Can anyone tell me why I torture myself so ?
Took this trade ( 3 lots ) and decided I’d had enough cos I want to go to bed. I don’t know what it is, maybe just as simple as lack of confidence, but I don’t like leaving a trade open when I’m not able to pay attention to it so closed it for + 7.5 pips.
2 MINUTES later, and I mean 2 MINUTES, price drops 50 pips. !!!
7.5 is better than nothing I accept that, but AAAaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhh !!!
Just moving your stop loss up to BE +1 would have kept you in the trade, and let you go to bed. And you woulda woke up with a nice surprise…
Yep, you’re right Tang
Maybe it’s just lack of experience/ lack of confidence as I said.
Still better than a loss I guess.
HoG
Personally I think Cable is coming all the way back to high 1-56’s. Maybe not toady, but that’s where I think it’s going.
looks like an op to short UCHF,
Shorted EUR/USD at 1-37 exactly
I was in the other way round after looking at the D TF.
Have to concur with Nikitafx, sorry HoG - the Daily has given us a doji followed by (currently) a low test that could end as an inside bar or better, and has put in a higher low. I went long this morning at 1.3690 when I saw that second mini-double bottom on the Hourly.
Personally, I always take my trade direction for the day from the higher TFs, even if I look for a tight Entry on the lower TFs. I do occasionally trade counter-trend, occasionally, but I am always clear that that is what I am doing and take a more cautious approach.
Don’t know where your Stop is, HoG, but obviously in the current climate you might still pull it off - Price is bumping its head on the Monthly Pivot, currently, so that might push things back towards your Entry.
ST
Hi Buckscoder,
Thank you for taking the time to write that interesting response - apologies for being slow to get back to you, I am not at the screen much while my back heals up, and I wanted to take some time to poke around the website you linked. Fascinating stuff (is he a friend of yours?). Certainly interesting, I agree with a lot of it, although would take issue with some of it. I am a comparitively new trader, so I am ripe for being proved wrong (although I know a number of much more experienced traders who are on a similar page to me) but I would be surprised at a decent system giving a drawdown of 100-300 days. 100 maybe, but if I found myself looking at a 300 day drawdown I would have tweaked my style long before that point, or just stopped trading the system for the year and find something else. But I take your underlying point, and find the website interesting.
You raised the subject of my monthly returns, requoting my 10% figure. Yes, I think that a decent system well executed should give 10% a month averaged out over the year, preferably more than that. We are in very strange times at the moment, so I am trying not to make too many strategic changes to my approach as we must come out the other side at some point. Surely…?! All I am doing is heavily limiting my end of day trading and focussing on the intraday stuff. It is a good learning point, actually, had not realized how out of practice I had become. I have put on nearly 4% this morning going long on EUR/USD and AUD/USD, both off the Hourly, so the market is certainly still giving up setups, but I do think that it is still much choppier than I have ever known it.
But to addres the monthly return point: my best month this year made over 30% (from memory it was around 34-35%); September was my worst month of the year, I made under 10%. Still fine, but about half what I would expect from the month. October is usually good for me and was not so good this year - profitable, but not at my normal level. A lot of pros quote 10-30% as being a sensible level to aim for once one is up to speed and has a decent strategy and I stand by those figures in spite of the current chop. This Spring, my strat was regularly giving individual trades that returned 4-5% each, against a 1% risk. February was another great month - the middle of the month, around 14-16th Feb, several Pairs all set up and hit big targets. Anyway, I’m rambling (what’s new?!) but my comment on the market being difficult for end of day was prompted by my return dipping below 10%, and then my month-end analysis showing that I had made a loss on end of day trading, and made all my money on intraday, which is the first time that that has been the case for me in over a year (and the first time since I have known what I was doing lol). So I thought it noteworthy.
As you say, we all have different styles, and different risk appetites - I stick to 1% per trade, always have a Stop at that level, and am happy with any return 10%+.
Thank you for the link to the site; a really interesting take on things! I have not enjoyed August-October, but am hoping that things return to normal for my strategy before Christmas. I will stick with the intraday trading and keep taking the odd experimental end of day trade, plus papertrading the end of day setups that I ignore now but would normally trade in order to gauge how they would have played out, so I know when to jump back in, if that makes sense.
(And sorry to quote my monthly returns in this, never like doing that, don’t want to sound like a show off and am not sure that it helps any newbies reading but it seemed appropriate within context)
ST
I absolutely get where you are coming from, but as a fan of the Rocky films (there’s a confession!) maybe individual sportsmen/women would get their fire lit by taking a loss, so are inclined to fight back? I used to box, and while not liking losing, it does not make one give up? Some people break in the face of a loss, others find new resolve. So I am certain that there are personality types who succeed well at trading, but not sure whether those personality types necessarily find their way to a particular set of professions. The world is full of people doing something that really doesn’t suit them, after all…
ST
It’s ok guys, already stopped out. Rather than base my stop on a chart level, I gave it 40 pips which was the most I was willing to lose worse case. That way of thinking may be a mistake, but chart level would have been too high and as it turned out I would still have been stopped out.
Not to worry though, on the whole still up quite well for the week. Onwards to the next battle !!
I think that I have said this before, but I believe that it is important to get to the point where one has faith in one’s strategy, 100%. Once one gets to that point, it is much easier to enter and exit trades mechanically, and that is - imho - what is needed to make sustained, consistent money at this over the long haul.
So I would never mess with a trade early, unless either the circumstances have changed, or I realize that I missed something in my original analysis. With a fixed Stop, it is much more lucrative to let trades run. So by all means set a fixed TP before going to bed, but personally I would not close the trade. Giving the winners room to run is important. If you thought that this was a good trade when you placed it, then it was still a good trade when you went to bed. So leave it alone!! There’s nothing better than waking up and finding you made money while you slept.
ST
Sorry, am becoming a thread-hog today so will keep this brief (for me!) but to answer this one: course have been debated at various times on BP and seem to divide opinion heavily. It basically boils down to the fact that we all learn in different ways, and have different risk appetites. Some scalp, some position trade, some like assimilating free knowledge from the internet, others like to pay someone to give it to them in context with the opportunity to interact with the teacher - both approaches work.
Personally yes, I learned Forex trading on a course. The course and subsequent coaching were quite expensive, I guess, but if I had my time over I would do it all again exactly the same way. I have paid back all my course fees and then some from trading, and before I took the course I knew nothing whatsoever. So I am a big fan of structured, focussed learning. I will trade for life and can support my family from it, so while we are all different I know from personal experience that course can work.
ST
Cheers ST
I only ask because knowledgetoaction are doing a free 2 hour one ( y’know, the reel you in type) in Glasgow in two weeks. I know they won’t teach a great deal in 2 hours but just wondering if it was worth going to at all.
Might pop along since it is free. Knowing my luck though, I’ll end up with a time share in Malta !!
Good afternoon ST (and all others btw.)!
No problem regarding timely response. I have also sometimes something what keeps me off writing.
No, it’s not a friend, I just know him as editor of this magazine what I get. Stumbled over his blog and read some off there. Sure I do not agree with everything what he writes, as I do almost never with anybodies opinion, and I also do believe he could be a little too pessimistic. I made 25% and more by just buying xau. That’s more passive investment. So I guess an active investment style like trading fx could lead to more. On the other side of the coin is however the fact, that we are not that experienced as him. That’s why I am rather defensive with my fx endeavour. If I will have 5 years experience then I will have probably a better picture. I used the blog of him more to check what his experience is regarding bots. There it seems he knows what he is talking about and interesting that I got almost the same results in general. Plus then as I said, if a guy like Ed Seykota made 40% on average, that’s “just” 3.5% roi per month and not compounded.
No, I did definitely not take your mention of those 10% as bragging or something like that. It’s great to know others performance. Well, you paid for a mentor, so that might also be a reason it pays off better. Plus you take into consideration some economic fundamental factors, right?
Regarding eurusd actually I also think it’s rather going up than down. Probably after some ranging. There are definitely some big buyers at this 136/137ish level. Clearly to see on the charts.
That’s how I started, I went along to a free seminar with K2A. Mine was in Derby rather than Glasgow but I think that they are pretty standard.
You won’t learn anything you can trade from it, if it is anything like mine they cover a bit of history of the person doing the presenting, then a bit of generic stuff about Forex trading, then a hint about the strategies, then a bit on psychology. It is a fair cross-section for just a couple of hours.
My take on it is that people who go in expecting to be able to trade what they have learned will come away disappointed, but if you have an interest in trading (which you obviously do!) then you can’t lose. I enjoyed the seminar, found it interesting, it gave an opportunity to ask questions, and it did whet my appetite for life as a trader (I had zero experience going in, that seminar was my first foray). Mrs Templar received one of their emails and suggested I go along.
I didn’t feel under any pressure to sign up to further training at all - they put up a price list on the wall at the end, handed out a flier, and did have the paperwork with them to sign people up (and I think there was a discount on the day), but to be fair to them the hotel conference room had cost them money, they had five or six staff there, I had learned some interesting snippets and had a free drink and they didn’t charge me anything, so it was fair enough to spend a few minutes on the sales pitch!
So I would go along, it won’t cost you anything and you will learn a thing or two in a minor way, anything that gives you a feel for another aspect of trading has to be good. You don’t have to have anything to do with them afterwards. But you won’t learn a strategy that you can trade at the seminar, that is all in the (paid) course afterwards. Knowledge helps, in this game, and rarely hurts.
So treat it as a bit of Forex tourism. I live 28 miles away from Derby, it was a sunny day and I have a convertible, so I treated it as a different sort of afternoon. Never seriously intended to sign up to a course, just shows you never know what’s around the corner. ‘Life is like a box of chocolates…’!
PM me if you have any particular questions about their courses, the seminar etc., perhaps better than boring other people on the thread with it! (And no I don’t get commission!!!)
Plus the girl handing out passes and signing us in was absolutely gorgeous, worth the effort of attending alone…!!
ST
Hello HoG.
I can just second what ST wrote. I know I am doing it sometimes also. Scalping for a few pips. But this is not my main focus. This is just a little trading to check the markets or to get new trading ideas. I have my bots and those bots trade with everything analyzed and planned. If the setup is there and the trade is open, there is no chickening out anymore. The only exits are either the tp, the sl or an exit condition. While that exit condition is just slightly improvement.
I mean, as long as you are making profits, do what lead to those profits. Albeit if you see any issues with trades, I’d suggest to think about a mechanical system which leaves emotions completely out of trading. All successful traders I am aware of use a mechanical system. Maybe with some minor discretional components, but kinda same risk/reward or some rules about it.
I absolutely take your point on a couple of years not being enough alone to have long-term confidence, but as you say I have a mentor and a bit of a support network (as part of my coaching I get a weekly seminar on how they view the market at that time, for instance). I see a lot of the trades posted by my coach and his colleagues as they post them, ie. before they play out, so they can’t fake the results. I then get to see how they went. So I know that a lot of these guys have made these sort of returns over a long period of time, so effectively I have an extra layer of confidence in the strategy as they have done the backtesting, it is part of what I pay for.
I think that you hit the nail on the head, there is a difference between investing and trading. You made a nice return on XAU, but describe it as a passive investment. Many of the guys who really make FX trading work for them might predict a big move, but they don’t just take that as one large trade - they trade each flutter within that. If that is done well, then the profit is pretty open-ended. Being very active in the market, very flexible, carries more exposure but does certainly increase the profit per increment of risk.
Yes, no question in my mind that my original course, and my subsequent coaching, have enabled me to hit profitability more quickly than I would have managed without it. For instance, I sit down with my coach and he picks apart all my losing trades, and talks me through how he would have played it in detail. Every trade I take!! That is a great investment in my future, the way I look at it, as it massively reduces the chances of repeating mistakes, and has accelerated my understanding of the context within which we trade, everything from fundamentals to the relationship between the different timeframes. So I bought myself an advantage, in my opinion. Speculate to accumulate!
Yes, I pay attention to fundamentals - I don’t ever enter a trade because of them, but I will avoid a trade because of them, or play it differently because of them. It is a subtle business, which in my view is why hours invested is one of the key elements to becoming a successful currency trader.
Yes, the wider picture on EUR/USD is interesting. We have a symmetrical triangle on both the Monthly and Weekly charts, and EUR/USD gave a nice long setup this morning. I’m now out for the week - NFP tomorrow, and Greece a mess - but I would not be astonished if next week opened bullish. Don’t like predicting, though - I’d rather wait and see what it does, then trade it then!!
ST
ST, thanks for the explanation! That gives me a better understanding how it works for you.
I just made some quick pips going long after the drop. Interest rate decreased, well that is rather a bearish fundamental. However, the fundamentals can lag several months. That’s why I’m still a little bullish actually. Technically in the short term charts the eur is oversold.
And that’s what happens when they let me loose with technology
