I do. One computer, the one that is at home. I can’t trade (buy and sell) from my tablet, but can monitor the charts though on it. The broker hasn’t made that possible yet.
Anyway, I keep detailed logs of everything I do. I have notebooks piled high, on all my notes. I have weekend journals. Daily journals. I write as much as possible. Ideas that I think of during the day I jot down. Etc…
I will check out that thread. Thanks.
Hi guys.
Well I’m in. Made my quota for the week. I’m happy! I made 98.7 pips, $83.81. That was with AUD/NZD. So, I closed it out, done trading for the week, and finally get to concentrate on data, strengths weaknesses, flows of the markets.
I’m looking for consistency. This week was successful. And guess what…I won’t lose it, cause I won’t trade again till next week, in which I will start over again, and try to get my goal early on like this time. Hopefully I can continue this pattern.
Also, I do let out the animal on my fake account. Scalping…holding on to a week long one…different tries of stuff. That’s my outlet, and all for experience.
Ok, that’s nice. Who’s strong? Well, yesterday it was the JPY. Man, …again. And we all know who’s weak, GBP. I told you all that the GBP/USD was due for a breakout. Yep, it did, so far. Long weak ahead though. "I chickened out of the GBP/USD trade I was in yesterday morning,…I can’t really say anything"
So today I will be watching if the AUD will stay strong (good report came out for them), JPY to see if they will turn around some, GBP to gain back anything, CAD to go back to losing, from showing a little bit of muscle lately, EUR and CHF to continue making some pips, like they did yesterday. NZD to keep losing? USD, who knows?
Well, it’s gonna be fun watching.
I’ll be in touch.
Mike
Hi Mike,
I’ve just come across this thread. Are you still trading the strongest currency versus the weakest?
When I first started trading I had a lot of success trading the strongest v the weakest however I became impatient and moved onto another strategy. I have now returned to this strategy because I have developed a simple way of identifying when a currency is being bought across the board and offloaded. I do believe such a strategy can only be day traded.
Hi useless!
Yes I do.
That is the how I view the market. I LEAN towards the fundamental side of things. But of course I use technical analysis also.
I’m so glad you wrote to me cause this gives me the opportunity to tell all here what happened last week for me. (I’ve been wanting to post stuff of b.p’s lately but just haven’t)
I have a full time job. Been trading (demo) for over a year now. Waiting for my long term results to be good enough to go live. Right now, generally speaking, I’m at about the break even stage. I’m working on my drawdowns. Just too much when it happens. And I’m tweaking things here and there. I’ll move 2 steps forward then 1 step back. It’s a long process. But one thing I know is that this is the most fun I’ve ever had. I know that I will get there, no matter how long.
Ok. That’s nice.
Now, let’s talk.
I took vacation last week. We didn’t go anywhere. Called it a “staycation”. Enjoyed not having to go to work! Me and my love will go do something small every day. Basically making the most at staying at home. And of course I had a lot of time to devote to “my market”.
And boy, did I learn some things.
This was my opportunity to watch all what goes on in the market. For many hours in a day. I did a lot of scalping…watching…seeing things move. And the way my charts are set up is that I can see all 8 currencies move at the same time. I’ll zoom in on the 10 min time frame and see who’s turn it is. One currency or another will have their turn at taking a bite out of the others. But you just don’t know for how long it will last.
Yep, I did the scalping thing. And lost like up to 100 pips up to wed. eve. (And this is on my live account also!)
(which I fully believe that it is!) (but in your world it isn’t)
Then I started to hold a couple trades for longer time periods. Oh that’s right, I had 3 open, CAD long and EUR short from wed eve through thurs eve. And I would monitor them periodically. I was making my money back. Feeling much better. Been battling that emotional roller coaster ride throughout it all. So, come fri. morning I was only down 24 pips. Waiting for the all mighty CAD news to come out. Well to put it in a nut shell, I lost, lost, lost. No matter what I did, it just went bad for me. Later on, after reading a good piece, I realize that I just shouldn’t have traded that day. IT WAS THE END OF THE MONTH. AND ALL THE BIG PLAYERS ARE SQUARING UP ON THEIR ACCOUNTS. That only makes sense. Being friday and the last day of the month is NOT the time to be trading when I should have taken my small loss and start over next week. Well, lesson learned. I lost 12.0 % this week. I am up 5.7% for the year though. (I still can’t believe that, cause it feels like I lost so much more)
So, yeah, that’s how my week went. Many lessons learned. And here they are.
Don’t scalp anymore.
Stick with higher time frames. They are much more reliable. And that is in the context of knowing who’s stronger down to the weakest.
Patience. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read people say this, but it’s personal now)
And for me personally, I’m going to devote more time to studying macroeconomics than studying the charts.
I’m running out of time now, cause it’s back to work for me, in a few short minutes. (nothing worse than a monday morning after vacation). But, concerning strong to weak. How I know that is this. I keep daily records of the 8 currencies. Who had an up day or a down day. Given that, I’m able to have stats on who’s stronger to weaker in the weekly time frames, daily time frames, and who was on top today. It’s my own thing. Out of the 8 I can tell you who’s the strongest in the long term, short term, and daily. I determine that by who’s trending in the weekly tf’s, and in the daily tf’s. AND THAT MEANS NOTHING THROUGHOUT THE CYCLE IN A DAY. That’s why I need to keep my focus on the larger time frames. Look, any one currency will have a good run in a day, no matter who it is. It used to be the CAD that everyone took advantage of all last year. Well, not this year. They are the strongest lately. And look at the JPY. We can’t all pile up on them for any length of time, cause they have flexed their muscle lately. Oh, and what about the NZD? Will they turn over now? Who knows. But I will be watching.
Ok. I’m done.
Thanks for listening.
To put it in a nut shell, I’m a discretionary trader. On the longer time frames. Picking the strongest and also picking the weakest. Need both to have some kind of edge in the market.
Mike out.
Hi Mike,
After a lot of hard work and stress I have finally settled on a system which I am comfortable with and am making money from although it is very early days. I am happy because I am trading with the trend and I only use 2 indicators to assist me with drawing trendlines (MACD and 20SMA), so I am pretty much trading with a naked chart. I trade the breakouts of trendlines and when price breaks outs of that trendline, I look to all the currency’s other pairs to ascertain if it is strong against them also.
I only trade AUDUSD, EURUSD, USDJPY, GBPUSD, NZDUSD and USDCHF because these have the lowest spreads and are less volatile.
Example: I’ve determined that the long term trend of NZDUSD is up so I only want to be trading in that direction. On a smaller timeframe (in my case 5M/250 tick), I wait for a retracement (preferably 2 lower highs) and I draw a trendline connecting the lower highs. I then wait for price to close above that trendline and when it does I look to all of NZD’s pairs to see if NZD is strong against them also. To determine this I will consider NZD to be strong if price has closed above the 20SMA on a 5M chart against all other currencies. This morning was a perfect a set up as per the screen shot below. At 7.50am price closed above the trendline and when I looked at all NZD pairs a few minutes later, NZD was above the SMA against each one telling me that the NZD was strong.
