1 Year update.
Wow, can’t believe it has been a year since I have started this journey.
It has been amazing so far.
I have read most of the great books on trading, Market Wizards and anything written by Micheal Covel and I listen to his podcasts every week. Excellent stuff and excellent food for thought and ideas on books to read and writers to research.
I opened an account with Oanda. No problems, they seem to be fine for the trading I do.
I purchased forex tester 2. I do think it helped. I become very familiar with watch trends and how to trade them. Also in basic price action and understanding support and resistance.
But mostly how my system and style works with various pairs. All pairs are not created equal. I tend to follow the USD and JPY pairs and of course mostly USDJPY.
I trade the new york open only. 5am my time to about 7am, then close my trades at 7 and off to work.
I scalp new events mostly, or use events as a catalyst for a longer position trade allowing me to move my stop loss up quicky a much lower risk zone.
I have evolved into a Trend Follower, almost naked style which means very few/no indicators, price action only/mostly.
I pretty much use only EMA 20, 50 and RSI.
I trade using Support and Resistance,
I enter on pullbacks when I see a good area of value, and focus mostly on 4H Time Frame but use weekly and daily for contect. Very important to understand trend and direction and general bias of the pair.
I have a simple set of rules, (I found complex rules got in the way and I was breaking them, so I dumbed it down.)
I find my self mostly scalping 5 to 3 hours. I have tried many times to be more of a position trader but with a small account it tough to have a SL so large to handle the daily ranges of most Major pairs. Although I have learned patience and waiting for the market to come to me, has helped, and improved my SL positions allowing for lower risk, higher reward trades.
I have learned trading is a process and a skill. It takes time to master it.
I have learned their is no holy grail. I have learned that these that the only way to learn forex is do the hardwork myself. That means I dont follow others, I figure out my own charts, and will compare to others, but never follow or copy. Pros dont do this, and neither will I.
I am putting in the hard work and learning to become a professional traders.
I have learned more about myself this year than I have in the past ten. Much of it not great, but I know where my blind sides are and what to focus on to become a good trader.
I feel like I have about equivilant of a 4 year collage degree in trading, in one year. I have put in countless hours and weekends, reading too, listening too and watching all relevant you tube videos.
I dont have a family near me, so this is a bonus for learning, no distractions.
The more I learn, the more I love Forex.
I am considering opening an Equities account as well. I havent traded stocks in 20 years, so much has changed, in a good way. No more brokers that dont follow directions. It’s all up to me now. Good or bad.
I started this as a bit of spin off from the idea of gold and silver stacking (purchasing physical gold and silver).
I forgot about that and almost a year later in full circle am not considering purchasing physical gold and silver again as a solid foundation for my new investment plan, then adding real estate development/investment into the mix in the next year or two.
Trading has given me my confidenace back after a very bad few years of been beaten down to zero.
How am I doing now?
Well, very well, It has been an amazing year of learning and building plans and putting things into motion of turning dreams into reality.
In the last two months of this year, I have had some serious ah-ha moments and have completely addressed my very poor risk management rules. I now use a method developed by Van Tharp (wwwvantharp.com). It just makes sense. Check out his work, brillant. His website sucks and is very outdated. But his material and content I find to be important in this stage of my trading growth.
How is my live trading going, Well, I am down… about 40% to be honest.
But I actually expected that in my first year. I figured it is the cost of learning and doing business. I am not too worried, I can afford to loose it in worst case.
But I wont, because I have a new found skill of risk management and a good solid simple trading plan.
I Tested it a great deal over various conditions. I am currently testing it using a very small live account.
I see pretty steady gains of 8-18%. and draw down of no worse than about 12%, and now in the process of confirming this in a live account.
It needs some tweaking and is untried on most commodity markets, but I am confident it simple and robust enough to work in most trending conditions.
All in all, I have learned a sh#t tonne about trading.
I have read some amazing books, found some amazing online teachers and learned so much from trading.
Things to work on this year.
Focus more on process than profit.
Focus more on risk than reward.
Focus more on quality trades than quanity.
I will focus more on Daily charts, looking for longer position trades.
Focus more on become a better person, healthier life style.
Learn how to create passive income and eventually retire from my day job,
allowing me to persue my new passion of creating and building wealth.
It has been a growth year. Outwardly I look the same, maybe older, inward, I have become a very different person, with a completely different approach to lifes bigger questions.
I can thank trading for that.
