Whoever rides the tiger

Trading Discussion Trade Journals
21

HI Sebastiano! Thanks for dropping in here! :slight_smile:

Glad you like the pics, I have always been keen on photography, and especially of nature. I just thought it could be amusing and liven up the thread a bit to draw a few links between us traders and the world around us! :smiley:

I am from the UK, but live in the Nordic area in Finland, so there is plenty of nature around here!

The question of full-time trader is perhaps a worthy topic all of its own but here are a few personal thoughts since you ask! :slight_smile:

Although it is the dream of many, I have never personally had any desire to trust my income entirely on trading for two reasons, 1) I love my normal work anyway and 2) trading for me is an activity combining logic, strategic planning and tactical initiative. Although it is sometimes frustrating, it should always be pleasurable, challenging and stimulating. If I were to add to that the need to earn a regular and significant sum of money to live by, then it would destroy those key attributes.

If I were solely dependent on trading for my income then life would be a component of my trading rather than my trading just being another component of life - and that would add a very negative dimension to trading: i.e. the need to perform even when you or the market is not “right” for it. But for others, trading might just be their thing! :slight_smile:

We are all so very different from one another, and it is important to find the right combination of trading aspects that let us live in harmony with our trading, whether it is capital, position size, timeframes, and so on - and, of course, these aspects change as time goes by. A person who is young and single will have a different set of criteria when they are married with three kids and a mortgage, etc!

Today has been a typical example. It would have been a disaster trying to force pips out of it. It did manage to drift a bit higher as expected but so far still within yesterday’s range. For me, this was a day off, I took a quick 7 pip dip off NY’s open and I am entirely happy with that: I wasn’t anticipating anything today and I still have a few pips more than yesterday -that is, for me, the difference between trading with the financial performance millstone and trading without.

A relaxed trader is likely to be more successful than a stressed out trader desperate to earn his mortgage payments for this month (and maybe even last month’s too!)!

22

I wish I could say that I have something really interesting (and useful) to say - but I don’t! Yesterday was pretty much an inside day with no enthusiasm on the downside at all nor any greatly inspiring upside either apart from the briefest of brief pop above the previous day’s high.

So there is no great prognosis for today except that often a quiet day or two is followed by a good move…so I am waiting for the trigger…( to be honest my own gut feeling is that the downside has run out of steam and we may well see an up day today - but that is purely instinct and not based on charts at all right now - except maybe that we are still above yesterday’s daily Pivot, which might be a pointer to higher levels today!)

Yesterday’s short term picture might give the impression of a possible return to dollar weakness and a rise in the EU, but I think that could be a bit premature right now. I think we need to look at the bigger picture as a background to yesterday’s drift upwards. At the moment the near term is entirely neutral but the longer term is still looking vulnerable on the downside.

The daily has not changed and only shows us holding a couple of significant supports for the time being, having run out of gas from the start of the week’s momentum. But the 3H and the 1H also look a bit soggy and don’t seem to have backed their bags for a take off on the upside - at least not yet…

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My interest on this thread is to mainly focus on the longer term picture and my focus is mainly on the MA’s compressions on the 1H chart but here is my 15m chart which I use to confirm whether and when the breakout from a compression continues the 1H trend or reverses it. The red/green clouds are exactly the same as the 1H chart’s MAs but represented as a cloud to emphasise the current direction. The 15m chart’s own MA group is clearly showing when the price is moving with the 1H or slowing down and drifting into a compression- or breaking out on one side or the other side. Here one can see clearly how yesterday morning’s compression failed to break below and broke on the upside instead - meaning “no selling today” and only brief buys, if anything, since it is against the main current trend.

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For a short term trader this was a good 30-50 pip buy yesterday, but there is always the risk that trading short-term against the main trend can look good one minute…and then collapse and leave you standing in deep water

23

[quote=“Manxx, post:22, topic:74797”]
I wish I could say that I have something really interesting (and useful) to say - but I don’t! Yesterday was pretty much an inside day with no enthusiasm on the downside at all nor any greatly inspiring upside either apart from the briefest of brief pop above the previous day’s high. So there is no great prognosis for today …to be honest my own gut feeling is that the downside has run out of steam and we may well see an up day today - but that is purely instinct and not based on charts at all right now - except maybe that we are still above yesterday’s daily Pivot, which might be a pointer to higher levels today!)[/quote]

Well today offered no surprises. There really was nothing to anticipate and not really anything to trade (unless one wanted to sit by the screen all day scalping) - although the upside, if anything, was the dominant side and we did manage to remain above the daily Pivot and in the “green” on the 15m chart all day.

I left my two little pathetic dabbles to show on the chart as it helps keep me humble before the market. These were more stretching of an ichy trigger finger rather than anything serious - but it is still pips in the bin! :slight_smile:

EU 0929 eve.png1553×686 38.5 KB

So that is it for the day, for the week and for the month. I hope you all had a good one!

24

Seems the downside is still where the pressure is. We opened weak this morning in Asia and I missed the start of the break downwards at three o’clock this morning local time! (who gets up to trade at 03.00 on a Monday morning?!).

But it still looked weak so I took a good-sized short even before the first cup of coffee and still half dozey. But it paid off with a nice 20 pip trade to start the week and the new month - that is psychologically very positive! I like the early days of the month because one has more confidence to do size when there is a whole month ahead to climb back if it goes wrong! On the other hand, taking big risks at the end of the month is risking all the work that one has done during that month. I know these month ends/starts don’t really mean anything in terms of market risk per se, but there is, for me anyway, a psychological effect from what my result is at month-end and it also is a breakpoint in accounting methods.

But the more relevant issue now is - where to next?

The daily is still stuggling with the same support band and it would be perhaps rash to pre-empt a break of that…

25

Hey Manxx, thank you so much for your reply! Obviously you are good at photography even though it’s just a hobby for you. And living in Finland definitely offers many beautiful landscapes.
I totally agree with you about the full-time trading. I am not a full trader as well and honestly I am not sure if I want to become such. To be frank, I am afraid to leave my entire income to depend on just trading and for now I prefer to have another job. Things change when you decide to become a full time trader I guess because now the pressure is much higher and most of the times I don’t think I will achieve the pleasure I currently have while trading. I don’t like to force and stress things because I am losing the necessary motivation. If I am not motivated, I am not able to achieve positive results. I feel that I need to gain even more experience and perhaps that is why I am still a bit scared but this should be resolved as the time goes by and I learn more and more. But definitely I prefer to be the relaxed trader you describe in your comment than the frustrated and stressed one. :slight_smile:

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