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)

Also, I tend to bet on the most likely outcomes of the football matches but of late, we’ve been getting some odd results which meant that the system that I used suffered a little. However, looks like we’re back on track again with a nice 4 win winning streak in the last couple of days!

I am thinking of writing an ebook, let me know if you’re interested by dropping me a line on alan@makemesomemoney.co.uk

Anyway, here is a screenshot of my wins the last couple of days..

Just so you know,  I am not the above picture!! Wrong sex first of all and she’s far better looking than me! Was interesting to find this picture so I thought I’d post it anyway!

Back to being more serious, if you’re like me and you’ve been learning to trade the financial markets in your spare time outside of your usual career there will become a time if you’re persistent and dedicate enough when you find that you’re doing quite well and the serious thinking comes into play… should you give up your career (which is most likely to be completely different to financial trading) and work for yourself trading the stock markets.

I have been toying with this thought although I don’t yet feel completely ready. I have been working in my IT career for over 10 years, earning a decent income and bringing financial stability into our home. I am paying off a mortgage and obviously need to eat and ensure that the wife and I can live as comfortably as possible. I know that the career that I have built will allow this…

Trading can reap in untold financial rewards. However, your daily income isn’t fixed like it is with your 9-to-5 job. It would be great if you could make money each day but the truth is that there will be days when not only have I not made any money but lost. That is the nature of trading.

I have taken a couple of weeks off for the Xmas break and during this time, I have spent the time trading the currency markets. Most of the time spent is waiting for the opportunity to come.. there were days when you sit there watching and watching waiting for a trigger to enter your position and it never comes. Those days are quite frustrating and you then have to be careful that you don’t enter for the sake of entering.

The other thing is that most humans need social interaction with other humans…. sitting at home trading the markets can be boring with no one else there. I am not talking about having the wife or having a kid to look after in the background as these will divert your focus from trading.

I have been thinking about the pros and cons of working my current job (career) and trading for myself. There are also other options, of course

• trading with a firm – this will alleviate the loneliness of sitting at home on your own and work with other like minded people. However, this comes with it’s own set of pros and cons. Number 1 thing is that there is a cost associated with this… if it’s a prop firm you’ve joined then a chunk of your trading profits go to the firm.
• renting an office – I didn’t mention another thing which is a problem when you’re at home.. I constantly find that I am distracted at home.. I have the TV, the Xbox, chores to do etc. Renting an office provides a work only environment. Also, you can rent offices where there will be other businesses running so you can get that human interaction. However, the obvious thing here is cost… your study at home, working on a computer with internet is all you need to trade so this can be a little difficult to justify

Anyway, they were just some thoughts.. I’ll put my pros and cons list together when I have it clear in my mind…

Merry Xmas to all and best wishes for 2010

Oh, just to let you know (and to make me feel good in saying this)..  I am happy to say that I made money every day trading at home

Anyway, some nice technicals on the DOW today. You could see that there was a clear downtrend channel (where I have wrote ‘resistance line here’), I drew the line to see how the chart would react to this line.. obviously, the idea is that if you are looking to sell, sell when it gets near this resistance, if you are looking to buy then buy when it pulls back to this line.

This is exactly what happened.. the price action broke through the resistance line and then fell.. when it did, it penetrated the line (now support) before bouncing up.. this was the time to enter so we’re in at 10285. I felt confident with this entry as the ADX line also has the green uptrend line cross the red downtrend line.

The first area of resistance would be the 10300 mark but the market didn’t even seem to notice this level so I left it. The next level was 10330 or so which was form from a previous peak (which we can extrapolate back from the original resistance line.. sorry, it wouldn’t fit on our chart).

It was at this point I took profit ..  a nice 45 point day!

(click picture for larger image)

I had to watch the market go against me 30 points or so before it tanked.. it went past my entry point and I took profits at the round number 9700 for 40 points which wasn’t bad. However, the market is still going down, as I write, it’s at 9672 meaning that I left another 30 odd points on the table… nevermind!

The market just dropped further and hit 9660….. double nevermind!

I haven’t been playing with Betfair all too much but this weekend, I thought I would return and play my usual strategy… bet on the favourites (yep, that’s it!). A simple yet effective strategy which has yielded me £185! I know that there are people who trade the sports markets (particularly Horse racing but that involves staring at the markets and that just takes so much time).

Anyway, here’s a screenshot of the bets and my winnings… happy days!

Market Wizards by Jack Schwagner – profiles a series of traders, it’s like looking over their shoulders over these great masters

Adventures of a Currency Trader by Rob Booker – a story about a trader, it’s fictional but there are some useful lessons to be learnt

Forex Patterns and Probabilities by Ed Ponsi – very good book on Forex technical patterns and the probability that certain patterns will repeat… after all, human nature repeats itself

Mastering Futures Trading by Bo Yoder – excellent technical trading book

Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas – the book which talks about trading psychology. This book is an absolutely must have.. trading is 80% psychology, if you can’t get this right, then you have no chance of making it

I have spent a lot of time reading on blogs and trading forums and something which stuck out is that a lot of successful traders trade simple systems. When you’re a rookie trader, you think that trading is some super complicated thing and you end up with charts with all sorts of patterns and stuff… you end up confusing yourself and losing money as you are just moving from one way of trading to another. For those that persist and become successful, they realise that trading is a probability game.. losing trades are inevitable.. you need to have more wins than losses.

Anyway, a quick trade that I put on today was a long with the S&P… the markets aren’t moving very decisively so I took profit before the previous high got reached.. however, the market has gone beyond so may well fly… I took 2 points however and was happy with this…

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…