Trade the DAX

For a brief info I have been in this game for a little over 3 years now. 2 years have been part time and the last year was my first year as a full timer - but I didn’t make a single cent aka my net profit was -100$.

It was a big shocker and a huge disappointment as my last 2 years of trading FX part time was somewhat profitable. Like many who’s been here before I took the plunge “too early” I wasn’t ready.

Well it turned out I didn’t know much about trading when I quit my job thinking I got it. And I underestimated the emotional pressure I was going to put myself into by going full time just after 2 years of part time experience.

When I first started out I was more of a fundamentalist than a technical trader. I was into economy so I would read and do my own analysis on each pair. But I had difficulty timing my entries. My entries were so sloppy that I would have hundreds of pips in the negative before the position turning positive.

I traded almost every pair imaginable except the exotics but that was pretty much it. When I decided to go full time a year ago I was mostly trading EUR and GBP crosses as most USD pairs were in a tight range. Well that has been the problem lately with FX.

A while back two years ago all I had to do was to buy USD against NZD, AUD or JPY timing didn’t matter and I would make money easily. That was the good times. Fast forward 3 years since I started trading that trend no longer exists. But of course that doesn’t mean trading FX isn’t profitable anymore. It still is, but if you used to trade higher TF there’s going to be less worthy setups.

So I no longer trade USD pairs as I realised the risk and time I put in to wait for a setup is not worth it, I traded EUR and GBP crosses for a while before taking 2 months of break. I’m back in the game after some break, its been 2 months since my break and I dabbled with DAX. With my previous broker I couldn’t trade DAX or any other index because the margin was significantly higher than FX pairs.

But with my current broker its cheaper to trade DAX. And I also realised DAX moves are plentiful and volatile especially around London open. Prior trading DAX I traded GJ for a while before putting it down. GJ sometimes can be a real hassle. So that’s how I got started trading DAX.

On this journal I will be posting my pre trading day technical analysis and trades I took each day. I start my day 7GMT when Frankfurt opens I trade the DAX. London open can be very tricky I’m not sure if I want to jump in without some observation and screen time of that particular session. But I did good with DAX during Frankfurt.