:17:
my stop loss got triggered! prices kept shooting upwards. oh dear.
So this brings my funds to -0.45% from a +0.25%
garuhhh, its better to go with current , catch some fish and go ur way. ur risk tolerance seems too big. risk that much if probability of trade is over 90% in ur favour. good luck.
Thanks for the recommendation, but I have two question:
[ol]
[li]How can I lower my risk tolerance?
[/li][li]How do I know if the trade is in my favour?
[/li][/ol]
I have just started reading this past few months, and so far I havenāt encountered those yet. Thank you again nisar!
for risk tolerance, I would suggest risk dollar amount rather than percentage.
for trade to be in ur favour, u should have a trading plan. that means u must have set parameters, when to enter, when to exit. for example if ur strategy is to trade the moving average cross over, or oscillator level or price action etc. I mean u must have some plan. if all conditions of the trade are fulfilled that means the trade is in ur favour.
I have made a couple of trades this past week, but I wasnāt able to update this journal 
and with those trades, I lost a LOT!
My money is down 4.98%.
Iām thinking whether updating this journal is still worth the time, since I spend too much time editing pictures, and trying to make them understandable to other readers. But in my case, I prefer pictorial representations of my trades, since I understand them better, rather than looking at a spreadsheet/table of trades. So Iāll see this couple of days more if I will still continue updating my journal more often.
So hereās my trade 4 for the month.
EDIT:
update, Dec 19, 2012: This trade is still on. It went up to a 20+pips, then went down again.
EDIT:
update, Dec 21, 2012: This trade is still on. I tried moving my Take Profit to 60 pips, since things are not moving on my direction.
Oh yeah, the previous day, I moved my SL to 150pips, since it was almost hit by a surge down. Now itās moving up again. I hope it was a good decision to move my SL so it wonāt be hit by that sudden surge down. Now I put it to 60 pips SL.
so now, TP/SL=60/60.
EDIT:
update, Dec 24, 2012: Last friday (Dec 21), I was contemplating on moving my SL higher than 60pips, but decided to stick with my 60pip SL, amidst dangers of it being stopped --> 6 more pips, and itās stopped! good thing it was not triggered! so now, Iām up to -37pips.
EDIT:
i forgot to update this trade, but it met a Stop Loss at -60 pips. Now Iām thinking it was a good decision after all not to move the stop loss. If I did, I could have gotten a bigger loss out of this.
Here is my 5th trade. EUR/NZD
Iāve made two or three more small trades, but my take profits are just 10pips or 20 pips, so I decided not to put them here anymore.
edit: oh dear, I messed up with the resolution. I shouldnāt have made it that big. the forum automatically cropped it.
EDIT:
update, Dec 18, 2012: I have now +80 pips, so I put a 70 pip trailing stop to keep some of my earned pips just in case prices starts to move against me.
EDIT:
Dec 19, 2012: I closed the trade at +200pips! my largest pip to date!! :51:
Hey mate,
Not sure what your goal is with this journal, but personally I update my journal not for others (although I hope at times other people get some benefit) but to track my own performance and make me accountable for my actions. Its very easy to fall into those bad habits of over trading and not following your trading strategy / plan etc.
I also believe that writing my trades here on babypips makes me less likely to make a trade without a proper rationale behind it.
Just my 2 cents, but there are plenty of strong traders who a giving people the benefit of their knowledge e.g ICT and NikitaFX. So rather than trying to focus on explaining your trades with pictures for the benefit of others, focus more of explaining your trades for the benefit of yourself. That way when you lose you can evaluate āwhat went rightā and āwhat went wrongā and likewise when you win.
Good luck mate!
Bitters
Thanks for the reply Bitters!
I was supposed to imitate Bijoyās way of journaling. Heās so detailed that even beginners like me was able to follow his posts in his journal. So that was my goal first, to imitate him, Hopefully I would also inspire other beginners to follow well, and of course to receive feedbacks from [I]masters[/I]. But itās sooooo difficult, and itās taking most of my time trying to make my posts as close to his as possible.
I guess youāre right, itās easy to fall into the trap of overtrading and not following your trading plan if you donāt do this journal. So I will continue updating this journal, but I might change my postings into ones that Iām more comfortable with. That means I might not be as detailed as before, but I will still post pictures of my trades.
Iām more comfortable looking at pictures, rather than a spreadsheet or table. Anyway, I can get that table anytime from my brokerās transaction history. So what I need will be pictorial representations of those trades. With just a glance, it should be able to give me my entry, stop loss, and take profit positions, plus the shape of the chart! Anyway, I base my trades on charts alone (I donāt listen/read news quite often).
Thanks again Bitters!
oh! I forgot to put this in here. It actually was made together with my trade 4 and 5. This morning, it hit its Target Profit. It was a short on AUD/CAD.
I was supposed to move the target Profit further down, near the resistance line as soon as it is about to reach the first target. But it suddenly hit the first target profit this morning while out of the PC, so hereā¦ +20pips for this one!
small pips accumulate, so its good to have some profit than nothing. plus it gives the confidence that system is working. today 20 pips next day 200 pips, who knows?
here is my trade 7. Long on EUR/JPY for hopefully for 20 pips.
risk ratio of 1:1
EDIT:
I closed the trade at +9pips. I didnāt expect this trade to drag this long. It took more than 4hrs. It went to negative pips, and as soon as I got +9pips again, I decided to close it.
+0.13% on my funds. Iām still on -4.5% so still a long way to go!
I have a question:
If letās say I have +80 pips on my trade, which is better to use: move stop loss near or past the entry OR use a trailing stop?
Of course the trailing stop should still provide enough room for movements. I might be missing something, can you please provide your opinion?
Whatās the advantage of simply moving my stop loss near the entry and simply providing a trailing stop. Are there no extra costs for using a trailing stop?
Actually, my EUR/NZD trade is +80pips as I speak. Iāll try to post some screenshots later to update my trade. As of now, I have put a trailing stop of 70, as I already want to keep some pips Iāve earned.
thanks for any reply! 
Here is my trade 8, AUD CAD.
This is just a small goal of 20+ pips.
I donāt mention anymore the risk, because itās default to 3% on mine.
EDIT:
update, Dec 19, 2012: this trade is still on, It went down, and went up again. So far Iām -3pips on this one.
EDIT:
Dec 19, 2012, 5pm: this trade met a stop loss.
iām in the same trade of eurnzd and up by roughly 200 pips. iām using a trailing stop but not a fix one, rather iām using hourly chart and move my SL -5 pips to the the low of previous swing. this way by now I have already locked about 128 pips. I will keep doing that until Iām stopped out. thats my way of trailing stop.
the advantage of moving Sl is that if trade turned against u then at least u have a less loss or may be locked in some priofit and donāt loose the trade.
there is no extra cost for moving the SL.
my trade 5 was closed to +200pips! whoah?! 
I decided to close it since Iām already nearing my take profit, and I donāt wanna loose any more pips. I have a feeling the chart will start to go down. so thereā¦ I closed it
My balance is now +1.8%, I still have -3.16% to catch up to.
its very risky to go short on eurnzd. we had a very strong up trend. may be market is taking a back step, before going for another surge. even ur stochastic is not showing OB, its by 50 mark. think well before jumping in it.
Thanks Nisar! good thing I didnāt go for the sell last night. almost 12hours have passed, and itās still havenāt moved yet.
Although, I was looking previously at the 4hour period, and itās showing overbought in the Stochastics last night. And the weekly view shows a downtrend of the prices, so thatās why I thought it might be a good idea to SELL it. I was a bit worried about the āshapeā of the rise, it seems all of a sudden.
EDIT:
by the way, I made a couple of āsmallā trades yesterday with TP/SL of 20/20. But most of them failed, so my money is still down to -4.38% (edit: 6 loosing trades!! :()
I was trying out a different approach other than looking at long term pips. But it seems Iām not getting the proper entry still. I will continue to try it out, and try if I can upload pictures of my āsmallā trades.
Taking Nizarās comment into consideration, Iām still patiently waiting for signs of Shorting EurNzd.
