I am waiting to hear from FXCM in the next day or two regarding my Trading Inquiry - I have been
allocated a case number…
Since the upset of the lost money in the margin call I tried for two trading weeks to make up that money,
with mixed results… Sometimes I used entry orders, sometimes I jumped into rallies (too late or bang on
the beginning), sometimes I got stopped out, sometimes I adjusted stops to allow for correction, sometimes
I went in with big bets, then managed losses to protect my account…
In the margin call, which is being investigated, I lost about £133, from an account balance of about £600
(I cannot remember the equity)… Trying to recover losses quickly would have worked but, trading mostly
during work hours with my mobile 'phone, I sometimes lost track of what bias I was trying to pursue
across the instruments.
I have, however, gained valuable trading experience in terms of pairs and I started trading commodities,
namely USOil and UKOil… Also, I realised that the UK 100 index, tradable on FXCM with as small a spread
as 1.0 (but with a 0.10 pip cost), is also one to watch, and one near significant over-appreciation, so it
does offer opportunities… As did the S&P500, a new one on my watchlist… A couple of days ago it
jumped over 100 pips and I managed to catch 42 pips of the move simply by being in the right place
at the right time…
I am banking on some money being credited back into my account from FXCM - that would really
make my day. I have since reopened the trades that had been closed during that Margin Call but
closed them back, as some of them had gone against my original bias.
Surprise of the week was EUR/NZD, which got me 30 pips to the upside, coming down to test and
bounce off a trend-line starting in 2012… Could this be the slow-churner of the year, similarly to
the AUD/NZD rising trend?
Anyway, the point is that I have taken and accepted many losses in the past two weeks, but kept
them balanced with winners, having the courage to let winners run, or to let losses being stopped out…
I would like to move on to Volume Price Analysis but because I trade from my mobile 'phone and the
(Real) Volume indicator is not available on the FXCM mobile trading platform, I have to wait until I get
home, and even then I do not always get to the computer in time until most of the US trading hours
have all but finished…
My ideal situation would be to try for six months having a desk at home set up with two screens to have
better comparative real-time analysis of pairs against volume, with a print-out of the economic calendar
and a real-time news feed on a third screen (e.g. mobile 'phone), trying to really keep track of what I
have been trading, i.e. writing a journal… I would also like to have a check-list of ‘pairs to watch’ that is
easier to follow, as my current way of doing this relies on memory and is quite time consuming as well
as a little bit inefficient.
However, I was doing well with my low-risk strategy before the margin call, and was about -12% down
from the starting account equity at the beginning of my trading last year, following a couple of big losses
in February… What the last couple of weeks have done for me is that they have proven how trying to
over-leverage yourself in a bid to recoup money that was lost in a ‘trading accident’ (in this case, a
margin call that should not have been) can be a double-edged sword… If managed well, it will work for you,
but you have to be sharp and ready, and trying to do this while in a full-time job is psychologically very
difficult to manage with a clear mind…
I am coming up to my holidays but unfortunately I will only have one day (Thursday) at home where I
will be able to make some money in the markets, as Friday will be the 4th of July US holiday, and makets
will be very quiet, undoubtedly… Then I will be out of the country for ten days, missing most of the
July trading, and stats show that, over many years, July has been the busiest month for trading through
the summer, across the board.
I am pointing all this out to myself, first, but also to others who have been following this thread, just to
reach out to them…
Cheers
and
Trade safe.
