The more I look at the stock market, the more I realise that trading is a game of probabilities.. you are never sure what the market will do, you can only make an educated guess as to what may happen and then hope that the market goes your way. If you’ve an edge, then you have a chance of making it as a successful trader.

Anyway, my trade today was a long at 96.37 as I saw the price action bounce off the bottom of the range which I identified…  the market had hit the bottom line 3 times and as a lower top boundary, I figured 96.90 would be a good exit.. this is the evaluation of the probability that is going on in my head.. I am seeing the market hit the bottom of the range 3 times and each time, it went up….

Should it break the range at the bottom, a short trade and if it broke the top, a long.

Soon after,  the market fell and hit my stop at 99.95 and initiated a short trade. My initial trade got hit for -42 however… let’s see if my short trade hits target which I’ve set as 95.15

Tags: currency trader, currency trading, daytrade, daytrader, foreign exchange, forex, spreadbet, trader, trading blog, trading probability, usd/jpy

As I mentioned last night, I had gone long on the GBPJPY at 174.21 with a 50 pip stop loss and a 45 pip trailing stop. I had correctly picked the right direction and the market went up…. my trailing stop went up also to capture profits. The market hit a short term peak at 175.00 before it started to fall and caught my stoploss which at this time has moved to 174.58 netting me 37 pips. This was quite annoying as at 175.00 it was a 79 pip profit. Then, not soon after hitting my stop, the market continued it’s direction upwards to hit 172.20. Well, a profit is a profit… I still can’t decide in my head what to do for futures sake however…

The current thoughts which are playing my mind are:

1. Enter a trade with a trailing stoploss and no profit target. This will allow me to know my maximum loss plus the trailing stop will allow me to capture profits and keep myself in for potential large moves. The trailing stop will allow me to at least capture some profits (or eliminate losses) as the trade goes my way. This is what I did in this case and my trailing stop got me out of the trade.

2. Enter a trade with a predefined stoploss and a predefined limit stop (usually 2 x stop distance). This means that I will know my maximum loss and profit. If the market goes my way, I will profit but miss out on potential moves.

I have been thinking about the mixture of the two.. enter two lots.. both say with a 50 point stop. One of the lots takes a profit at 2 x stoploss and the other lot is moved to breakeven should it reach 50 points or so and then I just run a trailing stop…  I don’t have the guts yet to go double my current lot size but this may eliminate the worst bits of both trading methods.

Anyway, here was the chart showing my entry and exit.

Tags: day trade, day trader, daytrade, daytrader, financial trader, gbpjpy, going long, makemesomemoney, spreadbet blog, spreadbetting blog, trader, Trading, trading blog

I just went long GBPJPY at 174.21 with a 50 pip stop loss and a 45 pip trailing stop.. the market has come off pretty strongly and I am expecting a countertrend bounce as the market seems to have found a temporary bottom between 173.60 and 174.00.. the over trend is down however so this is quite a risky trade. However, if the market does move up, I am expecting quite a handsome reward (that’s if I can hold onto the trade!)

Tags: day trade, day trader, daytrade, daytrader, financial trader, gbpjpy, going long, makemesomemoney, spreadbet blog, spreadbetting blog, trader, Trading, trading blog