jueves, 30 de marzo de 2017

EURUSD Short +30pips 0.2Lots

Today I'm really excited! I made my first live trade and it was a winner: +30 pips and +2% on my account. I have been interested in trading for a long time but had not managed to really start until late last year and all the hard work is paying off. I am happy because of my understanding more than the monetary gain. Although eventually I'd like to do trading for a living, I am in no rush as I have a stable job that I like and want to remain there for years to come. Nonetheless, it feels really good to finally take a trade and see it pan out.

I decided to take a similar trade on the demo to keep track of my progress. I say similar because the data feeds have different prices so it won't be exactly the same, but the concept that I'm using to take the trade and objective will be the same.

I was looking to short the Euro one more time as I thought dollar had still room to run, plus EURGBP looked like it would finally trade to 0.8590. I placed a sell limit order looking for 30 pips and a stop loss of 20 pips. I could have increased my trade size but chose not to do so yet and go with my standard 0.2 lots, and a 1.5R trade. 




I woke up and I had almost reached my goal but missed it and started to freak out, this was around 5am, and knew I'd get a retracement before NY but decided to stick to the rules and hold it. It was a struggle and could not sleep well, but in the end, the trade panned out and I was able to make my 30 pips.


I learned a lot from this experience and look forward to continuing on my journey. Here's the updated MyFxBook as I close the month of March. 


The account is up 8.45% in six weeks, which is almost 9% and comes out to 6% monthly which is my goal to duplicate my money yearly.

miércoles, 29 de marzo de 2017

EURUSD Short +30pips 0.2Lots

I did not see anything I liked on Monday and I decided to not even look at the markets for Tuesday. I think this is very important because as I get more and more comfortable with my trading, I don't need to be forcing things everyday. At first I was looking for a set up everywhere, and if you look hard enough, you can see both the buy and the sell scenario.

Another thing that I think is important, is that I've seen more experienced traders making some predictions on Twitter and I've not let them affect me. Sometimes it's a relief having some confirmation from other sources, but the best teacher in my opinion is experience so I'll go with what I'm learning.

Anyway, here's what was happening yesterday:

I had done my analysis early on and noticed I could potentially see a short in Euro or Pound. I thought cable was way too extended for my liking and decided to look for Euro. Euro had moved a bit already and I didn't think it'd give me an opportunity to sell on a limit order as the price I wanted was too close to the current price. I decided to take a short right then and there, with a 20 pip stop loss and looking for 30 pips for a 1.5R trade.



 Dollar had some room to go to take out the buy stops above 100.00 so I thought it'd be a good idea. I wasn't sure we'd get to 1.0770 stops on Euro and decided not to push it.



I woke up this morning to see that the trade had already panned out for a cool 2% gain in the account.
Since I opened this demo account I'm up 6.45% (February 14th - March 29th) for six weeks. I'm happy with my development and I have learned a lot. I'm ready to trade live and see how that affects my trading as the psychology involved is probably a lot tougher than demo.

Below is my trade history taken from MyFxBook.



sábado, 25 de marzo de 2017

GBPUSD Long +25pips 0.1 Lots, +40pips 0.1Lots

The closing of positions earlier makes it hard to account for how many pips one makes. Making some pips and securing profits gives me some peace of mind, and in this case helped me to hold the rest longer, but I'm not a huge fan of this approach, I think I'd rather just frame trades in 2:1R and be done with it instead of struggling through the motions for hours to get something done.

Anyway, onto the trade: went long at 1.2475 looking for 1.2560 as an objective. It went to 1.2530 and gave a lot back so I started to get nervous, I never know how to manage the position when this happens. For this time around, I decided to take out something with a favorable move, and leave the rest so I could practice.




USDX was choppy at this time but cable looked stronger and I thought they'd take out 1.2530 but did not see 1.2560 happening anymore.



Even though having some profits felt good, I didn't want to see what I had evaporate so I closed when I got some retracing move. Eventually, 1.2530 was taken out but given the time of day I felt more comfortable just getting out there.

After a month and a half of demo trading for real, unlike past experiences, I feel much more comfortable with my plan. I just need to start framing trades with better risk reward, or at least holding for it as right now I tend to close positions erroneously. Any loss for the full stop of 2% risk takes me out considerably, while I usually make something like 1.5% per trade.

I am ready to go live with my trading in April and feel very comfortable with the approach I've managed to finding setups.

NZDUSD Long +0 pips

I didn't really frame this trade in anything in particular, other than Michael mentioning he thought AUSUSD was going to go higher, me not wanting to trade his idea, and thinking I could try something similar anyway. I didn't get stopped out for -20 pips by chance, then I got some pips higher, but collapsed the position for 0 pips when nothing really happened.

I need to think more independently as Michael's idea was actually a losing trade as AUS collapsed, so lesson learned: do your thing and learn from it. Fortunately in this case, I didn't lose anything on it.



EURUSD Short -28pips 0.2 Lots

 It took me a while to write down this trade, as it happened on March 9th (two weeks ago), so I have to try hard to remember. The basic premise was that I expected the USDX to continue higher, and therefore, foreign currencies to drop against it. In this case, the Euro was giving me a setup after having taken out the highs previously.



Dollar traded lower, Euro traded higher from my entry and took me out at -30 pips with 2 lots.
Thinking I was going to be able to get something back by filling in a void, I tried to get short at 8:30am NY, but realized fast that it was a 'revenge' trade and got out for +2 pips which was smart as Euro went even higher after that.



 There are going to be losers in trading and I need to accept that, I had not had a losing trade in a while. What's important to learn is that I'm being more right than wrong in this small sample size, but I'm not getting as much reward. I need to get to at least 1:1, as right now, this single loss put me back substantially in my account and that's unacceptable, I'd like to frame 2:1 trades if possible going forward.

jueves, 2 de marzo de 2017

Short EURUSD +44 pips

The amount of pips doesn't always translate well, if you scale out of the position in a trade, these were 20 and 24, which is the equivalent of 22 pips for the profit, so it's hard to make projections sometimes with these numbers.

Anyway, I was still looking for a short on Euro as I had placed an order the previous day but did not get triggered. Fortunately, there was a new opportunity in this currency once again. 

Once again, I placed my order as a sell limit at night and went to sleep.

Sell at: 1.0539, stop loss 1.0569, looking for 1.0490. 


By the time I got up, euro had already moved 20 pips and taken an old low in the lower time frames. I decided to take half of my position off here and let the rest run.

Dollar was pulling back a bit at this time and euro was taking its time to drop so I decided to look for 1.0495 instead. It dropped to 1.0496 and retraced. I had moved my stop to give me 24 pips to 1.0515, and that got tagged. I was up to 63 pips at one point so it is a bit frustrating see it all go back but I'm still learning and seeing things for myself will certainly help.

I've taken 4 trades since I opened this account on the 14th of February, for a net of 79 pips, and 2.63% gain in two weeks. I'm well within my objective of 6% per month to duplicate my account yearly and will be looking to go live in April.

Next up in my analysis: see how far back I get in retracements to see if I can place smaller stops and go bigger with lot size for the same risk.

Short EURUSD -15 pips


With dollar failing to make lower lows and showing strength, I saw SMT in Euro as it made another high. I was thinking it would finally drop and decided to look for a short.

My trade idea was short at 1.0600 looking for 1.0535 which was an old low.

Dollar was retracing to a +OB so I was not terribly worried about what might happen as it was showing a willingness to rally.


 Euro had moved some 20 pips originally but right now wasn't showing willingness to drop so that got me nervous as ICT mentioned they might to a 3-top pattern before dropping it.

 At this point Dollar was still holding on but nothing was happening in Euro.

I lowered my stop to 15 pips and decided to learn from this experience if it indeed trade higher as it wasn't really my call that it wouldn't drop.

 Euro did end up making a higher high that day and dollar failed to make a lower low, so this loss can be mitigated.

Short NZDUSD +15 pips

I have been looking for NZDUSD to reach for 0.7125 Daily +OB, but it had failed to do so, so I was looking for it one more time.

As I've been doing lately, I look at the price past midnight and see where we open, where we could go and then go the opposite way. I set my sell limit order at 0.7170 and went to sleep.



When I woke up, NZDUSD had moved to 0.7154 which was an old equal low, even though I expected it to move lower, it had previously failed so I decided to take half of my position off here for 12 pips after it gave back a few pips at this area.



I was afraid that dollar would fill in what I thought was a H1 void as it was breaking below the OB, so I trailed my stop to break even.


Price went back up and ended up taking me out for a 3 pip profit.


I think I moved the stop tight very fast, but also 0.7125 was never reached, and Kiwi gave most of the trade back.

Overall: +15 pips that taste like too few.