checking in

The past week has been very difficult as all my family has been sick, I am barely getting any sleep!  Hayden (1 1/2 yrs) has been the worst, with very high fevers and difficulty keeping down milk or food.  He is mostly just keeping juice and water down, but seems to be getting better in the past 24 hours.  Also, hubby is getting through mid-terms at school and turning in various papers, etc., so he is stressed.  On top of this, both of his grandfathers are in very poor health and likely to pass away soon.  With all of this going on, I probably should have stopped trading, as I haven't been able to focus and experienced a bad week.  I feel like every week, I have some break-through that pans out to be nothing...or just further complicates my approach.  I am going back to basics and focusing on the daily charts and pinbars.  That has always been most consistent for me, and with all I have going on in my life, I cannot have time or quiet for contemplating more complex trade entries and exits <--- I think that this has been a large part of my problem.  Sloppiness or bad entries or exits...in general, I am right about the price movement most of the time.  But I mismanage my trades.  With a daily entry, I can set it and forget it, and really only need to check on it once or twice a day.  At this point, I have lost a large part of my initial deposit and it will be a slow journey to build it back up...I have even thought about going back to demo.  But, with as little as I now have to risk, I don't have much left to lose, but at least may build up my account and experience if I trudge forward.  I feel the psychological transition from demo to live was much harder than I was expecting!  The odd thing is, it isn't even about the fear of losing the money for me (which it should be, I definately need it!)...I find that I don't panic or get overly emotional when I am losing money, but I am driven to make poor decisions by greed (wanting to win more, faster) AND that I don't want to be wrong.  Being wrong is worse than losing money to me.  So, time for me to be right...haha.  Ok, so it's way past time to get serious - but losing a lot of money will at least push you to that point.  Now for the slow painful recovery period :/  It is a medicine I must endure, my own fault that I am here!

I'm back! Literally and Figuritively...

Alright, so I wasn't posting for a couple of weeks, because I felt like I lost my way and my focus.  When I started forex, I kept it simple with a few price action set-ups, but as I learned more, I started making it more complicated.  That's not a good thing when you are using PA.  You can't really think too much about what you think that the price should do, because it doesn't give a crap what you think!  You just have to watch, learn the patterns, and act at the right time!  So, after some self-reflection and a little tweaking to my system, I am finally getting good results...I am soooo happy.  (I'll go into more detail in a later post about exactly what I am doing...the process to get the end results)  I knew I was going to make it in forex, because I flat-out refuse to give up and I love it so much.  But to actually be trading live and now making profits...it's the best feeling in the world!  Ahhhhh, bliss.

Feeling Depressed

Definately not going well with my live account.  I started my account about 3 weeks ago now, and at that time we went from a serious bear environment to an inexplicable bull run.  Excuses aside though, clearly I haven't made the best choices as I have had several losses.  That's really all I have to say at this point.  Today is a Friday, so after the weekend I will try to start afresh and stay positive!  I can do this...I have to do this, lol...

...

I feel a little guilty for posting less here...you'd think that with starting my live account I would have MORE to say, but actually, my trades haven't been doing anything but going up and down for days.  So, nothing really to report at the moment.  I feel like I am being less aggressive with my trading...maybe a little gunshy...but the markets are rather sideways right now, and most people are just losing money.  Also, I have been reading and analyzing the charts more in the past couple of weeks.  I am trying to incorporate using the weekly charts (identifying patterns and breakouts) with my current daily system.  The thing about this is, it's less frequent trading.  Which should be a good thing, if I have a lower fail rate as a result.

Reading "Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader" by Peter Brandt

While I think that this was a great book, by a great trader, his style is more long-term position trading.  I am currently trading daily (holding trades for a matter of hours to a day...), so I am not going to put into practice much of what I learned.  It was extremely interesting to see how you can read patters on the weekly and monthly charts and actually see what is (likely) going to happen in the coming weeks or months!  What a concept!

First Three Trades

Well, my first three trades have all hit their stoploss...sadly.  This is a very bad start to my first live account.  Let's review the trades:  the first one was USDCAD (sell), the set-up that triggered this trade was an IB Fakey combo on the daily chart.  It didn't 50% retrace before it started to take off, so initially I wasn't going to get in to this trade (I felt that I had missed the boat so to speak).  But after speaking to one of my friends, he said that frequently price will at least retest the break of the pinbar on the fakey.  So, I decided to set a pending order.  There were many IB Fakey combos on daily charts that day!  I felt that this showed confluence that we were about to see a correction (dollar devaluation), also known as "risk on".  So, there was one more trade that I took a chance on AUDUSD (which displayed an IB Fakey combo)...setting a pending to buy on it, as well.

Unfortunately, I decided to set my stoploss for the USDCAD trade at the 50% retrace point of the pinbar (remember entry was at the break of the pinbar) because I felt that price wouldn't reach this point.  I was wrong and got stopped out when price moved back up to test that level. 

Still believing that this level was holding, I decided to open another trade, this one a buy on NZDUSD (which also had an IB Fakey combo).  When the dollar strengthened it gave me a better entry point for that trade, so I kind of felt like I was getting a bargain for getting in.  Then, my friend who I had been talking to about my trades said that he was getting into the USDCAD trade going short (same as I had done), but now price was at a better position...so I decided to try it again.  Actually, everything seemed ok for a bit, price was moving as expected...then it changed direction.  Basically, price started moving beyond the high/low of the pinbar on the fakey.  So, now I had to decide whether to move my stoploss a little (which I did) or let it close out and lose the money (which I eventually did) because I don't know whether these were false signals now at this point.  They SHOULD have worked out nicely, due to the confluence I was seeing all of these signals among many pairs...indicating the dollar was going to fall.  Also, the IB Fakey combo is normally a very good signal (including pinbars!), AND the price level that was being tested hadn't been touched in months (March/April/May timeframe)...so I really believed that we were seeing a correction about to take place with the USD. 

The AUDUSD trade is still open btw...it was less volatile due to some good news that came out regarding their economy on Thursday I believe.  AUDUSD has gone nowhere near the high/low of it's pinbar.  Still, the trade is currently in the negative. 

My account has taken a hit as a result of these three trades, and mentally, I need to stabalize.  I am staying calm, but I need to make some changes here.  First of all, I shouldn't have had three trades going at once (risking 2% each)...and all of them majors which makes me triple exposed to the USD.  I am decreasing my risk limit to 1% (unfortunately, I'll be building up slower this way...but also will lose more slowly if I am wrong).  And I won't expose myself to more than one trade on the same currency unless I see that it is already moving in my direction...(building momentum). 

The problem I face at the moment is, I still think I might have been right about the direction of the price movement concerning these USD pairs...price basically dipped down, stopped me out and then reversed (at this time anyway).  So, now we are heading in to the weekend and this is no time to enter new trades when there is no clear direction.  I am going to close my AUDUSD trade before I lose anymore money on it.  This is tough, but it appears that I made the wrong call here.

One last thought, we are entering into what will probably be a crisis reminiscent (or even worse) than the crash of 2008.  In reviewing what price did during that time, the USD skyrocketed in value...so maybe what we are seeing here is the beginning of that?  I HATE that I lost my first few trades, especially when the signals were strong and setups valid...but maybe this is why price didn't seem to be following the rules here.  If we are seeing the beginning of a movement where price chooses a definitive direction, that presents a BIG money making opportunity.  So, I guess if that were to happen, I could pyramid trade and build up my account quickly...so, that would be the brightside of this scenario.

Live account opened yesterday!

Alright...I finally did it.  Started my live account with a $2000 balance...didn't make a trade yesterday.  Set a few pending orders, two of which have triggered (USDCAD sell, and AUDUSD buy)...so cross my fingers...and my toes...will be posting the results of course!