Well, on the IBFX charts there was a huge spike on NZDJPY … check out the H4 chart. That took out my target. So theoretically my trade should have hit its target. However, 10 hours later they have reinstated my trade and removed my profit. Anyway, today’s results…
What happened this week? ATR decreased by a lot this week. I wanted to be cautious so I entered with broad stops and therefore broad targets. Many of my trades didn’t close this week and I have been riding them all week. Until there is resolution about the bail out from congress, I think this lack of movement in the fx market may remain. Many trades are standing on the side lines waiting. While the week has been slightly positive, the last few days I have been losing, but the losses have been small relative to the total amount that I am risking daily. I can live with that. I won’t be pushing on more trades for profit. Eventually the fx market will find direction again and volatility will subside with the ATR being more stable. Remember the days when carry trades went up and up and up week after week? And the USD was losing value week after week after week? These sort of movements will be back. Things will calm down. In the mean time, we can be satisfied with small profits. My trades for the week did better than the Dow and the SP500 portfolio of stocks. Nothing to complain about. 
Not a bad trading day today.
I may group my daily charts to contain 4 weeks of data from now on, which will put today’s performance on a different chart. I will notify if this is what I end up doing.
Today, there was no change in balance.
Yeah, what type of indicators, etc… are you using?
The usual stuff: Momentum, trend lines, zigzag, candles, etc…
What is different is my interpretation of the indicators as well as my money management system.
Ugh, Vista has had a major corruption. It will take me a few days to get everything running as before. Stay tuned.
Still recovering programs and data from the Vista crash. It turned out to be a very good week though. I had 10-12 winning rates in a row with a win:lose ratio of 1:1 for all trades (i.e.: stop loss was same size as my target for all trades). Will post specifics this weekend.
Wanna see what 12 winning trades in a row look like all with a stop and target who’s ratio is 1:1? I also had 3 straight winners on my other broker in the same duration. That sets a new record of 15 winning trades in a row.
I am still recovering from my Vista crash. Should be online very soon! No new trades until my software is restored.
These are the currency pairs I trade on Oanda…
As can be seen the spreads are just crazy, way too crazy (the numbers to the very right in the pic attached). This means that trades have hit the snooze button and don’t want any of these recent moves that have been taking place. Only central banks seem to be left in the market. I am going to follow the big boys’ lead here and do likewise.
Until the spreads calm down a bit, I am going to stop trading while I am ahead and concentrate on developing my system further.
Woo, check out FXCM’s no dealing desk spreads… Crazy.
I look forward to see your posts, and discuss our statements and, share knowledge and help others here.
As do I. 
Back in business this week. I think the volatility will subside because there are not as many important news coming out this week for the pairs I trade.
Will wait for spreads to calm down a bit and may wait out Monday because of Bank holidays. I will post an upgraded trading report with more goodies today or tomorrow as well. It was a really good week for me!
I am attaching a sample trades report. From now on, this is what it is going to look like.
I am still around. I have not made a single trade all month. I am sitting on the side lines waiting for market volatility to decrease.
I ended 2008 with 2.4% return. This was my return at the end of September and so I ended the year much better than most investors/traders. Consensus seems to be that it has been a brutal year for most money managers. October is when the markets became a bit too crazy for me. This is why I stopped trading. Liquidity (slippage), and spreads were too high. I think it was the prudent thing to do. While I was waiting for the markets to calm down, I did much technical work which needed to be done in order to advance my way of trading into a less time consuming endeavor. I have been writing custom indicators. I have not advanced much in terms of end products, but the wheels are rolling. I have found the direction in which I would like to develop my trading.
The new year has brought with it decent liquidity and subsided market panic. So, I am back in the saddle. I don’t have the amount of time I need to trade full swing (the 28 currency pairs I was trading before) due to my time consuming physics research. Whatever time I have outside of my day job will be largely devoted to enhancing my increasing the automation of my strategy. What does it mean? It means I will have time to trade only a few currency pairs. I will trade EURUSD and GBPJPY and possibly AUDNZD or CADCHF. As I automate my system further and further and it takes me less and less time to make an evaluation, the number of pairs will increase.
That’s it for now. Done with the theory. Now let’s see how things pan out in practice.
have you started trading this year?
do update your journal kay.
see ya!