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!