An update on a paper trade I made in AUD/NZD… it closed for a 1 R loss:
I don’t see a great deal that I did wrong here; I traded in the direction of the trend (in fact it went 68% in my favor before reversing), went for a 2.5:1 R, and waited for price to show signs of falling before jumping in.
Its possible that I was too early or that the downtrend has been broken. There’s also the support level below, although price never went that low. Time will tell.
So I made my first real trade of 2019, I’m long EUR/CAD @ 1.54507:
I’m looking for a roughly 2:1 reward-to-risk here by following the uptrend that has been in place on this pair. The EUR was weak today and pulled back to what I hope is trendline support. I actually wanted to jump into EUR/AUD, but some crazy “flash crash” caused this spike that scared me off.
I feel good about the trade as I’m trading with the trend, with a proper position size (0.5%) of the account, and with a seemingly attainable reward-to-risk ratio. I’m looking forward to seeing this one turn out 
So this one didn’t quite work out as planned. The trade went in the direction intended before reversing around the 1.5500 level. It appears the uptrend that had been in place is in jeopardy of being broken so perhaps this was a case of being too late to the party.
Not to be deterred, I’m moving on to the next trade… NZD/JPY has been in a downtrend for all of December. On the 4 hour chart it closed below a level that has held since August, so I’m betting on that support becoming resistance.
Same rules apply, 0.5% risk and a 2:1 reward-to-risk ratio that I now realize would be below the recent lows… that may have been a mistake. We’ll see what happens
Welcome back!
How long were you on it and was it expensive? How did you discover them?
Classic!
So that last NZD/JPY trade didn’t work out… price went higher and took me out at my stop, resulting in a 0.5% loss. Thems the breaks!
So I’m trying it again… shorting NZD/USD as it approaches a resistant trendline going back to late November.
I like that price was up today but seemed to pull back and closed at the 20 day EMA.
We’ll see how this goes!
Annnnnnnnd another loser! NZD/USD was actually the best performing currency of the week so it wasn’t meant to be. Price did pull back, but not far enough to hit my TP at 0.6675. Looking back at the trade, there probably wasn’t enough there to substantiate a move: price didn’t hit a meaningful resistance level, nor was there a good signal in terms of the candlesticks themselves.
In the wake of that disappointment, I spotted a pin bar in EUR/GBP. The pair seemed to have established a range between roughly 0.9060 and 0.8970. I was feeling gunshy and apprehensive given that GDP was due out for Great Britain later, so I made a “mental trade”, shorting halfway up the pin bar with a SL at 0.9070 and TP at 0.8937 for a 3 R. The GDP print was stronger than expected and of course this trade would have been profitable 
All laughs aside, one of the things I can’t seem to reconcile is if or when one should trade around news. I’m pretty sure the best way for me to trade is off the daily charts, meaning trades could go on long enough to be exposed to news. If I attempted to avoid news events I’d probably almost never be able to trade.
Obviously big events like central bank announcements should be avoided. Should I do the same for others like GDP, CPI, etc.? Gotta figure this out…
So the week saw only one trade for a loser, which I’m ok with, actually. I learned I probably need to see more obvious signs of what price might do, a greater “confluence” of factors. I also restricted my viewing of charts to just once a day in the evening looking back at the daily. I think that takes a bit of the “FOMO” out for me. I didn’t even compulsively check charts while this weeks trade was on. Only checking once a day is definitely good for the peace of mind.
So that’s it for the week… the journey continues…
Looking at NZD/USD this week also. Going long though, based off the weekly chart!
So nice to see the optimism in your posts btw. Definitely something I’d like to see more of on this site.
hi @purtle! Glad to see you still checking in on me. I apologize for taking so long to respond… seems like time is hard to come by these days. To answer your questions:
I checked out the coaching/system for about 2 months. I found this just by researching the web and finding that I liked the thought process. The website is Smart Forex Learning and the guy who leads it is Felix De Vliegher. He’s really helpful, responses quickly to emails and is generally good guy, I found. He trades a lot of reversals off timeframes from 1 H to daily. He publishes a weekly outlook as well as maintains a chat where he advises on possible trades, a Twitter page where he announces triggers for trades, etc. He also has an EA for MetaTrader that let’s you set trades to be entered automatically on the close of a candle based on price given a timeframe.
All-in-all I think his system is good, although there are some intricacies I didn’t quite grasp on when reversals are legitimate or not. I felt like I couldn’t monitor the conditions well enough to know when a good trade was in the offing (I work full-time and have a family), so I kept having this feeling of missing out (such a recurrent theme for me 
) which of course is no reflection on him or the system. Of course mileage will vary, but for the cost (about 48 Euro a month) I think you get good support and a system that seems to work.
So, this week was, once again, not quite what I hoped for. Such is life 
I took a long trade on CHF/JPY in the early hours of 1/15/2019.
I liked that price seemed to form a hammer near a level I identified as support, and thinking the thrust up from a few days ago might continue, I went in. I set a limit entry on the 50% retracement of the bar. I kept risk at 0.5% of the account and had an achievable 3 R.
So price went lower and stayed there. It probably wasn’t a good idea to trade long given that the downtrend was still not officially broken and price was still trading below both the 10 and 20 day EMA.
So, I stubbornly pressed on (why have one losing trade in the week when you can have 2 
) and made one more trade for the week, a long on EUR/USD.
So here I was banking on the support trend line from November to hold. I was thinking with the most recent Brexit nonsense having cooled this one would have a chance. I knew there was some econ news coming out the next morning, CPI for the US, and remembering how sitting out econ news cost me a profitable trade last week, I put the trade on.
And voila! Like the great trading magician I am, I made 0.5% of my account disappear.
The funny thing about this trade is I didn’t feel that great about it, even as I put the order in. My wife had come in and began to talk me, which kind of distracted and annoyed me. I had to ask her more than once to repeat something and eventually she got annoyed and left the room.
Not only did I impoverish myself a little more, I also booked myself a room in the doghouse suite. I had no idea I could multitask like that 
So what did we learn this week, children?
If I’m distracted, annoyed, or otherwise unfocused when I’m looking at charts, I will make a bad decision.
For the love of Pete, be patient! Wait for several factors to converge before doing anything.
I need to do a better job of defining entry parameters, to figure out what a confluence looks like before pulling the trigger.
I can be disciplined enough to keep my risk consistent, not move stops, and spotting situations where a 2 or 3 R is possible. I am pleased with this.
I need to revisit drawing support and resistance lines, I’m pretty sure I have too many.
Ok, that’s it for now, happy trading!
Thanks @purtle, my humor is my only defense against the disappointment. Humor and hope that if other people have been able to figure out how to succeed doing this, so can I. I know I’m the only one in the way so if I just keep looking, trying, tweaking… I’ll get there.
You should keep a trade journal, I’d love to see your insights and what you do.
Oof. 1H! That’s intense.
Sounds like a good deal if you have lots of time to really take advantage of what he offers. I have a full-time job also and have other things going around at the moment and I don’t think I can fully commit to something like that. I’m happy to see it’s working out for you though and that you’ve decided to still update your trade journal here despite your busy schedule.
Haha this happens to me not just with trades but also in life in general haha.
Funny! Hope you got that all sorted out now haha. I like your light hearted entry today, good stuff!
And yes, I agree with you, I do need to start keeping a trade journal here. I guess by way of quid pro quo I can also ask you to bookmark mine once it’s up LOL.
Loved the comments on your trading and have total empathy with the wife point.
We have all been there. It does seem rather strange that having tested a strategy on demo account exhaustively with favourable results the moment you take it live it under performs. I have a situation currently with a new system that I have developed. It looked great on demo and I was confident of good returns. I went live a couple of weeks ago and so far disappointment. I do, however, have a system for trading out of loss positions which is working well but it does require a lot if patience.
best of luck.
Funny! Hope you got that all sorted out now haha.
I did, I think my wife and I have found an arrangement that suits us both for playing around on our devices: a set time period to check email, look at charts, whatever, and then time to actually talk and spend time together. Its kind of amazing how easy it is to get sucked into these little electronic boxes and lose track with the people in our lives.
I guess by way of quid pro quo I can also ask you to bookmark mine once it’s up LOL.
Absolutely, I’d love to hear how you go about thinking about the markets… I know I’d learn from you.
Thanks for dropping by @Diabolo888!
Can I ask what your system is and how you went about demo trading it? I have a confession: I never really demo traded 
It just didn’t feel real enough. I tried for a bit but I’d end up doing something stupid just because I knew it had no tangible cost. Eventually I opted for trading really small sums of money. So basically I’m paying tuition for what I probably could have learned if I’d demo-traded. Everyone’s different and that’s ok! We just have to find what works for us.
So this week was a break from the norm, in that I actually had a trade go my way
The setup was a continuation of Sterling strength against the Yen
What I liked was what I think confluence looks like: price overshot support at 140.677 then pulled back to it, made a hammer all while the 10 day EMA was crossing over the 20 day EMA. Supporting this was news around Brexit that a “No Deal” break from the EU was unlikely. So I pulled the trigger, went long at 141.444 with a stop at 140.60 and take profit at 143.502, for an R of 2.3.
It was close, 3 pips were all that separated this trade from being stopped out! In the end, price continued on to reach my target, stall for a day, and then power on through resistance at 143.765.
So I finally have a winner in 2019! My takeaway from this is that confluence is real, I can wait for it, and it should probably have some fundamental underpinning as well. With that, I’m off to study the news and check the charts for some possibilities in the upcoming week! Happy trading!
My system needs more refinement at the moment but basically I trade with the trend, I enter using ema cross over with several indicators confirmation.I target half of my trade for a TP at ATR and then introduce a SL at BE and trail. The best element however is that from the outset I don’t use a SL but hedge to protect against too much loss. Once the hedge has triggered I trade it to eliminate the loss on the original trade. This requires a lot of patience and time but is better than taking a loss.
So true. If you’re using an iPhone, you can quickly check how much time you’ve been spending on these little apps on a per day/week basis. That’s how I decided I’ll stop using Facebook. I’d much rather spend my time here than look at what other people are doing.
Yeah I just opened a live account haha. I feel like that’s the only way I’d take forex seriously. Putting up a trade journal today/early this week! Hope you can check it out once it’s up!
You took the words right out of my mouth!
