December, and took EURUSD from 1.1635 to 1.2970. That’s a lot. Shall we go even further? The market rather said: I have been buying the rumor, now I’ll be selling the news.

So is the market right? Is this really a beginning of a beautiful bull trend for the dollar? I can hardly answer that question. On one hand I am nowhere near to be an expert market analyst, on the other hand I always follow the market, not predict it. But from all the above I believe what we saw yesterday was a nervous reaction, and in the coming days we’ll see the dollar pick up the bearish tone again.

Now I am aware of the fact that I have already bet on this scenario, so my mind may be playing games with me to reassure me to keep my losing trades. So let’s just say I’ll try to keep the possibility of an alternative outcome in mind, and keep cool enough to be able to react and close my losing positions should the dollar really pick up.

While writing all this the European early morning session has started, and the EURUSD indeed started to climb back up. As a first sign of trying to stay humble, I don’t take this as an indication of me being right with the above.<o>
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Sorry for the long post, but I had to do this to make my view clear for myself.

As my trading slows down I am afraid I will be giving you less and less excitement day by day. I had no closed trades yesterday either. I expect the dollar to go down this week, and instead of jumping in and out, I decided to wait. The break of 1.2900 in EURUSD will be key. If we are done with that, I expect to test the 1.2975 high and later the psychologically important 1.3000. The question is whether the market is ready to take the Fed hike stop as a stop and not just a pause, and whether all this is not already priced in. If the answer to these questions is yes and no, we'll break through. If the answer to the first question is no, another question arises: when is the market going to digest the new setup, and be ready to act upon it? If the answer to the second question is yes, the next question is: when is the market going to give up trying to break through upwards, and decide to turn downwards?
As usual, I have no answers, but I still keep my dollar bearish bias, and go with the trend until a clear sign of a reversal.

without realising it ...from day trader you become a swing trader, so instead of shooting for a quick 10 pip,( ugy mint a portyazo vegvari vitezek,rajtautes szeruen gyorsan ki es vissza be) you leave your trades to mature, with this inevitably comes bigger profit, less fun and excitement, trading becomes boring...but at least looks more professional

Took a couple of days off to digest a major loss. I made all the typical mistakes you can imagine, and lost all the money I won in the last three weeks. It only took two days. <o></o>

Those of you who have been following my thread know that I expected the dollar go down further. And all of you know it wasn’t what’s happened. Normally it is not a problem, you expect that the trend to continue, and when it doesn’t, you reevaluate your opinion and act accordingly. <o></o>

But this wasn’t what I did. I stubbornly stayed in an overinvested position. It also happens that you miss to close a position when it would be profitable, because you expect it to go furher up. But I didn’t close it when I was proven wrong. I could have exited at breakeven easily, but I tokk heavy losses instead. The reason was simple: I wanted to keep the myth of me suddenly have become invincible. I didn’t want to take a loss. Not even a small one. Not even a breakeven. I took a very expensive lesson here, and I can just hope that I learnt from it. Because this is not the first time.<o></o>

Without further detailed analysis, here are the trades that took away all my previous profit. Further whining about it might follow.<o></o>

EURUSD long @ 1.2856 SL 1.2740 -116 pips
EURUSD long @ 1.2883 SL 1.2740 -143 pips
EURUSD long @ 1.2834 SL 1.2740 -94 pips
EURUSD short@ 1.2740 SL 1.2785 -45 pips
EURUSD short@ 1.2781 TP 1.2735 50 pips
EURUSD short@ 1.2733 SL 1.2755 -22 pips
EURUSD short@ 1.2764 SL 1.2749 15 pips

Total for the day: -$2715

Weekly summary. Forgive me for not posting an evaluation this time. It's painful enough to post the sheer numbers.

Results of week #4
Trades: 9
Winning trades: 4
Losing trades: 5
Breakeven trades: 0
Winning ratio: 44.44%

P/L: -$2615
Initial account balance increase/decrease: -59.3%

Cumulated results since 17/07/2006 (4 weeks)
Trades: 48
Winning trades: 32
Losing trades: 14
Breakeven trades: 2
Winning ratio: 66.6%

P/L : -$470
Initial account balance increase/decrease: -10.66%

I believe both daytrading and swing trading can be done successfully. At the moment I tend to be somewhere in between. For me, as last week's result clearly shows, the key is discipline. Hope to improve on that.

Back on track, I keep on running this journal. Hopefully it'll help me recover from my losses. I try to keep saying to myself I am doing a good job, I just made a mistake last week, and I'll learn from it.
Monday was another mistake though. I couldn't follow the market during the day, but I still opened a position. I placed a stop, but at the wrong place, and got hit after running into a 20+ pip potential profit.

EURUSD long @ 1.2725 SL 1.2694 - 31 pips
The new rule is that I use a stop loss instead of trying to second guess the market. I know it is stupid to put the stop where it can be expected, but I still put it there. A short stop hunt took me just out of my position before turning back. Better luck next time. Or better stop placement.

Total for the day: -$155

Wow look like you had a rough day Hurvinek! Hope tomorrow will be better for you.