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

Well, the US market is closed today and I’m still on the live account.. phew! As there’s not much trading, I thought I’d spend some time doing research. As you know, I also look at Forex and I found a forum with a whole heap of free trading systems:

http://forexfactory.com/forumdisplay.php?f=71

In addition,  a lot of people use the Metatrader platform which is great in that you can add what are called Expert Advisors which are essentially automated trading systems.. they open and close positions for you automatically… you do need to keep the platform open though for it to do this. I wrote a post about this yonks ago, the post is here (if you’re interested)

http://makemesomemoney.co.uk/2007/08/24/make-money-while-you-sleep-with-automated-trading-part-2/ 

Also, as mentioned in the post there are some available to buy which plugin to Metatrader, these include:

Prophet1 Expert Advisor - claims to generate over 90% profitable trades
KISSfutures - claims to average +176 pips per month with little drawdown
Forex Ghost – claims to be 96% accurate

Tags: daytrade, expert advisor, forex, forex ghost, free, free trading, freebie, kissfutures, metatrader, money, pips, profit, prophet1, quant, Trading, trading system, trading systems

I was anticipating my first entry at around 19:00 GMT when the market was bouncing up. I was hoping for an entry at around 142500 (or just below) as this was the 5 day MA. I was a bit cautious and wanted to wait for this level as the stochastics were already in the oversold region. However, the bounce only made it to 142400 before dropping and therefore no entry this time.The 15 min chart is showing a short for both MACD and stochastics.

I will see if there is another chance for entry… the chart is strongly moving south, there may not be a safe one.

First trade was a short at 141900 with a target of 141525 but I was aware that it wasn’t the perfect entry so as soon as it had moved a bit, I moved the stop to entry…. Shame as it would have made target if I hadn’t moved the stop! This ended up as a scratch trade.

Second trade was a countertrend play, I went long at 141900. However, resistance was close so I had my finger on the button to close it when it looked like it wanted to turn. As it hit the 5 day MA in the 4 mins, I took profit at 142100 for +9.

Third trade was a short off the 5 day MA but in the right direction at 141975. I was a bit unsure of the indicators (they were contradicting the price action) and took profit manually at 141775. It would have made my target at 141525 if I had held. 

Made +18 today which is nice. Could have been more if I was disciplined enough to hold the last trade.

 (click for enlarged picture)

Tags: daytrade, daytrading, discipline, emini, eminis, futures, going live, live trading, profit, psychology, tca futures, Trading, trading academy, trading discipline, trading psychology