April 2008. results

+232 pips

+10%

This is my best month in pips won ever. Also I got 232 full size pips and I traded most of my trades with half size so it's even bigger overall pip gain. For my trading until today this is monster pip gain in month. My size of trades is down also so it's not that much in percentage gain.

It all came with accepting scalping as my main theme of trading. Accepting that it's ok to scalp, to gain small and to leave many potential pips on the table by cutting gains early. Yes, I know that it's against all principles of let your winners ride and cut your losers quickly. I found out that bigger importance than universal principles on trading performance have individual psychological makeup of trader. So for me this works.
I'm trading too many years now the same way and getting the same results. I aim for big profits, ride the winners, load them up and win. I never do that. On the other hand I average down, load losers and when I'm lucky exit at b/e + single digit pip gain. When I'm unlucky I lose 10 times more than I expect to.
So now I just want small winners cut them fast and add them up one by one. I still have big picture in my head and I see the potential of big win. That helps me to enter the trade but in the end I exit in scalp mode.

Trading with half size helped me the most this month. I was relaxed and could clearly see what is happening. When to get out, when to ride out the bumps. It's psychological help. When I see open loss of about 8 pips it's nothing because it's just 4 full size pips. If on the other hand I have 8 full size pips in the red I'm all messed up I do crazy things and trade bad. When I have profit I wait more with half size and in the end I get decent profit. With full size I take out 5-8 pips and I'm happy and it's too low. So leverage is important thing. I will see how will things work out when I put up the leverage again. Maybe it's dollar based thing that I'm relaxed with this size, I don't know yet.

My basic premise this month was that it's enough to gain about 50 pips a week to have 200 pips month and it's 10%-20% based on leverage. For my style of trading it's absolutely enough in pip gain. I don't trade few hundred pips a month, I don't trade long term. My trades don't last even an hour they are few minutes trades. So than I can just take small gain in the day of 10-20 pips and it's all I need.
Trading wears me down, because I watch every tick. So for me it's better to do my thing as fast as I can and just quit for the day. I don't have concentration or mental energy to trade many trades with same clearness. So than it's better to just don't trade any more even if there are better opportunities later. Better opportunities can't help me if there isn't fresh trader to trade them. So I'm not scalper in full sense of the word because I can't trade dozens of round trips in a day.

Now it's to see how will I trade next month. I had good months before but consistency is more important.