Currently I'm continuing my journal at www.forexfornoobs.com

Currently I'm continuing my journal at www.forexfornoobs.com

This is subject to change in far future. Until then, I'll keep it there.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Conclusion about 3 losing trades:

All were taken on trend analysis, not taken into account SR lines, only weekly chart as confirmation. I took trades that I thought could move after retracing on trend. Didn't pay attention to candlestick pattern, just if one candle was moving in the trend direction again after retrace.

Mistakes:
  1. Not paying attention to patterns
  2. Hindsight - no SR lines, no lines at all, even trend lines
Overall, I think the biggest mistake of all, that I've been doing over and over again, is not paying attention to patterns, just paying attention to overall movements. From here on, I will try and address this disability when taking trades. No trades in places I can't recognize clear pattern and CONFIRMATION candle (which may be optional, depending on the results of the statistics I'm about to make with testing platform).
I've taken a little time off because of making 3 consecutive losing trades. Overall, trading has not been profitable lately, so it's a problem that really needs attention. I've taken time to gather my thoughts, reanalyze my method(s).

As it's an off-job week and I have time, I'm learning again and planning to make trades with testing platform, writing down statistics about every single trade.

The statistics should include:
  1. Currency pair traded
  2. Candlestick pattern
  3. Was the trade correct
  4. Was SL in proper place statistically
  5. Was TP in correct place statistically
  6. Did the trade move in the right direction initially
  7. Risk/reward ratio
  8. Average right to wrong ratio
  9. Average right initially to wrong initially ratio

Sunday, January 20, 2008

I took 2 trades on the 17-th of January. Both resulted in losses -14,36 and -8,60. The first trade happened when I was asleep. The alarm woke me up at 3 a.m. The price didn't cross S/R line and after watching the graph for an hour I decided to set stop buy with stop loss of 50 pips and profit limit of 100 pips.

After 2 losing trades, I decided to take some time off. Didn't take any trades on Friday.

As of lately, I've come to an understanding, that I can't catch enough trades on normal hours because of work which takes most of my day leaving only 2 or 3 hours in the evenings. Waking up in the middle of night adds more stress.

Taking that all into consideration, I'm changing my time frame and add more currencies to trade. I will trade on 1 day chart and several non-exotic pairs. Although it's not advised to trade multiple pairs and change a strategy, once chosen, I really don't see any other way of doing this currently. Also this was the style that was working for me before I opened the real account.

This method means more risk as daily movements are bigger. However I try out and see what's reasonable. Risk level per trade should stay below 2%, having 3 trades at a time should be maximum.

I may start doing analysis with pictures for the pairs I plan to trade for the week in the beginning of the week. It all depends how much time it takes and if it helps me to keep track of my development or not.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

GBPJPY
direction ------ long
time frame ----- 4h
account after -- 1445,27
entry ---------- 211.54
SL ------------- 210.85
TP ------------- -
exit ----------- 211.87
profit --------- 6,12

date ----------- 16 Jan
risk level ----- 0,90%
risk to reward - -


Reason for:
entry - Crossing of an S/R line plus a pivot point a little later with nice momentum.

Exited earlier than was my initial TP, because of price starting to stall near my initial target.

GBPJPY
direction ------ long
time frame ----- 4h
account after -- 1439,15
entry ---------- 209.36
SL ------------- 208.80
TP ------------- 209.68
profit --------- 6
date ----------- 16 Jan
risk level ----- 0,73%
risk to reward - 0,57


Reason for:
entry - Crossing of an S/R line.

This trade happened when I arrived home from work. Exited earlier due to irrational price behaviour near the targeted exit. The price reached the target later. Exit decision taken too early I think.

GBPJPY
direction ------ short
time frame ----- 4h
account after -- 1433,15
entry ---------- 209.87
SL ------------- 210.72
TP ------------- 208.80
profit --------- 20,12
date ----------- 15 Jan
risk level ----- 1,13%
risk to reward - 1,26


Reason for:
entry - Crossing of an S/R line.

This trade happened at about 22:30 (GMT+2). Since I had to go to sleep I set my TP and SL in place. The trade reached the target and some more.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

GBPJPY
direction ------ short
time frame ----- 4h
account after -- 1413,68
entry ---------- 216.38
SL ------------- 216.98
TP ------------- 215.46
profit --------- 8,42
date ----------- 8 Jan
risk level ----- 0,28%
risk to reward - 1,37


Reason for:
entry - The price had reached a resistance forming a hammer after 4-candle trend.

This trade played out in the expected way. Hammer after a little trend near a resistance line.

Friday, January 4, 2008

GBPJPY
direction ------ short
time frame ----- 4h
account after -- 1405,26
entry ---------- 214.62
SL ------------- 214.33
TP ------------- -
profit --------- 2,68
date ----------- 4. Jan
risk level ----- -
risk to reward - -


Reason for:
entry - After the Canadian dollar news the market got a push in downwards direction. Entered after a confirming movement down after retrace.

The trade turned out well. Moved my stop loss to the current highs of the retracings. Got out after a breaking of the ranging market upwards.

GBPJPY
direction ------ long
time frame ----- 4h
account after -- 1402,58
entry ---------- 216,79
SL ------------- 215,64
TP ------------- -
profit --------- -10,43
date ----------- 4. Jan
risk level ----- 0,74%
risk to reward - -


Reason for:
entry - Price had broken a resistance line.

This one was a perfect entry, but there were news coming out for Canadian dollar at 13:30 GMT which was much different from expectations. Those news affected many currency pairs greatly. GBPJPY moved about 160 pips in 5 minutes which is a very strong movement.

GBPJPY
direction ------ short
time frame ----- 4h
account after -- 1413,11
entry ---------- 215.36
SL ------------- 216.07
TP ------------- 214.70
profit --------- -6,48
date ----------- 3. Jan
risk level ----- 0,46%
risk to reward - 0,93


Reason for:
entry - The price had been in a strong general downtrend. After 1 positive candle, a hammer had formed quite near resistance.

The stop loss was taken out. The price had reached my goal afterwards and gone 2 pips further. However this trade risk/reward was not good.

MISTAKES TO AVOID IN THE FUTURE:
1) SL should be above the resistance.
2) follow ONLY the strategy and not do experiments with real money