my only thoughts are along the lines of what cdawg says.
Where you begin your journey is definitely not where you will end it. So I say go for it. If trading the 5m charts works for you and it is in line with your personality than why not. A lot of professional traders prefer 4h and daily charts. I look at the 4h but I prefer to trade 15m chart myself.
I personally hate swing trading. its to much like work to me. Iād rather earn my 2% in 20-25 pips than to earn 2% in 100-400 pips like R carter suggests. But that is just me. I just always found it easier to pull 25-50 pips out of the market than to try for more.
So my best advice is do what works for you and by all means stay disciplined. Donāt move stops back to give your trade ābreathing roomā And only take the best trades that fit you model.
Thanks for all the advice, I have a plan laid out and I revise it as I go along. I have a pretty good handle on risk/reward (1:2 or 1:3 would be nice but it really isnt going to fly in real short time frames) and on money management, thanks to advice from some fellow traders who have been doing it for a living full time for years.
Iāve changed up my plan just a little and iāll be looking for a few less trades per day, 3-5 is what iām aiming for right now, If i can get more, great. Iām using Shr1kās spreadsheet doc as a guide for my weekly goals.
Just to give you a little background, Iām not totally new to trading, Iāve been trading stocks off and on for years, mainly swing trading but itās done in my 401k which is a self directed brokerage account. I started in forex about 2 months ago, My big hurdle was getting used to trading live charts, it still gets me sometimes but for the most part i have it down pretty well. I trade the 15m or the 5m, iām sure I could use the same strategy on any time frame, i just prefer the shorter times.
Also, this isnt about money really, itās about becoming consistent in my strategy, setting a goal and hitting that goal in a regular basis with minimal losses and developing my discipline so that when I am trading standard lots I can relax and just trade without hesitation.
My ultimate goal, like many others, is to trade full time. I have been in the same job, commercial aviation, for 18yrs. You know when you reach a point in your life where you just need to make a change? well iām past that point, I go to my job because Iām stuck there. Iām maxed out on my hourly pay and theres nowhere else to go. The industry gets worse by the day and iām just ready to move on with my life. Maybe Iāll make it to my goal, maybe I wont but at least Iām going to try as hard as I can to find out.
This sounds crazy but I was actually inspired by, of all things a fortune cookie. it read āYou can not change the way youāll die but you can change the way youāll liveā.
That kind of stuck with me and really made me think about what I want out of my life and how to give my family the things they deserve.
I donāt suggest its the way to go for everyone, thereās no right or wrong way to trade. A caveat to that is of courseā¦ if its consistantly profitable? I too many years ago started off looking to the quick in and out trades. I figured the less exposure to the market the better. But I liken this to driving. When your young its āpedal to the metalā mentality. When your older and wiser you know its more a case of the āhare and the tortioseā. LOL.
Just for clarification, I donāt swing tradeā¦ more trading the high/ low across the weekly tunnel. It works for me and freeās up a whole lot of screentime. Admittedly it takes a good while to see a trade through (5-10 days typically) but Iām old and patientā¦ only looking for an average 250 pips a week at 0.1% of bal risk per trade or 2.5% week on week increase on my account. Most weeks its better than that. Since Sunday 04/04 iām up over 1100 pips (my month on month spread sheet) or 11% on my trading capital. That said, Iām more than happy with 10% a month as its compounding that builds the account not individual trades.
I just noticed this thread. Itās the same as the flag thread on the FF forum. Things I like about it, small stop losses, high win rate, only an ok risk reward ratio of 1:1 but a high win rate makes up for that. Iām thinking of going for a higher reward like 1:1.5 or 1:2 or close half move stop to break even and leave the other half open. It has two other things going for it, direction and momentum.
Iām going to try it for a while and see how it goes.
edit:
and the $50,000-$100,000 figure quoted is implied to be those seeking to trade fulltime and live off their earnings. It doesnāt mention covering a yearās worth of living expenses too, but I would advise adding that into it as well.
alternatively you can work a job and save up while compounding a smaller account, but this can be like having 2 jobs and you really got to be motivated to execute that effectively (and not lose your job in the meantime!)
tell me what you think anyways, I hope itās a wakeup call for what youāre trying to do in the markets with $150.
Hey Talon, yes the Flag thread on FF is where I learned the method, I make my fair share of mistakes and I dont have it mastered like divergence does but Iām working on it. I like the method, itās simple, reliable and just works. The only thing I do differently is that I added an additional longer term sma for extra verification of the trend direction.
I practice a lot and I have the rules laid out in front of me when i trade, bad things happen when i dont follow them exactly. I got lucky the other day, I had what I thought was a legit entry but didnt notice i was looking at the wrong cci bar, instead of it being +50 it was 0ā¦i entered on that bar, luckily the next candle was the legit one and I managed to pick up a 21 pip gain.
akeakamai, yes I completely understand what youāre saying. Iām not trying to turn $150 into a million, far from it. hell, Iāll be happy just to make gains and not blow up my account , lol.
Iām using the small amount of capital and a micro account to develop my skills and consistency. When i was talking about getting out of my job I didnt mean I was going to grow my account to $1000 , quit my job and try to be a full time professional trader. If I have 6mo-1yr of living expenses and a decent sized trading account I would consider it but that is in the future. Right now itās all about learning ,growing my account by making consistent profits and increasing funds as I am able to.
Before this method I originally funded my account with $300, I made $65 in gains on the first day out of sheer luck, caught the bottom of the USD/JPY intervention. That type of gain on day 1 for a total forex noob was a bad thing, it led to overconfidence and not long after it I drew my account down to $100 while learning, trying different methods like just trading the ma cross and making big mistakes.
Anyway, as of right now Iām going to continue aiming for 10% weekly gains and see how things go. Iāll either do well of iāll go down in flames, lol
I started the thread for my own personal journal I guess, not really trying to prove anything but I like seeing all of your different opinions.
RCarter I believe 10% of your account is probably like 100% of my account. I know you are professional and I always pay attention to your posts
alternatively you can work a job and save up while compounding a smaller account, but this can be like having 2 jobs and you really got to be motivated to execute that effectively (and not lose your job in the meantime!)
This is what I do and it has worked great for me. Every chance I get I add more money to my account. I recommend this to anyone. Discipline is not just for your trading it is for your entire approach in trading. For me discipline starts with saving and adding to my live account and then it extends to risk management. For me it is all about protecting my hard earned capital. Finally discipline is practiced by taking only the best setups and compounding your gains.
All these things will help you grow your account and become successful.
I get bonuses from my job, some months itās $50, some $100 and I plan on adding my entire bonus or at least a portion of it to my trading account. Iām just like most other people, trying to make it from paycheck to paycheck and maybe even have a few bucks left over so right now $50,000 may as well be a trillion. Iām just hoping to be able to snatch a few crumbs from the big boys in the game and take my kid to Disneyworld before shes 30 (shes 9 now).
I picked a bad week to start this, the 4 day break is killing me. and fwiw Iām sitting at $157.11, right about on target for day 4 and next level up is $159.18, at 2% a day gain my 7 day target is $168.92. of course Iām aiming for a higher return but these are my target points
Things are moving along nicely, I made some alterations from my original post after messing up my calculations and getting some grief over my plan ,lol
I have been using the spreadsheet that shr1k provided to set targets for the day/week. I shoot for at least 2% a day in gains but I try to do much better than that.
I started with $150 micro account balance on the 17th and started tracking my trades on the 18th. I picked a rough week to start tracking because most of friday and all of monday were bank holidays for the world.
Iām just considering this as day 6 my 2% target for day 6 is $165.61 and my current balance is $165.26
my last 5 trades went well, total gain was 59.2 pips with 4 wins and break even.
target for day 7 is $168.92+
Thanks an i just picked up 24 pips on some crazy spike on the eur/usdā¦that made up for a few hours ago when boredom set in and i entered 2 trades knowing full well there was nothing there but for some reason I did it anyway and I paid for it. I cut em off pretty quick but I did lost about 10 pips on my stupidity lol
Iām thinking 1.47 is the key area both psycologically and historically? Well see. LOL But the spike is a good clueā¦ suck um in to placing longs and pull the plug! LOL
Well, I should have known better then to mess around with a news day. I totally blew my rules and then tried trading to make up my original loss. starting with the NY open EUR/USD , on my 5 min chart the 10ma crossed down below the 34 ma, so I take a short. Problem was that short didnt follow my rules, the low of the candle following my setup bar never broke the low of the setup bar. but what do I do? take it anyway and of course it went to the upside and i shut it down after a 3.8 pip loss.
next trade, ok trend is moving up. i go long ā¦again it reverses and hits my stop, even worse it takes out my stop by 1 pip and Iām down another 10 pipsā¦then it makes a 10 pip run to the upside. So now iām annoyed and should have walked away but I want my $$ back. I go long againā¦not paying any attention to the timeā¦12:25pm est, 5 mins from the FOMC.
this time it seems good, making a nice run up, should be an easy 20 pipsā¦ahh but FOMCā¦before i know what hit me I go from a profitable trade to stopped out for another 10 pip loss. that 1 candle ran 65 pips total and then after that calmed down the eur proceeded to make a nice steady run up for about 100 pips. I got in at one point for a small gain of about 4 pips and was stopped out because i was so nervous about it crashing again I kept my stop way too tight. Had I gave it some breathing room I would have had a nice gain of 30+ pips.
So I decided to take a break from it for awhile and I see news of the NZD rates coming outā¦Iām thinking this should be an easy win, NZD hadnt planned on changing rates, itās one of the strongest currencies around right now and itās up against the weak USD. So I put in a buy just before news comes out, again, not in my trading plan at all. I put in a stop 35 pips under my buy just in case things go bad and I go make some food. I come back a little while later to find a huge bear candle on the chart and my trade gone. -35 pips. ughhhh wtf lol. it was still heading south so I shorted it for a slight gain. What I didnt plan on what this statement āThe outlook for the New Zealand economy remains very uncertain following Februaryās Christchurch earthquake,ā
moral of the story, stick to your plan dont go making trades on the fly because you got overconfidentā¦FX has a way of humbling you in a hurry. So much for my gains Iām back at $153 right now.
Edit ; Traded my way back to where Iām supposed to be $167 and counting
Hit my 2% target of $173 plus $2
current balance $175.39
trades taken 4/27-present :21
losses: 6
52 week target $25,830 of course thats with $0 additional funding and $0 withdrawls while compounding all of my gains and increasing risk relative to my account balance. Is it attainable? who knows but Iām going to try
