I started learning forex 6 months ago in January of 2015. I joined this board in February and have found it to be my favorite forex community on the internet. I went through all of the school and found a thread that taught price action and learned a lot. I trade only price action with support & resistance and trend lines. I do not use any indicators. I practiced on demo for a coupe of months before going live with 100 dollars. I just had my first positive month, and it was actually disappointing. I was up about 10% and went out of town leaving 4 open trades that all lost. They had stop losses set so I didn’t blow the account, but it wiped out my profits to date. It has encouraged me to become more disciplined and better document my trades. so here we go.
I am still learning a lot and don’t believe I will necessarily be profitable in the immediate future, but I will keep learning and growing as I go. I started this account with 100 dollars and hope to turn it into income replacement levels. The earliest I could see that happening is 5 years from now, so I plan to be here for the long haul.
My process:
I work a full time job 9 - 5 on the east coast time zone GMT -5:00. I look at charts 3 times a day: When I wake up, when I get home, and before I go to bed. Each time I spend somewhere between 5 and 30 minutes looking at charts and executing trades. I use only daily candles and occasionally 4HR candles. I trade price action patterns and candlestick patterns around support and resistance lines.
I do not set risk reward goals for my trades, but I do avoid trades that are far less than 1 to 1. I will risk no more than 2% of my account balance on any one trade. I use Oanda as my broker. They allow me to use custom units, so there should never be an issue of risking too much. Every trade will have a stop loss and profit target set before it is opened so that if a trade moves quickly it will not destroy my account.
Ideally I will be able to earn 6% monthly returns. Each time I earn 3% I will deposit 100 more dollars into the account. This should help the account grow faster, but will only do so after I have proven that I can trade successfully. After any drawdown periods of 6% I will take some time off to re-evaluate my trading and refocus my efforts.
Feel free to comment on my trades or ask questions about my trading. Thanks for following. I will be posting screen shots of my next trade. Thanks.
Going short on NZD/CAD daily. Price has retraced to an key support turned resistance area and also hitting the current trendline. stop loss is just above resistance and TP is just above next support level. only risking .5% here because price action signal is not abundantly clear, but level is key. risk reward is roughly 1.5/1.
Long position on EUR/CAD. Price closed above 1.4000 level for 2 consecutive days with the latest bar showing a rejection wick indicating bullish momentum with the current trend. This trade has a strong Risk:reward level of about 6:1 with the next resistance level being far above entry price. I am risking .5% on this trade.
Had this pending order get triggered over night on GBP/CAD. had a pin bar hit a resistance turned support level and a trend line simultaneously. placed pending order just above the pin bar. placed this trade at .5%
Big CAD news coming out this morning so i will be trailing this trade with a stop to ensure i keep the profits i have. Also I want to avoid holding trades over the weekend when i can.
I was stopped out at break even +10 pips today. I am disappointed to not have the 200 pips it was up at one point, but glad I was able to get out of the trade without losing. I am thinking about using trailing stops in the future to lock in more profits.
Manually closed this trade 5 pips above break even. Had a candle close above my trend line negating my reasons for being in the trade. Happy to be out in the plus, but left money on the table by keeping open over the weekend. Thinking about closing all positions Friday before market close moving forward.
I have a pending short order here on GBP/USD daily. The most recent candle is showing a pin bar right at the 1.500 level which I have marked as a historical resistance level. price also broke through the most recent uptrend and the pin bar wick touches the would be trend line which now serves as a dynamic resistance level.
If price drops to the 1.545 level my trade will execute with a stop loss just above pin bar high and a profit target just above the 1.5200 level. Risk reward ratio here is roughly 2 to 1. I will be risking 2% of my account should this trade be executed.
I will look to move to break even if price reaches the most recent lows.
Going Long on EUR/CAD again. Price has returned to the 1.4000 support level where last time it bounced for a 200 pip gain. It is close to trend line intersection of the level as well so I expect a good bounce. I have a tight stop loss and reasonable profit target giving me a 3 to 1 risk reward ratio. I am risking less than .5% on this trade due to the lack of signal and the recent traffic surrounding this price. I’ll be looking to exit this trade quickly if i get a nice positive push due to the recent volatility.
Looks like I was quite wrong about this trade. Price got low enough to trigger my order and then took off in the wrong direction straight to my stop loss overnight. Have to be more careful when going counter trend in the future.
Closing this trade out due to concerns of it turning around. Came pretty close to my stop overnight, but it had a huge morning as suspected. It appears momentum has slowed so going to take my profits out now.
I’ve spent some time today performing some analysis on my account using myfxbook to see all kinds of statistics about my trading history. It helped me make a few realizations.
Firstly, there are 2 pairs that I have lost 100% of my trades on: AUD/CAD and AUD/JPY. I plan on completely removing these 2 pairs from my trading, at least for the time being.
Secondly, Tuesdays are apparently my absolute worst trading day. To date my success rate on trades is 67%, however on Tuesdays it is a mere 33%! For the time being I will not be placing any trades on Tuesdays. If I have any open trades I will manage still track and manage them.
Lastly, I am more likely to lose a trade the more I have at risk on the trade. I have 10 losing trades when I risked 2% and only 1 winner. I wish I knew the cause of this, but I have 2 possible theories:
risking 2% is too much for me to handle psychologically. I may be more risk averse than previously thought.
I am too confident is those specific set-ups. I determine risk at the time of entry and it’s possible that the more confident I am in a trade the less likely it will succeed.
To counteract this in the mean time I am going to move to having a fixed risk for every trade and lower my risk amount. From now on I will use a fixed 1% risk for each trade I decide to enter. Hopefully this takes some of the psychology out of my hands. If I still feel like a am risking too much than I will consider lowering my risk per trade even further.
Good to see you analysing your trades, the Tuesday thing is a bit weird.
Have you considered trading just 1pair for a while to see if there are any trading patterns that seem to repeat?
Taking a Long position on EUR/GBP. Price has been range bound for 4 months or so and has hit the bottom of that range. The .7000 level is my support and my SL is below the recent lows beneath that support. My take profit is currently about half way between the top and bottom of the range. The risk reward is very high on this one on account of how tight my stop loss is being played.
I am slightly concerned about the momentum of which price approached the support level so I will look to move to break even or even take profits soon with this trade. Risking 1% of my account.
I agree the Tuesday thing is quite strange. I’ve heard of traders having a tough time on Fridays due to a less active market but never a Tuesday…It may just be a coincidence, but in the mean time I am going to try and avoid it for psychological purposes if nothing else.
I don’t want to limit myself to one pair because I pretty much only trade daily candles. If I only watched one pair I would have very few trade opportunities to take.
This trade went on to hit my stop loss and never really got the bounce I was looking for. Looking back I rushed into this trade and never had a good signal to enter. I need to be patient moving forward and wait for the proper signals before entering these trades.
Worse than that I took a revenge trade(something I thought I would never do). I had the morning off of my day job and spent it looking at shorter term charts. I took another quick 1% loss to put me down 3% on the week! Ouch. I haven’t looked at a chart since Thursday morning because I feel that I am compromised emotionally. I will get back at it next week to try and stick to my plan better.
I’ve entered my first trade of the new weak. I’m feeling cautious after last week’s performance , but I have come back with a better head and more in control of my emotions.
I’ve taken a short position on the NZD/USD. Price broke through the support level around .6600 and has retraced back to that level. I have the support flipped into a resistance level to continue the down trend of the past few months. I am risking 1% on this trade and getting a risk reward of around 3 to 1. My stop loss is above the resistance level and prior lows while my profit target matches the most recent lows.
I simply recorded it to show where I would have placed my stop and profit target had I taken it. I think this is a good trade from a good level. However, I am standing firm on my no trading on Tuesday rule for the time being.
This is a 4 hour chart with a pin bar(not yet complete) at a nice price flip level continuing an uptrend.
