Learning Trade Forex

-137 pips
-33%

From being up 28% for a month to down -33%.
I really have small amount of money in account now and I'm trading full leverage so big percentage swings doesn't mean much in a sense that's affecting me financially. There are changes that will follow in my trading and I welcome them.

P&L no change

I'm at exact dollar amount where I started the month. At least I can say that there were opportunities for me to trade that I was happy with. My trading, ups and downs, not so bad but not so good either.

Between blogs that I follow there are two that are inspirational for me lately so I want to share them:

The forexbird - forex scalping at it's best. I would really like to watch video of his scalping because charts are to static to show nuances of his work. Extremely tight on stops and fast in his reactions.

Bankrobber - momentum trading of stocks. Very simple trading by going in where momentum is in that moment but maybe the most profitable trader/blogger that I found. Plus great mental mind set which is explained in many posts. That kind of trading is closest to mine preferred trading. I'm a little bit jealous that I'm not capitalized enough to trade stocks that way because there are many more daily opportunities of that kind in stocks then there is in forex or future markets.

-132 pips
-40%


My trading is bad, really bad, market is difficult and I never remember so much bad results without positive days. Big percentage drop is because there is low amount of money in account and I don't want to trade with too small positions because it then wouldn't be realistic for me. After bad day at 14th I didn't want to blog about it. It's sometimes too difficult because there is nothing that I can say in my defense or to explain. There is feeling about being accountable in front of blogosphere and sometimes it's simply embarrassing to be open and show it all.


30.
Yesterday my first idea was valid, I was long into a breakout. It turned fake one and stop was ok price to pay for that opportunity. Trades after that one were me being stubborn and pressing that long side without much of an reason.
Later I caught nice trade in eur/usd, I just noticed the potential, executed and stop held and trade was nice winner. After I wanted to reverse but was afraid to do so. When it became obvious that I missed I wanted to go short again (usual thing when I miss, go in other direction to not miss again). Even that would be ok if I just used first opportunity where I got stopped with 2 pips. No, I started tilting and lost all that I previously won on that nice short trade.
-17 full size pips







29.
Market was at least moving which is rare lately. I had trades on every turning point in right direction. Didn't capitalize on that. It's difference with trading not to lose (which is obviously where I am) and trading to win. +1 full size pip


17.
Here on seventeenth I had experiment I wanted to see can I follow rules to the letter if I want to. Rules were sequence of ten trades, +6 pips or -6 pips, no managing trade after entry, pause of at least three minutes between trades. I didn't broke any rules. It was really different then usual trading. Got a bit stubborn in the middle. Seven negative and three positive trades gives net of four negative trades for -26 half size pips or -13 full size.




14.
This gambling was so bad that I couldn't publish it when it happened, it was too embarrassing. I stayed up most of the night starring at the chart. First part was bad but it was profitable and I continued. I could have easily lost all that I had in account. Market came back some fifty pips back from worst point. I just couldn't close it. Pure gambling and emotions in worst possible sense. One of top 5 low points in my trading experience.
-45 full size pips

+5 pips
+2.5 %

I like black.

-69 pips

-27 %

Depleted account so big percentage swings. I didn't have positive month since May last year if we don't count in December's +6 pips. It's interesting to me how I still have will to do it despite my results.

I had busy December at my work so I couldn't trade at all. I didn't even open my charts.

For December
+6 pips
+2%

Year
-17%

This year I made many subtractions from account as I promised myself last year. Total loss when everything is taken in account is -17%. In term of pips it's about -100 pips of a size that I use lately. So it's not that much but nevertheless it's a loss. I'm yet waiting for profitable year. It's a sad notion for now seven year trading career, although first three years before this blog were mainly trying out things with really nothing on the line in terms of risk.
Like Harvey says looking for consistency is now the main thing. So from that is coming the willpower to continue something like this that looks like losing proposition. Even though losing days hurt much more then we feel good on winning days, winning days give us hope that one day our p&l will be as good as of The forexbird.

This year I had experience of doubling my account from the low point around Spring. So now I know that it can be done with regular effort and not something special. At second half of the year which wasn't so good I pressed myself to trade with bigger positions to break out from range of comfort zone I had before. Also by trading full margin most of the time I wasn't able to average down which was my mountain high weakness before. With that I wish to continue in the future because if I give myself opportunity to average down, soon I will.

To all my readers I wish Merry Christmas and Happy New Year with peace in the mind and love in the hearth.

-30 pips

-10 %

-64 pips

-17 %

It will be better..

-45 pips

-10%

- 103 pips
- 19%

-97 pips ( -48 pips of size that I started month but only traded three days)
- 8 %

I started trading this month with bigger size, soon it all went down mainly because of that. If I count my trades in previous size which I traded the rest of this month my roller coaster ride was roughly this:
up 90
down 400
up 190
down 150
up 170


My recent trading is a mixed bag of very bad trading and good one. On some stuff I'm really proud and can see progress. Trading skill which looks to me satisfactory and promising for good results. On the other side there is my bad trading, or emotional trading. There things are as they were always. This is my current reality and I don't have any ideas but to carry forward. As I was brought to this moment by my trading experience I will continue to see what is next.

+253 pips

+25 %



Both good and bad trading this month. Result in the end is great but I had intraday drawdown that was bigger then that. Plan for future is again to increase size and deal with it. Also I have a plan on more active planing and managing my losing trades.

+103 pips

+10 %

I'm calling end of month little early. After big loss at the beginning of month with bigger size I took size back down and made around 250 pips run up. Now I want to settle down a bit and lose big swings mentality.

+242 pips

+32 %

-42 pips

-10 %

This are results with pip size that I started the month. After one trade a day experiment I decided to go back to my known way of trading. Sometimes averaging, sometimes adding to position with smaller size of the trades then before. When I think about bad results that are following me from end of last year, my conclusion is that everything would fall in it's place if I did cut size immediately.
Back then after few very good weeks I had one bad day where I lost discipline that I had. I didn't recover mentally since then. I continued to trade with larger size but without discipline and that was bad for my mental attitude. I didn't like swings in dollar terms against me and I didn't want to cut size because it would take longer to recover.

Now I'm trading with smaller size and more loose. It's natural and I shouldn't even try to enforce hard discipline with this size. When we go to bigger size again things will straighten, but first I need to trade my way to there.

-91 pips

-15 %

Results are far worse then they look like because in last 4 losing days of last 6 days of trading I managed to lose -189 pips. Maybe I need this kind of reset time when I'm totally fed up with trading and disconnected from it. Maybe next time I could reset myself without first having a blow up.

+147 pips

+23.5 %



Year
-22 %

I can scalp profitably, that's what I learned this year. I had few very good months doing that. There is no reason to jeopardize it with problematic trading, but I still do that. I guess it's a slow process.

In a meanwhile I got tired of my approach. Which was that I'm growing my account with compounding planing that in a few years that will give me real wealth. Well it's just my dream and reality is different. In reality after few positive weeks or months I non mistakenly lose all profits in a single day. All work is gone, profits are gone and my dream of compounding growth is back where it began. So I realized that is what's making problems for me. I'm not trading for profit, for present moment. I'm lost in some dreams and plans. I built myself golden calf of amount of money in my trading account and I'm worshiping it.
Now I'm abandoning that approach. Money at account is only margin which allows me to trade and profits are wired to my bank account. I need to get accustomed on earning money from trading. That is basic. In my head I had it all figured out, but things don't work that way, at least not for me. I need to put this in exact spot where it belongs, money making venture and not wealth building mechanism. Difference is slight but for me very important. Like we all know it's all up to psychology and for me this is where I was wrong.

All of that realisation came with thinking about that last big loss. When things settled, in my mind was only how much money I throw down the drain. I did earn them trading two months previous to that day, but it was money which I could use for some other stuff. It wasn't plastic chips or points score in some game. So I understood what foolish act was that from real world perspective disregarding pips and percentages. So I came to conclusion it's all foolish if I earn profits (money) then lose it, earn then lose. I'm not advancing in my get rich scheme. I'm just guilty of the sin of idolatry. It's pretty much bizarre that my worship idol was my trading account. So now I'm dethroning it considering it now just a margin for my positions. My profits are going to my bank account becoming cash that I can spend or save.
I expect from this change to finally earn some money from trading making that my new objective.

-37.5%

- 265 pips

I hate writing this up.

+183 pips

+21 %

Only first ten pips were with previously used size, from that point size was double the one before. So starting leverage for new size was around 12 times.

I'm more then satisfied with results because I didn't expect that high pips win with bigger size. I was mainly scalping and I was satisfied even with 4 pips wins, in the end it all add up. I didn't move from my emotional nature but I'm trying to prevent problems as much as I can. Great thing is that it's shown how only scalping can make very nice profitable month.

+240 pips

+17%

I had nice profitable month. I really need it after June blow up no matter how did I manage to achieve it. Now I can aim toward more reasonable trading that I think already started this week.
Plan is to aim for small number of pips with strict control of losses, no wiggling around. Also building size of positions if my results are positive and I behave totally disciplined. I can't trade larger amounts of money if I can't obey stops and risk parameters. So I turned toward scalping where years of screen time give me advantage.

I found quite an inspiration in blog that I recently came across. I read all posts of The forexbird and it's incredible how scalping works for him and how he became much more disciplined now then in the beginning of the blog.