Arnie's trading journal

Hello everyone!

I am pretty new to the forex thing, only been doing it for 4-5 months and learning everyday. I wish I had known about this forum when I started, it would have saved me some money!

I have a small mini account that I opened up with FXCM and thought it would be interesting to have a journal of my trades and reasonings behind them so I could learn from myself and hopefully get feedback from other people.

I have the luxury to be doing this 24/7 if I want to, working from home has its advantages! So I thought i'd take up a hobby, with the potential of a little bit of a return.

So far it's been a rocky back and forth experience. I went up as far as 300$ on the mini account only to dive back down to 88$ because I held onto a position out of pure stubborness.

There's a glint of hope that by making my trades public that I'll be able to hold myself from making dumb reactive moves which have always seemed to cost me any profit made.

I trade on EUR/USD only at the moment and will occasionaly trade on foreign news. I love trading news because it helps with my overall balance,but I have lost a few times because of harsh pullbacks (screw you banks with all your monies!).

well, that's it for now...



Beginning balance : 100$
Ending balance : 154$

I'd post the transactions and some graphs, but my client won't connect cause they're closed and my charts are somewhat lame.

Hey Arnie, Ive done what your doing too. Maybe you should put some more cash in before trading. Because 3 losses in a row would spell certain doom. BElieve me I know that. When I started, I just thought to drop in the minimum for the mim account and blew it twice. Then when I decided to put a grand in it went much better. But if you can make your cash back that way, then more power to you man.

I wish I had 1k to put into my mini, but unfortunetly I am not that fortunate. I try to be very diligent about where I enter.

I've been using the 3 EMA bands 8-22-51 on the hourly-30 mins - 15 mins charts and it's been ok thus far.

My biggest problem is knowing when to get out. I should honestly just hop out the moment I see a 100% gain, but I always want to see just how far it'll go... only to get some traceback.

Take for example the EUR/USD on friday, it hovered in the 1.2850-80 range (I was sitting at 1.2842 short because I saw it dip and thought it was going to break through and didn't) I was able to sustain the bouncing around and when bernanke gave his speech it broke through the barriers and went as low as 1.2825.

I was pertty certain that it was going to make a steady descent to the 1.27xx mark, but then there was a major pullback and I had to jump out before it ate through all my profit.

Now, looking at the charts I am going to wait for the charts to break the 1.2850 mark before hoping short again, there really shouldn't be any reason to NOT break the 1.2700 monday... I am probably wrong.

Back to the topic, having 1k would be nice... it would certainly make life a bit less stressful. I bid a 10k lot which gives me roughly 100 pip move in the wrong direction, I think that's enough leeway for me for now. I never have 2 trades going at the same time because I just don't have the backing... but I am hoping that being smart about my trades will get me closer to the 1k mark.

I have lost alot of money learning thus far, but have been able to make it back.

My target for next monday is reaching 200$, once I do I will hop out of the trade and call it a day. Which is a really tough thing to do beacuse I always see oppurtunity to make more and end up making less.

Thanks for the reply~! Appreciate the feedback.

Yeah I understand exactly what you mean with not knowing when to get out. Maybe if you set a limit for yourself, it would help. I know thats hard advice to follow because i dont even do it all the time myself. Check out all the forums on psychology and stuff because those help out a tremendous amount. Before I really checked into that, I lost some money that way because of greed and then watch as it would traverse back down. Best luck to you in your trading.

Arnie,

Good to have you on board. Mike is right, it is very difficult to move forward with minimimum capital in the mini account. But on the other hand if you do not succeed, it will be an inexpensive lesson, wish I could say the same. Just be very careful with your lot sizes, stick in limits and stops, make it last and dont get greedy, or stubborn, the market doesnt care how you feel.

Northpro
Wavetrade

How do you use the 8, 22, and 55 ema?