Now what?

I don’t know what to say right now. I know I have been here before. I am embarrassed. My confidence is shot. I feel sick. Should this be the end to my Forex journey?

What can I say apart from that I have truly fucked up today! All that I thought had been put behind me came back and hit me hard! I lost over £800 today! Every rule I can think of was broken. I decided to sit down for an afternoon session and it all went wrong. A stop loss took me out of a trade, stop losses were moved, pip values changed, being hopeful with trades, entering too many trades – and everything else under the sun that should not have been done, was done!

I am right back where I started. I have now effectively lost almost £4k since originally investing £20k in September, an average of £2k per month, not bad huh? What am I going to do? My ultimatum from last week means this is it for me......however everything in me is saying I can still do this. But at what cost – the rest of my capital? The bad habits that I have got into are ingrained in me now – I fear that the steps I have to take to get back on the straight and narrow are so far ahead of me, I might never reach them. Am I simply deluding myself into thinking everything will be ok?

Sid at Forex Training Works warned us all that once you start down the wrong path, turning back becomes very difficult. He was right. The stories about others who had strayed now apply to me. I am one of the statistics. And what worries me, is that I don’t recall hearing any stories about those who strayed and came back........

If I am going to continue with my Forex dream, I need a plan and have to stick to the plan, so I am going to put something down now;

-          I’ve just reduced my pip value to 25p per pip.

-          This pip value will not be increased until one full week of good trading is achieved. If this is achieved weekly, I will double the value weekly. If I don’t follow the rules for even one day in a given week, the next move will be back to demo trading. I have to right?

-          GOWID must be exercised at all times.

-          I will improve my trade entry points. This will involve me being a lot more patient than I have and ensuring that there is strong correlation between the currencies before trading. Not doing this is probably the biggest contributing factor for why I have been going wrong.

-          No more than 3 trades will be entered into per day. At least until I have systematically worked my way up to the £40 per pip level – this now being the appropriate pip value based on the capital I have left. Executing numerous trades in one day or session is another reason for my fuck ups – Sid used to call it revenge trading.

-          The maximum duration of each session will not be more than 2 hours.

I think that’s it.

If I was a reader of this blog, I would be cringing right now. How many times does one need to learn from their mistakes? I hope this is the last time, I couldn’t take this again – could you? I use this blog because I can no longer speak to anyone about this, it would be too embarrassing. I am finding it hard enough to continue with this blog with all that has happened so far.....

More Good than Bad

I’m going straight into the results today, I started at 8.11am today, entered 9 trades that yielded the following and finished at 8.49am:

Trade 1 – Sell for -6 pips

Trade 2 – Sell for +1 pip

Trade 3 – Sell for -4 pips

Trade 4 – Sell for -2 pips

Trade 5 – Sell for +9 pips

Trade 6 – Buy for -6 pips

Trade 7 – Sell for -6 pips

Trade 8 – Sell for +10 pips

Trade 8 – Sell for +5 pips

The bad news is that my negatives are clearly too high, and way too many trades were executed.

The good news is, not one of my trades got kicked out by my stop loss – granted getting kicked out by the stop loss is difficult for normal traders, but in my case, I seemed to be at the mercy of the stop loss with relative ease in the recent past. So this must mean, that GOWID, to a certain degree is working for me, though the 4 out of the 5 negative trades today were too high. This simply means that I was using a combination of GOWID and HOPE, and I know all too well what HOPE can lead to in this type of trading. The last piece of good news today is I finished overall for +1 pip.

I’ll leave it like that for today!

Perfect start to the week!

I couldn’t have asked for a better start to this week. I finished today for +3 pips off one sell trade which lasted 36 seconds and the whole trading session lasted 6 minutes.

I haven’t explained what the white and yellow lines in my graphics mean before, so let me attempt to do so now. As you can see in my snap shot today, the white datum lines show my starting point today, this is when I sat down to watch after my setup of the charts. The yellow datum lines within the Cable chart are approximately 30 pips either side of my white datum line which I aim to match against the top and bottom of wicks off prior Cable 1 hour candles in the same day. This helps me gauge the range of the currency’s movement, without having to watch the actual price every second. This also provides an indication of points when the currency might break through a previous high or low. I never used consistently use these datum lines before, but have been for several weeks now and it certainly helps.

Now that I have explained what my datum lines are, just look at how great today was. You can see the price of the Cable when I sat down and that there was a 20 pip (there abouts) red candle on the Cable already. Before entering by sell trade today, the currencies seemed to be correlated, but were not moving in one direction with any kind of momentum in order for me to enter a sell or buy trade. But then, out of the blue, the Swissy began to push up with momentum, the Euro began to push down with some momentum, but the Cable, at this point, wasn’t doing much. Then the Cable decided to jump down around 4 pips from 1.5617 to 1.5613 to catch up with the movement of the other currencies. Then, the Cable gradually reversed again, back up to 1.5617, along with some respective correlated gains and losses by the Euro and Swissy. If I remember correctly, this happened in both directions a couple of times, when after a couple of minutes, the Swissy decided to push up further, the Euro push down further, to the point that there was no wick at the bottom of the Euro – and I was lucky enough at this point, to enter a sell trade on the Cable at 1.5614, before the Cable had started its corresponding correlated movement. The Cable held at 1.5614 for a few seconds, then cleared the spread and held for a few seconds, went positive by +1 pip but quickly went back down to break even and hold for a few seconds, it then moved up by +2 pips, which is when I exited the trade. But by the time the system took a split second to close the trade, it had moved to +3 pips.

I hope I’m not jumping ahead of myself as it is still early days, but something is different compared to the last few weeks. I feel a lot more relaxed. I think I have finally got it clear in my head that when a trade looks good in terms of criteria and I decide to jump in, I just have to be ready to GOWID, not just when such a trade has gone positive, but even if it stalls right at the beginning even before clearing a spread. This way, I am limiting myself to small negatives as opposed to the negatives that you have seen me do in the past. But the equally important aspect of this type of trading is that I have to wait for good criteria before actually entering a trade, this is key to avoiding lots of small negatives resulting from me exercising GOWID well, but not getting the entry points right.

As I said in one of my posts last week, I think I am getting there – slowly but steadily – but one thing is for sure, I feed great today!

I’ll be back tomorrow.....

Distracted

Today’s session was a prime example of when not to trade. I was quite rushed off my feet this morning before sitting down to trade, and I brought this attitude with me when I sat down to trade at 8.48am.

GOWID, to a certain degree, kept me relatively safe, but there was a lot of luck involved again today. So to keep it short and sweet – 5 trades today, yes I know, way too many – results were, +1, -5, -4, +7 (this was an old style crazy hopeful trade, so shouldn’t count really) and +3 pips. Leaving me +2 pips up for the day. But I reckon it was around 50% rule following and 50% luck today.

So, the weeks round up;

Monday:                      -30 pips

Tuesday:                      +2 pips

Wednesday:                +3 pips

Thursday:                    +2 pips

Friday:                         +2 pips

Total for the week:      -21 pips

I’m not going to dwell on this week, I think the penny is beginning to drop, even after the events of this week.

I’ll be here again on Monday to report on my results.

A good day – but not perfect

Started at 8.47am, two sell trades, +1 pip each and I am done for today. I think I am beginning to recognise the difference between a good trade and a not so good trade. For example, my first trade was iffy, at one point I was -3 pips down, the trade lasted just over a minute and strictly speaking if I was following the rules to the letter, I think you can guess what the results should have been – correct, GOWID for -3 pips.

My second trade on the other hand, was perfect, it lasted 13 seconds to yield a 1 pip profit and I GOWID.

The key is to of course find the right entry point, but that does not mean the trade will go positive as anything can happen, a plane might have just crashed into Buckingham Palace and the currency markets go crazy, so most importantly, being ready to GOWID in a split second is a must.

I think am I getting there, a few more trades like my second trade today and I reckon the anxiety I feel just before trading will be gone too. The feeling after a day like this is great though. As soon as I know I have finished for the day in profit, I can’t wait to close down the platform and report the results in my blog, I’ve had a scan through my posts to date and the scales are clearly tipped for the worse – this has to change, I want to be able to scan through prior posts and really have to look hard to find a bad day.....

It’s Friday tomorrow, the last day for the week, I was going to say, I hope tomorrows session finishes on a good note – what I should be saying is that it will finish on a good note, the worst case scenario should be a couple of small negative trades.....small meaning between -1 and -3 pips. Whereas the best case scenario is my first trade takes off and produces a double digit pip profit and I’m done for the day!!

See you tomorrow....

Rules, Rules, Rules!

The rules saved me today – my first trade was almost a repeat of my bad habits and could have been far worse if it was not for GOWID!

Kick off was at 8.38am today. When I was setting up, the 8am candle on the Cable was already over 50 pips down and had no wick at the bottom. By the time I had set up my charts however, the Cable had reversed by around 10 pips and I began to watch for an opportunity.

My first sell trade was a disaster and like I said, could have been a lot worse if I hadn’t GOWID, I ended up with -5 pips. What annoys me about myself on this trade is that, when I was 1 pip down at one point, I was in doubt and I didn’t GOWID. I need to remember this or I am going to come a cropper again and my ultimatum dictates that I hang my trading shoes up for good if I fuck up again like I have in the past.

The second sell trade, better, finished on +1 pip and made good use of GOWID. The duration of the trade was longer than it should be, but I’m quite confident I was ready to GOWID from beginning to end on this one.

Trade three, a buy, much better in terms of pips, it yielded +4 pips and good use of GOWID. The duration wasn’t too bad either, just under a minute.

My last trade for the day, another sell, is the perfect example of the type of trade to enter. The trade lasted 6 seconds, yielded +3 pips and I GOWID! A perfect end to the day.

On rereading the above, it’s evident that I’m revenge trading aren’t I? Another attribute that’s not within the rules. I had broke even after trade number three, so to finish up for the day I got into a fourth trade – risky business – the question is, would I have continued trading if the fourth trade hadn’t produced the goods? Either way, in my opinion, one too many trades for my level of experience. I wonder – having broken all the rules for such a long time must have made breaking the rules second nature for me – this has to change, I need to reverse this trend, following the rules has to become second nature and instinct for me.

I am feeling good with today’s overall results though – you could say that three out of four trades ranged from being ok to perfect, so it’s all good!

Tomorrow is another day......

A marked improvement!

There some hope after today’s results. It feels like it has been a long time since I felt this good after a session of trading. There’s quite a bit of relief as well, but overall, the feeling today is pretty good.

I started at 9.05am and entered the first at 9.18am. It was a buy trade and it looked good, there was some momentum between the currencies, and correlation was evident. The trade lasted just over 1 minute, but I was watching like a hawk and ready to GOWID. The spread took a while to clear, but importantly, the trade didn’t go more negative, it held, cleared the spread, held again, went positive by 1 pip and I GOWID – Hurrah! My first decent trade! It felt good!

The second trade which was a sell was dicey. It lasted just over 2 minutes and did not do as expected, however, the good news is, I GOWID! And got out to break even. I actually GOWID in a trade such as this, that’s a huge improvement in my eyes!

The third and last trade for the day, a sell again, lasted under a minute, yielded another 1 pip and I GOWID again. Hurrah, Hurrah, Hurrah! What was scary however – by the time I took the screen shot, the Cable had reversed by almost 10 pips – isn’t GOWID great?

I have finished for the day after 3 trades to be ahead by a couple of pips for this session, no looking back, onwards and upwards. Here’s to tomorrow............................

Embarrassment

Where shall I begin today? Put it this way, I’m very embarrassed! It’s a good thing I don’t have any followers of this blog, if I did, I’m sure I would be reading through a barrage of abuse after today’s post.

I think the biggest problem with my trading is I don’t know how to GOWID! Starting my session today at 9.15am, I got into 11 trades today – just look at my activity window, 6 out of 11 trades are negative. When I was in those negative trades, I remember saying to myself on a couple of occasions to get out when they were only around the breakeven to -2 pips level. But instead, I happily sat there and watched these trades grow into larger negatives and then used my supreme intellect to get out and solidify these larger losses. And then, as always, I got carried away revenge trading trying to recover these losses.

I am meant to be executing 1 trade or none at all per session. I am meant to be trying to bag a couple of positive pips here and there to reach my target of 10 pips per week. So what am I doing? I recall during today’s session, that on a couple of trades, which eventually ended negatively, I was actually up at one point by 1 or 2 pips before they stalled or warranted GOWID, and now thinking about it, I was hoping they were going to yield bigger gains, so I just sat there again as these trades slowly wiped out their small gains to break even or go negative by 1 or 2 pips – this is what I was talking about earlier when I was saying to myself, it’s time to GOWID – and I continue to let these trades grow to larger negatives!

To cut a long story short again, my trades today produced, -7, -4, +5 (should have finished for the day at this point), -9, 0, +1, -7, -5, -6, 0 and lastly +2 pips to finish for the day. Something else that is very embarrassing – you know that I am currently on 50p per pip when trading right? Well, the first 10 trades today were all at 50p per pip, so at the end of trade 10, I was -32 pips or £16 down. But then, clever clogs here changed the pip value before the 11^th trade was executed to £50 per pip! Thankfully this was a positive trade and surprisingly, executed correctly for a change – I must have shit myself into following the rules on this last one. So I finished for the day -30 pips down, but £84 in profit for the day.

I am here today to say that from this point on, if I ever play with the pip value for the wrong reasons again or repeat any of the other mistakes I have been making until now, I am CLOSING the book on Forex Trading – considering that I embarked on this line of work many months ago and I am still behaving like a rookie, must mean that this is not for me. This is my own ultimatum, Sid at Forex Training Works used to say that you shouldn’t apply pressure on yourself and should be very relaxed when sitting down to trade. Sid also you to say that when the penny dropped for people, following the rules, especially GOWID, became second nature and people made a decent living from Forex. Well, I may be applying pressure on myself by giving myself this ultimatum to stop being a dick head, but it’s a necessity now, otherwise, I am going to lose all of my capital and will be so fucked up in the head that there will be no returning from that place.

Let's hope that the penny drops soon, until tomorrow......

Getting it out of my system ASAP!

£1k per pip! That is what I was thinking about doing whilst taking a stroll a short while ago! So I’m here getting it down in the blog before it is too late.

I started off with £20k at the beginning of October this year when I went live, I’m currently a couple of hundred short of £17k. A £1k per pip could get me back to £20k in one session right? Who knows, I could be a few grand up on my original £20k in less than two months.

Fuck! No! I am sticking to my plan. 50p per pip until I am consistently happy with my trading for at least one full fucking week. This, I am yet to achieve since starting this blog almost, hold on, let me just check – a month ago. I can’t believe this blog has been running for a month and I am still at this level of trading.

Keeping this short and sweet – this is to reiterate – no fucking £1k per pip business for me!!

Good night!

A small step in the right direction

Have I recovered from Tuesday? I don’t know. Did I trade well today? Just about – I think.

The plan after Tuesday was not to trade at all for the rest of this week. I didn’t trade yesterday and I was going to keep it that way until Monday. Having said this, I wasn’t feeling too bad yesterday. I had, to a certain extent, brushed Tuesday’s events under the carpet – I have to right? Otherwise it’s just going to make me more anxious than I am already and that is so far away from the mindset I need to succeed in this.

Though the intention was not to sit down today, I had some time to kill, and I thought I’ll go for it, planning to take it easy and not enter any trades unless I was really, really sure – heard this before haven’t we?

So I settled down at 8.46am, set up my charts and got ready for my trade to present itself – if you haven’t guessed already, I finished today for +2 pips from one buy trade which lasted just under two minutes from 8.51am. When I started, the Cable already had a large 30 pip red candle with a further 10 pip wick at the bottom, which means, between 8.00am and 8.46am, the Cable had moved 40 pips down in whatever form. But by the time I started watching, the Cable had begun to reverse its direction, and correlation between the other currencies was evident. What was missing however, was the momentum that I talk about all the time. The Cable was moving back up alright, but not in a steady movement and not with any gusto. After watching the Cable move up through 20 pips, the Euro looked ready to punch upwards, there was no wick at its top end, the Swissy was pushing down with no wick at its bottom end and the Cable was hovering around the 1.5928 mark – and I jumped in. The trade cleared the 2 pip spread almost straight away, but then held, dropped back by 2 pips, held, then cleared the spread again and went positive by 1 pip and held (this is when I should have got out, but I stayed in), then reversed back down by 2 pips and then another 1 pip and held, then went positive, cleared the spread and up a further 2 pips to 1.5930 and I exited the trade.

When I answered my question about trading well today with just about, you now know what I mean by this.

I also just noticed that since I started this blog, I haven’t reported on a day’s trading where all I have done is sit and watch because an opportunity to trade with all the correct criteria has not presented itself. In fact, Tuesday this week should have been one of those days of physically not entering a trade at all – I remember thinking this during the Tuesday session, obviously before I jumped into that first disastrous trade which took me further downhill ten trades later. I have to remind myself to expect the odd days when all I end up doing is sit for the 1hr 45mins and simply not trade for the day – I used to see numerous examples of this from other live traders on the Forex Training Works daily bulletins and most of them were consistent traders who finished positive week in week out.

I have just finished rereading this post, and noticed something at the beginning of the fourth paragraph that gave me cause for concern. I said “........and got ready for my trade to present itself...” – this may have quite big part in why I seem to be fucking up so often. This only jumped out at me because I just reminded myself about sitting down and not trading in a given session. Fucking mindset shit is all I can say – hard fucking work, all of it!

I am definitely not trading tomorrow and will be back here after my Monday session to, let’s be positive shall we, to report on how well I did.

Enjoy your weekend, I know I will be..........

Playing with fire

I have strayed so much today, I’m afraid there might be no hope for my trading career. Everything I could possibly do wrong was the nature of my trading today. To name a few - staying in trades too long, revenge trading and the scariest, changing the pip value from the £0.50 per pip that I was on to £50.00 per pip to recover the losses made.

I have been through my thought process in prior posts, I’m not going to do it again today. I going to leave you with my screen shot that will tell you what I did today. 11 fucking trades! 11 fucking trades! Theres a friend of mine who used to say I was on drugs, very fucking cheap ones! I really do wonder what a shrink would have to say about me right now?!?

click on the image to zoom in

My capital is standing at £16,868 compared with the £16,858 opening balance of yesterday. If I had followed all the rules this week and remained with the pip value of £0.50 per pip that I am meant to be on, the £10 profit that I have made equates to 20 pips – but what actually took place was a totally different story and is taking me closer and closer to quitting this line of work for good.

It’s clear that if I trade anymore this week, it will just be a disaster. I have survived on luck ever since I started this blog, just like today, my capital should be at £16,813 right now instead of the level I have finished on. It’s just a matter of time, before I wipe out my capital completely, if the last trade where the pip value was at £50 went wrong, which it easily could have, my infamous saying, at one point, applies to this trade as well, I would have wiped a £1,000 off my capital when the all too familiar stop loss would have finally kicked in.

If I am going to give myself any chance at all, any chance – in succeeding in this, I have to take some time off to collect my wits and have a serious think about what the problem is.

Over and out!

A start to the week

It’s funny, I was just looking at my results from last week and for a moment, couldn’t work out what the hell I did last Monday. I was sure I only executed 3 trades last Monday, but then it dawned on me, I went a bit crazy last Monday didn’t I?

Moving on very quickly – today yielded positive results but having had some time to reflect on this morning’s one trade, it is a case of luck paying off again really. It’s amazing how easy it is to congratulate yourself just because I finished today for +3 pips after one trade and the whole trading session lasted 9 minutes – starting at 8.30am and finishing at 8.39am. But when I replay the events in my head step by step, it paints a different picture.

When I sat down to trade or, not to trade as they say in the Forex Training Works course, the Cable already had quite a big red candle, it was down around 20 pips from its 8am starting point of around 1.6085. The movement between the Swissy, Euro and the Cable was up and down between 4 to 6 pips. But then the Cable and the Euro began to move down with some momentum, whilst the Swissy edged up very slowly – so correlation was present. I jumped into a sell trade at 8.35am when it looked like the Cable was going to take off further down – this is where I am clearly going wrong, I just shouldn’t be anticipating a move, I should be getting into a move that is already underway with all the criteria. This also explains, why I was, at one point, -7 pips down on this trade – this is what I meant by luck paying off today. The trade eventually came back, did what it was supposed to, it moved down further with momentum and I exited the trade at 8.38am for +3 pips.

As soon as I had got out of this positive trade, I felt great, the title to this post was when I started typing, “A Great start to the week”, half way into the second paragraph, I changed it to “A better start to the week” and I have just changed it now to “A start to the week”. Funny how my mind works, always trying to fool you in thinking you have done far better than you really did. My rights and wrongs today, starting with the wrongs, entry point for trade, not good, should have GOWID when it was down -2 pips and wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, need to wait for better criteria before entering trades. Rights – closed down for the day and recognised my wrong doing – I making progress in such leaps and bounds.......

It looks like my pip value will be remaining at £0.50 per pip between now and Friday next week, that’s right for almost two weeks, that my punishment for today and of course that will be my level of investment as long as I don’t have any more fucks ups during that period.

I am done for the day and will be back tomorrow.

a good day and end to the week at last!

It happened at last, I am finishing this week’s trading on a positive. I’m feeling good after today’s session. I felt I waited patiently for criteria today and only got into trades when I felt confident about them. And I was poised to GOWID each time.

I sat down to trade today at 9.25am and finished at 10.01am for an overall profit of +3 pips off two buy trades.

I’m kind of at a loss as to what to say today – usually it’s such doom and gloom and it flows when talking about those days.

My first buy trade which I got in at 9.51am at 1.6002 ended 3 minutes later at 9.54am at 1.6003 for +1 pip. Correlation was present between the Swissy, Euro and Sterling and it looked like momentum was about to kick off. So I thought I’d get in early today. But momentum was lacking and this explains the duration of the trade. The trade did hold for that period though – in fact I missed out on this being +2 pips because by the time I clicked to exit, it had dropped another pip to give me my +1.

The second buy trade was a lot less nerve racking in terms of the length of the trade taking just over 1 minute. In at 10.00am at 1.5993 and out at 10.01 at 1.5995. However, at one point, I was about to GOWID to take a -3 pip hit on this trade, when it edged back upwards. It’s hard to explain, but it looked like it was going to push further up any second, and it did. In this case, I clicked to exit for a +1 pip, but by the time the system took me out, it was up by a further pip to give me my +2 on this trade.

So, hook or by crook, more by crook, I have got myself 10 pips this week which is my weekly target of averaging +2 pips per day done. No more trading for the rest of the week – I mean it, no more trading for the rest of the week! After all, these are the rules I was taught – less is more etc. You know what I am doing here don’t you?

idle minds are the devil's playground

This couldn’t be more true!

I decided to watch, not trade, just watch, to see what had happened to the 2pm Sterling candle since my last trade and ended up taking another buy trade, almost identical to that of my last, in at 3.01pm at 1.6158 and exited 27 seconds later for +1 pip at 1.6159.

That’s me done, no more today – I’m feeling good and guilty at the same time.....

therapy

I was feeling quite low after this morning’s trading session and after a spot of lunch, I noticed the time was coming up to 2pm London time, the New York trading session was about to open and could produce some activity. So I decided to sit down for another session at 2pm and ended up taking one buy trade one minute into it at 2.01pm and according to my transaction history, exited 34 seconds later for +2 pips.

I’m still not feeling great, but reflecting on this last trade, I was within all the rules, except for the fact that the trade was somewhat risky, that is, there wasn’t a massive amount of momentum. But the Swissy was holding its downward push, the Euro was moving up slowly and so was the Pound. During the 34 second period the trade was at -1 pip momentarily before it cleared the spread and eventually went positive.

Ultimately, I needed to feel good about my trading, so I closed the platform immediately after this one trade. I had my therapy session and felt better because the trade went my way and more or less had all the criteria that were needed according to the training. However, I am slightly disappointed for trading again after this morning, when one of the rules is not to trade more than you need to – and let’s face it, I didn’t really need to trade again today did I?

no progress today either

I didn’t even manage to start today with the right frame of mind. How can I nip this in the bud? I haven’t had a good day of trading since Monday last week! This just can’t continue if I am to derive an income from Forex!

I didn’t make a loss today – I started at 8.59am and finished for the day at 9.34am on +2 pips overall, but my actions could have yielded far, far worse.

My first trade, to cut a long story short, was equivalent to last Wednesdays trading, all the rules were broken, I was in this trade from 9.01am at 1.6106 to 9.33am when I exited at 1.6106. Also, guess what happened at 9.30am, there was an important announcement, and what was I doing? I was still in the trade. Again, I was extremely lucky to have broken even on this trade, because, at one point, I was -30 pips down on this trade. How is that possible when the stop loss is set at -20 pips, well guess what? I shifted the stop loss down further as well. I am cringing right now, if you read my post from last Wednesday, I spent time putting down what lessons I had learnt on the day etc, etc – I’ve learnt fuck all since.

My second trade wasn’t too bad, but I didn’t get out of the trade when I was first in doubt, which is what GOWID is all about right? GET OUT WHEN IN DOUBT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But this yielded my +2 pips. Got in at 9.33am and was out at 9.34am. Still way too long really, but nevertheless, I was done for the day after this trade.

I don’t think I mentioned this before, but I picked up these rules that need to be followed, on the internet which were produced by someone called Sid Wyemann at Forex Training Works. There are numerous glowing testimonials about how well previous students have done and more similar stories from other sources. I am aware that there are scam artists out there, but my gut reaction to this course is it’s not. His course was simple and straightforward, but as you have seen so far by my results in these recent posts, putting it all into practice has been a very different story. On occasion I do wonder though, if what I am trying to achieve with Forex is within my reach.

But, chin held high, onwards and upwards to Wednesday!

living off luck

That’s exactly what I’m doing! Relying on luck if today’s trading is anything to go by. Following my post yesterday - I'm not so calm anymore!

I started today on a bit of a back foot. I forgot to set the alarm for this morning and ended up waking up late. However, I was feeling relatively upbeat and was looking forward to sitting down to trade today. I eventually sat down at 8.44am today and finished positive for the day with +2 pips at 9.13am.

Though how I finished the day up instead of down is a different story..........it's a good thing I halved my pip value to £0.50 per pip.

My first trade was not perfect, but ok, I felt good in the fact that I exited this trade for +1 pip. And even though it did go negative by -2 pips at one point, at the time, I felt the trade was holding well and would produce the result I was after.

The second trade was a -3, but for once in what feels like a long, long time, I followed the rules and exercised GOWID before it was way too late.

But then, revenge trading took over. In my head, I was now -2 pips down for the day – we can’t have that now can we? Why the fuck do I do this to myself? So my third and fourth trades were disasters – I wonder sometimes if using words such as disaster, fucked up, and so on, is helping me psychologically.

The third trade was for -6 pips. If I am to console myself, I could say that this was a combination of pointless hopeful trading and following of the rules – at least this wasn’t a stop loss situation right? I’m now at -8 for the day so far. Oh no! What shall I do? Trade again of course.

Trade 4 – at least this was my last trade. Exited this trade for +10 pips, so I’m now at +2 pips for the day so far. Do you think this last trade was achieved by following the rules? You guessed right – of course not! Put this way, at one point – when I stop needing to use this phrase, I think I will be a good trader – I was 7 pips away from my stop loss taking me out of this trade. Need I say more?

Now that I have taken you through the last two trades, my first trade was clearly me trying to convince myself that today wasn’t all bad, when in actual fact, with the exception of my second trade, it was all shit.

If I repeat today's events again this week, another punishment will be called for – pip value to be halved again to £0.25 per pip for next weeks trading. I'm great at this punishment stuff – what should be my reward, if I manage to follow all the rules for the rest of this week – that I need to think about. 

On to tomorrow........

calmer

I am a lot calmer now following my trading session on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to starting afresh on Monday. Line drawn under last week and all that....finished on +11 pips even with the crazy shit that happened on Wednesday.

I am keeping in mind that this is my long term ambition to become financially independent so that I can do what I want to fucking to do, as opposed having bills, mortgages and other burdens dictating where my money goes!

It’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of time – there’s no two ways about it!!!

in the end the market was kind

.......at 3.14pm my third and last trade for the day ended with my take profit limit exiting the trade for me at 1.6071 for +50 pips. I wasn’t watching the market during this whole period and thankfully was able to get some other work done today, but boy did I feel like shit. Logging back in every so often hoping to see the Cable moving down further from the last time I checked, moving my stop loss and take profit all over the place – look at the charts, at one point in this trade I was down around -30 pips! I was telling myself at various points during the 5 hour 29 minute duration of that last trade to write today off and start again fresh tomorrow. I was going through fucking hell and clearly on a totally different fucking planet to that of normal people!

Apologies for my language also taking a turn for the worse today – hope you can understand.

Finishing for a profit today is nothing at all for me to be proud of. I was extremely lucky to finish today on a positive note. You can probably imagine how I was feeling after my second trade today. Can you imagine how I would have felt, if I was trading at £50 per pip, which is what I am meant to be doing with my current level of capital which stands at £16,850. By the way, I did start at £20,000 and was trading at £50 per pip and – I think you get the picture as to what happened.

Perhaps my entry in the blog prior to trading today was the wrong thing to do. Perhaps I should have just waited as I am supposed to when announcements are being made instead of trading in the middle of them. Perhaps I should just pull my fucking finger out!

I am someone who believes in rewards for doing well. What do you do when you have not done well? That’s an understatement, what do you do when you have completely fucked up? Is a punishment called for? Well – as a form of punishment, I’m going to reduce my pip value from £1.00 to £0.50 per pip and will only go back to £1.00 and the doubling of this etc, etc. if I make it through a full week of feeling good after every single trade – at this rate, I will be going back to demo trading instead of moving up towards my £50 per pip trading!

Ok, let me try and be constructive about today. What lessons have I learnt today? Be disciplined around announcements, don’t trade for at least 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after an announcement! If I suffer an unexpected loss, switch off for the day – don’t attempt to immediately enter another trade or trades to recover that loss! Of course, the term unexpected loss does not describe my type of losses today where I’m simply breaking every fucking rule in the book, but refer to sudden large movements of the candle in the opposite direction of a trade that you are in. Also, don’t mess around with the stop loss or take profit limits!

Just trade within the fucking rules! Simple!

I have made the decision to not trade until Monday next week and put this unbelievable behaviour of mine and the events that occurred today, behind me again.

I know you are going to miss reading about my fuck ups until Monday, but my intention is to make you miss reading about my fuck ups indefinitely!

Disaster

Well, it happened. Disaster has struck. I started off with one mistake and followed by numerous others.

My first trade, a sell, which I entered at 1.6079 at 9.30am, smack bang in the middle of an announcement that effects the Cable was exited at 1.6102 by use of the stop loss to solidify a whopping -23 pips – something that should never happen if I followed the simple rule of not entering a trade 15 minutes either side of announcements.

My second trade, another sell, entered at 1.6104 at 9.32am, continuing to break rules – entered this trade when still within 15 minutes after an announcement, being hopeful of recovering my previous big loss – all other criteria clearly ignored as well. Surprise, surprise, got stopped out again at 1.6124. -20 pips.

My third trade – as you can see, I am now back into fully fledged gambling mode. I entered this sell trade at 1.6121 at 9.45am and I am still in it as we speak – ridiculous, I know – I just cannot explain what I am thinking right now. This trade is currently at -5 pips and I am still in it – the time is 10.00am........

about to sit down

I remember two weeks ago today being a disaster - the plan is not to repeat that episode. I will be reporting back shortly.

could have been a close call

Right now I am simply relieved that I finished today positive.

There hasn’t been a great amount of movement since I finished trading yesterday. The starting price of the Cable when I sat down today was 1.6075. And my gut feeling was that today was going to be a long session based on the sizes of the candles over the last few hours.

There was some anxiety in me this morning – you know, I have been enjoying a bit of a positive streak, is it going to end today kind of thing. I re-reminded myself about GOWID from last night – I think mentioning it in the blog yesterday helped. And I was conscious about the length of my trading windows. But, as per the norm, I put it behind me as best as I could and settled down to trade.

I set up my charts in the usual fashion, during which time the Cable had dropped around 10 pips. I continued to watch as the Swissy climbed slowly pip by pip around 8 pips, the Euro was fluctuating, but had some correlation with the Swissy and the Cable was doing the same, but still had some correlation with the Swissy and Euro. I also noticed that the Cable moved up and down a couple of times by around 4 pips and I was close to entering one of my hopeful trades on the Cable’s next move back upwards. But then there was a sudden jerk down, the Cable dropped from around 1.6068 which was its lower end of the 4 pip up and down movement, by a further 4 or 5 pips. So I took my finger off the buzzer and waited. Watched the Cable start a new cycle of moving up and down by around 3 pips. But this only took place a couple of times. I then noticed more prominent correlation between all the currencies and jumped into a sell trade at 1.6054. I noticed after the fact that this trade lasted 1 minute 6 seconds – way too long. The trade cleared the spread quite quickly but then began to move back and forth between breakeven and -1 pip. However, there I sat waiting to exit the trade, instead of? That’s right, exiting the trade as soon as it stalled at breakeven or at the worse, when it went negative by -1 pip. I say to myself now, as I have done so numerous times in the past, would I have got out if it went negative by a further pip, -2, -3, -4 pips or worse!!!!!!!!!!!! The answer is obvious, the trade lasted 1 minute and 6 seconds, because I was waiting for the trade to go positive – and if it hadn’t and continued going negative, I don’t think I would have waited for the stop loss to take me out this time, but I’m quite sure the negative would have been bigger than -4 or -5 pips. Thankfully, and this is clearly luck again – the trade did go positive after that 1 minute and 6 seconds and I exited for a +1 pip trade today at 1.6053. On a positive note, at least I had the sense to get out then, rather than wait for a +2 which may or may not have happened – or worse, jumped back down to become a negative trade. I did notice after I exited however, that the Cable did continue its downward move by a couple more pips, which would have given me a bigger positive trade – but, I can honestly say – I did not care – as I said, I was more relieved that I was finished for the day on a positive trade and my trading session was 7 minutes.