Wednesday, August 02, 2006

End of month Trading results

The month produced excellent returns again, with a final profit of 31%. This has been my best month to date. After having a great start to the month. I decided to experiment for the rest of the month with some Heiken Ashi studying.

Hieken Ashi are modified Japanese candlesticks, and most trading platforms allow you to select these as your preferred technical indicator. Whilst they look very impressive and pretty, I really haven’t had much luck with them as my primary indicator. Basically you ‘sell’ when they are red, and buy when they are white. But, I had so many false signals with them, that I’ve abandoned them for now while I search for more detailed information on how to use them correctly. I know that a lot of successful traders use Heiken Ashi almost exclusively as their prime indicator. Obviously they know something I don’t – at the moment at least. There are a couple of trading courses around that teach and use H.A. so maybe I’ll try one of those. I’ll keep you posted.

This last month, it was indeed fortunate that I decided not to trade. The escalating conflict between Israel and Lebanon no doubt caught a lot of people off guard as the prices swung this way and that. Technical indicators were nearly useless in this situation, and trading the news was pointless when the news coming from that region was changing hourly. In my opinion, unless you can be glued to the screen in this scenario – it’s best to stand aside.

For those news traders out there, Thursday and Friday are going to be busy with ECB,BOE rate decision on Thursday and Non Farm Payroll data on Friday

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  • Sunday, July 09, 2006

    Box technique on eurusd and gbpusd.

    Below are two trades from this past week on the pairs mentioned above. Using a technique I have mentioned before a ‘Box’ or ‘Channel’ technique. This is particularly useful for a sideways trending market. As there was a mixed week on the markets, due to the 4th July break in the US, the likely action was probably due to take place on the Thursday and Friday sessions. This was because of news releases on Thursday and Friday.
    We see the currency pair bouncing sideways and place a buy stop above (30Pips) and a sell stop below (30 Pips) This 30 pip range is to allow for some movement – but it will hopefully catch a large swing. My stop losses are placed at the current price position. In addition to this we place a trailing stop loss at about 15-20 pips.
    Our first trade is not that exciting the EURUSD bounces up through our buy stop and the gets stopped out buy the TSL.
    Still, profit is better than loss and we’ll take it!

    Our second two trades on Friday are far more interesting for two very different reasons. I place two box trades on the EURUSD and the GBPUSD exactly as described above. This was done the night before the impending news release, as for me it was the middle of the night when the release would happen.


    When I awoke I see the EURUSD trade is nowhere to be seen on my terminal. I examine the trade and see it stopped out for a small loss – despite the price action never touching my stops!

    This was extremely annoying! Especially as my GBPUSD trade was 140 Pips in profit.
    Entry........
    Exit.........


    So instead of having my two trades in profit by a total of nearly 300 pips, I have a total of around a hundred and twenty. I end the week up around 180 in profit. Some people claim that brokers will go “Stop Hunting”. That is triggering stops before they are reached. I have never experienced it myself, but am now doubly sure I shall be looking for a mix of brokers to handle my trades.

    However, considering I traded only two days I'm happy to be handsomly in profit.

    That's all for now. Best of luck
    Cash
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  • Monday, July 03, 2006

    End of Month round up

    The end of the month profit for June was 19.3%

    Very happy with that. This was despite missing the big movement last Thursday due to a non existent internet connection.

    Refining the strategy little by little, and think the next move is diversification into different brokers. Probably four brokers in total.

    This is to keep the size of the account with each broker manageable in both lot size and in money terms. I've noticed a delay in orders being filled and am going to experiment with multiple accounts for a while.

    The pivot strategy seems to be working very well and I'll continue to tweek it the coming month.

    Good Fortune
    Cash
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  • Wednesday, June 21, 2006

    Multiple trades on USDCHF using pivots and candlesticks

    Today’s post displays a multiple trade on the USDCHF this week. As well as a nice trade on the EURUSD. First the USDCHF.
    In the first screen capture, we see a shooting star at the top of a previous climb. Normally these are a no-brainer but, as it’s early in the week, our pivots aren’t yet accurately displaying support and resistance. We wait for confirmation of the fall/reversal. A series of spinning tops and other candlesticks indicating lack of clear direction tells us to hold our position. Another shooting star, and a subsequent bearish candlestick prompts our entry. Our trade is not as dramatic as we hoped and our TSL is triggered, but still giving us a nice profit.
    The following day another shooting star appears. This one much stronger, and now our pivot points are giving us a little more help. A brief touch of a resistance line coupled with such a strong shooting star prompts me to enter a ‘sell’ order. The trade falls to the pivot and we exit as there is no clear break through.

    Watching the pair retrace the fall upwards, we notice another reversal at the resistance (yellow line) – essentially another shooting star - and enter another sell order.

    This time the fall is much more dramatic (52 pips) after a falter at the main pivot, our trade crashes through and heads down towards the next point of support – Blue line. Carrying on going, it finally starts to retrace at the yellow support – prompting us to close out.

    This series of trades shows us the impoertance of following the currency pairs closely. After a while one can get a 'feel' for the action going on beneath the chart activity.

    In another trade this week on the EURUSD we see a clear resistance after a sustained climb at our pivot point.

    After a few heartstopping moments we see the trade dramatically fall in our favour.

    This time instead of using my usual 15Pip TSL, I opt for a heavier margin of 25Pips TSL. This is eventually triggered - but not before we have bagged a nice bunch of pips.
    With practice and daily chart analysis, this really can become second nature.
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  • Saturday, June 17, 2006

    A Volatile week comes to a close

    Very little trading done this week. Those of you following the markets this week will have noticed the charts varying wildly from one moment to the next. Each day seemed to bring ever more random and extreme variations in the currency pairs. Of course this was due to the multitude of news releases issued during the course of the week. As I have mentioned before, I don’t usually trade the news. I normally sit and wait out any volatility during the newsbreak until the markets are again giving me some clear indication of direction. But, this week the markets never seemed to settle. The result this week was that I didn’t trade a single day with the exception of Friday, when I traded a brief eur/usd bounce See pics below.

    There are people who do nothing but trade the news. If you are so inclined there is a course called MMTS forex trading system, which can help with timing trades during news releases. They have two main systems, one is the "London open system". They claim it is useable on any currency pair. As the name suggests it uses the news releases on the London session in conjuntion with mathematics to work out entry and exit strategies.

    Lets hope the coming week brings some clarity and stability.

    Here's the eur/usd trade.
    Noticed a possible support forming at our yellow line, seeing a bullish candle forming, I entered a buy order. (notice how the slippage puts my order much higher than normal) I enter an automatic take profit at the blue line above, which I guess is the next point of resistance.
    I get admittedly a little lucky and our trade touches our closeout price. But, I'll take it!

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  • Thursday, June 08, 2006

    The Emotional Side Of Trading

    Hi Everyone,

    I thought I would post concerning not, as you would expect, winning trades – but losing trades.

    I had entered two positions on USDJPY and GBPUSD my reasons for entry were pivots as usual. I expected the trades to proceed up and down accordingly - and they did. But, that particular day I had had a spectacular argument with my other half, and when I looked before retiring for the night I saw that the combined profit for the two trades was at roughly 48 pips - Great!
    However, being a little tired from the day’s aforementioned spat, I declined to put in place my usual 15 pip TSL and went to bed. On awakening I saw both trades had disappeared from my terminal! Which meant that they had both reversed and passed through my 30 pip stop-loss. Further investigation revealed that both trades had been mightily in profit before the reversal took place. I had in trading parlance "Turned my winners into losers."

    There is an important lesson to be learnt here. Whatever happens, stick to your rules. ALWAYS put your TSL or TP in place – in fact if possible don’t leave trades open through the night AT ALL! (But certainly not without the TSL)

    This illustrates what in my opinion is the main difficulty in trading the forex market. It is not that the technical analysis skills are hard to aquire (they are quite easy to grasp) It is the emotional side of trading that is the hardest to master. Trading, after a while, should become second nature. The signs are often clear, the direction obvious - and yet we still fail to act accordingly. We must control our emotions - not just our greed.

    On the bright side – I am back to my winning ways. Examples of two 20+ pip winners earlier in the week. See the trades below.

    As you can see from the image above, our pair had been testing a pivot resistance point. After three failed attempts to break through, I entered a sell order.

    Our trade dips nicely as predicted and we bag 20+ pips after a bearish candlestick prompts our closeout.

    Our GBPUSD pair looks as if it is reversing a short fall as a series of reversal candlesticks appear.

    A clear point of support is forming at the red pivot and we enter a short term buy. The trade progresses nicely but stalls aroung the next resistance (blue line) we close out again for 20+pips.

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  • Wednesday, May 31, 2006

    USDCAD trade. Month end profit.

    Noticed an engulfing bullish candlestick forming at 1.0940 on the usdcad (thought I'd taken a screenshot - but can't find it!) . If you look on the chart above, which is actually taken after my exit., you'll see a bullish candle open lower than the bearish close but then start to 'overtake' the open of the previos candle. A true engulfing candle would have opened lower but then closed higher than the previous open - which this did not.

    However fortune, in this case, favored the brave and I was rewarded with a 34pip gain eventually cashing out when the spinning top appeared at the far right of the image.

    This months results are a total of 17.5% profit for the month of May. I'm very pleased with this and shall continue to refine the strategy I'm using at the moment. I am however going to open a demo account on another platform to test out some other trading strategies. I shall of course keep everyone informed.

    Good Fortune - Cash

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