Yep. Bad timing with my shorts, lol. 
With the 10 EMA on the daily chart currently running at approx 1-4380 and acting as a good support over the last few days, Iām inclined to wait and see if price tests that are again and just close out. Price down to around 1-4410 just now which leaves me down approx $5.60.
All in all I could live with that loss without it disturbing my day too much, but again, looking at the charts I see the 10 day EMA has been tested a couple of times so quite reasonably ( in my humble opinion ) expecting another test. This would put me in a - 25 / 35 area and I would quite happily accept that.
Is it the struggling with decisions like this that keeps us all so enthralled with FX ??? The never ending game of chess certainly has itās hooks in me on this one.
HoG
Your mindset is very unprofessional. There is no system in play here, and that will continue to be a fault until you have specific guidelines for entering and managing trades. Buckscoder already hit on this point, but I donāt think you get it.
You think if you can lose less on this trade, that you will have achieved āvictoryā, but the only victory left on the table is the one where you close your trade at market and truly accept your loss. It will hurt because you risked too much. Donāt do that next time (or ever for that matter).
Iām so terrible at sugar-coating my advice so hereās a happy face to close out 
I mean well
Akeakamai
No need to sugarcoat replies, weāre all big boys and girls here and if we canāt accept a little bit of advice and constructive criticism, as long as it IS constructive and not insulting, then maybe we shouldnāt be here at all.
And youāre absolutely right, this trade has been a bombsite since the start. I freely admitted that. I fell down here. I forgot the rules and made two big mistakes. First of all risked too big a percentage of my balance, then secondly moved my stop. Very unprofessional as you say, but then Iām still a taxi driver, not a professional trader, so I guess Iām bound to make an arse of somethings but hopefully learn from them aswell.
Two things I would just add though. First one is that I still maintain my reasons for getting into the trade in the first place were good. And even if I do end up taking a loss, Iāll still believe my analysis showed me a reason to take it. If Iām wrong then I was just plain and simply wrong.
Second thing is, all the advice to close the trade, however friendly or well intentioned, seems to me to be working on the assumption that price will never comeback to my entry point. But are we all so sure?? My stop at the moment, admittedly risks a large percentage of my balance, but is above general downtrend on daily chart. So until price breaks from that trend and takes out that stop, ( I wonāt be moving it again I assure you all ) my trade is still valid.
I know of someone who sold at 1-4328 almost 3 weeks ago and is still holding that trade because pric hasnāt reached his target of 1-4050. Sure his account is much bigger than mine and therefore can afford to risk more and have wider stops, but he has his stop at 1-4535 which is break of general daily downtrend.
Incidentally, made 25 pips this morning trading a small part of the range and as I write price is back down to c. 1-4410. So who really knows for now?
Anyway, thanks for the smiley, nice to hear from you again. And just for future reference I prefer people to speak their mind rather than dance around the fire. So keep the honesty coming akeakamai !!
HoG
Hello,
Second thing is, all the advice to close the trade, however friendly or well intentioned, seems to me to be working on the assumption that price will never comeback to my entry point. But are we all so sure??
You can always look up a thread http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/12716-gbp-jpy-equity-building-profitable-trading-strategies.html its a long one and i have to admit that i did not read all of it but the end of thread kinda answers your question.
There is no real downtrend on the daily. Itās ranging. Sure it can go down, because we are at the upper side of that range. However, it can go up as well. 
NOBODY knows what will happen. There are just probabilities. And there is for sure no warranty it will come back. We are right now inside of a contraction period and after that usually what follows is an expansion period. As price behaves right now I am pretty sure we will see nice fireworks in the upcoming days. Up or down.
I wish price goes up. For the sake of HoGs account. Because that will save him from doing it again. If it goes down now, that is a victory without any value for the longer term. Avoiding a loss for the risk of a bigger loss is never a good idea.
HoG, you might take then your pips this time, but further losses are just around the corner. Been there, done that! Yes, you write you wouldnāt do it again, but you are already doing it again, because yesterday at 14390 there was already a good chance to close the order.
Oh well, just take it as something to think about. I just write straight from my opinion and I do not say I know everything. Donāt take it too serious. If you can live with the loss if the stop is hit, no problem. You have however the chance again to move your stop lower to the first level now, right?
I just see that I have no chance without a proper system. I can make money by trading on my opinion as well, but it is too much risk and the profit is not good enough. I am doing way better if I trade after a system with all there. Setup, entry, stops, time for a trade, leverage based on mm and foremost risk controlled to itās minimum what I would like to tolerate. Best of all with a system is that I can let my bot trade or file orders in advance with all set and I do not have my emotions involved.
Happy pips to you and everybody else!
Your emotions are all wrapped up in this trade. Your stop is still wide, and your risk is still highā¦ yet you talk like the mistakes have happened in the past. The mistakes are happening RIGHT NOW.
Why is it acceptable to have such high risk on [I]this[/I] trade? Surely it wouldnāt be acceptable for future trades, so something is setting this one trade apartā¦
HoG, finally that move down is here!! just remember Money Management next timeā¦
Yes. Lots of chances to liquidate now.
My bot made another loss today. This bot must be careful or he becomes scrap metal.
Do I feel bad with the loss? No! I feel great! Because I followed my system. I do [U]always[/U] follow my rules and I never change stops after entering a trade! Plenty of winners to come and this loss is just another step forward ā¦
Wow. Where to begin with this one. Let me start by saying I closed the trade at 1-4361. So only 70 cents ( 7 pips ) lost. Iām the first one to admit I got there through sheer luck, nothing else. And typical of this whole comedy of errors, shortly after I did close it, price actually FELL as low as 30 pips below my entry. But anyway, letās get to the answers.
[B][U]Buckscoder[/U][/B]
Maybe āDowntrendā was the wrong choice of words. What I meant to say was that price range had been making a succession of lower highs since 4th May. Latest lowest High being approx 1-4535 which was why I moved my stop to that area. Still not saying it was the right thing to do, but thatās why I did it.
Nobody does know for sure which way price will go, and although I made two very big mistakes by using too much of my balance and moving my stop, which I have freely admitted several times, price had as far as I could see as much chance of going down as it had of going up. In fact, since we were trading at the top end of the recent range I tend to believe it had more chance of going down. Price, as you all know much better than me, can go in any direction in any trade.
As for it being a victory without valueā¦ yes and no.
Yes because it was a victory by luck, nothing else I agree.
But No, because the lesson that should be learned from this was not to be so bloody stupid again. And I was very fortunate enough to have only paid 70 cents to learn it.
I know price hit 1-4390 yesterday, and youāre right, that would have been a good time to close out the trade. But I donāt have the luxury yet of being able to spend my day in front of a computer. I spend my day sitting in a taxi. And, if I am lucky, I get to have a quick look on my iPhone every 45 minutes or so at the price. And by the time I got to see that yesterday, price had moved way back up again. Itās like today. I checked my phone at one point and saw that price had hit a low of 1-4383, but when I checked it, price was back up at 1-4425.
Then when I checked later, price was back down to 1-4360. And as I donāt have anything in the way of half decent charts on my iPhone App, which I could use to check if price looked as though it would continue down or turn back up, I jumped at the chance to close. So by the time Iād hit the button and the order had gone through, it closed at 1-4361.
So I do understand the point of your reply Buckscoder. But what can I say, I made a mistake, I was lucky enough to have got away with it and hopefully Iāve learned from the whole thing. I guess itās just part of learning.
[B][U]akeakamai[/U][/B]
Emotions too wrapped up? I donāt know. I donāt believe so. I just believed price would come back down. Stop WAS too wide, risk WAS too high. I made an arse of it ! But I genuinely didnāt feel emotional about it. I just took far too much of a risk to be building a future on. I readily accept it was a bad trade and on any other week I might have ended up on the wrong side of a hiding and I canāt admit it enough, it was a bad trade.
But I think the lesson to be learned has been valuable as long as it IS learned and adhered to in the future.
[B][U]yunny1[/U][/B]
Couldnāt get out quick enough yunny1. Carried the luck this time, I know it wonāt always go this way. Since this trade Iāve now decided on a 3% risk on any trade. I know 2% is more usually advised on, but considering my balance size I still need to give a trade room to move. But this is my new discipline from now on. If I do stick to this rule, then what has gone on this week WAS worth learning.
I mentioned in an earlier reply that I made 25 pips this morning. Reviewing my transactions I see it was only 21.1 pips. So minus the 7 pips on this trade I am +14 pips for the entire week. Not earth shattering, certainly lucky, but balance just over $92 now. This allows me the better part of 30 pips of risk on future trades. Weāll see how it goes.
Not sure Iāll trade again this week as Fridayās Iām at work from early morning til after market closes. Considering tomorrowās Jackson Hole event, itās maybe not a bad thing Iām not at a computer.
Thanks to all who gave advice during my latest rollercoaster. Talk soon.
HoG
Well HoG, maybe [U]we[/U] were all together too emotional about YOUR trade, lol. Thanks god that is over now, lol.
Anyways, Akeakamai is right in that you made another mistake every day not to set your stop lower again. I can understand that 14535 stop, because that is a key price, but in such a case that if I see my first place stop is wrong Iād just liquidate. You can ALWAYS enter later again for smaller risk. Did it jump to 145 later? Yes! You would have made money on that if you had the stop in the first place and entered at say 145 again with a stop at 14535.
And if I look at all you mentioned, you seem not to have a system. I am not the guy who says [U]you[/U] canāt make it without system, but I couldnāt. So, maybe itās time to look for a system. Backtesting and forward testing in demo. If it shows success going life again. Just saying.
Here is my now optimized system I trade with.
Less than 10% dd in less than 2 years and a profit of more than 100%. A trade not every day, but every week. No weekend or rollover exposure. Just to give you a hint what to look for if you look for systems and why I am smiling from ear to ear if I get a loss. The next winner is right around the corner. I just donāt know when it will happen, but it happens.
This is my money protection mode. I could easily increase leverage, have a 20% dd and a 200% roi per year. But I wonāt do that right now. And every single trade in that system has a stop loss which is definitely fixed from the beginning before that trade even goes to the broker. If that stop is hit this trade is over and forgotten. I can move on with the next trade. I have a clear mind again and can look forward if I get the next signal. Because I know I have the edge on my side. No matter what losses occur.
It has made me smile a little Buckscoder.( since it closed I mean ) Iām glad itās over too ! Maybe Iāll even sleep tonight !!
But I hear so much about trading without emotion and I do wonder if that is even truly possible. I understand the need to develope a professional attitude. I understand the need to learn to accept losses when they come in a calm and understanding fashion. I understand the need to learn not to beat ourselves up about them or dwell on them. But to be without ANY emotion about them is surely a feat accomplished only by Dr Spock.
Funny thing is I am incredibly good at that when playing golf. I have a very low handicap. And when I have a bad hole I can walk off the green and accept it. I walk to the next hole and concentrate on that instead of moping around whinging about the last hole. I donāt like it, but I accept it. But I am not without emotion about it, I just donāt dwell on it.
As for trading without a system youāre right, I donāt have one. I have survived thus far ( maybe rather surprisingly ) by trying to identify support and resistance levels and trying to trade them. And the simple, honest reason I DONāT have a system is that I donāt know what a trading system is. Is it a set of guiding rules you set yourself? Is it a method of analysis? Is it both, or more than both ?
I donāt know what back-testing is or how to do it. I look at the picture you posted about your optimised system and I honestly donāt know what all that means. Maybe that would be a great Newbie Thread if any experienced trader would do it. āWhat Is A Trading System And How Do You Get One?ā Maybe that thread already exists and I just donāt know about it.
So developing a system would be great, but finding out what one is would be better for now, lol !
Anyway, as I said earlier, lesson hopefully learned for now. Fortunate to have lived to fight another day, but there surely must be a better way of going about it.
HoG
Great you can smile now (again?).
A system is something what gives you everything from a valid setup, entry rules, exit rules, leverage, etc. etc. I do develop my own systems/bots. Backtesting is checking the system over sample data of the past. Forward testing is checking the system with a demo or live. I do just backtesting and then I go live. I trust my backtests and all of my systems show the same behavior in live trading that they show in backtest. Because I do not overfit and I have good sample data. My systems are simple. In this system above I use just 1 indicator. Everything else is based on price action.
Without a system itās really hard. Because you canāt know what to do. You have to do all the work on every new trade again and again. If you have a system that can help you in just becoming an āexecutorā. I mean just executing trades, lol. While my systems are 100% mechanical and realized with bots there is also the possibility to have a combined system. Mechanical in the first part and some other discretional ingredients. The reason I prefer a 100% mech system is that I can backtest it over 2 years and if I have an equity curve like in the report above and the small risk and good profit I can trust then this system and I even have a fuse plug. I can pull that if my real performance with that system would be say twice worse the max. drawdown of the report. So, I have controlled risk again. If I know my report has less than 10% drawdown I can pull the plug at 20% drawdown. This way itās a little like investment in a company. Professionals āpull the plugā or liquidate stocks if price goes between 10 and 20% wrong off their entry. So, I can do it then with my bot or system. This way I never risk more than 20%.
This is also a nice risk reward report, because if I know my backtested risk is max. 10% and my roi would be 100% then I have a nice 10:1 reward:risk ratio. Not for any trade, but for the whole system at once. That is much better. In the end one trade is like a deal with a successful company. Unimportant. Some deals might give loss, but over the long run the chances are 10 times against 1.
I guess without such a system your chances are small to make money. The brokers commissions and the spread will eat a lot of your earned money. At some time you might feel exhausted, because you had so much work to do with the trades and made so less money. With a system that all is much better. You have more control over risk, your emotions will not stick with trades, etc. etc.
Regarding Mr. Spock, yes it is like feeling I would be Mr. Spock. LOL. Because there is no emotion. The systems says what to do and thatās it. Losses are part of the game. If you look at the equity chart, you can see that it always recovers and after a couple of weeks I have more money than before. Why should I have emotions at all? Sometimes the stop get hit and the price reverses. But that also happens to the take profit! Sometimes it hits the tp and reverses. So what? The only thing when I get emotional is when my broker/bucket shop is playing tricks with my order execution. :mad:
I have to say you been doing a good job, especially for someone who has just started trading Home Of Golf.
Its very easy really. Its all logic also. From picking SL to MM.
That is until we try explaining to another person. Especially when they are new or a person who has never used a technical chart.
Then it all really becomes complicated.
Recently I have been surviving. And with a bit of luck here and there, Iāve managed to grow my balance a little. But the problem lies in the fact that even though I have done what is probably some very basic analysis, I still have the feeling I know nothing at all and luck has played a bigger part than it really should have.
I am trying to learn, still trying to grow, but I reckon the real problem most newbies face is NOT learning what buttons to hit, itās learning to LEARN WHY they should be hitting them in the first place.
Trouble is for me personally, I have always suffered from a short attention span. And unfortunately there are NO shortcuts in learning this business. So Iām finding the learning stage hard going. But as long as I keep surviving, keep asking questions and reading what my terrible attention span will allow, Iāll hopefully get there in the end.
Anyway, off to bed now. First good nights sleep all week. Canāt wait !
HoG, donāt be discourage about the amount of information in FX tradingā¦ being in the winner side is really easyā¦
I will show you how simple is to be in a high probability tradeā¦ you just need:
- Price Action-Order Flow (Japanese Candlesticks Formations)
- Patience-Timing
- Support-Resistance levels
This was the trade I took today, was good for 50 pipsā¦
first step was looking for candlesticks formations (i like dojis and pin bars), a huge long-legged doji appeared with one down wick near a trendline and a 200 HMA
second step, placing the short trade at 1.4398 (SL 1.4458)ā¦ just below 200 MA, up trendline and hourly support.
third step, waiting to the price to move down during US-London session, high volume assures a strong move.
fourth step, manage the tradeā¦ i closed it at 1.4347 support (4H chart)
I donāt want to sound pretentious but FX is not that hard once you understand PA, S/R and liquidity (or volume) in US-London sessions
I sort of get that. looking at my Euro Dollar 1 hour chart I see that the 200 EMA has pretty much acted as supprt since the 15th Aug. ( with the exception of the break below on the 18/19th.
Sometimes itās easy just to get blinded by the āscienceā though. When I first started looking into FX there where no shortage of Experts only to willing to tell me that FX should be left to Rocket Scientists and people who have spent at least 3 decades meditating in a Japanese monestary.
It then becomes quite difficult, believe it or not, to believe it can be broken down to such simple pieces.
Anyway off to work now. Wonāt do any trading today. Maybe thatās not so bad with whatās going on.
Talk soon
HoG
Good morning HoG,
Thought I would just add to all this by saying that you have taken a fair amount of, er, robust feedback considering you lost only seven pips in the end. However poor your initial Entry, you were trading with the most likely market direction. Also, as you said, you have a day job, so are not around all the time, so missed a couple of opportunities to close the trade with a modest profit. Many other traders have made far worse mistakes, and been punished worse for them, myself included. More than once! So I just wanted to say hats off to you for doing this in public, as it were, and keeping us all updated with your thought process and emotions throughout.
This has been a great learning opportunity for many people now, yourself included. You put your hand up to it being a crappy trade, you took the criticism on the chin, and you do seem to have learned a lot from it, so overall for your future trading character I would say that it has been a positive experience. After all, if someone had offered, a month ago, to sell you the knowledge, personal insight and market feel you have gained for just 70 cents, you would have bitten their arm off!!
You said, yesterday, that you donāt have a system; you simply try to identify and trade Support and Resistance levels. Well, so do I, with a few other things thrown in. S&R can form the basis of a great system, so this whole period is invaluable to your trading career. Layer up the knowledge from that S&R foundation and you should find yourself in a very happy place at some point. Price Action and S&R are the basis of many successful tradersā approaches.
One question, if I may, while I am rambling - how come you trade in USD while living in Scotland?
Nice work on your thread - keep doing what you are doing and learn from the odd backward step.
ST
I second that you did a good job in surviving. Anyways, I conquer with some who try to convince you it is easy. If trading would be easy, everybody would be a successful trader. In fact, it is the hardest job until you have the gut to take losses without emotions. And if you look at the numbers, less than 10% of all traders get a living from it. Probably rather 2-3%. And you for yourself know already it was more luck. So, trust you feeling in this case. Enjoy that you have a better start now than before and try to go the way all successful traders over the long haul will go: To trust you system, style, whatever, you have to check it out over some months, better years. I check my systems for minimum 2 years and minimum 100 trades until I go live. Because I know anything less is not reliable enough.
Then if I look just at the facts you started with around 150 while starting this thread and are now down to 90. You won after going to 50, but after some winners you will get some losers. That is inevitable.
The key part of trading is money management and not getting high probability trades. There are professionals who have just 30% or less winning trades, but they make a fortune. Because the winning trades make it up for the 70% losers and some more.
When i started trading almost 2 years ago, I was in the same boat as you. I just had a bit more luck. I traded my account from 1k to 2k in 4 months. Everybody would have encouraged me to continue and everybody would have said I am a great trader. I wasnāt! I had just luck. In the upcoming month I lost that 1k of profit. Back to start. Then I stopped trading and checked what happened. What I got from that is this:
- Donāt believe, because you had some winning streaks, you are a great trader. Even if it goes for a year or some.
- Donāt be overconfident.
I learned from it. Learning here means I had to UNLEARN at first. Because what I thought was a key to successful trading was sheer luck and not more. This UNLEARNING process was the real key to my success what I have right now. I have tried it again and again with experiments and there is nothing what beats a system with clear rules. At least to me. I can trade by hand and win, but it is a question of time until I am back to start, if I do not use proper risk control and a system with clear objectives. It is like doing a business. If you have no business plan, you are lost.
Trading is NOT to be right. It is ALL to have a systematical approach, an edge and proper risk control. Professionals who are only 30% right make a fortune. Amateurs who are right most of the time lose a lot of money. The basic cost to be right in trading is more risk. You can check that easily: Set a random entry and sl 10 pips away and tp 100 pips away. You will get 9 out of 10 winners. But your loser eats up all your winners plus then you have the broker charges. You end up in a loss over the long haul. Sure, you can improve that with an edge, but without an edge you might still believe you are a great trader if you get 90 winners out of 100 in a sequence. Impossible? Definitely NOT! After those 90 winners you face 10 losers in a row and gone is your profit plus confidence. Was it because of psycho issues? No, you just had luck in the first part and after that reality of statistics took place later.
To sum that up: If you donāt know what your edge is, Iād suggest stop trading and look for something what gives you an edge and where you can have trust in that edge, because you know where that edge is coming from. Then use a proper money management and risk control. That trade was not a proper one, whatever anybody else is saying. Nice that price went down, but what if it went up? Would anybody here have paid with half of an account size for a warranty it will go down? There is NO 100% probability. NEVER! And if you risk too much then it is just a matter of time until reality sets in.
Well, no trade for me today. My system said NO! Would I have traded if it said yes? Absolutely! I do not believe in magic days (Friday). My statistics show it is irrelevant which days I trade. Friday is risky. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is risky as well!
Okay, after that rambling through my experience I wish everybody a good weekend!