For those following, I mentioned that I signed up for the free 30 day trial of the FXCM System Selector and attached the TrendEscape trading system to it for the GBPUSD and GBPJPY forex pairs. Yesterday when I checked, I was about $2000 down from the demo portfolio.. it started at $100,000. The last trades where a short of both the two pairs which amount to losses.

Right now, the account has dropped further.. another $1000 and the current live trades are slightly down at $100 loss or so….

Over the long term, the Trend Escape trading system is one of the most profitable…. I’ll leave it to run and see how it gets on!

Tags: automatic trading system, currency trading, foreign exchange, forex, forex review, forex system, forex trading system, fxcm forex review, fxcm forex selector, fxcm review, trading system, trend escape, trend escape system

My trading of late hasn’t been particularly good..  I know I haven’t updated the blog with these trades but in total, I had traded 6 times with a total loss of around 500 pips! Ouch!

Anyway, last night, I sat and spent a lot of time thinking… where did I go wrong? What happened to the success I was having?

I think the key to being successful is to be adaptable… the trading rules change when the markets change.. you need to have a trading strategy for trending markets and ranging markets and you need to be able to identify so you can adapt.

Trading is a very complicated endeavour.. almost an art, in fact, some people say that it is an art…  the only rules are buy and sell but the psychological aspect of trading is immense…

Anyway, I watched the GBPJPY. The smaller timeframes are quite difficult to trade unless you watch them like a hawk.. to be honest, I couldn’t really see what was happening in the short term charts…

However, in the 4 hour charts, you can clearly see that the market was trending up… where I entered, it looked like the market had made a bottom before resuming it’s upward spiral..  my entry was 139.11 with a stop at 141.20 which was just below the previous high that was made.

There was a period where I thought I would lose the trade as the market pulled back from my entry by about 80 points.. painful to watch but that’s the trading game. It’s even more painful when you’ve been doing badly and 500 pips down… it’s very difficult to take this and you just lose confidence in yourself. The below shows the trade in the 1 hour chart:

Luckily for me, the market didn’t hit my stop and then went upwards towards my target of 141.20 (just under the previous high). The market hit this and I got my 209 pips! Hoorah!

The market at this stage has made a double top pattern and started to fall away.. it would be a relatively safe short here. I am not sure about the longer term price action as it looks to be going north longer term.. but certainly, a short could be initiated to ride the down momentum before the bulls enter… easier said than done however.. I missed this entry and I would probably have taken profit at 100 pips.

Still, I was happy with my 209 pips and my trade and analysis.. I need to keep more vigiliant with trading.. only enter when absolutely necessary and not for the sake of doing it..

Tags: currency trading, day trading, forex, Forex trading, gbpjpy, good trading, profit, trading analysis, trading profit, trading psychology

I am finding trading quite difficult lately.. the techniques which I have been trading with have not been doing so well and as a result, my account has plummetted. I wrote around December/January time that my account had reached all time highs.. the market was really good with me and I made a killing.. however, the market has changed and what I was doing which worked before, doesn’t work any more… trading really is tough!

Also, it is hard to find the time to stalk and wait for these opportunities.. I work most of the days and when I come home, there is a limited time window for trading…

I still love the idea of being successful as a trader but as close as I got.. the further from where I would like to be is apparent with the recent losses… a trader needs to be flexible enough to be able to adapt to all conditions.. I am not quite there yet!

Anyway, this brings me onto the FXCM  Forex trading system..  I am currently running their 30 day free trial to see how it works and whether it could work for me.. it will trade the markets automatically buying/selling where needed.

There are 40 systems to test with and you can look at the performance and there are all sorts of criteria to select to find the trading system for you. I tried to find the one that had the lowest drawdowns with the highest profits… and I came across one called TrendEscape. You then select the trading system (or systems)… yes you can attach more than one system to your account and off you go.

With the demo, you start off with a balance of 100,000 USD. I applied the Forex Systems I wanted to use and left it to get on with it..

The system I selected opens 6 trades at any one go.. I’m not sure how to change this as it’s quite high.. when (and if) I open my real account, I wouldn’t only really want to trade 1 trade… not 6… I don’t have that sort of capital!

The first trade was a short of the GBPJPY at 131.03 (18th Feb 09).. this didn’t go well with a loss of -173 pips per lot… that’s a loss of 865 pips! Holy crap!

The next trade was on the 23rd Feb 09 with a short of the GBPJPY at 138.53.. these each closed at a loss but at -5 pips or so…

OUCH!

Anyway, today, I have 12 positions open… 6 are a short of the GBPJPY at 138.98 and a short of the GBPUSD at 1.42609.  The GBPJPY are roughly 80 pips up each and the GBPUSD is about 60 pips up.

The $100,000 USD demo account is currently at $98,862.46 from the closed trades but with about $900 in the bag so far for the open trades.. it’s not too far off…

I’ll just run with this for the full 30 days to see how it goes…

If you’re interested in having a look… go to http://www.fxcm.com/forex-system-selector.jsp

Tags: automated trading, easy money, expert advisors, forex robot, forex trading signals, forex trading system, fxcm, fxcm forex, fxcm forex system selector, make money, money