Battlefield

Lot's of scalp trades. I would like to pinpoint second and third. On second I immediately felt trapped hitting short at the bottom. So I exit it and reversed direction because of that feeling, if I felt it everybody in my position did also, so I ride on their covering.

5, -5, 7, 0, -1, 3, 9, 6, pips
or
0.25, -0.25, 0.35, 0, 0, 0.15, 0.45, 0.3 R


24 pips, 1.2R

Two trades today

First in eur/usd after broken 8.00am low time was for push through low below that one. I was angry because I didn't take 8 pips after 1min, so I took quickly profit when I had it again.
12 pips 0.6R.

In gbp/usd I missed nice short opportunity at 4200. Trade was when price started to fall below morning low. I was looking for surge down but I didn't get it.
6pips 0.3R

Today 18 pips 0.9R

January 2009. results

-209 pips
-21 %

What can I say? Maybe blow ups will be behind me someday.

Heat in the start

Not so nice trades, I would say hard ones because there was pain in the start of the trades. I was right so I made a profit, but I didn't want to take a loss if things didn't go my way. It's hard for me to judge should I stay or should I go :D when things don't go in my direction immediately. First one I shorted because gbp/jpy on third chart didn't look promising for going up. I got 0.7R on that one.
Later in eur/usd 0.9R win, I shorted because I expected that stop levels circled on 5min chart will be cleaned.

I'm not a trend trader yet. Before I was just reversal trader, now I'm also "break out in the direction of the trend" kind of trader. It would be much easier if I could trend trade but I'm not on that level yet. But for now it always was profitable to stay in my niche of competence. If I look at my new monthly target of 5R it's enough for achieving it and avoid trouble.
+16 full size pips

There were two very nice posts lately from bloggers that I read, so check them out if you missed them.


Proprietary Trader

Boogster

1R

I'm glad that I got exactly 1R on this trade. I don't remember when did I last time see green dot on my screen. It means that I was waiting until the target was hit. It was tempting to get out before it. I was thinking "what if it comes back and you are just 5 pips until the target". If it was the other side I'm sure I wouldn't get out 5 pips before stop is met. I would want then to move it for 5 pips. Well I got to commit to trading as correct as I can. Trade was about 1/3 of full size with 30 pips R.
I was thinking about some changes that I want to implement. First of all I will cut down my goals. They will be on small enough level 5R/month so I can take all the stops and still be able to meet my target. This 5R/month if I succeed, with elevating position size from month to month, will be good enough for yearly goal that I'm happy with. If I isolate my blow up/avoiding stop problems on trading related stuff thing is in too big goal. I wanted so much profit that I couldn't get it if I take the stops. Pure greed and frustration. If I take myself back to the ground I can agree that 5R would be enough and that I don't need to go for the moon. To put things in relation to before 5R will be as 50 full size pips before. There absolutely isn't guarantee how will my trading go with this new setup but that is step that I'm willing to take.
Also I will stop talking about full size, half size from next month and I will put initial R amounts for each trade, winner or loser.
+10 full size pips

Guess what?

I had another of my famous blow up days. Last one was three months ago, before that in August. This is still learning that trading as a business is consisted of profitable and losing trades. On the other hand trading as a gambling is consisted of winning trades and denying of taking a loss. I could see it last couple of days and I shrug it off. For me obviously big losses are only thing when I say stop and try to learn something.

This time I'm emotionally absolutely fine. I'm little out of balance, but I don't have suicidal thoughts regarding my trading career. I really don't want to dwell on details of it. Because I know myself I don't keep so much money in account, now about three monthly checks from my day job. Yesterday shaved quarter of that. Let's say that I was on trading seminar yesterday, so I hope that I learned something and that money spent will do me good in the future.

Now I have to concentrate on taking losses. I got to learn that. It's not important how will my trading go, how unprofitable it will be. I need to integrate part of taking of a loss as my second nature. Maybe I'm trying to match up with my blogosphere friends (I don't mean only you who comment here, but everyone) too hard. Maybe I need to take my learning and progress more slowly and not expect so much from me. I'm simply trying to jump steps and that can't be done.
So now I'm pretty much positive about it all because I got direction. I can't face problems until something radical hit me. Now it is and I find calm in it.