Here we go! A newbie trade and journey journal

Trading Discussion Trade Journals
322

:slight_smile:

By dangerous, I meant that it could overinflate my ego and because of that my trading wouldn’t be as methodical.

I think right now I am at a spot where I have an idea of what I need to do, I just need time on the charts making decisions and getting experience now. My wife gave me permission to set up our attic space as a dedicated trading office rather than trading in the living room so I can limit distractions and really buckle down over the holidays to get my “back office” setup.

I definitely want to start keeping a journal of my trades, and I need to set up a spreadsheet where I can keep a trading log and look at the objective data on my performance to make sure I am not slipping backward. I have a paper planner setup to mark down news events and trades that are developing but not quite ready for me to get involved (sort of like a watch list of sorts).

On the GBP-USD, I am bearish on it too. I would like to see price push up a bit higher to reduce risk before I get short with a target at a retest of the previous low. At this point, if I miss this one because I don’t like the risk/reward profile, I’m ok with that. No one is paying me to put trades on, ie, I don’t get paid when I hit a certain number of trades. No sense in putting on a trade that I am not super comfortable with. Here is the chart of what I am looking for.

GBPUSD Trade Setup.png1824×867 75.2 KB

323

Hey, wakeup and smell the cofefveee

The Ever Back VIPER

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324

I’m here :slight_smile: I haven’t taken any trades lately, just sort of watching how the markets move these first few days back after the holidays. My wife also bought me a few trading books for Christmas, Forex Trading for Dummies and Technical Analysis for Dummies, so I have been reading those. Surprisingly helpful being that they are For Dummies books.

How were your holidays?

325

First trade of the year is on… found a range on the cable 5 minute chart betwen 1.35542 and 1.35358. Market put in what looked like a false break and then re-entered the range so I shorted at 1.35525 with a target at 1.35358. If it turns out that the break has more strength than it looks I will get stopped out at 1.35600. Risk reward on this trade is 2:1 so looked like a good intraday trade to me.

326

Well… that didn’t work…

327

Ok, took a second trade on the Aussie hourly chart. Entered long at 0.78388 in a bullish market on a small pullback. I figured this pair will go up as USD had a lower than expected jobs number (if I am correct in that a weakening USD will lead to a price increase in the AUS/USD pair) and 0.7833 appears to be acting as support in the near term. Trade is currently +/- 1 pip of my entry and has held there for a few hours.

My target on this trade is 0.78755 which is the previous high point on the hourly chart. Stop loss is at 0.7822 for a good risk/reward profile and this trade is 1 micro lot in size.

328

Market moved 20 pips into profit and then turned around to stop me out. I had moved my stop to break even prior to getting stopped out so I didn’t lose anything, thankfully. This morning the market had moved way lower than my original stop even.

329

Hey dude, well it happens. I’m off the high water mark we set a bit ago, got hit with the Rumor bug this morning, but this is all part of the gig. Make sure you double check your Context and Premise on your next few trades. If it was the rumor that hit you today, not much can be done to avoid the mini Black Swan. Stops and thats about it.

The Ever Reasoning VIPER

330

Yeah, losses don’t upset me much anymore. I make sure I set my stops to 1% to 3% of my account balance with my preference leaning towards keeping my position size constant. If the market doesn’t give me a logical place to put stops while allowing me to trade a micro unit within the 1-3% account balance risk then I pass on the trade.

So far I had a few small losses and then hit a $1.67 win on USD/CAD long position, then took another couple of losses for around $0.20 to $0.30 each. I am still dabbling in different trading styles but never taking more than one position at a time. My account is still green but I am a bit more humble about it all now :).

I still fall victim to flipping my position once in a while. If I have a short on and it gets stopped out I sometimes flip it to a long and then get stopped out again as the market reverses back down. Once I get that problem fixed I should take a few less losing trades.

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331

Right now USD/CAD is spanking me like a Catholic school girl. On the 5 minute chart, we had a breakout of a range, and the price came back into the range. Shorted just below the top of the range with stops at the previous high spike.

Of course, now the top of the range is acting as support. I should have factored that in as the range was recently violated and instead played it as a bounce. I want to flip this to a long pretty bad, but I don’t have a clear reason to expect the price to increase. Weekly and daily charts show a bearish bias since 2015 but I don’t know if that has any bearing on the 5 minute chart. At least this way I am with the underlying trend. Hourly chart also shows a bearish bias as well so I am just going to log out of my trading platform, get back to work, and take a second look tomorrow (when I have off work to spend the day working on my short term trading).

332

Looks like the spanking is over as the market put in a 5 to 6 pip downward move bringing me back into profit and allowing me to move stops to break even. Zero risk trade at the moment which is probably the best case scenario right now for this particular context.

Edit: market just spiked up and took me out. No harm, no foul.

333

So far I have learned that I don’t make money on 5-minute charts. I just seem to lose more often than win and the risk to reward ratios are not high enough to cover that. At this point, I think I can safely eliminate the 5-minute and 15-minute charts from my trading, at least, while I am only trading part-time. One reason I think that the short-term charts don’t work for me right now is that my position sizes are so small that I need to get 15-20 pip moves to generate anything more than a few pennies. With a larger account, I could generate decent returns off 5-7 pips moves so I wouldn’t be holding trades as long. A lot of my short-term trades moved 5-7 pips into profit before turning around and stopping me out for losses.

On the longer term trades, I tend to take fewer trades, but of those trades, I tend to make a lot more money. All my trades that made $5.00 (3-5% of account value) or more were on the 4-hour charts. I think these trades work better for me because the moves are bigger and I have more time to analyze the markets and find my highest probability setups.

Right now, the Euro is range bound between 2068 and 1559 on the daily chart. The price is about 30 pips away and on the 4-hour chart, we see 4 tests of the upper bound of the range and 2 tests of the lower bound. I threw a limit sell at 2062 with an initial stop at 2129 and a 40 pip trailing stop loss in case I am away from the markets when the price hits the median of the range. I put a target at 1737 because there is a bit of a resistance level blocking price from the bottom of the daily range on the four-hour chart. If targets are hit, the trade makes me $32.00 (biggest profit to date if hit) and if I am stopped out for a loss then I lose $3.00 (account balance is $110 so less than my 3% max).

While I am waiting for this trade to trigger and play out I will be playing with the 5 and 15-minute charts in demo trying to see how position sizing affects my profitability. Perhaps I am wrong and bigger positions on those charts would just mean bigger losses rather than profits.

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334

Not much happening lately, but I did close a +65 pip EUR/USD short this morning off a double top on the 4hr chart. Now if I just had enough money to trade a $1 or a $10 pip… :slight_smile:

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335

I figure since I am here I would swing by and update this thread. I am down about 25% of my original account balance and my high water mark was 115% of my original account balance of $100. However, my trading library has grown and I am testing and experimenting with lots of different ideas.

I do plan to post regular trading recaps here once I get to the point where I feel with my record keeping. Maintaining a trading journal and regularly reviewing my trades still isn’t getting done and I still don’t have a finalized, formal trading plan yet. The last month of trading has been rather slow as I moved up to the 4-hour chart and have taken maybe 2-3 trades in the last month. How do people make money at that low of trade frequency? I still have yet to capture a 150+ pip move which for some reason is important to me.

I think that with the lower trade frequency I feel like I need to hit 100, 200 and even 300 pip moves to make any money on a monthly basis. If I average 3 trades a month that is 36 trades per year and at a 40% win rate that is 14 winning trades, 22 losing trades. If I am winning 100 pips per winning trade, that means my losing trades are losing 50 pips and that comes out to net 300 pips for the year. I don’t see how 300 pips for the year would make a decent living. However, I am only trading one pair so I am guessing that swing traders increase their earnings by increasing the number of pairs they trade.

Well, that is the end of my rant for now. I’ll swing by again sometime and post another update when I have something interesting to update on - otherwise if anyone wants to follow me on Twitter (I am much more active there because I can use it from my phone) just PM me for my Twitter handle (don’t feel good about advertising my profiles for other sites on sites like this, makes me feel like a used car salesman).

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336

Good to see you posting again !

All the best

F

337

Hey guys! I am still alive, and still grinding on my trading :slight_smile:

I switched my strategy to trading on the 4 hour charts and looking for double top and double bottom chart patterns. I also need to see RSI overbought or oversold on the first part of the pattern, and then an RSI cross back into “normal” range on the retest of the level. If I get all those to line up then I enter at trade at the market.

My back tests on the EUR/USD pair for last 5 years shows that each trade has a positive expectancy of about 35 pips and some change, and on the GBP/USD pair each trade is worth about 43 pips for the same price range. Average losing streak is 2 trades, and max losing streak is 7 trades. Average risk/reward is 1.5 reward to 1 risk, with a win rate average of 55%.

The four hour charts have been working well because of my full time job. I tried day trading the Asian sessions on both range and 5 minute charts and it was like the bonds department of a big bank in the early 1970’s. I would rather just pop onto my charts every four hours or so (which I can with my job) and check on trades rather than limit myself to the snail’s market of the Asian sessions.

I am still figuring out what money management system I want to apply, and once I get that done I’ll re-open my trading account with another $100 (didn’t blow the first one up, just pulled the plug once I hit 35% loss on original equity). Right now I am just demo trading the four hours and seeing if I can implement my strategy under accurate market conditions.

My end goal is to trade the USD pairs on a swing trading basis and build my account from there. If I ever get to be a full time trader then I will daytrade the NY session, and use swing trading to smooth out my equity curve.

For me education I have read / listened to the following books:

One Good Trade by Mike Bellafiore
The Playbook by Mike Bellafiore
The Daily Trading Coach by Brett Steenbarger
Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas
New Market Wizards by Jack Schwager
Forex Trading for Dummies (forgot the author)
Technical Analysis for Dummies (forgot the author)

Currently working on Hedge Fund Wizards by Jack Schwager. After that I plan on getting Reminiscences of a Stock Operator and then beyond that I am out of ideas for books to read.

Well that’s all I have - I am going to try to be more active here as well even though I am still heavily testing my trading strategies (which makes for very boring reading :slight_smile: )

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338

Trading journal has a huge importance for a Forex trader as it helps to improve the strategy. You can share your journal with other members in order to find a solution for any problem with it. Moreover, you can get inspiration from other members’ journals as well. Thanks!

339

Good to see you pop up again :slight_smile:

340

Nothing by Dr. Elder hmmmmmmm ?

The Ever Prodding VIPER

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341

remember the logical place to put your stops wil have been seen by everyone and the big players trying to create liquidity will try to move the price to that level so they can enter with a meaningful trade size.