[B]Friday, November 27, 2009, 3:07 PM[/B]
It has been awhile since I have updated my non-existent "Trading Journal". During the past two weeks or so, I have been learning a bit more.
After losing about 20 trades in row, (still pending, will it be 21?!) I have learned a few things.
Below i will post my [B]trading plan[/B], and [B][U]rules of trading [/U][/B]which i will be loyally adhering to at all times.
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[B][li][U][I]Never risk more than 2% of starting principle account on each trade[/I][/U]
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[B][li][U][I]Use money management, NOT pip management. [/I][/U][/B] I could enter trade abiding to the rule of never risking more than 2% of my money, but if i set a rule saying, I will not take trades where the stop losses is greater than 50 PIPs, than I will have a very inflexible system, and will be losing and missing alot of trades. I have learned that setting a Cap on stop loss in pip value could be harmful, stop loss should be in nominal cash amount, but never in pips. Trades could vary, and stop loss in pips could vary. As long as the Risk Reward of SL and TA is good, stop loss in pips could be almost any amount.
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[B][li][U][I]Set Reasonable and volatility included stop-loss [/I][/U] [/B]after being spiked out all the time, i finally realized that setting tight stop losses aren’t the correct thing to do, especially with retail brokers with all the stop hunter out there, and news time volatility. The stop loss should be reasonable, it should not be super tight, but should be the an amount that proves you are wrong almost 100%. the way i think of stop loss is that its all most like a bollinger band, if reached, there is 95% of chance the trade has gone out of favor for you.
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[li][U][I]Avoid lower time frame charts, such as any below H4[/I][/U], [/B]since i am a big candlestick fan, and candlesticks could be notorious for giving fake outs, I will take council from relatively higher time frames, i am currently using 4H, D1, and W1. I find 4h is less noisy and could be used for entering trade. I also aspires to be a swing traders, so these charts are ideal for me.
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[li][U][I]A candlestick is not official until it closes, [/I][/U][/B]i have learn this the hard way. etc, hammer is very bearish during the session.
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[B][li][U][I]I will do my best to check the market at the following times, 8:30 AM(must), 12 PM, 4 PM, 8 PM, 10 PM(must) [/I][/U][/B]
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[B][li][U][I]Always consider risk reward on any trade[/I][/U][/B] I use to set a rule of taking trades that are only 2:3 or better, but i find that this is kind of inflexible, especially taking the consideration that some trades have a high probability of reversal with 100 indicators all converging to a single conclusion. anything more than 1:1 is good at this point. still pending on specific risk reward ratio rule
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[*][U][I]Its better to get on a good trade late, than get faked out and lose money. [/I][/U][/ol][/B]