Hello!
I’m kluebirby, a beginner trader. I’ve been messing around with forex for about 9 months now but still haven’t gotten serious about it. I had a good profit up through december, but I lost that profit in about a week, ouch! I therefore figured it was time to take things more serious and start a log to keep me accountable and help me stick to my pre-determined strategy.
Again, I’m just a beginner, so don’t expect much from this log, but feel welcome to chime in!
Anyway, here are my trading rules:
[ul]
[li][B]Pair[/B] - [I][U]only[/U][/I] EUR/USD
[/li][li][B]Time frame[/B] - [I][U]only[/U][/I] 4H
[/li][li][B]Lot size[/B] - I’m using Oanda, so I can trade as little as an individual unit. I’m going to use a simple rule of thumb to regulate my position size: I’ll trade 5x as many units as I have euro on my account. For example: with 600euro I’ll trade 3000 units. This will work nicely as the risk scales linearly with my account size, and it comes down to risks of about 1%.
[/li][li][B]Strategy[/B] - I’m using support and resistance levels and indecision candles. My chart is full of identified support/resistance zones and if I get an indecision candle after a strong trend in one of these zones I’ll try to find a good entry for a reversal trade. The take profit is set near the next support/resistance and the stop loss will be below the current zone
[/li][li][B]Entering trades[/B] - I must record all trades here before entering!
[/li][li][B]Take profit[/B] - I’ll try to aim for 50 pips, but will depend on how close the next support/resistance is
[/li][li][B]Moving to breakeven[/B] - At 20 pips I’ll move my stop to breakeven
[/li][li][B]Trailing stop[/B] - Depending on my target, once I hit 35 pips I’ll either remove half of my position or add a 15 pip trailing stop
[/li][li][B]Stop loss[/B] - Again, situation dependent, but [I][U]must be less[/U][/I] than the take profit goal
[/li][/ul]
Let’s see how it goes!
Here’s my first trade order, lets see how it turns out. There is a nice downtrend, and we’re currently in a support/resistance zone. If the price pushes down a bit it’ll likely drop down to the previous low at 1.3020.
Entry: 1.3060
TP: 1.3020 (40 pips)
SL: 1.3090 (30 pips)
Edit: Trade ended up getting trigged, moving about 5 pips in the correct direction but then hit the stop loss very quickly after the CPI announcement. The EUR/USD has now shot up to the next support/resistance zone, so maybe I’ll have another short opportunity soon.
Here’s my 2nd trade. It is a bit of a gamble, because the signals aren’t exactly where I’d like them to be, and the take profit and stop loss are both 50 pips. The pair is slightly below the resistance level, so there is still a chance it’ll move up a bit before going down. But on the other hand I feel confident it’ll move down as a correction to Friday’s strong rally.
Entry: 1.3160
Take profit: 1.3110
Stop loss: 1.3210
Edit: unfortunately another loss to a very strong bull movement. I’m not exactly sure what caused this movement, was it the auction of the EFSF bonds?
Here’s my next setup. It might be a bit early to setup this trade as the EUR/USD has just reached the current level of resistance, therefore there is a chance that my order gets triggered without the guarantee that the resistance has held. Hopefully I’ve set the entry point low enough though. I do like the setup however.
Entry: 1.3250
Take profit: 1.3205
Stop loss: 1.3288
edit: I closed this trade at about 1.3215 for a 35 pip profit about 1 hour ago. Yippee :). The reason for closing was word of Bernanke’s speech possibly causing lots of volatility. So far it looks like I picked a good point to close the trade because the pair is now at 1.3234.
The EUR/USD is nicely stuck between support and resistance giving good opportunities to enter reversal trades. I’m setting up another order now:
Entry: 1.3215
Take profit: 1.3275
Stop loss: 1.3175
Edit: Trade is now open and is approximately 25 pips in the plus. It has been going slow though, because this was all during the Asian session and volume is low. I’ve moved my stop to breakeven, but hopefully with the London session close to opening it’ll push up quicker.
Edit 2: Trade ended at break even after reaching a peak of about 35 pips. A worse than expected French manufacturing PMI caused the pair to move downwards to my stop loss. I debated moving my stop loss further down but in the end decided that I need to stick to my rules.
I’m going to enter another trade now. The EUR/USD is coming out of a strong area of resistance, just below the psychological 1.33 level.
Entry: 1.3260
Take profit: 1.3205
Stop loss: 1.3310
I’m also removing half of my position once I get to 1.3225.
Trade reached the take profit rather quickly, although there was a bit of a scare after some good news from Germany. I removed ~2/3 of my position when the trade was about 25 pips in my favor because I noticed it was struggling. I wanted to only remove 1/2 of my position, but I filled in the order incorrectly apparently. The rest of my position closed at the set take profit above.
I’m now at 2 wins, 2 losses, and 1 break even. My account balance is only slightly in the plus compared to where I started.
I just entered a new short trade.
Entry: 1.3348
Take profit: 1.3300 & 1.32800
Stop loss: 1.3385
I’m removing half of my position at 1.33 because of potential support at the psychological level.
Edit: I ended up making a very small profit on this trade. I had a bit of bad luck, because on my broker the stop loss just barely got touched (by 0.3 pips). So I lost 37 pips. After seeing that the pair didn’t really break the resistance level I decided that the trade was still valid and entered for a second time. The second time it went better and I took off some profit at 1.33 and the remaining pips at 1.3282. All in all the trade was just over breakeven.
Your current short Entry is superb and should come off nicely. You need to define the status of the direction though to not get caught by surprise by the impulse. Is it a retracement of the larger bullish momentum or are you playing this as a major bearish impulse.
I’ve just placed an long order on EUR/USD based on an a good indecision candle at an area of support. The indecision isn’t very clear on the 4 hour chart, but on the 1 hour chart it looks great: A strong down trend followed by a long wicked candle at the area of support.
Entry - 1.32925
Take profit - 1.33675
Stop loss - 1.32600
There are a few areas to watch out for. The entry is right below the pyschological 1.33 level. Also ~1.332 looks like it might slow down there.
Edit: Trade is going well. I’ve now removed 2/3 of my position with a 60 pip gain. The remaining 1/3 I’m going to let it ride with a 15 pip trailing stop. I’m hoping that when the London market opens the pair will continue to move up, possibly past the area of resistance at which it is now.
Edit 2: The remaining 1/3 ended up hitting my trailing stop at about the same place that I closed the first portion. So all in all a +60 pip trade.
I just entered another EURUSD short trade based on a small pin bar at the resistance and a confirmation candle.
Entry: 1.3332
Take profit: 1.3300
Stop loss: 1.3360
Damn, trade ended in a loss. Shortly after that it continued to move down to the profit target. Oh well…
I entered a long trade last night. The EUR/USD has had a very strong push down hitting a resistance level with the formation of a pin bar. I think a small reversal will be in order now, people will be looking to consolidate their gains.
Entry: 1.3143
Take profit: 1.3195
Stop loss: 1.3092
