How many trades do you have open simultaneously these days, I had only two open today and because the markets so.unstable even that can be abit intense
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Right now I have seven open in demo (no live trading at the moment). But I’ll trade until I’m just short of a margin call. I get margin called a lot.
I used to take up to 20 trades. Once it’s safe to move my stop loss to BE, I’m piling on more trades. I do so because technically, my risk exposure has returned to 0.
But my risk never passed about 5-6% at any one time. If I move my SLs to BE, then my risk is 0 and I’ll add another 5-6%. I’d do that until my margin is used up. I suppose it’s unorthodox, but I don’t care. I had times when I was increasing my account by 30%. The problem however was that I didn’t recognize the signs to close trades properly. So, I would watch my 30% profits dwindle, and I end up profiting some while newer trades would hit their SL.
In the end, I would still lose. But it showed me that it’s possible to profit in this game. There were two seperate times that I had those kinds of profits. That was the second time. The first time was when, somehow, I was increasing my account every week by 10% (not exponential).
However, right after that I started losing like crazy. I had to take some time to stop and do some analysis after all that.
I’m digressing. Right now, though, I’m not really paying much attention to trading. I’m focusing on my trading plan. I wasn’t making much progress so I decided to pause on trading until I can finish.
You know best dushdimes , there no fixed rules .Would you be prepared just to focus on less pairs at a time or happy where you are
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hahaha bro, I had to face reality. I can’t keep up with that many pairs. Not yet. I used to watch over 50 pairs. Every few months, that number would get smaller and smaller. I used to think that more pairs = more opportunities.
Technically, it does. But not in reality if you don’t have the skills to do it. If I were more proficient in my strategy, then yes, I could go back to watching more pairs.
I’m not sure what my max would be. I’d probably stop at 40…no…maybe 25-30. If I can manage it, then I’m gong for it. But I have to be realistic about it.
Soon, I’m gonna take my time and just trade one pair at a time. And I’m gonna put a time limit: 4 hours. Whatever I get to, I get to. Whatever I miss, I miss. If I review just 5 pairs in one day, so be it.
I don’t want this to turn into another job. The goal is less screen time, not more.
How about you? If you got to a point where you’re comfortable in your trading, would you try to increase your profits and start casting a wider net to catch more fish?
Or would you prefer to keep things as they were, once you reached a comfort level?
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Your passionate about trading just that you could get passionate about just a few pairs or maybe the indices but even mixing Forex and indices at the same time ,can complicate things . ideally you have some long term trades open whilst day trading .I don’t stereotype myself as a daytrader as I could have trades open for days . Today /tommorrow fed day not keen these days even trading London before fed announcement s sometimes it pay to sit back and see the outcomes.
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yeah I agree. Knowing when to sit out is just as important as knowing when to take a trade.
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I’m putting images to my diagram, and I found myself looking for ideal set-ups to portray a specific idea.
But I had to stop myself because there are no so few ideal set-ups and I purposely put trades that show how things can go wrong, and what I could have done.
Perhaps it best to be honest about how bad things can go and then just do the best you can to be prepared.
For example, I found one trade to be worth paying extra attention to. Normally, I could lose 2 or 3 times before catching the swing. However, in this particular trade I had to take 6 false signals before catching the swing. But it was a massive swing and the losses were covered very soon.
I included this trade in my diagram because this is something I would like to stay aware of.
I’ve been thinking about the idea of profitability. It would be great. But I was thinking about how I would really feel if I were actually profitable.
Just imagine I did a wreckless trade. 100% of my account on one trade, and the next morning I wake up to my account 200x.
I would actually feel scared. We’ve all had the ¨what would you do with X amount of money?¨ conversation.
My thing is that when I really think about it, it would scare me. I’ve had so many losses in my life, that I’ve grown accustom to losing. I’ve grown so accustom to it that I wouldn’t know what to do if I actually won.
So many great opportunities have slipped thru my fingers because of my own blunders. I have friends that have never had the opportunities that I’ve had. And if they did have them, they would have taken advantage and done a great job.
Perhaps, there’s a small part of me that’s self sabotaging. If I saw a signal that was a guarantee win, I’d actually be scared to take it. I might be in such disbelief that I’d sell instead of buy.
I’m not very happy at the moment. Sure, I’m grateful for a lot of things. But given all my opportunities, my life could have been so much different. Over the past 5 or 6 years, I’ve blundered very nice opportunities. And because of that, instead of advancing, I just fell backwards.
And that’s kind of where I’ve always been my entire adult life: at the bottom. When I say bottom I mean the lowest level expectations. I’m not talking about drug abuse or homeless. I’m saying for someone who has had my opportunities, I’m at the bottom. And the only time I’ve done better was when someone was supporting me.
Then when circumstances change, and that person is no longer supporting me, I fall right back to the bottom.
So, let’s say in one trade if I were able to change everything in my life…it would terrify me.
If you’ve been losing for so long, it becomes your comfort zone. This is when success is scarier than failure.
And you even become indifferent. You don’t wanna face the new world of victory, nor do you want to stay in that hole. And that’s the dilemna.
But the answer comes to you when you close your eyes and dream. What life do I imagine for myself? Then that’s the life I should strive for.
When you have that kind of fear, you have to face it. Sure, facing this new world could suck. But it doesn’t suck as much as staying at the bottom with no options.
At least work and create the option for yourself. You don’t have to take it. But just create the option. You don’t have to change your lifestyle, but just create the option. I think it’ll help close some of those bleeding emotional wounds on the inside. The scars will remain. Nothing can be done about that.
But just be willing to accept a victory and the possibility of feeling just a little better about yourself.
It’s difficult to understand the markets until you first understand yourself. Even so, we evolve, our ideas evolve, our inspirations and preoccupations shift.
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I finished my diagrams. Now, I have to test drive them. I’ve had problems with losing data in the past.
This time, I backed up my work, and even took screen shots of the layout, and copied all the photos I used. This way, it’ll be easy to rebuild if anything happens. Time for a break!
I finished my diagrams. The program is nice because I can shrink the chart screen shots in the diagram, but I can click on them and they become full size and occupy the whole screen. I like that feature. However, if I convert the diagram to a pdf, I lose that feature.
Also, in order to convert the diagrams to pdf files, I have to pay and upgrade to pro. That’s $50… I doubt I’m gonna do that anytime soon.
And since the diagrams are done, I’ve pretty much extracted everything I need from past charts. Well, I suppose.
I’ve looked over so many charts and seen so many of the same things over and over. So, I’m feeling like, what’s the point of studying more charts and taking notes?
I’ve taken notes on charts where the trades goes perfectly as well and unexpectedly.
I think the only next thing to do as far as studying is applying my strategy to old charts–back testing the strategy.
I’m forward testing now, but I limit my live trading time to as short a time as possible.
What’s left is backtesting the strategy and tweaking the strategy. I wanna question what I do after that, but let me get thru that first.
Wow. I really did speak too soon. I checked on a loss that just happened, and it’s something that I didn’t add to my strategy. It was a mistake I had made not long ago with a JPY cross, but I decided to follow the strategy.
My price action strategy didn’t account for dojis. So, now I added a section for dojis.
I meant to do that before, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. Well, I just got a clue.
I’m making myself look indecisive here. But that’s part of having a journal.
I took a second look at my diagram, and I didn’t follow it 100%. That’s what happened. I mixed another idea with it at the last minute and sold when I should have bought.
I read into a detail that I had never read into before, and I just contradicted everything. WHY?!?!
I think I was so afraid of missing out that I got paranoid and was in disbelief of my own strategy.
You are funny dushdimes 
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Yeah, I’m kinda self-sabotaging right now. Jeez. My emotions are like a chimp in the kitchen. If you ask a chimp to butter your toast, how well do you think that’s gonna end?
So, it’s better if I just try my best to follow my strategy, and leave my emotions and last-minute ideas out of the equation. Actually, it might not be a bad idea to take notes on WHY I entered the trade, as well.
I write notes, but not explaining the why–just what the trend is doing.
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I think trading probably simple really and when one complicate s it ,they probably need a separate activity too .That maybe why certain people come on here to compensate the dullness of trading
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Keep at it I’m sure you find what you looking for eventually
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Today was ok. I got stopped out in a few places. And I got scared.
I can’t believe it. I got scared because I was wrong twice. My strategy says I could be wrong 3 times. But I got scared when I tried to sell and lost 2 times. So, the third time I went long. WRONG!! Now the pair is going short, and I could have have a GREAT win.
This strategy is a lot harder than I thought. I can’t believe I messed that up…
This is frustrating. This shows that even if you have a profitable strategy, the trader could be the reason there are no profits.
Oh man. I can’t believe I messed that up… This was a type of trade with a perfect entry that I’ve been trying to get right for a while. I got scared and didn’t keep going.
I’m going to be thinking about this for the rest of the day.
I’m upset about this. I’m at the point that studying more won’t help. Backtesting won’t help. Asking for advice won’t help. Looking at more charts and taking notes won’t help.
Everything external that I can do, I’ve done…for now.
I’m at the point where it’s all up to me. The profits are there. Now, it all comes down to following the strategy, being patient, and paying attention.
But being wrong twice really messes with you. Doing the same thing again feels wreckless and counter-intuitive. Frankly, it feels like you’re trying to lose on purpose by doing the same thing again.
If I lost twice, why would I do the SAME thing again???
But that’s the strategy. It’s for a reason. I added a reminder to my diagram that I could be wrong. I only added it in some places before.
Just now, I added to every step that I could be wrong 4 times. In a worst case scenario it could up to 6 times. But there was only one trade like that in my backtests.
It’s frustrating because it feels the same as leaving a stack of money on the table and not even taking it. I don’t mean you exit with some profits to avoid risking losing it.
I mean there’s a perfect trade, and you just fumble it. It’s feels like there’s a bag of money on the table, and instead you just say no thanks and you go looking for coins in the street.
It feels like that. But it’s no one’s fault but my own. I’m giving in to fear and letting my emotions get the best of me.
At some point I have to stop giving in to fear.
I just realized another error. When I took the trade this morning, and I was thinking about switching from sell to buy, I didn’t even consult my diagram.
However, I just checked and I’m not even sure the sample charts in the diagram would have helped. So, I took a screen shot of what happened today and added it.
I can’t have a sample screen shot to prepare me for every possible scenario, but I added today’s chart as a reminder of WHY to stick to the plan and keep taking losses.
So, there’s no point in analyzing and further backtesting. However, what I should do now is try to enhance my diagram, because that’s the tool that will do the thinking for me when it comes time to trade.
I took a look at my diagram for trading retracements, and I needs better sample screenshots. That’ll help me in the future.