closed other half of eur/usd at 23 pips
0.153% profit
long gbp/usd at 1.5986
risking 0.20%
stop 25 pips
target 50 pips
long gbp/usd 1.5947
50 pip stop
85 pip target
0.25% risk
currently up 0.243% for the day
5 trades, 3 winners, 2 losers. One trade currently open
Will follow up once trade is closed.
Jay
stop moved up 20 pips on gbp/usd
now only risking 0.15%
too tired to trade anymore3 tonight. Just want to be doneā¦and given where price and S/R levels are, the best thing for me to do is just close this out.
So. Iām out. 1.5962
15 pip profit
0.075%
todays totals:
6 trades. 4 winners, 2 losers.
0.318% profit.
Not particularly impressive for a day of trading, but then I never risked more than 0.40% per trade, and I think I averaged
about a 0.2% risk.
had I risked a flat 1%ā¦today would have netted over 1% profit.
GOnna build it up first a bitā¦then increase my bet sizing.
Will summarize more tomorrow.
Jay
nice job. have a good one. see u tomorrow. I am off for 40 winks before US session.
Oh my, so many trades, Iād be lost with all of them, lol.
PA missed my entry from Friday by 7 pips. Entry was at 13815, target at 13655. 
With my trades today I [B]bear[/B] that in mind.
Plus my bot today missed the target by 1 pips. Still running and weāll see. :33:
edit: Target hit. 
Target2 hit as well now. :53:
Nice trading Bucks! your computer probably caught you a better ROI today than I caught myself. AH wellā¦ my only real concern is for a time when they become adaptable to the point that Iām no longer able to stay ahead!.
Fortunately for us old fashioned screen watchersā¦ that time is not YET hereā¦
too bad about friday, that would have been a beautiful trade.
Sayā¦ this may be heresy, but would that 1.3815 short been a MANUAL trade? 
Jay
Hello Jay!
Yes, nice trading and 7% up in my account thanks a lot, but next losses will come for sure. However, Iām with my bot at a new ath in equity. 
No, no heresy, lol. Yes, that was a manual trade from 13815. I mean, this would have been one if price went a little more up to fill my entry, lol. Iāve seen those 2 resistance levels there and thought to myself I play safe and take the upper one. Particular with the stop relatively high. Though price turned down right at the lower level.
Iām watching the screen with charts as well, because I compete with my bots, lol. Right now no way to be better, but weāll see ā¦
Though, I do also other things like optimizing my computers and developing other applications. As I have my bots now, I can trade by hand, but itās not mandatory to trade by hand.
I guess there will not be a time where trading by hand wouldnāt work in the medium term. I wouldnāt worry about that. I am pretty sure some big banks have already trading systems fully automated and there are still enough opportunities. As long as the markets have an edge. Then, think about it, if the markets would lose that edge, how could then a bot make money with it?
Iāve spent some time going over yesterday, and here are my concerns from this point:
[B]It didnāt feel ātightā enough.[/B] Sure, I took 6 trades, and stuck to my plan (which i congratulate myself on, because that is going to be the secret of success in aiming for this goal), but itās pretty obvious that this plan is far from complete. Here are some thoughts that I have had regarding yesterdays trading. I will be thinking through these to come up with some rules in which to trade by more effectively.
I started feeling tired, and I felt that my ability to fully think through why iām entering or exiting a position was compromised. I donāt at this point choose to try to regulate my sleeping schedule further (itās tough enough for me already),
I instead choose to make a rule that forces me to recognize when iām too tired to be trading well: It is now manditory that
I journal at least my analysis and reasons for entry for every trade I take, either before I take it if itās possible, or at very least, as soon as I enter the trade.
Why does this work for me? Because in life, some are balanced. Others are Driven. I tend towards the latter. I can completely ignore physical discomfort in most cases in persuit of a goal. At this point in my trading, this tendency of mine has become a hinderance.
I wonāt always recognize when iām too tired. BUT, I WILL recognize it through my behaviors. Likeā¦ I will trade, but not be able to concentrate and journal the reasons why i took that trade.
If I see myself unwilling or unable to concentrate and journal all my reasonsā¦well, then Iām too tired! or too distracted, or too emotional, or trading impulsivelyā¦etc.
Itās an elegent solution for me. Not only does it prevent me from the dangers of poor decisions while tiredā¦it also prevents me from making poor decisions while distracted, emotional, etc.
Soā¦new rule! - For every trade, the reasons behind entry need to be written down before I am able to take another trade. No journaling for a particular trade? Then there is simply no more trading for that day.
Alsoā¦ I feel I could learn more from the trades I took yesterday. In particular the losing trades. In order to learn from them, I must review them. I feel I wonāt have enough time in my day to do everything if I spend an exhaustive amount of time reviewing on a daily basisā¦yet I feel daily is necessary. So, I will create a compromise that [I]WORKS FOR ME[/I]
[B]NEW RULE: [/B] Every day before trading, I must review at least 1 trade from the prior day. If there were no
trades the prior day, then pick another recent trade, and review that. I can review them all if I choose too,
but must review at least 1.
This way, I feel that one trade to be reviewed each day is totally acheiveable, and will be helpful. In this way, the plan works to play to my strengths, without burdening me with what I donāt feel right about committing to. I get to have my cake and eat it to.
Now, on to what I will look into for this review:
When reviewing a losing trade, I will try to write down what I overlooked, or missed. I will try to identify what I could have foreseen to be a problem, and write those down.
In the event that the losing trade would have been successful if I had adjusted my entry or my stop, I will try to identify how I could have forseen this before I took the trade. In other words, my trading idea was correct, but the exact details of entry point and stop loss point caused the loss.
When reviewing a winning trade, I will look to see how much margin of error i had with my stop and target. I want to know if I āgot luckyā. In this way, I can see if my trade idea was essentially WRONGā¦ but my stop and target were just so that they happened to capture the few pips possible in an otherwise incorrect analysis.
Also when reviewing a winning trade, I will determine if my original target would have been hit had I not modified my stop loss, or taken profits early. I will write down how much I made, and how much more I would have made if I had not modified my stop loss.
This is enough for now. I will add more as I learn more about what to add.
Jay
No, your right. I was getting paranoid about the ābot invasionā. heckā¦if computers were somehow āself awareā, It likely would not be any different than trading against the best and the brightest human beings today (which we all do already, on a daily basis no less!)
congratz on the new ATH
Jay
Thank you Jay. 
Well, computers are relatively dumb. But very fast. A human chess player is far more intelligent as every computer, itās just that big blue for example calculates a hell of a bunch of moves in microseconds and so it can compete.
Hm, thatās all a lot of work what you have to do there while trading. Are there so many rules that you can make so many errors? My bot for example has only simple rules based on specific setups and then itās just trading mechanically. It adapts automatically to volatility and ranging and treding markets, though. Here is a report with a lower leverage for ~ 2 years. The trades since no. 150 or so are live trades and before from backtest. So, it could probably also trade from 1k to say 50k in 3 years with a higher leverage and drawdown maximum of ~ 30%. Right now I use lesser leverage until it made enough ābufferā money. I donāt have to do anything beside of watching if the trades are executed. Because there is no discretional component.
Iāve watched almost all Seiden webinars and still donāt know what the success rate of such a system is, if you trade just by supply/demand. So I am curious how fast your account will grow and how big the max. drawdown will be. :33:
Hey guysā¦ iām kinda gonna do this on a whim, but if it helps me out, Iāll start to do it on a regular basis.
Since this thread really is about two things: acheiving excellence, and trading for a living, i figure those who read it might be interested.
Iām gonna post up my trades in my futures account. Kinda to give you all some perspective on what (IMO) is pretty doable on a regular basis trading from home, in the forex and commodities futures marketsā¦while trading 1 or at most 2 contracts at a time:
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
including the breakeven trade as a winner, this was my futures account for sundaynight/monday morning.
66% winners.
Jay
eur/usd long from 1.3581.
stop 15 pips
target 19 pips
risking 0.15%
okā¦not even time enough to write up this tradeā¦the reasons for it!
will be doing that before i take another trade.
up 0.19% today
Jay
would have gone short at 1.3615, stop 17 pips, target 32.
oh wellā¦still writing up the other trade
still writing my analysisā¦but since iām mostly doneā¦just wnent long on 1.3545 on eur/usd
stop 20
target 30
risking 0.10%
stop moved to BE + 1 pip
Ok guysā¦heres the write up for the first trade taken today:
this trade on eur/usd long from 1.3581 is essentially a āshake outā situation.
Iām taking a long trade here because as europe is opening, the larger institutions
look to push into liquidity. today sentiment is ārisk offā going into europeā¦but larger
institutions donāt sell low. they buy low, and sell high.
So, the logical movement here is push into liquidity to the downside to shake out
longs. we pushed just a few pips lower than the low of the day (and the week). Popping
stops of many who are long. THis provides the liquidity for larger insitutions
to buy up what they need. They then push price above a recent swing highā¦popping
the short stops, and then, finally the market resolves in the direction they ultimately want.
Also, 1.3580 is a price point that the larger institutions looke to accumulate or
distrubute at in the euro, (the 00, 20, 50, and 80 are all institutional points of interest)
and, we are coming into some demand zones from the previous week. This is a trade
I am very comfortable taking.
Ok, so the trade was profitable. I canāt say I learned much from this trade (generally learn from the mistakesā¦not
the successes), but, it met all my criteria, and it played out exactly as i thought in the market.
Today so far I have 2 trades, no losers. I WOULD have been 3 for 3, but i wasnāt prepared to write down my analysis for the poential 2nd trade, so it just got passed on.
TAKE HOME LESSON: start preparing for the day earlier, at least 1 hour before market opens, in order to be fully ready to both trade and journal as the day starts. This will become a new rule in my plan
Jay
Ok, I currently have a long order on eur/usd at 1.3534.
25 pip stop
25 pip target
risking 0.10%
And another long at 1.3523
27 pip stop
40 pip target
risking 0.15%
will update the thread in the next 24 hours to give a breakdown of where my account, and this experiment, stand so far.
P.S. first half of trade filled, and modified target to 40 pips - 1.3574