Actually i am from Colombia, castilian or “castellano” is just the same as spanish but i lived for a year in Dallas, Texas. there i learned my english
LOL!!! Well there you go… so close and yet so far! Hehe… Spanish is like English… guess the geographical location? Well still short EU and will be to the bottom end on the daily. Night all… WAY past shut eye AGAIN!!!
Lol that’s one of the things I love about this thread - I go to bed, get up the next morning, and the conversation can have covered literally [I]any[/I] topic I can think of!
I read languages at uni, and hats off to anyone who can converse consistently on a forum such as this in a language other than their own. And sorry Bob, that means hats off to Yunny, not you…!!
On the NFP thing, I don’t trade intraday that day, but will hold end of day trades through the day as they generally have a wider Stop that can survive any hijinks. If I’m wrong I’m wrong, NFP generally doesn’t make a difference with the medium-term stuff.
And for my sins, I went long EUR/USD overnight - rejection of Weekly S1, fib level, divergence, few other reasons in there that might or might not make me some pips…!
ST
I’m long E/U from 1.3174 - got in around the initial pullback after LO this morning. Asian equities did well and risk on for today so far it seems. Aiming for 1.3240 where the 38.2% Fib comes in from the recent drop.
I got in at 1.3173, so we’re obviously looking at the same thing! I should not be so insecure, but I still find it oddly reassuring when some traders on here place the same trade that I have.
I have my ultimate TP set as an order at 1.3450. I know, I know… but assuming a certain amount of testicular fortitude I can look at the Daily and 240 charts and make a case for it. I’ll obviously trail my Stop in the meantime, so we could well end up in similar territory.
ST
Castellano is what the Spanish would consider the “Queen’s English”. If I remember my Spanish lessons correctly it came from the Castile region and was called that to separate it from Catalan, Galician and weird Basque languages that were knocking about at the same time. From my travels in S.America the Spanish spoken there seems really similar but obviously they have a bunch of different words. The classic example of differences between the two would be that in Spain to take the bus it’s “coger el autobus” while in S. America this would mean that you were going to f*ck the bus.
You have more patience than me to sit in trades clearly! Though I’m tempted to leave more of my trade on than I had originally planned if we get to 1.3240 after seeing PA this morning. Looks like a lot of buying so letting some run for a significantly higher price might not be a bad idea at all.
Lol maybe! I split my trading into two halves, intraday and end of day. The intraday gives me my ‘active in the market’ fix and some good steady pips, it’s my salary if you like. The fact that I am doing it helps me find the discipline to avoid fiddling with my end of day trades. This EUR/USD trade was entered via an order that triggered overnight, I only look in on trades on the time interval relating to the timeframe on which I entered them, so look in nightly on those. I trail Stop to B/E at a certain point, but other than that leave them alone (other than sometimes taking half off if we hit significant resistance), they last a few days or more but they’re the ones that can hit heavy R:R - backtesting has (finally!) taught me that leaving them well alone is best. Just one or two a week, usually. Last week it was EUR/GBP and EUR/JPY (which closed this week), this week EUR/USD.
I like to have a mix of end of day and intraday during any week - intraday pays the mortgage, end of day compounds the acccount and gives us holidays, hobbies etc. Took me AGES to find the discipline to leave the end of day trades alone, though. Absolutely ages. I still look back on the odd one I cut early and shed a small tear. Always good to remind oneself of mistakes made in this game, however painful!
ST
I’m gradually getting there. I started keeping the length of time I kept a trade open as part of my trade journal. I was quite surprised after initially starting the journal to see that my average trade length was like 30 minutes. I hadn’t realised at all that it was so short. Was pretty evident that I was leaving a lot of money on the table by shutting them down so quickly. After much painful sitting on hands I now have it up to about 4 hours and it’s definitely helped my profitability.
That split that you do sounds like a good idea actually. Might give that a try. With the end of day traders do you go in with a feeler position and then build on that once you see it going the right way or do you establish a core position initially and then work around that as the trade plays out?
well 30 minutes after NFP I’ll trade. Just go the opposite way of the initial surge. Works every time… almost. 
I speak ebonics
Obviously the bearish bias has been just invalidated.
Like pipbandit I still need to work on my patience… had a long from 1.3106 but took all my profits at 1.3150… I should have let run at least half of the position.
I really admire ST patience… I guess i am spending too much time at the 1H chart… that makes my fingers nervous… 
you are right, pipbandit. Castellano is the correct name for the language spoken in most of Spain and all latin america…
“coger” means to grab, hold or take… but somehow in a lot of countries is used as synonym for f*ck although in my country and Spain is used in its original and correct meaning
Closed out half of my LO trade at 1.3240. Then added the same size back in after Draghi’s speech retrace at 1.3230 to chance my arm given the risk on feel to today. Closed that now at 1.3263 and letting the remaining half run towards my TP of 1.3290. Let’s see if we can get up there today.
I am choosing to apologise now as i feel the length of this post will be quite long lol…
Ok, so i’ve been MIA the last couple days to do some reflecting on my trading up until date. We are nearly 2nd week into March now so this put’s me into 2nd month of my demo account. As we speak my account currently sits at £187.35 - a 6.36% loss from my original starting demo balance of £200.
I’ve had some good wins - although looking back now they seem more luck than anything else, and also some bad losses. One thing i’ve managed to stay consistent with throughout is my money management - in the sense of im not risking anything more than 2% a trade, but more often then not its about 1-ish%. I think the biggest mistake i’ve made so far, and its only one that ive really come to realise today is i’ve been over trading - big time!
I have tried to make a habit of analysing the trades i make to see what actually happened and what i could have done better - and to hopefully learn from this before my next trade. So this week, not only have i lost quite a few pips through losing trades, but i mainly lost the opportunity to bag some (on an estimate, missed out on a potential 200-300 pips), this is both though trades that i was in, and doubted myself and closed short, or trades that did not get triggered due to an inaccurate entry. One of these days happened this morning… Usually as i leave for work, i get up an hour n a bit early to have a look at my charts and see what could manifest today, more often than not, i leave the house with buy/sell limits set, or with a trade active and then i monitor throughout the day on my iphone. Today i set 3 trade limits - none of which triggered. By lunch i had no notification of triggered trades so i looked at the prices and basic limits and saw that 2/3 of my trades had come close to my limit and then gone off in the direction i thought. If all my trades had gone through today, think i’d comfortably be sitting on +100 pips today. Immedietly i tried looking at my crappy phone charts for an entry and literally had to peel my phone out of my hand to stop myself jumping into a trade - as ive made this mistake before and it didnt end well.
Today is when it properly hit me, i was itching to be in a trade and to have one running. I wanted to be in a trade more for all the wrong reasons than because i had actually found a good setup. I stopped myself and realised a lot of this is because i dont really have a set of rules yet for which a trade must ‘qualify’ for me to take it. So, as of today, i will write up a set of rules of what i do know about (currently combining daily bias, stochastic indicator, general PA, and eagerly wanting to apply some VSA that ive been reading on Petefader’s thread, s/r and fibs) - and will use these to support my reasons for entry, and my entry point. I have also become accustomed to trading right from LO, but i think i will change this to NYO as from here i can monitor my trades better with charts which put me at ease.
I’m planning to take the rest of this week off, especially as it’s NFP tomorrow, and will make a fresh start to this Monday. I have really been beating myself up about this all week, and especially today, just felt i’d pour it out, so excuse the rant! lol… I guess i always knew at the beginning my account would take losses, and it’s part of my learning cycle - i guess deep down i wanted to be the one exception who could just do it from the get go LOL!
Anyway, hope you’ve all had a good day trading
I’m looking forward to next week
SanJ
When i first read this, i thought you were referring to the word ‘cougar’ to which i know as ‘older women who like to get with younger men’ LOL :54:
I thought the same thing
Sorry to be so late to this - hectic day, suddenly, shuttling kids and broken cars around.
Yes, journals can teach lessons that one did not even realize were there to be learned! I still slavishly keep mine up to date and review each month.
To answer your question, with the end of day trades I am firmly in the second camp you suggest: I always risk 1% per trade on both my styles of trading, so with an end of day trade I place the order in an evening based on that day’s Daily bar, with the SL set to 1% of my account. I also set the TP then. So that would be my core position. If Price moves in my direction, and then retraces and I see a further Entry available, I will move that initial TP to BE or to lock in some profit - depending on which makes most sense, but generally just to BE - and then enter a new trade risking a further 1%, so my total exposure to that move is still 1%. I will sometimes do that several times, which can give an amazing R:R but still never with a risk anywhere more than 1% of balance. Assuming there is no retrace that gives me a chance to add to the position in this way, I will generally trail SL to BE on the fourth bar after the trade triggers. It can be hard to leave them alone, but the fact that I am also in intraday trades helps keep me away from them. And if I make 1% intraday, then I have made the end of day trade ‘free’ anyway. This balance helps keep me moving forwards regardless of market conditions. It also means that I see what I expect to have as a ‘staple’ income, yet can still have the crazy good months we all dream of when starting to trade, without losing my overall career focus. It took two years to get to this point, though!
I’m still in my full position, moving well and I see no technical reason to abort, yet. Thank you for the implied compliment, but this is just the result of a lot of hard work, a lot of backtesting, and seriously analysing what is the most profitable approach for my Entries. I do get the odd end of day trade stop me out for 1% having spent a day or two in profit - GBP/JPY a week or two ago springs to mind! - but I don’t mind that I had not yet trailed the Stop and saved myself the loss as overall that approach gives me the odd trade that pays 15% in one hit. Plus my win ration is well over 50%, so I have managed - finally! - to train my brain to take the losses in context and not sweat them too much. They’re never fun at the time, but my eye is on the prize sufficiently that I can take them on the chin. I just take ten minutes out and maybe pour a G&T lol.
I do inhabit the higher TF charts when not actively seeking an intraday trade, because as you say I find that the Hourly make my trigger finger itchy, it can be very tempting to pull a trade for no good reason other than that there’s a retracement. Compare the Daily and the Hourly for the same move after the event and you often see how someone looking only at the Daily would have stuck with a position that a trader looking at the Hourly would have abandoned.
I find that very mechanical rules for everything from Entry to SL trailing help me stop fiddling. I just stick to my rules, every time. Over time it pays and my brain knows that, even if my heart trembles occasionally.
I’m still long my original position from 1.3173. Fingers crossed!
Sorry if any of that sounded smug or preachy, just trying to give some insight into my thinking as this is the aspect of trading that I found (and find) hardest: trade management and testicular fortitude!!
ST
We love Cougar Town (the sitcom, not a place I go to pick up older women lol).
Not sure that that is relevant, but you made me think of it with your cougar obsession!
ST
Sanj,
One thing I have learned from this site is that one never needs to apologize for a relevant post, however long.
Sorry to hear that you have had some losses, but if I am reading correctly, you have been demo trading for about six weeks? And you’re just 6% down? At the very beginning of your trading career, losing 1% a week for the first six weeks is really not a disaster, particularly if you have been risking more than 1% sometimes. That means that if only a couple of trades had gone the other way you would be at BE. That’s pretty good.
Overtrading/revenge trading is very common - I think on my first day of trading I placed 27 trades. Considering that I am not a scalper, that is way too many.
I would consider two things, in your position (if I can be so presumptuous lol - tell me to shut up if I’m speaking out of turn!):
-
set a limit to your daily losses. For me it is 2%. If I hit a net 2% down on any given day, I pack up and stop for the day. As I risk 1% per trade, that means that if I open the morning with two losses then I am done. It has happened, a couple of times, before 7am lol. Sounds harsh, but it protects my capital. If I win one then lose one, it would take a further two losses to have me stop for the day. This only kicks in occasionally, but it means that I never hit the evening too depressed. If I were to lose a couple, then a couple more chasing it, I’d be 4% down and my spirits would dip. So this rule stops me getting to that point.
-
Always risk a consistent amount per trade. Personally, I risk 1%. You could go with that, or 2% (or 1.5%!), but I would always keep it the same. That way you know how many losing/winning trades you need for BE, and it is much easier to understand where you are, manage your risk. If I lose three and win three, I will be at BE - you could be 3% down on the same stats purely because your risk is inconsistent. So I would make it more uniform, if I were you.
In my experience, having a few mechanical rules like those surrounding your trading, and sticking to them whatever is going on that day, helps to keep emotion out of your execution and preserves your capital for the days when everything is running your way. If the risk is limited, but the profits are unlimited, then you are just a successful strategy away from success.
Just my thoughts, apologies for entering preach mode.
ST
As much as i’d like to take credit here… I cant lol…
As part of my few lucky trades, i managed to bag a handful of trades that ran a good 100/150 pips. This brought my account to a high of around £209 - to which has fallen to its current low in the space of about 3 weeks. When i saw this down fall i knew i had to change something…
I actually really like this idea, and i think i will do just that. Both sound really important and will help me keep myself controlled when i’m trading. As you rightly said, it is a lot easier to measure both wins and losses when risk % per trade is kept at a consistent level…
I will work on implementing these this into the start of what i think will be my trading plan - which actually quite excites me? lol… I feel as if i’m taking my first proper step forward from my fresh start newbie stage.
I have no regrets about starting demo first tbh - i have seen many people are against it and think going live straight away is the best route to take. Im not planning to go live until around July - when i would have finished my work placement year and will have a lot more free time to trade.
I feel like my journey is finally beginning…
Thanks for your constructive response - as always!
Happy trading!
SanJ