Elenmirie and her Quest for the Holy Pips

Trading Discussion Trade Journals
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Hello all! I’ve opened this thread to document my journey. As many before me have said, I’ve not got anyone in real life to talk about regarding trading forex, so I’m going to try to get my need for communication and support on here, amongst you lovely like-minded people.

I thought I’d do my first post on how I came to be here. Because it’s not just a matter of, I woke up this morning with a song in my head and a feeling that I want to be a forex trader!

It all started with logic puzzles. I’d started a new work-from-home job (being semi-retired), and for my breaks I was using solitaire games. I made a decision to do something else which would be a little bit more beneficial for my brain than “red queen on black king.”

So, I started doing logic puzzles online. The site I was using had a forum, which was lightly trafficked, but I read it anyway. One day an old post bubbled up… it was originally an announcement for a puzzle contest with a prize to be paid in Bitcoin, which was to celebrate the launch of a crypto-token called IQCash. Unfortunately, the post that brought it to my attention was the posting of the solution and the winner, so I didn’t get to have a go at the puzzle.

However, IQCash was intriguing to me… it was a crypto-token that you could mine by solving puzzles. They called it Proof of Human Work. I love puzzles, I will always be doing puzzles of some sort in my idling time. You can earn crypto by doing puzzles? That sounded great!

Doing more research, and long story short, I did decide to become an IQCash miner. Because, although the price was about 10 a (US) penny… who else is going to give me a penny for solving 10 puzzles? And who knows, maybe this thing will someday be worth more.

15,000 puzzles later, my mental arithmetic has improved. That’s nice! Something good.

Okay… so now I’m in the crypto world and I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. So much research required. I spent a couple of months reading up on Bitcoin, blockchain technology, and trying to get educated about the world I seemed to have stepped into. I was lucky enough to get a few work-related jobs related to blockchain, including some bits of an online course being developed by Oxford University, which did help in understanding the underlying technology.

Right. I bought a bit of Bitcoin… FOMO, you know. I’ve got some Bitcoin. And invested in a hardware wallet. Because exchanges get hacked with monotonous regularity. Now what? I still don’t know enough to be dangerous, really.

Please stay tuned for the next installment!

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Right. So how did I get from buying a bit of Bitcoin to a wannabe forex trader? I hear you cry…

Talking to a friend who had made some money mining Bitcoin before it became impossible for mere mortals to be profitable, he said: Why don’t you trade Bitcoin? That’s a better prospect now than mining.

Trade? Ok, I used to play the stock market a little, but went off it for various reasons (I did make a pile, but that was blind luck.) Trade? Wait… how?

So off I went researching how to trade Bitcoin. Oooog. I read a lot of BS and found a lot of people willing to sell me their secrets for a few thousand pounds. Or Dollars. Or Zorkmids. Whatever. They were going to make money, and I was going to go into the red.

So, I bounced around for a while, saying, I haven’t got a single clue how to do this, and I’m not paying someone thousands to tell me, because I think they’re making money off of mugs and I don’t want to be a mug.

Finally, on a website called 99bitcoins, which had a nice series of videos that was a good plain-talk intro to bitcoin, I found a mention of Babypips. It was on a page called “How to Trade Bitcoin” which of course was not going to tell you how to trade Bitcoin, because that can’t be done in a page. But he said: here’s a good general site on trading forex.

Long story short, I ended up on Babypips. I ended up enrolling in the School of Pipsology, with the thought… This, THIS, is exactly what I need.

Of course, when I started the SoP, I was thinking something along these lines: It’s all well and good that they’re talking about fiat pairs, but obviously I’m going to be trading crypto. Because that’s what the cool kids do. And I’m definitely a cool kid. Right? Right???

My thinking evolved. Isn’t that the great thing about opinions? They can change.

Please stay tuned for the next instalment…

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Our story so far… I’ve just found the school of Pipsology, but I’m still stuck on the idea that trading Bitcoin is the way to go. If only I knew the secrets! Because everyone says Bitcoin is different.

But as I worked my way through the school, it gradually dawned on me that this was a skill like any other skill, and to gain the skill you have to start at the bottom and work your way up.

Or put differently, I got myself a demo account for CFDs on BTC/USD, and every time I spotted a candle pattern that I’d just read about (or convinced myself that I had), I’d take a trade. Pretty soon I’d convinced myself that I didn’t know what I was doing at all.

So eventually some of the lessons began to sink in. Risk management. Discipline. Maths. Slow and steady wins the race.

And something else sunk in, too… that this was actually a place where one could make money if you did it right. Not maybe, someday, if all the stars and planets line up correctly, but actual money a little bit at a time. Boring old fiat.

Time to get serious.

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So that’s more or less the story of how I got to where I am now. It compressed about 6 months of reading, exploring, learning, hoping, dreaming, and coming back to reality into three (hopefully) fun-to-read posts.

So where I am now, is I’ve gone through the School of Pipsology (for which I thank the good people that run this site for providing) and am now on my second week of trading a demo account. No more sexy crypto.

For the record, I’m not trying to dis crypto. I actually think that cryptocurrency has a future, that it’s not going to go away, and that there’s money to be made in it for those with luck, skill or both. Crypto is exciting, it’s a great place to be—like the early days of the internet before spam, Cambridge Analytica, and troll factories—and I’m satisfying my need to be part of it by hodling a small amount of Bitcoin and mining IQCash.

But for my trading journey…

One pair. One system. One trade at a time.

One pair: GBP/USD. Because it feels like home, I live in the UK and have a decent understanding of the economies of the UK and the US.

One system: Cowabunga. Because it’s simple, Pip Surfer and others on here blog about it, and it suits me in pretty much all aspects. The pair I chose, the time frame (all the personality tests told me I’m a day trader) and the simplicity.

One trade at a time: Boring it may be, but I have to walk before I can run. If I can’t manage one trade at a time, what on earth makes me think that doing more is going to make it better? Plus it simplifies risk management, I don’t have to worry about correlation and all that jazz.

The first thing that I did with my demo account is “withdraw” £97,000 from it, leaving £3,000. (If only that “withdrawal” had gone into my bank account, but alas!) Because it might be fun to pretend that I have a well-funded account, but when I go live, I’ll start with only a few thousand. I want to do my demo the same way, with an amount that’s realistic for me.

After one and a half weeks of trading my demo, I’m down 2.6%. I’ve managed to miss almost every good trade and jump on all the duds. But I’m pretty upbeat, because I’m learning and my risk management system is working.

Next: what I’m learning.

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Okay, today I feel pretty good. Proud of myself. Because I did two trades (Cowabunga System) and managed them well. Both ended up a little bit profitable, which is great! (Total of 33 pips, risk ratios of 0.79 and 0.77 respectively).

My demo account is now down 0.2%, but at the start of the day it was down 2.6%. Yay! I’m only 0.2% in the hole now! :sunglasses:

The reason that makes me so happy, is I realised after reading through my journal notes for the last two weeks (the private one I’m keeping, not the one on here), that I’m pretty good at spotting the trades, figuring out where to set the stop and getting the position size right. I’m handling spotting entries and entering pretty well (except for one last week that I jumped the gun on, but I understand now why I shouldn’t have done that.)

But once I’m on the trade, that’s when Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt and Greed turn up. On Monday this week I missed out on a big potential win when GBP/USD was dropping like a rock because a politician made some comments about Brexit. I was on that!

But I panicked myself out… it started moving against me just after I entered, and that target was so far away, and I’m absolutely sure it’s going to get stopped out, almost certainly… wouldn’t it be better to get out with a few pips rather than getting skinned of 15?

So I emotioned out at just under 3 pips. And then spent the rest of the day watching “the one that got away”… it would have gone right through my first target, through my second, and I think I would have been able to exit pretty close to the third one. That would have been about 45 pips, if I’d followed the system and not panicked.

Then I did it again on a smaller move a couple of days later, in a slightly different form… I moved my stop to my entry point before the market was finished dithering, so I stopped out at break-even. If I’d left the stop alone, I would have got something like 13 pips, if I had followed the system.

I set a new goal for myself in demo trading, which is to experience the different things that can happen after you enter a trade, understand my reactions so that I can recognise them, and develop the judgement to behave sensibly.

I hope that makes sense.

I see that although the entry to a trade is quite mechanical… just do this when these conditions are met… managing your stop and exit through the trade are not so mechanical. If you don’t use good judgement, you can end up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Today was a good day!

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Thanks @Pipzilla and @Penelopip for liking some of my posts… much appreciated! :slight_smile:

I’m writing this in the hopes that someone will read it and find some encouragement for their own journey. Maybe reading about my ups and downs will help someone else to weather theirs.

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Hi @elenmirie!

We’re happy to have you and we also appreciate your efforts to share your journey with the community!

See you around.

Penelopip

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Hi @elenmirie! Thanks for sharing your trading journey! I can totally relate to your stories as a newbie in demo trading. I’m also using the Cowabunga system. The feeling of panicking when your trade starts moving against you just after you entered and the one that got away. lol. I guess that is how we learn and improve.

Good luck and I’m looking forward to read more of your journal entries!

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Hi baemax023!

Thanks for your comment! Glad you’re here.

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Well, this week has not gone so well. Let’s see why…

First, I’m still dithering about Fridays. Do I trade Fridays? Do I trade Friday mornings but not Friday afternoons? So I dithered my way into missing everything good on Friday, including by not following the system. I got up late (Thursday night I have quiz league, so it’s a late night). I’d missed a signal, so I broke the rules and tried to get in late. Bleh. Stopped out.

Then I said, sod this for a game of soldiers, and declared that I only trade Friday mornings. Guess what? Something good happened in the afternoon.

How do I know I’m trading my plan if I don’t know what my plan actually is?

Monday: A busy day for cowabunga… there were three signals that formed. I got whipsawed on all three. I entered them all according to the system, didn’t make any panicky moves. So, well done for that. However, knowing theoretically that the system doesn’t guarantee pips in your pocket is quite different from experiencing three stop outs in a row. Those nasty green spikes!

Tuesday: Okay, I made a mistake. A signal formed in the morning… or I thought it did, and I got so excited that I entered the trade without checking the oscillators. Oops. Oh, let me just check those oscillators… turns out MACD was not right, it had gone negative the candle before, so the trade was not good. And guess what? Got stopped out.

So, pretty much five losses in a row. I would say 1 and 5 were my fault, and the ones on Monday were just the market not going my way.

I’ve got some strong feelings, such as: I suck at this, the system sucks, what am I doing this for anyway?

Well, of course I suck at this, I’m new at it. I can’t tell whether or not the system sucks, because I keep not following it. And I’m doing this because I want to learn to be a trader. So pull up your socks, woman, and get on with it!

On the positive side, my risk management system is working. I’m down but still in it.

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I just wanted to drop in here and offer you a few words of encouragement.

You have a lot of the basic qualities that help in reaching consistency in forex trading. You think in a logical manner which means you are analytical rather than emotionally spontaneous, which reduces your risk of greed, fear and revenge trading. This is likely to keep your trading based on a systematic and consistent approach instead of just chasing the price all over the place.

You also have a very level-headed attitude towards your expectations and are not in any rush to buy your first yacht or Caribbean island, or two. :slight_smile:

You also clearly see the importance of sticking with a strategy long enough to thoroughly test it and maybe even adapt it to suit you own trading “signature”. There is no future in jumping from one method to another as soon as a string of losses appear. Your best approach is to a) follow a logical progression where you analyse which of your existing components are working and which are superfluous (or even misleading), and jettison the clutter off your charts, and, b) decide what your method is not telling you and look for an add-on solution which will plug the gap.

I do not wish to comment on the Cowabunga as such but you might find that it could help by looking into some Price Action type approaches such as Support/Resistance levels on higher timeframes or trendlines or pattern formations, etc. These do not usually clash with MAs or create confusing overlaps, etc. But one has to be a little careful not to be too enthusiastic about identifying these lines otherwise there will soon seem to always be a hurdle just a few pips away that says “don’t do it”!

Short term day trading can be very stressful, especially with currencies such as GBP which is going through such a traumatic period of uncertainty mainly, but not only, as a result of Brexit…and this may only get more volatile as the autumn approaches and the need for solutions becomes critically urgent in order to meet the deadlines next year. USD-based pairs are also subject to short-term flips due to uncertainty over trade war comments, etc, but are also seemingly feeling periods of stagnation whilst no-one has a clear view where the fundamentals are taking us.

But you clearly have a strong commitment to finding your niche in this business (and treating it as your business is extremely important) and that is a strong asset. It is my firm belief that success lies more with the quality of the trader than with the method itself. But few newcomers focus enough on their own actions and reactions rather than just their method and their failure is always blamed on the inadequacy of the strategy rather than their own poor performance and skills. It is often claimed that even a mediocre strategy will produce positive results if the trader is good but even a brilliant strategy can still lose in the hands of a bad trader…

Just a few thoughts along the way - I wish you every success with your venture :slight_smile:

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Nice to read how far you have come Elenmire. Great lessons learnt; one pair, one trade per day, reasonable money in wallet like its a live account, one great strategy consistently and competently handled in trades makes you a great trader. I’m a learner in pips too and really encouraged to study hard.

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gbpusd.jpg1917×843 262 KB

My observation,
Both 5ema & 10 ema line sloping downwards shows a bearish trajectory. Red MACD histogram bar illustrate bearish momentum. Monday LOW, Tuesday LOW and Wednesday HIGH suggest a level of resistance at 1.27301. RSI breached level 30 twice show bearish bias, and seemingly found resistance at RSI 50 level. Stochastic oscillator crossover provide a clearer picture of resistance at 50% level. Both RSI and Stochastic suggests there is a strong level of resistance at 1.27301. However, receding Bearish MACD histogram bar as compare to previous Histogram bars shows weakening of bearish strength.

Impression : A re-test of Wednesday LOW is highly possible. GBPUSD is currently doing a pullback and seem ready to bounce off both EMAs line soon. 1.27301 provides a level of Immediate resistance.

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@alphahavoc, hi!

I am just wondering…did you mean to post this here?

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Yup, just to share with Elenmire how i interpret the cowabunga system.

I notice she’s trying out the cow system and trading GBPUSD. Just trying to help.
I’m feeling bored, can’t sleep…

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OK, sorry! :slight_smile: I just didn’t want anyone else to miss out if it was intended for a different thread!!

I don’t use the Cowabunga myself and didn’t even recognise the components :smiley:

Are you finding it useful yourself?

Why? (aren’t you getting enough of those biscuits anymore? :smiley: :smiley: )

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Well, i have come to the realization every indicator work, depends on how you interpret and use it. When market is choppy. Every system fail. Plain chart work just as well too.

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20180816_011824.jpg4032×3024 3.01 MB

Still eating those biscuits, i highly recommend it.

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I knew it! That’s where you get your trading inspiration from! :smiley: The manufacturers love long term customers like you!

I hope all is well with you and your family nowadays… :slight_smile:

PS Kinda funny seeing my post on your screen over there - technology still never fails to amaze me…

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All is well. Thanks for the concern. I may start a Live account trade journal next week. $500 to $2000 challenge… stay tune :rofl: