August 2011. results

+165 pips

+64 %

From longer term trades to trading drunk in the middle of the night, then some good scalping to bad trading and gambling. Interesting August.

Gambling

Yesterday I was telling myself that it's enough of drama. But I'm probably lying to myself. Today it was all about excitement and tension again. First I was at -43 pips with unsuccessful trades and then I covered that and earned big when gamble payed off.

+49 pips

Bad day

Locked in in my mind patterns and emotions. Recovered third of a loss in the end. Just three positive trades today show desperation that I was in. Totally lost.

It's hard to break out of the cycle when you are in the middle of it. Later I can only look at the chart in wonder.

-61 pips

Forex brokers spread comparison

I've had valid comment and question from PRD trader about brokers on last post. I answered that Oanda can't be beat in spread for small trader. Then I realized that it was true before but is it now? So I look around and found nice web aplication by FX Intelligence for live spread comparison for various forex brokers.

On first view Oanda looks totally uncompetitive. But you need to get little deeper to see is that so. For example MB trading that is known broker (at least for me) have spread plus two way routing fee. It's great for someone that uses limit orders, preferably on in and out of position because you get paid back on limit orders and you lower your cost. I do not, so Oanda is still better. Then I decided to check FXOpen that had very competitive spread in comparison table. But on their site they state that spread is fixed to 2 pips on eur/usd. And guess what I read something there that induced me to write this post. It states: "Scalping With limitations. (1) Stop Loss, Take Profit and Pending Orders 10 pips or more away from the current price; 2) Most of the trades must be open for more than 1 minute".
No comment needed.

In comparison with big forex brokers like FXCM and Forex.com Oanda have best spread. In last 12 days average for normal hours 1.3 vs. 2.2 or 2.8.

At the end of my investigation I found out that you can chose to show data with commission included on that site. Then Oanda is around the top of the list even if spread now in Europe morning is 1.4 pips. Some other brokers have spread higher then 4, 5 or 6 pips. Go figure.
While I wrote this post spread came to 1.1 pips and Oanda is at the top if we exclude Alpari Direct with Currenex, that is certainly not broker for me.

So conclusion is that I'm pleased with Oanda from the first day and that I'm grateful that there is broker like that. I can scalp, spread is tight, I like their charts, they are fair and transparent.

Two part session

I missed initial morning run up and movements slowed down. Trading in range didn't gave good results because I was hoping for continuation of the move up. After some time I quit trading with small loss of around eight pips for a day.
My charts were open and sudden sell of started. I really didn't have any idea what was going on. After my entry I realized that Oanda widened spread from 1.2 to 5 pips but market continued down and spread came to normal. I was thinking that maybe this is start of some major thing but selling dried off. Some more classic scalping for another push down and it all gave nice profit for a day.

Later I read at 4CAST News: "A US investment house has been a good seller of EUR/USD in the last hour or so, taking out Russian and Middle East buying reported first thing."
It's interesting how marked sometimes can be moved fifty pips by one entity selling.

+27 pips

Good day again

Again I had ideas what will happen and I based my key profitable trades on them. With small stop loss I had to be careful to pick valid spot for entry. There were frustrations also like clumsy entries after 10:17 exit. Also those stops from 10:35 to 10:40. My idea for possible target for previous short was around 430 but I closed it earlier based on price behavior. Now I was buying too early because I was impatient and giving back half of gained profit to that point.
All in all I'm pleased with my performance. I like that I have some idea of market structure and trade with that in mind. Not just blindly following price. It gives me certain confidence to enter trades. Of course that I have to pick good entry spots, because it's extra easy to get stopped anywhere based on how price is behaving lately.

+45 pips

Good day

Very good day. But I must admit that I have many bad exits, entries are good and many exits are suboptimal. Like first, third, fifth.
After bad news for eur at 11:00 I had idea that it will nevertheless go up. I had problems with getting in and risked on third trade all gain so far. Luckily market picked up and made nice run of twenty pips. Now my story was confirmed so I banked another twenty pip gain after push over previous highs. Two more tries for clearing 500 level but that didn't happen and that was it.

+43 pips

Small loss session

First trade was a try to pick some small top it got stopped. Following few trades were just my reaction trades to having a loss on previous trade. Those are impulsive trades that I need to stop doing.
-10 pips

Two trades

Very high spread of 2.7 pips. I gave second trade a chance for downside after nice spike catch but nothing happened.

+1 pips

Giving back

Not really trading but mindless gambling without a plan or idea what and why I'm doing.
-46 pips

Downgrade

I had to play this downgrade story with small account and vacation vibe when Oanda enables opening positions over the weekend. I didn't go full margin in even though I thought about it. If I learned one thing about this longer term trading it's to take profit when you have it. In scalping full margin size of eur/usd which I usually trade it's 87 pips win.

+87 pips

Longer term trades

I was entertaining myself this week with some longer term trades. I wanted to go long usd/jpy over the weekend expecting gap up that happened playing that debt circus but I simply forgot to put trade in. Then I decided that it will probably go up some more so I put trade in with a stop bellow lows. It got close to t/p level over the night but didn't reach it (marked yellow). Then I managed to lose all profit. I surely don't understand those bigger time frames that well and how should I behave on them.
Those other trades was me trying to pick out some extended spikes, I couldn't believe that it's getting that low without some kind of intervention. My last trade got taken up by some kind of intervention spike (or whatever it was). I expected much higher move, so I closed later when buying stalled and shorting came.

It was very interesting for me getting up in the middle of night to check what's going with a trade. It probably isn't for me because firstly I don't understand price on higher time frames and secondly I'm too nervous about a trade and what should I do with it.

In newly found enthusiasm over longer term trading I decided to play something exotic and I really found extremely bad place to initiate long in eur/nok. Then again I had to try it again with second trade and make another small loss.

This longer term trading is hard on my scalping biased brain. Idea about long usd/jpy was good but everything else was poor in one way or another. In the end I made some small profit after taking big losses first (small account size now). If I put it in terms of my usual scalp size it's around thirty pips.

+30 pips