I have been thinking about trading and athletes. The best in both fields have trained themselves to the highest standards… with athletes, this obviously means regularly training intervals and lots of lots of repetition through working their bodies through motions to help their mind and body connect.

Trading is the same.. you need to have experienced and trained yourself. I mention training oneself since I am a self taught trader, I am not an institutional trader.

This means that when I’m competing (in competing, I mean trading).. I need to ensure that to end up as a winner I need to be completely focused, trained and ready for the experience. If you take the 100 metre sprint..  that could be the equivalent of a trading session. You watch these athletes and they are physically in tip top condition.. their psychology allows them to visualise themselves winning.. it’s about setting a goal.

I write this today as I am trading today.. I am committing myself to a day every couple of weeks to trading. I want to experience the feeling of being trader, to see if I can do it.. to see if I can deal with sitting here on my own looking at the markets and making money from it.

Today, I’ve not started that well.. my mind is on other things. You know what it’s like.. if someone tells you that your next shot at a round of golf is going to determine whether you win or lose..  that added pressure doesn’t help you… you invariably end up screwing up.

Yes, so today I had two trades open in the market.. a short on both the EURUSD and the GBPUSD. I shorted the EURUSD but as it went up, I closed it for a 3 pip win. I then entered another short at a few prices worse than the previous one and then got out when I couldn’t deal with more than a 25 pip loss so I took it. The markets have since reversed and I would be in a 10 pip and counting win so far.

The GBPUSD was a good entry… however, I took profit way too early and have left a 30 pip profit on the table.

So my psychology wasn’t good today.. even though I ended up in positive (it was only +2 when it could be +60 and still counting)

(click to enlarge)

Tags: eurusd, gbpusd, trading psychology

Following on from my successful 40 odd points from the DOW, I had another success with the EURUSD. I shorted the market at 1.4645 and it was drifting nicely south when it made an upward push against my position.. my stop was at 1.4670. Market fell and I had my limit at 1.4622 for 23 points.

There was a huge drop with the EURUSD and my system had indicated a short entry at 1.4270.. this would have been a lovely entry and very profitable.. however, as you know, I work a 9-to-5 job so was unable to enter.

However, my long at 1.4241 last night with an exit price of 1.4290 yield a nice 49 pips.

I have just entered long 1.4175 now with a stop at 1.4135.. let’s see how it goes…

Tags: eurusd, forex, spreadbet, Spreadbetting