Getting the monkey of my back!

Hello if you are reading this.

This thread is a place for my ramblings, if you want to join in, please do but keep it polite. Otherwise, this is not the thread you are looking for, move along.....

Background
I have been trading forex on and off for many years, tried all sorts of systems, mechanical, EA, S/R, 5 minute, 1 hour, you name it. As a mathematical person I have always believed there is a way out there to consistent profits as charts regularly create patterns and waves... Its easy to see in the past, just not so easy to see them as they develop.

I am like many in the UK a wage slave, I work a job i don't like just to earn enough to pay the bills. The monkey on my back has always been money, and earning enough to become financially independent. I have a dream of opening a little woodworking workshop and making fancy items lol.. But to do that i need a passive income.

Where am I at right now.
I have developed a system that I began on 1st September. Since then my initial deposit of £175 has turned into £500. I have good hopes for it, but this is not why I am posting..... Please do not ask for the system.
All I will say is its daily charts looking to get in early on a trend change. Cut losses and run profits until trend slows.

I am posting because the biggest threat going forward as I see it is the emotional rollercoaster of having larger sums of money at risk. I want a way to not only monitor my trading, but also record my thoughts and feelings. Recently I have several positions in a large gain, but watched in panic as that gain reduced dramatically during the day. Most of it came back, but if I feel that way with tens of pounds at stake, how will I feel with hundreds of pounds at stake?

Anyway.. my trade explorer is there for all to see. I recently closed all my open positions due to the impending USA presidential election. I will begin again after that (probably Wednesday)

For info I am UK based. Trade off daily charts and open / close trades at about 9/10 pm GMT.

I'll probably edit this post with more info in the future

Hello

Im blaak from South Africa and i understand where you coming from as i firmly believe that your trading strategy eliminates the 'emotions' aspect in trading.
i.e from my side my strategy does not allow me to enter a trade before i see a confirmation in price like a HH or HL, even i need to see price price on a fib level or support or resistance so initially once i have confluence in all my set points i take the trade with no feelings the market confirmed i just follow what it says.
If i make a loss i go and review the trade to find out were the jinx was in the strategy. Keep to your strategy then the emotions will be in check. Risk Management that's key as well

nice start Slowly.

You have a similar trading strategy to myself. daily, look for reversals in trend then back in for trend continuation.

with daily TF trading sometimes i feel it's best not to monitor trades, except at the end of the day to see how that day formed.
if you are concerned with increases in lot sizes then adjust to suit e.g for every $1000 up lot size 0.1 (passive) or 0.5 (aggressive). one will grow account slowly and keep you in the game longer if all goes wrong, the other grow the account but you are out of the game quicker if all goes wrong...just a question of risk appetite. I prefer the former.

Thanks for the support guys.

Kraven - I really understand what you say about risk size and confidence. I use spread betting in the UK and due to the smallest available (10p per pip) and having large stop losses on a daily TF i've naturally needed to have quite a large risk. Currently my risk is about 5% per trade. It might seem a lot, but due to the large stop loss if it goes the wrong way I usually close with a smmaller loss. However I can imagine that as my capital increases I shall want to lower that down quite a bit. I'm fully aware that if I have 10 trades open that could potentially lose 50% of my capital.
That being said, what I have noted about the system is that often when I have a lot of open trades they act like a basket, and even if a few are losses then the other gains far outweigh them. Again, I am fully aware this is early days, I also believe that if I keep having continued success then that may reduce some of the worry.

Just waiting for the US election to get out of the way and I can get back on to it.

I'm glad you have learned to stay out of the market in times like this..It's the one thing that lets me down and i can't seem to help myself. big wins early on with gold and usamxn to loose it on uj and uchf trades. when you look at the turn around, right on the new daily candles (NY time) it makes you believe all this is rigged.
Will sit it out for a day or so....believe USD will retrace back down on fears of no Dec rate hike due to unexpected election win.

Well its a brave new world we enter under Donald Trump.

The charts look a real mess atthe moment, most pairs with huge spikes and ending the day mostly where they started.

Not much for me to see as most pairs are in the middle of their moves, just one new trade for me today

AUDCAD sell at 1.0254.....sl at 1.0345

Quite a strong reversal and lots of room on the down side after a sustained run up. Lets see how it goes.

'I am like many in the UK a wage slave, I work a job i don't like just to earn enough to pay the bills. The monkey on my back has always been money, and earning enough to become financially independent.'
I feel your pain I'm exactly the same. I wish you all the luck in the world.
AUDCAD looks promising on daily. good 100 pips or so at least bit of divergence too.
Are you taking multiple positions per trade? allowing you to run some and average out entry slightly?

look for the CAD to take a hit...worries over NAFTA

..or not so good. still come down though eventually.

Blah... well there we go, first one out the way. And after my stop is hit, price returns back where it came from Markets still seem a bit spikey and lots of uncertainty I feel.

Sppon, no I don't bother with muliple positions, simply in or out.

Anyway, I did a thing today to hopefully remove some of the demons. I had an MT4 app on my phoone and regularly checked it at work, stressing about every pip up or down and willing my positions to go up.

I uninstalled it today.

It was definitely an easier day because of that.

I need to try and train myself to only check once a day, enter or exit as required, then leave my positions to run. Easier said than done, but thats the aim.

Anyway, 5 new positions today. I'm very much a chartist and quite robotic. If my charts say enter, I enter. Its worked OK so far.

Much better today. The five positions from yesterday have recovered and my equity is back over where it was 2 days ago.

No positions to close.

2 positions opened.

I'm sure I will get some comments about opening on a Friday evening and not holding over the weekend. My opinionof that is that I hold positions for multiple days, average of 4 i think and good runners can be a week or more. If I don't hold positions over the weekend I'm cutting short my runners which is not what I want to do. As far as opening positions on a Friday evening. I know there are often odd movements on a Friday late on because of people closing for the weekend, but in my opinion it is not enough to change the direction of travel on a daily time frame.

As I said before, if my charts say buy or sell... thats what I do

The see-saw continues, not a great day today. Have lost alot of the gains from Friday.

Must remember, stick to the plan.... stick to the plan.....

Have trimmed one loser today, the other position currently in the red needs to be held according to my chart. Not so sure but must .... 'stick to the plan'
No new positions today.

Another poor day. Weeks like this are where I start to lose faith. Nothing seems to be happening, I'm taking several losses on the bounce and none of the winners are really pushing a good trend. Meanwhile, charts I am not part of continue to show great gains.

Have trimmed a few that are losing or my chart says have run out of steam, opened a couple of others.

However, having thought about it, its similar to how the beginning of this journey was. My system relies on being in the trend from very early on, which means getting in when it turns. As I closed everything over the US election, it is going to take time for the new trends to shake out and to get in on the trade when they turn. I just need to be patient (not one of my strong points) and stick to the plan.

Reminder, stick to the plan... thats it lol

I like your draw downs. Seems like you have the patience to wait for good trades - that makes the losses worthwhile, doesn't it?

Patience, yes thats a good word for it. Unfortunately at the moemnt I seem to be having lots of small losses without the big gainers. Its at this point in the past that I would usually ditch my system and look for the next one.

Yes the gremlins are definitely in my head. What if its just lots of losers from now on? What if you had a lucky few weeks and now its all going to go wrong? What if all those profits are going to disappear?

These are the worries that go around, and I'm sure I'm not the only trader to go through this. What I just keep reminding myself at the moment is thatthere are currently lots of great winners showing on the charts, great trends that I just missed out on because I was out of the market during the election. I just need to wait for them to finish their current trent then turn around and get in on the retrace.

Plus I have my dearest other half constantly reminding me... Dont give up yet, stick to the plan, its worked so far!!

Yes, patience is a good word.....I've needed it this week!

Almost forgot.. a few losers trimmed, one position opened.... Still waiting to get on a good trend!

That is all we can do Keep on aligning our trades with the market and take small losses along the way. Cheers.

Another difficult day. Not much seems to be happening apart from I keep trimming losers. It feels a bit like death by a thousand cuts.

A few changes today. The positions opened have had smaller stops so have opened with larger pip values (still sticking to my money management). This gives me hope in that if they do move quickly in the right direction it will make the losses back quicker. Still seems a long way off though to get back to where my capital was just last week.

Still, this is entirely why I decided to keep this journal. This week has been a poor week. I know that its impossible to trade and not have bad weeks, and hopefully my account will come out the other side back into profit. Then, if I have another week like this and it seems like nothing is going right, I can look back at these posts and see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Onwards and upwards.... I hope.

Well that was a better day!!

I've decided trading is very much like watching a geyser, you wait around for ages with not much happening then..BOOM.. it explodes in front of you.

Not much of an explosion today, but all my positions are positive and have made up half of what has been lost this week. Obviously theres the point that I haven't banked any of it yet, but after a pretty crappy week its just nice to see positive pips across the board. Crossing everything to hope it continues into next week.

1 new position opened, none closed.

1 step forwards, two steps back... well just a bit of a shuffle really.

Poor day again, trimmed a few losers, and a winner which is on the turn.

Still in the doldrums and can't see the positives at the moment.