Patience Paying off

The high I wanted to end the year on came along today! I started very late today at 10.11am and finished at 10.20am with one perfect +2 pip buy trade.

All I now need to do, is not get all excited, remain calm and repeat what I have been doing this week – stay patient, wait for the perfect moves with all the criteria being present. That criteria being, good correlation, strong momentum, and being confident that if the trade is entered into, it will go positive straight away – as it did today, the trade lasted 4 seconds!

So this weeks round up....

Mon – No Trades

Tues +1 pip

Wed – No Trades

Thurs – No Trades

Fri +2 pips

Therefore, I finished the week for +3 pips – and most importantly a positive week and feeling good that I followed all the rules this week.

Time to enjoy the rest of today and see in the New Year.

Preserving Capital

Yet another session of maintaining discipline and preserving my capital. I started at 8.36am and finished at 10.21am for a total of 0 pips off no trades again.

What can I say, I saw no opportunity where I was comfortable enough to trade. I did however, see plenty of jerky movement by the Cable during parts of the 8am candle, during the whole 9am candle and part of the 10am candle – but none that had the correlated support with momentum of the other currencies. In addition, when I asked myself the question, would the trade go positive straight away if I got in, the answer was always no.

In fact there were a couple of scenarios where I for a moment contemplated getting in on a trade on momentum alone, but at the points that I would have got in during my gambling days, the candle reversed abruptly and if I had got in, I would have ended up with a big -6 or so pips. This reminded me again of how important it is to follow the rules and wait for the right opportunity, rather than gamble.

So, my capital has been preserved this week and I feel a hell of a lot better with my performance in the last 5 sessions than I have done for the last couple of months.

As I said a few posts ago, I was to finish this year on a high......

Another day of no trades....

It’s bizarre, I sat down to trade today between 9.20am and 11.02am and found no opportunity to trade. I stopped at 10.27 because of an announcement due at 10.30am that would have an effect on the Swissy and in turn, possibly on the Cable and Euro, but continued to watch. At 10.30am on the dot, the spread on the Swissy increased to 5 pips and did no revert back to it’s normal 1 pip spread, well, at least not by the time I closed down the platform at 11.02am.

There were points during today’s session where I began to wonder if I had gone from getting into too many trades at the wrong time to not getting into any trades at the right times. But I quickly dismissed this thought, as you have to feel confident in a move, see all the criteria and only then get in – this did not happen today, therefore no trades undertaken and my capital is preserved.

If I step back and look at the bigger picture, we are in the holiday season, so it’s understandable that the markets are slow or behaving strangely. The market behaves strangely in normal times, so what has been experienced this week is nothing out of the ordinary.

I am extremely pleased with myself though for not risking trades when criteria were not present. There was a point today where the Cable in the 10am candle started moving up with reasonable momentum, mostly little 2 or 3 pip moves upwards, but back to back upward movements. But at the same time, the Swissy was moving upwards and the Euro was moving downwards – so no correlation and therefore no trade. I am proud to have stayed out during this time. Seasoned and experienced traders would probably laugh right now and say something like, “.....yeah and? That should be the norm...”, but I know that has not been the norm for me, I have jumped head first into trades that had no correlation, momentum or the slightest chance of going positive straight away, on many an occasion, so this is quite a big deal for me.

Time for me to go and get on with other work that I have to do – we’ll see what the market brings tomorrow.

1 hour, 1 pip

Another day of practicing patience. I started at 8.38am today and finished at 8.48am for 1 pip off one buy trade.

Staying awake, let alone remaining focused, after 30 minutes certainly becomes tough. I entered my one and only trade today after watching for 11 minutes or so. After that, it was a bit of a battle to stay awake. But I endured the duration, watching and waiting and after an hour I decided that it was time to close down for the day. There just wasn’t enough momentum in the market and correlation was strange and on occasion doing the opposite, anti-correlation?

Looking at the 9am candle on the Cable, it looks like it would have been easy to bag at least 10 pips on a sell trade. But that candle grew in such a slow fashion and without any real correlation with the other currencies. There certainly wasn’t any momentum between the currencies, that’s for sure.

The main thing though, is that I sat through the session in a controlled manner and preserved my capital again.

There might be more movement in the market tomorrow as it is a working day in the UK, time will tell.

No Trades

I stayed disciplined again today. I started at 9.48am, quite late in comparison to the norm and finished at 11.12am. But I saw no opportunity during this whole session and so did not trade at all today. This means, my capital is also preserved. I couldn’t stop yawning after around the 30 minute mark, but remained pretty focused though.

The candles hardly moved at all today, and for obvious reasons I presume, the bank holidays. I’m sure it will be the same again tomorrow, but will take a seat and see what happens.

I forgot to do last weeks’ round up on Friday, so here it is;

Mon 0 pips

Tues -12 pips

Wed -19 pips

Thurs 0 pips

Fri +1 pips

Total -30 pips for the week (a small improvement on the week before).

Optimistic finish on Christmas Eve

It feels good to finish the weeks’ last session on a high. One sell trade today for +1 pip. I started at 8.44am after checking the announcements due for today on Forex Factory, my daily routine, and there were no announcements due that affected the currencies I work with. But the currencies were moving extremely slowly this morning. Not just that, the Swissy had a 4 pip spread compared with its normal 1 pip spread, the Euro had a 2 pip spread compared with its normal 1 pip spread and the Cable had a 3 pip spread compared with its normal 2 pip spread.

A sell opportunity arose for me though and I followed all the rules. It cleared 1 pip of the 3 pip spread and held for a good 30 to 40 seconds before clearing the spread in full and going positive by 1 pip. As soon as that happened, I thought that should be it for me today. Finish on a high, close down and enjoy Christmas until Monday, which of course is a bank holiday in the UK, but a normal working day in the US.

So, that me done for Christmas and on that high that I wanted so badly.

Zero Pips

I was relatively disciplined today. I started my session at 8.55am but stopped at 9.27am as there was an announcement at 9.30am that affected the Cable. The spread jumped from 2 pips to 15 pips between 9.30am and 9.33am and then reverted back to a 2 pip spread. I checked the Forex Factory announcement website to ensure the announcement results were published before commencing my session again at 9.33am.

I didn’t enter my first trade today until 9.47am. However, it was a poor trade. It yielded 0 pips, but by no means was this a well executed trade as you can see from the duration of the trade in my activity window – the length of this trade wasn’t the only thing that I did wrong. This aspect of my mindset, I have to, have to change – better GOWID and better entry points. I would then be in a much better place.

Trade number 2 took place almost 30 minutes later. This sell trade on the other hand was better, in that I GOWID to break even again for 0 pips. The trade held as soon as I had entered but it didn’t of course go positive straight away – the Swissy fired off upwards, the Euro pushed down, but not a great deal and the Cable held. So I felt relatively confident that the Cable would go down eventually. But after holding its position for over 3 minutes, I decided to GOWID for 0 pips. I then made the decision to close the platform for the day. It felt good in making this decision instead of going for a third trade.

My session today was quite long again, almost 1½ hours, so I am being quite patient, that’s a good thing. It is tough though, I was stopping myself again at various points from entering hopeful trades.

Zero pips for today, a first for me since starting this blog anyway – and on to tomorrow, Christmas Eve, my last day of trading for the week.....