My Trading Journal at Zulutrade

Hello everyone! This is my first post here and from now on I will record on this thread my journey on ZuluTrade. I traded on Zulu just for a while last November-December but I didnt have the time to continue back then. I started again today and hopefully this time it will last longer.
My public profile on Zulu can be found here:
https://www.zulutrade.com/trader/197577
I am a novice trader but I have some solid academic education on Finance so I hope I can make some pips along the way.
I demo trade for the moment and I won’t deposit any money until I feel confident about my trading.
I have also played online poker in the past with some better than average results.
I will normally update the journal at the end of the day when I close my trades.

[B]Monday 25th August[/B]

Today as you can see from my trading history on ZuluTrade I went short the EUR/USD.
This was due to 3 facts:

  1. Janet Yellen and Draghi speeches on Friday
  2. The Ifo announcement on Germany + the resignation of the french government
  3. The mess with the fiscal policy in the Eurozone + the tension between Europe and Russia caused by the war in Ukraine

Unfortunately I put stop losses of 20 pips and out of my 5 trades one stop loss was triggered from an instaneous price spike and I ended up with a 10 pips cumulative daily profit. Probably I should rethink my stop loss strategy. For the moment I will mainly focus only on EUR/USD. To be honest I am not really a fan of technical analysis and I believe I will be more of a fundamental-sentiment analysis trader but of course this may change as I get more familiar with FX. Any comments are welcomed and sorry for any grammatical mistakes because I am not a native speaker.

[B]Tuesday 26th August [/B]

Placed and closed two intra-day trades (2 hours):
EUR/USD Short at 1.3200 closed at 1.31926 +7.4 pips
USD/JPY Long at 103.891 closed at 103.921 + 3 pips

The first trade was placed because as I can understand the 1.3200-1.3210 level is the current 2-day resistance level.
As for the second one I spotted that the pair lost the 104.050 level aggressively last night but I believe it will quickly test again this level.
The reason that I closed these trades is that I dont want to have market exposure during the U.S. Durable Goods Orders announcement. I am just experiment at the moment until I have a better understandanding of the markets.

I think you need quite a lot of improvements to do, unfortunately so far your performance is not any that a follower can copy you need quite a lot to do in order for people to follow you.

I am not expecting that people will follow me in the near future, I have just started this trading journal to keep me motivate and learn from other people before opening a live account. As a SP on Zulu, other traders here can watch and comment on my trades. Thats what I am hoping.

Should you want feedback on the zulutrade performance, I’d advise you to open a thread in the official zulutrade forum and follow the discussion there. Keep in mind that whoever comments on your performance have to also follow you as well. This is how the system works.

[B]Wednesday 27th August[/B]

Placed and closed two intra-day trades:
EUR/USD Short at 1.31787 closed at 1.31727 + 6 pips
EUR/USD Short at 1.32005 closed at 1.31944 + 6.1 pips

Only? …so what is the overall performance? Care to share with us…
This way we can motivate you further…

[B]Thursday 28th August[/B]

Today I shorted again the EUR/USD with entry points: 1.31673, 1.31729 and 1.31822.
The market was trending between 1.3170-13185 and I had to close the 1st trade on a loss.
I closed all the trades at 1.31690 for a cumulative + 15 pips profit.
From the beginning of the week I am up 48 pips after 13 trades.
Highest drawdown was around 30 pips on Monday when I had 5 trades open.
I am still trying to shape my strategy and find what is relevant and what is not in forex trading.
The short-term goal is to have a small profit or to be at least break even on the demo account by the end of September.

Hello, so how much do you plan to make out of this trading? What about your followers? are happy with them?

[B]Friday 29th August[/B]

Entered and closed 2 shorts on EUR/USD today:
Entry @ 1.3185 closed at 1.3179 + 6 pips
Entry @ 1.3188 closed at 1.3178 + 10 pips

[B]Weekly Recap (25-29/8):[/B]

+64 pips out of 15 trades
Average pips per trade: 4.3
11 trades were profitable
3 trades closed on a loss
1 breakeven trade
Biggest win: 13.4 pips
Biggest loss: -20 pips
Thoughts:
The good think is that I correctly followed the trend of this week which was a sell off for EUR/USD.
On the other hand the average pip per trade is very low and probably I should let my winners run more. If 1-2 more stop losses of 20 pips were trigerred, my gains would have been vanished. So small profit taking requires a very high percentage of successfull trades and I should trade more if I want to follow this strategy.
As for your question EDDY, if I can make 10 pips on average per day or 200 pips per month I wil be satisfied. So far I have no followers but this is normal considering my low ranking on ZuluTrade.

Keeping under the radar I guess. We can call this as slow and steady profit. I mean it basically beats everything else.

Hi, Keep doing what you are doing . You do not need to bad a lot of pips to acquire a lot of money . There is something called compounding , using this will just increase profits, so eventually you could trade $5 per pip and increase this if you are getting good results :slight_smile:

So, what is your strategy man, who are following actually?

[B]Monday 1st September[/B]

Placed and closed only 1 trade:
EUR/USD Short at 1.31347 closed at 1.31287 + 6 pips

When I placed the trade I thought that the conflict escalation in Ukraine during the weekend and the weak PMI’s data from the Eurozone could drive the pair lower. But volatility on the pair was no existant due to the Labor Day Holiday and clearly investors are waiting for the ECB announcements on Thursday.

I follow closely all the news that may affect EUR/USD, the 15m chart to decide my entry points, the 1m chart to get a feeling of the market and daily pivot points to identify support and resistance levels. So it is a very simple analysis so far and I hope that as I become more experienced with forex I will add more advanced elements to it.

I see. I think it is better having a save and sound strategy than actually risking all and loosing it within a minute.
EUR/USD shorting only correct? you dont think of anything more to differentiate?

[B]Tuesday 2nd September[/B]

Absolutely horrendous results and trading.
Placed and closed 7 trades:
Short USD/JPY @ 104.897 closed @ 104.945 - 4.8 pips
Short GBP/USD @ 1.65226 closed @ 1.6517 + 5.6 pips
Long USD/JPY @ 104.932 closed @ 104.986 + 5.4 pips
4 shorts on EUR/USD, all stop losses of 25 pips were triggered -100 pips
Daily total: -93.8 pips

Lessons learned:
Do not try to aggressively averaging down when the market is moving all the way against you.
Add at most only one trade on a losing position.
If I had opened 2 EUR/USD shorts with stop loss of 50 pips I would have a better probability to catch a potential reversal on the price.
Let my winners run more, missed a great opportunity on USD/JPY and GBP/USD.

[B]Wednesday 3rd September[/B]

Placed and closed 2 trades:
Long USD/CAD @ 1.09125 closed @ 1.09044 -8.1 pips
Short GBP/USD @ 1.64646 closed @ 1.64416 + 23 pips
Daily total: +14.9 pips

[B]Thursday 4th September[/B]

Closed 3 trades which were placed yesterday:
Long USD/CHF @ 0.91906 closed @ 0.92136 +23 pips
Short EUR/USD @ 1.31428 closed @ 1.30908 + 52 pips
Long USD/JPY @ 105.012 closed @ 105.086 + 7.4 pips
Placed and closed 5 intraday trades:
Short EUR/USD @ 1.30124 closed @ 1.30052 + 7.2 pips
Short GBP/USD @ 1.63513 closed @ 1.63423 +9 pips
Short EURUSD @ 1.29462 closed @ 1.2937 +9.2 pips
Short EURUSD @ 1.29348 closed @ 1.29279 + 6.9 pips
Short EURGBP @ 0.79094 closed @ 0.79394 - 30 pips
Daily total: + 84.7 pips

[B]Friday 5th September[/B]

Placed and closed 4 intraday trades:
Short EURUSD @ 1.29751 closed @ 1.29521 + 23 pips
Long USD/JPY @ 104.763 closed @ 104.993 + 23 pips
Long USD/JPY @ 104.888 closed @ 105.034 + 14.6 pips
Long USD/JPY @ 105.211 closed @ 105.034 -17.7 pips
Daily total: + 42.9 pips

[B]Weekly Recap (1-5/9):[/B]
+54.9 pips out of 22 trades
Average pips per trade: 2.5
14 trades were profitable
8 trades closed on a loss
Biggest win: 53 pips
Biggest loss: -30 pips

Thoughts:
Mixed to bad results for me, if you consider the fact that I have 3 open shorts EUR/USD position that are currently at -41.2 pips and my max drawndown reached 174 pips on Friday. The good thing is that after the initial shock of the bad NFP number, markets didnt overeact and I firmly believe that the trend against EUR will continue because Eurozone needs a weeker euro to recover. I also expect that Scotland will not go independent at 18/9 so the GBP free fall will stop.

[B]Monday 8th September[/B]

Closed 3 trades that were placed on Friday:
Short EURUSD @ 1.29482 closed @ 1.29382 + 10 pips
Short EURUSD @ 1.29499 closed @ 1.29269 + 23 pips
Short EURUSD @ 1.29271 closed @ 1.29216 + 5.6 pips
Daily total: + 38.6 pips

[B]Tuesday 9th September[/B]

Placed and closed 7 intraday trades:
Long GBP/USD @ 1.61028 closed @ 1.60929 - 9.9 pips
Long EUR/USD @ 1.28883 closed @ 1.28941 + 5.8 pips
Short USD/JPY @ 106.188 closed @ 106.176 + 1.2 pips
Short GBP/USD @ 1.61072 closed @ 1.60842 + 23 pips
Short GBP/USD @ 1.61028 closed @ 1.60798 + 23 pips
Short GBP/USD @ 1.60937 closed @ 1.60707 + 23 pips
Short USD/CHF @ 0.93487 closed @ 0.93447 + 4 pips
Daily total: + 70.1 pips