4 pips again!

I started late today at 10.15am and finished at 10.20am for +4 pips off one buy trade.

Sounds superb I know, but following my performance last week, my confidence is low and I can’t help but wonder if this one trade hadn’t gone positive in the 20 seconds which was the duration of this trade, how long would I have stayed in? Would I have let it go negative to the point of the stop loss kicking in again? Or would I have exercised GOWID correctly to minimise my losses? The answers to these questions are, I just don’t know.

I would normally be over the moon after a trade such as this, but I know all too well that a great result like this doesn’t mean that I will pull it off again or more to the point, follow the rules consistently in the future. How do I change this? How can I stop making the same mistakes over and over again? I have tried everything so far, I have told myself repeatedly what I need to do to make this a success. I have also beaten myself up on many occasions for the mistakes I have made. So what more can I do to ensure that I simply follow the rules and not waiver? This is not rocket science, so why can’t I trade successfully yet?

I’m kinda fed up sitting down to trade every morning and my emotions yo-yoing from highs to lows from one morning to the next or from one week to the next (on those rare occasions when I have performed well for a whole week). Something has to give – I talked like this before – when is this going to become a success for me? Or is it more like, when am I going to quit?

I’m going to leave it at that for today, I have plenty of other work to do, I will be back again tomorrow.

Banging my head against the wall

That’s exactly what it feels like! So I sat down for my second session at 8.06am, entered into two more trades, both sell trades and finished this session at 8.24am for 0 pips.

The first sell trade in this session was relatively okay in terms of exercising GOWID, but the entry point was very poor. When I say relatively okay, it means that after getting in, it moved down very slowly to break even over a period of nearly 3 minutes and throughout this time, I was in doubt, but said to myself that I would get out at the first sign of it reversing, in other words, if I physically saw the candle edge upwards, I would jump ship. And I did jump ship when the trade broke even. Now that I have described my thought process, it’s very clear that this trade was in fact totally wrong and I should not have (I hate this phrase) even been in it. Why? Because I was hoping it would go positive from the point go and managed to stay in the trade for 3 minutes. This was all wrong, the entry point was very poor, and if that is the case, you just don’t get in.

The second sell trade – well, talk about going from bad to worse. Everything was done wrong, the infamous, at one point, applies here, in that the trade was down by -8 or -9 pips at one point, the trade lasted over 7 minutes before I got out to break even and the entry point was very poor. And the funniest thing is that, after getting out, as you can see from the screen shot, the candle continued it’s downward move where if I had stayed in, it could have (I hate this phrase as well) been a +4 pip trade – but as the training course used to point out, these pips were not mine, and they are certainly not deserving if this is how I conduct my trades in the first place.

I think that’s enough of my pointless behaviour for one post, now on to my weeks rounds up;

Mon – did not trade

Tues – did not trade

Wed -21 pips

Thurs +4 pips

Fri 0 pips

Total for the week -17 pips!

The big questions is, can I improve on this next week?

What’s GOWID?

That’s the question someone should ask me? Why? Because I just don’t know what GOWID means. Today’s trade was a disaster. I started at 6.30am and finished at 7.15am for 0 pips off one buy trade. But I was in this trade for 39 minutes, during which the trade never once went positive but went negative by up to -10 pips and low and behold, I stayed in the trade during the whole time and only exited when it broke even. I am taking the wrong approach and getting used to it. If I remember correctly, I should have got the fuck out of this trade for a -1 or -2 pip loss right at the beginning a few seconds after entering the trade when I was actually in doubt, but I didn’t. It would have been a loss, but at least I wouldn’t have felt so bad about it and it would have been a trade that was correctly executed. I still don’t know how to exercise GOWID. After so many months, I’m still battling with GOWID!

I have stopped trading now as an announcement is due at 7.45am, but I will sit back down at 8.00am for another 45 minute session and stop at 8.45am at the latest as there are more announcements due at 9.00am – I will then be done for the day.

4 Pips!

A perfect morning of trading – I started at 6.50am and finished at 6.55am for +4 pips off one sell trade.

I couldn’t have asked for a better result today. I know of course that I can get carried away after a day like this but I want to savour this moment for a few minutes today – it has been a while, in fact, I just looked back on the blog and the last time I had a good trade was way back at the beginning of Feb.

I have said this many a time before, and I am saying it again, I have to wait for that perfect trade where I feel really confident that it will produce positive pips for me, else don’t trade even if it means sitting through the whole 1 hour and 45 minutes.

I am also completely aware that I was only 5 minutes into my trading session today before my trade came up – but as seen from past experience, this is a very rare occurrence. So I have to remind myself that trades like this may not come along as soon as it did today or come along at all for that matter, in a given session.

The other reminder to myself which is also the most important, is exercising GOWID – this rule is paramount to my survival, I have broken this rule so many times it’s ridiculous. I must know this better than anyone else in Forex, it’s so easy to hope that once a trade has gone bad, it will come back and go positive – the point is, as I know way too well, that’s fucking wrong – so here’s me telling myself, fucking GOWID at the first sign of doubt!

There’s an announcement affecting the Euro listed as all day tomorrow which has a medium impact colour associated with it at Forex Factory, so I need to be careful of the effects resulting from the all day announcement and not be trading during the other important announcements. So, based on tomorrows schedule, I cannot trade before 4.15am or between 7.30am and 8.00am or between 8.45am and 9.45am.

Now on to other work I have to do today.....

No improvement

An early start for me again today at 6.56am and a 7.41am finish for -21 pips off two buy trades.

The first trade was risky, it lasted almost 2 minutes to yield +1 pip. It didn’t go positive straight away and I was in doubt at various stages during the trade. I didn’t GOWID at the first sign of doubt, instead stayed in and watched the Cable move up and down through a couple of pips before eventually clearing the spread to yield that +1 pip. In other words the market was kind to me on this trade, whereas..........

.......trade number 2, after waiting so patiently for 23 minutes since the first trade for another opportunity, was a total disaster and my friend Mr. STOP LOSS took me out to crystallise -22 pips. As usual there’s no justification for why I didn’t GOWID at -8 pips on this trade which is where it dropped to in a split second when the candle reversed without warning – instead of watching it happily drop pip by pip until the STOP LOSS took it out. I’m going to say that this is another lesson for me to learn so I can keep trading, else this would all be very fucking depressing.....

And to think that I considered increasing my pip value to the £45 mark prior to starting this morning! I’m so relieved that I left it at the 5p mark instead.........

Finishing on a high – FAT CHANCE!

So I started at 7.59am today and finished at 8.28am for -4 pips in total off the back of 3 trades – one sell trade for -9 pips and two buy trades for +3 and +2 respectively. I’m so fucked in the head aren’t I?

I even decided to move the stop loss today – to lock in profits this time – but nevertheless, this a new rule that has been broken.

Let me get my weeks round up out of the way now...

Mon +2 pips

Tues +3 pips

Wed -28 pips

Thurs +3 pips

Fri -4 pips

Grand total: -24 pips!

So if I was on my correct value per pip of £40, that would have been a loss of £960 this week. I’m so thankful that I at least have the sense to remain on my 5p per pip trades

Do I have anything insightful to say today? Not really. I’m feeling pretty shit, my mind is wondering all over the place, there are plenty of external pressures weighing down on me and I haven’t enjoyed myself for a long time. I’m going to stop now, there’s no point writing any more.

Pre-trading anxiety

I thought I’d try and relieve my anxiety today before actually trading. I’m about to start and I’m anxious! Am I going to repeat the same old routine and fuck up again? That’s the question. How hard can it be I’ve asked myself on many an occasion in the past and yet I have fucked up time and time again. I really want yesterday to be the last time I knowingly fuck up, so here goes. I’ll be back to report on my results before 9am.

Just not there mentally

I’m just going through the motions today, as there’s nothing in today’s performance to be proud either. I started late at 10.50am and finished at 11.59am for +3 pips off 3 sell trades.

You can look at the duration of these trades for yourself to realise that none of the rules have been followed and luck has been my only saviour today. I mean a 25 minute trade is not the way to move forward and improve is it? I have lost all patience by looks of things and I’m really quite fed up! I can imagine the kind of comments I would be getting if people were following my performance on this blog – I would be the joke of the day!

The one rule that I have been following is that at least I’m not exceeding the maximum of 3 trades a day – woohoo, but everything else is down the drain.............

I have got quite a few external pressures, but as I have always said, those pressures will always be there in one form or another so I need to just deal with it right? Well, I’m clearly not dealing with it, there no other explanation for my performance, apart from of course – pure stupidity, which can’t be discounted.

Anyhow, it looks like there’s a big slot tomorrow morning for me to trade where there are no announcements, I will do my best to finish the week on a high, even if it means that I sit through the whole session without getting one trade – at least then I would have followed the rules right.

The rule breaker strikes back!

If you think I’m laughing, I’m not. Far from it in fact. I had an early start today at 6.40am and finished at 8.09am for a glorious -28 pips off 2 sell trades.

Mentally, I got myself on a back foot after I fucked up on the first trades and never really recovered from it. The annoying thing is that, the first trade would have been a perfectly acceptable 0 pip trade if I had exercised GOWID when I first told myself to as this trade cleared the spread almost instantly after I entered the trade to breakeven. Instead, I sat on that hopeful perch and waited for it to produce a profit – it never came.

After that point, as much as I waited 45 minutes telling myself, “you fucked up, but it’s ok, now take your time now, be patient, there’s no need to rush and try and recover those lost pips”, I did exactly the opposite and even repeated one of my old bad habits in the second trade, GOWID was not exercised at all and I allowed the stop loss to take me out of the trade.

That was me done for the day – clearly!

The one redeeming factor in all of this is that I have not been messing around with pip values. I did increase it to 10p per pip prior to the Monday session, but after the Monday session, reverted back to 5p per pip which is where it has been since.

So the ill feeling is back with me this week and I now have to be extra careful not to compound that effect over the next two days.

A perfect trade!

I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect trade than the one that I bagged today. I had a bit of a late start at 10.07am today and finished at 10.20am for +3 pips off one sell trade. I was ready to trade for before 9am, but when I checked the announcements that were due, the first starting point I had available was from 10.15am. And yes, I know I started at 10.07, but I wasn’t going to get into any trades until after 10.15am, at least, that what I say now....

This is a pure, pure mental game, and I followed everything that I reminded myself about in yesterdays blog post to the letter – for a change! The duration of today’s trade was 12 seconds – short and sweet as it should be. This is quite funny, but whilst I was watching between 10.07am and 10.20am today, I could feel myself trying to jump into a trade that wasn’t really there and I told myself out loud, “wait, there’s no rush, you need strong correlation between the currencies and strong momentum!”. But did forget to remind myself about GOWID.

I’m so glad that I did wait for the trade that I eventually executed today – where as in the past, my problem, plain and simple, has been, lack of patience! And how ever much I tell myself that I can sit through an entire 1 hour 45 minute session and not have found a trade, I haven’t really. That probably explains, why the duration of my trading sessions on average must be less than 30 minutes. But that is what I need to do, I really have to be prepared to sit through an entire session and not have traded if there was nothing that I was really comfortable with. I remember Sid saying that he now goes for 10 pips a day, but I’m after 10 pips a week or at least an average of 10 pips a week. So I just need to be patient.

It goes without saying though, that the anxiety has already kicked in in anticipation of tomorrows’ session, but hopefully, I will be as cool, calm and collected as I was today and I might find a few pips to bag tomorrow. I have quite a bit of flexibility to find my session tomorrow between 6.45am and 9.15am, before any announcements start, so the latest I can start is at 7.30am. Here’s to tomorrow.....