So heres my first journal entry… its time to come out of the shadows and be a little more open in how simple I am trying to be with this trading lark!
So my view which I confess was stolen from some training manual is, Forex trading is simple but the most difficult thing. Trading charts, using averages . candle patterns, seems that once you understand it you’ve got it, thats the simple piece the difficult bit is our emotions. That for me is the most difficult piece.
Anyway that brings me to this journal, I’ve decided writing down trades I’ve completed / trades im keeping an eye on and why will help me focus. Also this morning i looked at a trade i had put on last night and for the love of god of me i cannot figure out why i put it on. So hopefully pasting a couple of pics in here will give me some breathing space.
For clarity I’m on a Demo account. account balance was £5000 to start. When i go live I think I will put only £200 in my first ever account leveraging 5% risk ration per trade, im massively cautious with money. Therefore I am using the same basis on the demo. So im sizing my trades to have stops at £10.
Im looking at price acton candle patterns and support resitances etc. Nothing complicated or particularly intelligent. Hopefully it might develop a little moving forward.
So that me and how and why. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE feel free to comment / suggest / slag off / tell me how great I am below. Also be interesting if others are spotting the same patterns.
So first pair I looked at tonight is the EUR/USD. At the moment im looking at these being a very very boring pair. No obvious signs for me. Day traders might have more look on the 1 hour / 30 min charts etc but from my perspective not a lot giving. Do you agree? I will keep an eye on the pair each day and im looking for the support lines on the the 4 hour / daily chart to break. If that happens i will take another look. The resistance on the weekly is interesting as well, there was a false break a while a go.
Second pair ive looked at is the GBP / USD. Weekly chart is showing a downward trend. The four hour and 1 hour chart broke the resistance on a downward directions. (green line) however it seems to be sentiment based. There were a few hours of gradual up trend and then bang it blew everything out and went 170 pips in one hour. Im in two minds as whether to put a trade on this one. I am currently thinking of holding off and waiting to see how it retraces, lets see if we get a second / third elliot wave, alternatively it could keep going and follow the weekly trend of downwards.
Final one im checking out tonight is the USD/CNH. Looks like elliot waves developing on the weekly chart and the bad news out of US today has hammered a rally that seemed to be happening. I will keep an eye on the 4 hour chart see if it recovers and carries on the momentum it had before (yellow circle).
So before i sign off tonight, couple of open trades at the moment. Also i desperately need to finalise the the accounts log. i need to start tracking these so I can see where successes are / aren’t.
Just a quick update before i do my analysis tonight. I closed out on the USD/JPY trade today. 200 PIPS profit, £13 in my demo account profit
Anyway I cancelled the profit rather then letting it run to its full Profit target as I felt as though it was hitting support on the daily chart. I am going to keep an eye on this one. If it pushes through that support level ill go back in and short again. Also the hourly and maybe weekly seem to show week elliot waves. If it pushes through the daily support level the hourly third wave wil be in play which will give me double confidence to go forth.
so first thing to mention is yesterdays decision to stay out of GBP/USD was a stupid one (or at least the wrong one). It kept going up and ive been looking at all the charts trying to find a way in, but i need to walk away. Ive decided to ignore it, im trying to chase it now and thats not good.
Ive been looking at the GBP/JPY tonight. Weekly chart shows a downward trend since may last year and it looks like its exhausting the fourth elliot wave. The four hour chart suggests were going down and potentially bouncing off the 50% fib level. So I am going to put a short trade on with a stop loss on the 60% line. QUESTION: (if anyone is actually reads this and or knows) does the four hour chart look like its developing the “head and shoulder” setup? I dont fully understand this but to me it looks like it might be.
OK finally tonight i looked at AUD / JPY. Weekly showing strong downward trend and about to hit the resistance level of that down ward trend. The four hour showing a slight uptrend but the daily chart suggests its bouncing off the resistance level. I have bet it is going to go down and placed a trade on this. Now I was thinking of waiting to see if it broke the support line I’ve drawn on the 4 hour chart first. The theory being if it breaks that its a sort of double confirmation however I’ve decided to jump a little early simply due to where i place my stop loss. If I place the stop loss on the daily chart at the resistance level i have less of a stop. If it breaks the resistance line then the whole plan is off anyway. Not sure if that makes sense but it did in my simple brain.
So I have three trades on here at the moment. I shouldn’t be online tomorrow so I’ll have a look on Sunday check them out and see how the markets are lining up for the week.
My account equity is break even after first week however if I get stopped on all open trades I will be £40 down. Im relatively happy, if i didn’t make two idiotic mistakes last week I would be £10 up. Which is effectively half a trade size up on the account. Bearing in mind im using 5% loss rates based on a demo account assuming i only have £200 initial trading. Maybe the other way of looking at it is if i had a £20k trading account I would have made £1000 last week.
I’m noting that some of the trades you’ve legitimately taken haven’t been talked about.
Well, I noticed this from your 2nd post in that Journal thread. You talked about EUR/USD, GBP/USD and USD/CNH but then you took a trade on the USD/JPY and EUR/JPY. No explanation behind those trades.
I was just curious the reasoning behind those trades is all.
I should probably be posting this on that thread lol[/quote]
Thought I should merge the post over here. lol
Anyways, good thread start!
If you don’t mind explaining a little about your trade plan that way those of us who do follow this can keep up with you.
I know you’re using plain Price Action, but what I mean is something like:
1.) Trading Support/Resistance - Channel patterns - Wedge patterns
2.) Trading WITH trend
3.) Once price reaches Support in an UP trend, look for Price Actions of Pin Bars or Bullish Engulfing (Or Bearish going the other way).
4.) Once the Price Action signal finalizes, wait for second candle to confirm move by passing the nose of the Pin Bar or the High of the Bullish Engulfing candle (or the Low of the Bearish Engulfing candle).
5.) Execute trade with appropriate Stops and TP’s.
Quick update tonight. Booked 200 + PIPS on the GBP JPY trade i discussed above. Very pleased with that. Ive taken another look at the pair and i believe they might be ripe for more. Its potentially in the period of crossing a support line on the 4 hour (green line). If I see a confident cross over the support line in the sell direction then I will be looking to sell with a stop against the red line and a take profit towards the orange line. The other reason I am feeling a little confident on this on is the hourly chart shows eliot waves going down (highlighted them in green on the right side of the pic)
so Ideasonscribe asked for some more information on why im making a trade etc. Bearing in mind Im very much a noob happy for peoples opinions.
I loked at the USD/CAD tonight. Im looking for sell options as the Weekly has been on a massive downward trend for couple of months and broke its upward trend line very strongly. (See bottom chart green line) The daily is showing a contained down ward trend as well. (Top right chart green lines). Everything is saying sell… however i havent.
Main reason risk management and stop loss. without wanting to be fake stopped out, my stop would need to go on the top green line on the daily chart (see organe line) if i do that i am not sure the pair has enough legs to at least double the risk. The red line on the daily is showing potential support toard the left hand side.
Because of these reasons ive decided to back out of this trade. I will keep an eye on the pair but not going to enter right now.
General Update
Today I downloaded the FXCM trading platform and started using Market Scope. I have been playing around with the tools for about 2 hours tonight so not had chance to look at the markets that much. I’m also going to try and be a little pointful with my updates. Hopefully it will help make more sense.
Current Account Status (at typing) $5016 Closed positions since last update GBP/JPY - $20 / 200 pip profit
Pair - GBP / JPY General Trend Down - weekly Trade entered? yes - Sell Reasoning
This is a pair I booked a profit on earlier in the week. I was waiting for it to break the support line which it now has (see earlier post). In the pic below. Top left chart weekly showing downward trend. Top right is daily. This is showing the formation of potential head and shoulders. (circled in yellow) now I should wait until it hits the green line before selling however when I see the 4 hour chart (bottom left) I see it broke the support line I was looking for. See the two circles earlier where it was tested. If it continues down it has plenty of room before it hits the next support area (green line). Therefore I was brave and put the stop just above the previous support which is now hopefully the resistance line
So this is a pretty boring pair however ive noticed on the daily that it has broken the trend line (green dashes). The orange line shows the support bar it bounced off. So do I enter? Well yes however I my next check is where to place the stop and I just cant decide. The red line is above the two day previous bar and back into the trend zone. However the orange bar is the resistance line. Now logic says I put the stop there however that means the take profit has to be all the way down at the thick blue line. That is a pretty solid support line however I’m needing the pair to travel 320 PIPs in the right direction. Ive decided to go with he long stop and put it on the resistance line however I would be interested in other peoples thoughts.
Quick update before away for Easter so wont be online over the next 7 days.
Now new trades only one closed over night. The GBP/JPY I put on last night stopped me out. I think this is my fault and lesson learnt. I put too tight of a stop on. In the chart below I put a stop on the orange support line. Where as I should have (in hind sight) looked at a longer stop. Maybe the best point would have been the 50% fib level on the last down trend. This was a previous resitance line and is shown in green in the pic.
I need to look into stop management better I think. I am still very confident on this going down and as I am doing a dmeo account I’m tempted to put the trade back on with the stop on the 50% fib line…
Oh sod ill do it. Take profit is the blue like at the bottom
on what basis did you take this trade?
The trade was taken on swing low of the prevailing downtrend, price went crawling back up toward upper support line, so infact you were lucky having that stop loss placed.
Good question and I’m intrigued by something you said.
I took the trade because it broke the support line on orange. I expect there is some reversal back above the support line however I thought once it broke that it was going down.
What do you been by reversal of swing low? Where do you see that on the pair?
I am not in place to judge yet as I am a newbie myself, however I spend alot of time and effort to spot those key S&R areas, but first I would not place the support line at 158. where you have placed yours, perhaps you should take a look at my chart *note that my lines were placed prior to the swing low creation.
price has reached the 159.7 support and now has been stalling there for a while,(I already don’t like the way things look) however, not only that area is a swing high in a prevailing down trend it also coincides with a trendline which should add significance.
depending on how price will react to the small fresh trendline I drew underneath price action I will decidie if to place an order or not. If it breaks through that line I will seek to enter a short preferably on a backtest of the trendline, since it is not yet fully qualified as a trend line I might depend less on a backtest, but I will look to enter.
nothing5555 interesting setup and too be honest I have nothing left to add other then I thought there was a support line, it thought it broke that and was heading down. Downward is the weekly trend so I thought I was trading with the trend. I got it wrong. What I have learnt is the second trade I put on I was trying to chase the pair. I shouldn’t have done that one. I lost and I should have walked away. I didn’t and that is the biggest stupidest thing I did in trading this pair. I’m walking away now though, letting it settle and I will take another look in a couple of days once ive forgoton about my heart break.
Take it easy, the truth is during the last month (march) I have been struck by on going losses, so my progress hasn’t been good either even though Feb was a great month, I guess one of the reasons were because I have been following too many pairs in fact since my last analysis on the gbp/jpy mentioned above I did not take any interest in that pair at all, back to the majors only, better focus better analysis better trades period. but that’s just me.
I highly recommend this guy Steve W from No Brainer Trades, hes got alot to offer from his own experience, puts an emphasis on S&R lvls.
his site also offers alot of free info, I am constantly learning from him. but don’t give up keep posting your trades!
