So after the drubbing I got early in the year and the absolute despair it caused I have managed to pull things back and actually go better than ever. When the Corona virus hit and I thought work might stop it really hit home why I am doing trading as a plan b for my main business and that if it didn’t work I was in the s**t.

As it happens my work has carried on pretty much as normal, however, I really focused on trading. Sam has not been at work so that has enabled me to trade full time (something that always helps my results). I have been trading the European session and have felt that this has suited me, at least for the time being. I am still following the same markets and looking for the same patterns (123 and Ross Hook). Rather than taking every pattern that appears I am really trying to be selective and picking the best. I think this has shown in my performance.

I knew I was going to be close to my 5% target this month and wasn’t sure if I would actually hit it….I was close….4.4%. This is the best I’ve ever done. Hopefully it carries on into next month and I can build on what I have achieved in March. One day at a time and stay focused.

So I didn’t write an update at the end of December as I’d hardly traded and so I was going to do an update at the end of January, but then things (trading) took a drop for the worse. Everything I touched failed…..they didn’t even move enough to get interesting. I was very low because as a beginner it’s hard not to be.

Apart from one trade where I walked out and left it to fail on its own, I did keep my discipline and kept trying to do everything the same. Things have turned around a bit this month, not in a massive way but enough to give me a bit of confidence back. I was also able to trade a whole week full time (while the schools were off) and that produced the best results. I am mixing more of trading the European session with doing the US session that I was doing before. I actually sort of prefer the morning session, but will see over a longer period of time how it develops.

Anyways so only doing a short one this time. Hopefully can continue to build on this month in March and will update then….good or bad!

Had a really positive month after I started intraday trading the US session in the afternoon/evening. Unfortunately I have left it too late and only had 2 weeks to do it before my partner finishes maternity leave and goes back to work leaving me with the school run to do and baby to look after. This is a good thing. I am lucky to be able to look after and spend time with the kids like this, but it does mean I can’t trade intraday apart from one day a week.

I have been trading all the major currency pairs, the major indices and gold and oil. I liked the commodities and indices as these tended to have very quick moves and you weren’t sitting on a trade for very long. I settled into a nice routine for my trading day and was getting a feel for the markets and how they behaved and where they might head once they had reached a certain point. I was only trading the 15 minute charts and was only looking for 123 patterns (although I did do the odd pin bar and key day reversal candle). I found that I was really only looking for the reversal of a trend (when I tried joining trends I invariably lost).

When I started I sort of went back to being a beginner trader with the emotions that come with that and the resultant rash decisions….for example you would be in a trade and watching price and when it started going towards your entry point panic set in and the trade was closed for only a tiny profit..only for the price to then reverse and hit your original target but too late. This happened a lot but in the second week I was able to overcome this and trust myself and let the trades run and hit target which, surprisingly was quite often.

I was using the Fib levels for my targeting. I went for the 261% level and this was usually hit, however, I did notice that price quite often went on to hit the 423% level and this would have given me a much better rate of return. Had I been able to continue trading I would have started to set this as the target.

Up until now I have only been trading the daily and 4 hour charts but I just felt at home with the 15 min charts and, like I say, I settled into a routine and with a feel for the markets and what they were doing and how they interacted with each other in terms of price action. When I do it full time I will definitely need to invest in a more comfortable seat though!!

Will see how the next few weeks go and report back next month.

This month has been dominated by 15 minute charts and a holiday. I started to trade intraday on the 15 minute charts from about the second week in October. I did a whole week, excluding Friday and then had to break off for 10 days for a holiday. I managed to get a couple of days trading in after the holiday.

I have been focusing on 123 pattern reversals and although some of my entries have been less than ideal I have done quite well, helped with a bit of luck. I have had a positive month and have finished up with plus numbers for pips gained and money earned. I have set aside next week to again trade the 15 minute charts on the American session and will see if my luck will continue. If it does then things might be moving forward finally. Not sure whether I will still trade minimum stake next week or up the risk a bit.

I knew, coming into this month, I was on the back foot following my mistake in August. It set me back mentally but gradually in September I overcame this and got back to work. Did a couple of trades mid-month that didn’t work out.

For the latter part of the month I have re-doubled my efforts to start intraday trading. I got a new laptop to use solely for those trades and opened a new spread betting account with ActivTrades for this purpose also. I refreshed my knowledge by going back over the slides of courses that I have done and have started looking at the charts to “get my eye in” without actually doing anything. I am optimistic but will see what happens when I start doing it for real. My biggest problem will be fitting in trading with children and other work but I’m confident I can at least do two days a week uninterrupted.

So not much to report. October here I come…

What can I say…sometimes in trading it is not the markets which get you it is your own self. Making poor decisions can be very costly. If you make a judgement on where you think price will go based on chart pattern etc and then it doesn’t go right and you get stopped out, as long as your decision making was correct and your entry was properly done then it is not your fault, the market just didn’t play ball.

But when you have a black and white rule where there is no grey area for debate and there is only one answer to the question and you ignore what you know you have to do and do the opposite then the only person to blame is yourself. I have turned what could have been a good month into one that has kicked me in the bo**ocks. My rule for trading is don’t trade if there is high importance news out for that currency. If a trade is open then I may move the stop to break even. If there is a global news event which effects all currencies then I close the trade, no ifs no buts. However, I had been farming 4 trades on  the eur/chf, usd/chf, nzd/jpy and nzd/chf. Some were doing well and I had added on (particularly the usd/chf) others were waiting to get started but were ok. On the morning of Friday 23rd August I saw there was news out that was going to impact across the board. I think in my inexperienced enthusiasm that I was actually having some success I didn’t want to close the trades and so left them open. Worst still I went away for 4 days so didn’t return until Monday evening and didn’t check any charts in the meantime. BIG MISTAKE! I came back to all having been taken out (one for break even) due to comments made during the G7 summit.

I am gutted because it was non-negotiable, I should have just closed the trades and had I done that I would have been up 4.8% and finished the month 3.8% overall. A great result that would have meant I went into September on the front foot and was planning (if September went well) to up my account in October. However, I have now finished the month 4.5% down and have had to delay any decision to up the account by at least two months.

Lets hope the blog for next month is more upbeat 🙂

 

euraud 4 hour chart

Above is a link to the 4 hour chart showing the EUR/AUD trade that was running from last month. The red arrow shows my entry and the E is where it got stopped out following a 123 pattern reversal and a move up. Since then it has come back down but I didn’t know that at the time so had moved my stop to just above a pull back to protect profits.

This month has been good and I feel back on track after the lows of June. I have been continuing with the mechanical trade exercise that my mentor has told me to do. They are not done for profit as after a year they may just break even, but it is getting me used to placing a trade on a break of high or low on a short time frame and leaving it to do its own thing…either succeed or fail. A lot fail and this helps you get used to losing trades and in particular blocks of losing trades. These have scewed my results for the month but my mentor has said to disregard them from my totals, so by not taking them into account I have made 3.6% this month. Better than a poke in the eye and definitely better than bank rates.

Apart from the EUR/AUD trade closing in this month I placed very few normal trades. One was on the GBP/CHF and was a key day reversal candle in an order block. It got stopped out. Another I opened on the GBP/JPY also due to a KDR. This one I closed early taking just under 1R. I closed it early as price failed to push above the 20ma on the daily and looked to be stalling. Since I closed it price has closed below the 20 and 50MA on the 4 hour chart and is also looking negative on the daily. Will see how it pans out. Was I right or wrong to close early….we’ll see.

Another positive month for performance and net pips gained and money as well. A holiday in August will halve my trading time but I have set an order today on the EUR/CHF following a reversal pattern on the daily chart. I will let this run if it gets triggered and manage it while I’m away.

In the first two thirds of this month I was really depressed about my trading performance. Normally I make mistakes and say to myself that you are learning all the time and that it will come, just be patient. Every mistake learnt from is another step towards consistency. However, this month I just really thought I was never going to get this and that it’s one thing knowing the theory but if you can’t walk the walk then it will never work. I hit rock bottom and, although I won’t give up, the thought did enter my mind of what will I do if I can’t do this?

The minus on my cumulative points balance was in front of an ever increasing number. Even the trades that did work didn’t stem the flow downwards.

My mum went into hospital so I didn’t trade that week . The following week I got back into my routine and two lovely Key Reversal candles formed on the eur/nzd and the eur/aud (both on the daily chart). This was my opportunity to enter a nice risk/reward trade and hopefully place my first add -on trades as well if the market moved enough.

For the last 9 days I have been in these trades and have watched the Euro fall nicely against the two comdolls. Although I entered the trades on the daily I monitored them using the 4 hour chart and when both pairs pulled back nicely I set orders to trade the break of the Ross hook (I was being cautious so went for the break rather than further up the pull back).

The eur/nzd trade hit its 2R target today plus the add-on trade so that made a nice bonus and it also helped me secure the best net points gain at the end of the month….ever! The other trade has a 3R target and is still ongoing.

What a good feeling to know that I have put practice and learning into action and pulled it off. So the next time I feel really down I just need to look back at that trade and have belief in myself. I WILL come through all the hard testing times to be a consistent trader.

Busy month…I have followed the advice of my trading coach and have been doing a mechanical trade on the gbp/usd and eur/usd pairs. Each morning at 7am I have been placing an order to buy or sell the break of the 6am candle on the one hour chart. Whichever one triggers first cancels the other order for that pair. This has been good practice at filling out orders quickly (I am used to working off much longer time frames) and has also shown me some other ways to use my trading platform that I hadn’t known before.

Apart from that I have placed a few of my usual trades but haven’t finished up for the month.

I am a fear based trader, but I let that get to extremes and wait and wait and wait once price breaks out of a particular area, for a trend to appear. The problem is, that trend appears and I am so late getting into it I am invariably scrapping around at the tail end just as it is petering out rather than getting in early and riding it down. I have worked on that with my mentor on Thursday and feel much more confident I will address that going forward. When you are new, however, it is hard to trust your judgement because you haven’t built up a library of previous experience to call on.

This month I placed the worst trade I have ever done. It was an inside bar to nothing, it looked horrible at the time and still looks horrible every time I look at it. Needless to say the trade got stopped out. It is one to look back on and laugh….I don’t know what I was thinking!!

Anyway, looking forward to next month. I will try to enter trends earlier and definitely only use inside bars when I should do. Happy trading.

Nearly managed to string two positive months together. In a way I have because I have been managing my trades much better and have been trying new entries etc but I have still finished down slightly. As of last night I thought I was going to smash it but this morning trades turned round and where I had moved stops because of news out for the USD, for example, these were then hit but my original position would have been still open.

I placed 6 trades this month, 50/50 trend following and reversals. They mostly involved the USD and in fact two trades were on the USD/JPY when my original entry on a KDR was stopped out and I then went back in on a pin bar (this is something I have only done as I have gained confidence and trust in my ability) and is why despite the lack of positive pip accumulation I can be positive about other aspects of the month.

Yesterday I entered my first trade based on a 123 pattern on the EUR/JPY on the 4 hour chart. I am waiting for my mentor to actually confirm it was a valid 123 pattern but for now I am going to call it that. It really moved nicely up yesterday but overnight and today has fallen back towards my entry. I am leaving it open to see what happens although I rather suspect the pin bar that formed yesterday might be suggesting price isn’t ready to go up.

Another first was the entry on the EUR/USD this morning on the 5 minute chart to catch the early move of the day. It nearly worked today and I will be continuing to do this everyday going forward and also on the GBP/USD using a fixed method of entry.

Hopefully I can build on the last two months and fingers crossed next month will be as good if not better. I am really starting to notice a difference in how I am approaching things and I am also in touch with the markets much more now I am able to check them during the day more, since I have stopped working in London.

Good luck everyone.