I can remember the posts during this period, initially a sense of failure, then it was apparent that the clouds were clearing - so no surprise to see the above chart.
Maybe include your positive mental attitude as a number 5 - attitude, thinking, personality, positivity always when facing adversity, a huge part of all success.
Edit: Yazz springs to mind 
Thanks Peter.
There are a lot of holes in the business model… in fact, there is yet no business model.
Professional trading is strong on statistical probability - things like Montecarlo, Sharp ratio, etc. -
and I have been so busy trying to implement a trading approach that fits with my life, and that I can
understand inside out, that I have not yet fully implemented the second part of this plan, which is
projections, back-testing, getting to grips with statistics in a meaningful way etc.
My Excel skills are low and MyFxBook does not always seem to provide reliable charting for
analysis, so I have an uphill struggle when it comes to doing this manually - you know, taking all
your account’s trades and doing various statistical analyses on different aspects of the whole data.
The idea is trying to specialise in something that I can manage in the time that I have and that
shows to be feasible: as I do not have enough data to work from in terms of the current approach,
meaning that I do not have enough data to analyse my performance, I am busy managing positions
and looking into what things could improve my chances of success.
One of the questions that I am asking myself is whether I should invest any money at this stage,
where I am trading demo and have no capital that I could (or should) earmark for any trading venture,
by which I do not mean trading live money but invest in myself, for example in acquiring better tools to
look at the market, at what is actually important for what I am trying to do.
I cannot say more at the moment but it is essentially to do with marrying currency futures volume and
spot forex price to determine higher-probability entry for trend-trading and reversal opportunities.
I have been looking into volume for the last three-four years and I am slowly trying to find a way to
focus this in a way that can more directly be used in my trading.
There we go, that is where I am at.
What about you, Peter?
This is a hotly contested topic and it would be interesting to see what answers you come up with. I think there is some value in looking at broker specific volumes as a representative sample of what is happening in the wider market without necessarily going to the DOM from a futures exchange.
At the end of the day your broker’s order book supply and demand will determine where your brokers prices end up which is arguably of more interest to you than what is happening elsewhere. Let me know what you dig up on this.
How is are your carry trades doing. It has been a while since we talked about it. What approach have you settled on for taking those interest payments whilst reducing your exposure to the risk of market movement in prices.
I think you should be able to use DOM to work out support and resistance levels based on pending orders in the order book. Although the orders are fast moving so you would need something in place to process the data to find where there is net aggregate demand in one direction versus another. There most be some software on the market for that.
Eur/Gbp is my only ‘concern’ in that I make decisions based on what I think lies up ahead.
Thankfully we have been fortunate that the cross has held up despite a recent run of GBP buying ending in mid April past.
I get a sense that it will continue to hold up for a while yet, although I suppose I can never be sure of anything - a business friendly Brexit deal would mean a change of thinking so I will keep a close watch on the politics.
Hi Ropunzel, yes but I am not looking for the DOM stuff in the guise that I have seen offered, e.g. by FXCM, which is basically a lot of numbers flashing on the screen, too fast.
I am looking more at VAP (volume at price), which is the same as the COT lines and futures volume bars but laid out on the vertical axis (plotted against price levels). I am a visual person when it comes to trading and just reading a ton of numbers alone out of context is just not for me. There are only so many hours in the day and only one life, so I am becoming less keen to study everything unless I get the sense not only that it could work but that I can engage with it on a daily basis.
I just posted some stuff on the volume thread, THE volume thread 
How is your triple-rollover strategy? I am sitting on two trades collecting rollover, but I had to cut size as there has been some negative floating P/L to take care of, so it is too early to say. Adding large rollover amounts to large profit targets is the way to go, so the ‘time sitting on your hands’ is actually productive because the trades are working for me through accruing positive interest.
I want to use VAP to improve my entry points.
Cheers
PS: agreed about using brokers’ own volume profiles, but I prefer centralised figures for transparency.
Yes I remembered your own ties to this pair… It is a weird situation with the Pound and the Euro both falling, making this pair sit in an eight-month range.
I keep in mind USD so the behavior of Gbp/Usd and Eur/Usd is important in getting a sense of where Gbp is likely to go up ahead.
I mentioned the end of the buying run on Gbp in mid April - mostly that was attributed to the poorer UK numbers, the diminishing probability of rates rises, and comments from the BOE - all this is correct.
Guys will say that the fundamentals are already priced in, in a sense also correct but often not the way that is believed.
There was a general feeling that the UK numbers could be under pressure, think I posted some links to info before data release, anyways bottom line was that the FA was priced in - the GBP buying was merely to facilitate the selling up ahead - have witnessed this many times, commented that they take it up to sell it down.
Bottom line is to watch USD - Eur/Usd was telling the tale in Mid April, the dollar was strong, no sign of any likelihood of new highs at that time, so why would cable go further up - they merely took it up to the DT to take it down.
Probably the wrong thread but just thought I’d mention it here.
Gbp/Usd daily: (the indie is just a zl macd- there were others on hr1 giving signals at the top)
And of course USD and how it performs in the largest swimming pool:
@peterma Great post! How is EurGbp doing now? It is not on my watchlist just this minute.
I am trading EURTRY, as I said, and managing a position from the beginning of March; also, I
entered a second position at an all-time high (with higher rollover) and that is about 5000 pips
in profit.
Since the beginning of the month, I have minimised risk from about 50% drawdown (over the
two positions that I had (EURTRY + USDMXN)) to currently 34% (over three positions), freeing
up margin. Total rollover accrued is back above £1000.
Profit targets are far away but time and interest are on my side.
This style of trading is not for everyone, so please do not try this unless you really have
the personality/temperament to sit through long periods of inactivity!
This pair continues to exhibit an awesome uptrend. I have lots of longs built up. Trailing stops well into profit.
nice one.
Unfortunately I got margin-called on EurTry on Friday due to the insane final(?) climb up, a climb on top of an already steep incline that I had been shorting with carefully managed risk: that last leg of this five-year trend was more than my account could take, matched by a 200-pip spread in the most liquid hours of the day, so I am a bit devastated.
Sorry about your loss on the pair. You know the usual advice - Trade what you see not what you think. My trailing stops got hit this morning. Gained about 10% increase of account balance. I’m going to begin another series of longs. Expect usd/try to continue up. Use small lot size on this pair!
I found an interesting site that projects future prices, caveat emptor. this pair has been going up more than their projections.
http://30rates.com/usd-to-try-today-forecast-dollar-to-turkish-lira
here’s another interesting site. Futures quotes. Will it get up to 8.4 ? I’m staying in longs.
Thank you Talon, for the comments and the websites.
I have used CME currency futures for some time now but while Mexican Peso future charts have a lot of data points
(due to being more liquid) and you can narrow them down to hourly volume/candles, Turkish lira futures are very sparse
and anything below daily chart does not offer you much. Also, try looking ahead (e.g. December contracts) and you will
get basically zero data points. I am comparing MXN/USD and USD/TRY futures because they are both EM currencies…
What I find more helpful is looking at XU-BIST100 and MSCI Turkey i-shares ETF charts, both having a tight correlation
with USD/TRY spot. However, correlation and CAUSATION are like chicken and egg: which comes first? It is up to the beholder to know how to make trading decisions… No chart offers the future, not even…a futures chart
I am shorting EUR/TRY again as it has come to +90 RSI on both daily and weekly for the first time in ages and on the monthly for the first time EVER. On the hourly the RSI has started diverging today for the first time from price action,
all signs that the rally (for now) could be over. I am now up £213 on my short at £0.74/pip, so up about 290 pips.
Good luck on your longs, and on my shorts
And good luck on your shorts and my longs 
currently I have only one small long after trailing stops got hit on the others. Not adding any more until it starts moving and it does look toppy here but I’ll continue to hold a long bias on it for now.
Thanks TalonD
had a good run of EurTry today, earned back 1000s. It was an amazing run.
Turkey’s MSCI ETF was a high-volume buy, which consolidated my decision to sell EURTRY.
I guess that you stayed on the sideline today?
My broker increasing margin requirement for turkish Lira, until 25 times from normal margin, due high volatility on usdtry and also eurtry
another broker they don`t allow trade on these pairs due for safe cocmpany and client
@bearish yes, it has been really bad this last couple of days: usually TRY gets quoted at normal spreads during the more liquid (European/US) sessions but it has been pretty horrendous so far this week, like 200-pip spreads in the middle of the day!
As you say, hard to trade…
But, EURTRY has huge intra-day volatility so even paying 200 pips to the spread you can more than make it back, e.g. get a 3000-pip profit and subtract 200 pips from it: what are you left with? Quite a lot…
So it is the price to pay for such a currency…
