Good Morning, Good Morning, Good Morning (ever watch 'Fawlty Towers')?
Benjimang:
Thanks for the input and insight.
Quote:
|
I am the same as you... I can't help but check my open positions ALL the time. By introducing a rule that I only act at the beginning of a new candle, I have SEVERELY reduced the amount of instances where I pull a position too soon because I wuss out, so to speak. I use this technique on all timeframes and it is one of the best things I have done with my trading
|
Glad to hear I'm not the only one!!! Like I said before - I say 'damn - I should not have pulled out when I did' many many more times than I say 'wow - am I glad I got out when I did'!!!
Quote:
|
1. You might miss some profits.
|
Not worried about this anymore - the profit is what counts - and I'd rather make smaller profits more often - than huge profits which invariably get offset by huge losses.
Quote:
2. Determining what time of the day the daily chart opens a new candle can be tricky. Also, you might be asleep or at work when the new candle opens, so your reaction time might be even slower.
|
Fortuanately not a problem for me. As you probably know I'm in South Africa so the daily 'ticks' over at 06h00 here which is 00h00 NY time (at two brokers) and 07h00 at the other (I've never been able to figure out why their daily is an hour behind but not realy a problem). What's great for me is that I normally work (watch) until about 23h00 which allows me to cover the European and US sessions. I've tried to cover the Asian sessions as well but it became extremely counter productive very quickly. Actually - that's something I have noticed - my trading sure has improved now that I'm getting sleep!!! That may sound strange but I'll tell you - your mind does need to be awake - otherwise you really make stupid decisions.
Anyway - I'm going to give your advice a try. Thanks.
As far as the thread is concerned I have made some more observations this morning:
1 - There were quite a few positions that I did not open last week when I first started this because there were already two or three PSAR dots showing. I had a good look this morning and I figure that with PSAR you COULD theoretically open positions no matter how many dots are showing. Why do I say this? Because remember that although you are opening positions late your stop loss is much smaller if you are using the indicator as designed. So - the logic being - you are getting in late - if the trend continues - good for you - if not - you stop and reverse with a minimal loss.
2 - I also realised that I have been TOTALLY stupid when opening all these positions at my one broker!!! I forgot that they have a Level 2 platform!!! On Level 2 the spreads are minute compared to the normal orders. There is commission payable on every trade but this equates to be far less than the cost of the spread on normal orders. I can't believe I forgot about this!!! I mean - sometimes - there is NO spread - and when I looked at some of the spreads just this morning - I've opened some positions where there is a fifteen or sixteen PIP spread on normal orders and on Level 2 that same pair only had a three PIP spread. This makes is more viable to trade what are normally high spread pairs like most of the exotics.
3 - Take a look at what happened this morning with EUR/SEK (the problem child from yesterday)!!! Now there is a PSAR dot at the top and a PSAR dot at the bottom!!! What to do??? I added (and I know this is cheating) an indicator called 'TRIX' just to get a 'heads up' and this indicator tells me that the trend is still up (this indicator is some or the other tripled or quadrupled doubly smoothed something or the other and is designed to indicate the direction of the major trend and keep you in the trend as long as possible). Now - don't get me wrong - I'm not circumventing PSAR - it was just on this pair that I had no direction at all - still don't!!!
4 - There is an inherent problem opening as many pairs as I have opened. I just realised that by opening as many positions as I have that you are effectively creating 'hedges'. It's almost like going long AUD/USD and short NZD/USD. While both pairs wont move at exactly the same time and by exactly the same amount the one will show a loss and the other will show a profit and the nett effect will be either a smaller profit or smaller loss. On the other hand - I have still not quite cleared this in my mind. Does this actually make a difference? Actually - I'm talking nonsense (I think). If I take a look at these same two pairs they are BOTH going south based on my PSAR positions so they are not effectively 'hedging' each other. Actually - the bigger danger appears to be that BOTH of them go against you at the same time!!! I need to research this phenomenon in more depth but any comments or input would be greatly appreciated!!!
By the way - as I type - profit on what is now 36 positions / 36 pairs is $1916.71 I did not get any 'new' PSAR dots this morning - just trying my 'it's OK to enter late theory' as detailed above).
Edit:
I'm 'wracking' my brain on this one i.e. with the number of pairs. I keep thinking to myself I should not be trading the 'crosses' e.g. it's not making sense to me to be trading EUR/GBP AND anything else EUR/??? and GBP/??? for example. In other words - I have a lot of other EUR/??? positions and a lot of other GBP/??? positions - and are these other ???/??? positions not pretty much dependant on the movement of the EUR or GBP??? Thinking!!!
Another edit:
Also - is it just me - or are the currency markets not really doing anything??? I'm getting reminded once again why I trade the Indices and Commodities and not Forex!!!
And yet another edit (actually this is more of a 'message to self'):
HANG IN THERE!!! Now that there is no movement I am SOOOO tempted to just close all of the positions that are showing a nice profit!!! What happened to the 'violent' movements I saw last week and on Monday / Tuesday this week??? After the 'shinnanigans' last week on stocks even the Indices seem to be asleep!!! It's like what I imagine to be the 'doldrums' (I'd make a terrible sailor - although - if the truth be told - that's EXACTLY where I want to end up - Alaskan Crab Fishing on the Bering Sea with my son - once I've paid off all my debts and bought a crab boat - ala 'Deadliest Catch' - just think - I could trade the DOW and the DAX via satellite)!!! Let me go and wash my car!!!
Regards,
Dale.