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

I was doing pretty well of late but my trading seems to have suffered a turn for the worse of late. I know that I am entering trades when I shouldn’t be.. they are like gambles. My short of the GBPUSD at 16263 was premature. The trend was clearly upwards but I was seeing a slowdown in the rate of progress the market was heading upwards.. it has powered uphill rather rapidly and I was expecting the market to subsequently move down before a continue journey upwards. Countertrend trading as this is called is risky as you never know when the countertrend will turn.. if indeed it does counter… which is doesn’t look like doing right now.

Sure, upwards momentum has indeed slowed but this doesn’t mean it’s going to fall. The money is on the uptrend but I have committed myself and will ride the trade to completion.. my stop is at 16300 which is probably too tight.. it should be about 10 pips above this but I am not prepared to put more money towards a bad trade.

The other bad trading habit is not being patient when awaiting an entry… I have come home from work and want a gamble… this is the road to ruin. I don’t think the trade is giong to work out today (however, you never know with the markets). I will take the hit on the chin and learn from my mistake… loss of money is a good motivator…

Tags: bad trading, day trade, daytrading, forex, gbpusd, Spreadbetting, trading habits, trading loss, trading losses

Another winning trade today…

I saw momentum towards the downside had dwindled and the market looked like it would make some movement upwards. I went long at 14622 with a stop at 14585 and a target of 14660.

Soon after my trade, the market went south and I was beginning to think it could go wrong and move towards the first support area at 14600 and if this failed, the 14575 level. My stop was at 14585 as I didn’t want to take the loss or risk below the 14600 line.

My target was 14660 and when the market bounced upwards towards it, I got a bit edgy at 14650 and took profits for 28 points.

It looks like that was a good short term trade as the market fell away from this level as you can see and is now at 14627 as I write.

Lately, I’ve been able to get out at the short term top/bottom.. I’m not sure if it’s intuition through working with the markets or what. I know it’s early days but so far, I’ve had a positive trade every day since I went back to my spreadbetting account.

Tags: currency trading, forex, gbpusd, pound dollar, spreadbet, Spreadbetting