weekly trading update

a reasonable week – 204 pips. It started out dull, nothing to really trade monday and tuesday, but the signals came good wednesday. I entered on the cable and the euro$ and suffered big reversals (note to self: if it’s sitting on a fib support, maybe not a smart idea to short it).

Rather than look at the losses, i stepped back to the weekly view and there were some patterns there that showed that it wasn’t near a significant monthly high or low and had developed a classic “M” pattern. So I waited until it had got properly wrong (to the tip of the M), and shorted again so when it recovered it would recover much faster. End result, 150 pips.

However, I did need to sit and watch this over a day and a half running a larger exposure than normal, but I’m starting to use stochastics more to reinforce my entry and especially to time my exit. Even though it looks like it could keep running, if the stochs are over bought or over sold, I look to exit. So far I’ve managed to get out either at the right point, or near enough to make little odds. One must remember it’s not possible to squeeze every last pip out. So don’t try. Be sure you bank some profit.

As a result, I still trade with large trailing stops. As soon as the big trade went into proper profit, I ran with 35 pip trailing stops.

forex update

update on last week – 35 pips down on the week due to a series of misplaced trades. note to self, if you’re awake at 5am and shouldn’t be, don’t trade. I mis-read my own signals. It took the 100+ pips trade on friday to bring it back to that defecit. I think this was further hampered by being out of the main sessions, so liquidity is low and swings are faster. or something.

After this mess, I’ve refined my own signals and analysed each trade that went south and am more cautious. As a result, I took 10 pips from a sluggish market yesterday when traditionally on a monday I do badly. Could have been 30 but i wasn’t ready to pull out (things peaked early). However, i did get signals of a reversal so closed trades with some profit. Overnight, that’s what the market did so i’m glad i got out.

Sometimes it’s harder to work out when to get out and takes some confidence to close early when the brain goes “when in profit, let it run”