From a very poor start...

I started slightly earlier than planned today for 8.11am, 4 minutes earlier than I should have really as there was an 8.00am announcement, and I finished at 8.23am for +3 pips off two sell trades.

The first sell trade was a disaster in the usual fashion. I hadn’t even sat down for a minute into the session when I decided to jump in as the Cable looked like it was moving down with momentum. But there wasn’t any proper correlation with the other currencies, namely the Swissy – the Swissy was also moving down instead of up. Though I know that correlation could still be present when this sort of thing is happening, I should be staying well clear in these unknown or unclear situations. What was I thinking? I hadn’t even given myself time to understand what was going on this morning or get a feel for the kind of movement that was taking place. Thankfully I GOWID for -5 pips rather than wait any longer.

The bizarre thing however, was the Cable did continue to go down, but so did the Swissy. The Euro did have a downward movement, but not much momentum. And again, where I should have stayed out, I jumped in on my next and final sell trade for the day. This time, the trade didn’t really go negative, but nor did it go positive straight away. It took its time to move down a fraction at a time, then hold, then move down another fraction, until it suddenly went positive by around 3 pips, it then did it’s fractional downward movements again, then shifted further down again by another 2 or 3 pips and this pattern continued for just over 5 minutes, which was the duration of this trade until I finally decided to get out to lock in +8 pips. The Candle did of course continue with its downward move after I was out as can be seen in the screen shot, but I was thankful to have finished for the day by now and though this trade finished on a positive, it was all wrong.

Unfortunately there isn’t really anything to be proud of today. I was just lucky again. The first trade is more like what could have actually happened in the second trade as well so I’m not patting myself on the back for today’s performance. A 5 minute trade? That’s not what I’m supposed to do is it? Another rather important point that I have forgotten over the last few months is that I should be picturing that I am trading with the true pip value that reflects my capital even though I am currently trading pennies per pip at the moment – perhaps then I would be a lot more picky with my entry points out of fear of losing my capital – who knows. I’m going to leave it as luck for today and I have done enough of beating myself up as well. Lets hope my actions will be much better next week.

Moving on to this week’s round up..........

Mon +4 pips – the only good day of trading today.

Tues +3 pips

Wed +1 pip

Thurs – didn’t trade

Fri +3 pips

Total +11 pips

No time

This is a bit of a late entry for today but it’s the first time I have had a chance to get on the web. I was quite slack this morning and ended up waking up late. I had a couple of morning appointments scheduled and ended up out of the office all day – as a result I did not find an opportunity to trade all day.

But I will be sitting down tomorrow morning hopefully for a decent session before 8am.

From a very poor start...

I started off today at 8.44am knowing that I had to stop trading at 9.15am due to announcements. In the usual fashion I wrongly jumped into a buy trade in this session which lasted over 12 minutes. Of course, this trade went negative at one point, that goes without saying. Fortunately, due to luck, this trade eventually produced +1 pip at the end of the 12 minutes. And I stopped trading at 9.16am with a view to sitting down again at 10.15am after which point no announcements were due again until 12.15pm.

This first trade is a clear sign of me not realising the fact that it is just wrong to stay in a trade and watch it go deep into the negative and hope for it to come back and go positive. I know this is completely wrong – so why have I repeated this wrong again? It can only be because I have traded like this and come away with positive trades or trades that have broken even in the recent past and subconsciously, I must be saying to myself that it is okay to carry on trading this way. Well this is me stating again in this blog, purely for my benefit, I have to stop fucking around, I will never come out of this whole that I am in if I don’t.

Moving on – come 10.09am, I sat down again for my announcement free slot of trading. This time my behaviour was better. I waited patiently. If you look at the hour candles of the Cable, you must be wondering how an earth I couldn’t scrape a couple of positive pips today with such large green candle being available. Well, having fucked up this morning, I was determined not to do it again. However, at around 10.42am I entered, or I should say, tried to get in on a buy trade, but the platform froze and eventually notified me that I hadn’t even got in – if the platform hadn’t frozen, I may have fucked up again in the usual fashion, or come away with a 0 to +2 pip trade. I am basing this theory on what the candle appeared to have had done after I eventually restarted the platform over the next 15 minutes – but who knows what I would have really done. Once I got the platform up and running, I started watching again, but did not find another opportunity that I was comfortable with to trade and at 12.01pm decided to call it a day.

In trying to stay positive today, bar the fuck up first thing, I think I showed the first signs of being patient and waiting for solid entry points before entering trades today. As they say, practice makes perfect right? I will have to wait and see if that applies to me.....

Poor trading

It was a late start again today. I did sit down for 8.30am, but there were various announcements due this morning and the first clear slot for me was from 10.15am onwards. So I watched for a little while and then decided to do some other work until 10.15am.

I eventually sat down again at 10.11am and ended up performing very poorly again today. If it wasn’t for luck which allowed me to finish today for +3 pips off one buy trade and two sell trades, I would have finished today with some hefty negatives.

My first buy trade had duration of almost 17 minutes. That should be enough to illustrate that this trade was executed all wrong right? At one point I was -8 or -9 pips down on this trade and I happily sat there watching, hoping and waiting for it to reverse and yield a profit. When it did, I luckily got out at its highest point to yield the +2 pips it produced. This trade has nothing at all in it for me to be proud of – it is so important that I realise this and not go on thinking that it is okay as long as I break even or make a pip or two.

Trade two, the sell trade which again I was in for just over a minute and a half produced a loss of -3 pips. As with the previous trade, the duration of this trade alone is enough to illustrate that this was executed all wrong. I jumped into this when I saw the Cable jerk down by over 10 pips – I didn’t really look for confirmation from the supporting currencies, I didn’t see any sustained correlation or strong momentum in all three currencies, so again, this is a trade that was executed very poorly, I should not have even got into this trade in the first place. Thankfully, I didn’t just sit there and wait for it to go positive, though it did after I got out – but I can’t think like that as if I had stay in I would just be breaking more rules. So, if I am to walk away with something positive from this trade, though I was not quick enough in doing so, I did exercise GOWID, which is the correct thing to do.

Trade three, another sell trade which had duration of one minute – still too long in my opinion which again boils down to not waiting for all the criteria before getting in. But if I remember correctly, this trade did not go negative at any point, instead it inched down slowly until there was around 1 pip left before it cleared the spread to break even. There was correlation between the currencies, but there wasn’t much momentum, hence the reason for the prolonged duration of the trade. But then, without warning, the Cable suddenly jerked down to clear the spread and produce the +4 pip profit. And I exercised GOWID straight after. I did notice the Cable had moved down by a further pip while I was taking the screen shot, so to avoid me wondering if I should have, could have, stayed in the trade, I closed down the platform before any more movement was visible to me. As much as this last trade was okay, not perfect but okay, having re-read the events that transpired, and knowing what level of trading expertise I have, this is another trade that I should not have got into.

Ultimately – not exercising GOWID and not waiting more patiently for better entry points are my biggest problems – so do I feel any better than yesterday or after last Friday’s session? The answer is NO!

Perhaps tomorrow will be a better day.

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.