Posts by psopark

Here is my score card for today. GOAL - Watch for trend on hourly, watch 5 min for failed breakout for optimal entry. Trading Plan - B Stuck to the trading plan and avoided pit falls that were common previously (reference below) Money Management - B Avoided overscaling and adding to losers even though there was opportunity. Kept size consistent based on RR. Action Items - B Patience. Let the price come to me and enter. Use limit orders on entry for optimal price. Do not get in the habit of FOMO. It is better to not be in a trade than lose money. There will always be an opportunity. Summary It has been about 9 months since my last post and this will be 1 year and almost 6 months since I have started trading Forex. Since inception, my account has been virtually blown out to $100. I am still committed to trading and have revised my strategy several times to account for what works for me and my character. Still not giving up and working the $100 account. I need to prove that I can succeed at this regardless of account size so there will be no adding funds until I can show progress. My trading plan is updated and I feel comfortable with the plan. I will take incremental steps to get better and better. Second profitable day in a row. Need to stick to the plan and avoid pitfalls.

Since my last post i had a big trend gain and came back to an account size of about $4k. This is while going down all the way to less than $2K. I now see the benefits of trend following and the ability to have large gains quickly. The key is managing risk and the losses. I have since updated my trading plan accordingly. I had another large gain after this that got me above $5K but it went back down to under $4k. This was due to large spike down and then a next day of equal spike up. I need to focus on cutting the losses at an optimal time and phasing out so that the drawdown is not as large. Also, the emotions of losing so much so quickly got to me and I started looking for trades. Learning Points. - Always be cautious of position size and do not get greedy. - At times of draw down need to limit losses and not revenge trade - Work on Phasing Out of trades - Do not move stops Manage risk and do not get emotional

Been about a month since my last post so there is a log to update. Had a large losing month which virtually wiped out my account. Shrank my size down and lost less but still lost. Since then, I have analyzed my trend following methods and I have sharpened my trading to match more trend followers. I realized that I was making key mistakes (i.e. over sizing my positions based on the RR percentage, over pyramiding into winners, not placing my stops far enough). So today is another day and I have to chalk up the previous losses to learning costs. I have refunded my account $3K and am sticking to stricter strategies. - Position size based on 2% risk ration. I use the Forex Calculators to dictate position size. - I will not pyramid until I have at least made the RR ratio target (of around 3:1). This may not provide large profits at the moment but I am going to slowly transition back into pyramiding once I feel more comfortable with my initial trades and trend following strategy. Also, I realized (from podcasts) that the greatest RR is at the initial entry so I don't think I am skilled enough to pyramid as of yet. - Sticking to the trend following methods with EMA (8,24,200) as indicators. I am also using the ATR to dictate stop size. Hoping that this becomes a more positive turn this time. In either case, I will not give up!

Started out the week fantastic. However, I got overconfident and compounded subsequent trades (after a winner) by oversizing. Need to be able to limit the drawdown and focus on the process. By overly addinging to positions, I lost larger when I was inevitably wrong. YOU WILL BE WRONG EVEN IF YOU ARE ON A GOOD STREAK. DO NOT OVERTRADE.

Happy new year! Trading started off well during the holiday break. Was profitable almost on a daily basis and was pretty consistent. Most if not all the gains were based on USDCAD and EURUSD. However, I fell in love with the trades yesterday and today and when there was drawdown, I kept getting stopped out and losing. I realized that most of the trades were amplified because I was trading multiple pairs but with the same base currency. As such, when a move happened with the base currency, all the trades were hit causing me to get stopped out. In essence, I multiplied my risk factor by each trade. As such, I am adding a rule to only have one currency type per trade. If I want to have multiple trades, they need to be different currency types and not correlated. DO NOT HAVE MULTIPLE TRADES WITH SAME CURRENCY.

Positive closeout for the week. Gained all the minimum pips per day that I wanted thus making up some of the previous losses. Need to remember to stick to the trading plan and avoid pitfalls. Slow the trade down and concentrate without emotion. Manage risk and remember that this is a grind! Great 2017 year for learning how to trade Forex! Looking forward to 2018!

Rough start. I am finding myself making a lot of errors and giving back what I won. It seems that the impulsive trades are the ones that hurt the most. Lost 50% of my account. I need to stick to my plan. Slow down the activity and think about the trade. Trade less and be more picky about what I trade. Stop looking at other trades and bouncing around trying to gain profits. Focus on the trade at hand and not potential profits. Let my stops hit. Had a good start to the day but gave back all the money I gained and lost some. Focus on maintaining capital and money management.

Its been about a month since my last post and there have been a lot of activity. I increased my account size with the mentality that if I am going to do this, I am going to give it my best shot. Had some wild swings. Gained some money back in a very positive swing trade. However, I ended up getting stopped out due to market close spread increases because my spread was too tight. This was a very costly mistake that I will need to take as a lesson learned. A few changes... I am increasing my initial entry size significantly to 50K pips. As I try to pyramid in to trades, I am noticing that I am usually correct on the trade initially but I will end up breaking even or losing as I pyramid in. Those times when the trade goes against me, I end up losing most of what I gained. As such, I am going to start larger and pyramid in far less while taking profits. I am hoping this will work better for me. I am using Moving Averages and the Awesome Oscillator now and have found better results. Updated my trading plan to reflect as such. Overall, I am still down but not by much. I am staying alive and getting into some good trades while taking the stops. Need to remember the plan and continue to improve.

WILD SWINGS! STICK TO THE PLAN! Last week should have been a positive week as I stuck to the swing trade plan for USDCAD and come out with a huge positive. In fact, i recovered all losses and was up $25 overall. This told me that I could do this and be successful if I stick with the plan! Saw the weekly momentum early and the daily momentum and capitalized on the trade for the week. But, I let greed get in the way as I tried to trade an economic event. US GDP had strong numbers and I placed larger than normal orders on USDCAD and USDJPY. Both popped initially and started to tank. Not only that, I held on for far too long losing all my gains for the week and more. I could not understand why it fell but I have to realize that the market is unforgiving and relentless. I too have to be equally diligent in making sure I exit early and accept losses when they happen. In addition, I need to stop spreading myself across so many different currency pairs. I am taking far too much risk especially if one market moves against me. Plus, it does not seem optimal nor am i hedging because they are all usually in the same direction based on USD. As such, going to focus on the most optimal pair and trade accordingly with greatest RR. STICK TO THE PLAN! DO NOT TRADE ECONOMIC EVENTS! WATCH RESISTANCE LEVELS!

Not much movement on the start of the week but I am sticking with my trading strategy. Overall, I am pleased with my mentality and my focus on the plan. Hoping that it bears fruit this week. Updated my trading plan and shrank my size to 5000 pip entries. I already see the benefits in relation to my small account balance. It allows a larger spread for the trade to go against me so I can wait for the recovery. For example, early on, I was losing on both trades up to 50 pips which would have been hard to stomach previously. This morning, both trades reversed and almost back to even. STICK WITH THE PLAN!

Positive end of a down week. Really analyzed my Trading Plan as to why I was getting in far too early and seeing different signals. The idea of divergence was actually incorrect and I ignored the actual trend direction (which was what my strategy was supposed to be based on). Also, I am reducing my initial trade size. Hopefully this revised plan will be more beneficial. Big win on shorting GBP and exited right before the reversal. Stuck to the trading plan and took profits when available. Kept a small position in but got stopped out (still for an overall profit). Analysis still shows that the long term Swing trend is still in the same direction even though there was a reversal but I am glad I took profits when available. Play with House Money!

Rough start on the week. Stopped out on 3 of 4 trades. The one trade I took profit on cancelled out one of the stop losses. Need to work on picking my positions carefully. Most times were stopped due to economic data that went against the direction. This could potentially be just the nature of the strategy as there will be times that it will go in my favor and not be stopped out. Will have to continue and just manage risks accordingly. Positive note was that I avoided jumping back in when getting stopped and revenge trading. Focused back on my strategy and reassessed entry and direction. Also, tried out a ranging strategy for economic news and quickly realized the risk reward is not worth it. There's too much wild range when it comes to economic news. I see why people avoid it. Will stick to my momentum trend strategy.

Closing the week down but overall I stuck with the process and accepted my stop losses. Last day was a winner but need to get more consistent and work on Risk Management. Feeling confident about my system. MOVING TO REAL ACCOUNT!! EXCITED AND NERVOUS AT THE SAME TIME!!

Had better control this week. Stuck with my stops and accepted them for the most part. Lesson here is to stick with my analysis and plan. I diverted for the short term RR and deviated from my analysis. Then the trade went in favor of my original analysis. Strangely enough, I revenge traded and got in towards my analysis direction but the GBP reversed on Brexit news. So I lost on the double edge sword. Need to trust my analysis and not divert as I got hit twice when I should have just been stopped out once.

Continuing to stay positive enough though my account went largely negative this past Monday. Overly weighted myself in EURUSD and it turned the other direction on me. This is a reminder to add to winners and NOT losers. Need to have a better Risk Management in place. Going to only add to winners now and stick with hard stop losses on the losers. As some great traders say, losing is part of the game and I need to accept this fact. On the brighter side, I have decided to get a real money account at first opportunity. Looking to decrease my lot size to 10K sizes and grow from there.

One positive note from yesterday was that I did set the stop loss to a low limit knowing it was a revenge trade. I have to keep focusing on accepting stop losses and taking minimal losses as opposed to potential major ones.

Its Friday so I don't want to speak too soon but I turned an overall profitable week and gave some back due to REVENGE TRADING. AUD news caused AUD to drop forcing a stop loss on GBPAUD. Trying to catch the wave, I jumped into a short position for AUDUSD. This was a big mistake as it rebounded shortly afterwards. Lesson: Need to accept losses when stopped and only get back in after full analysis. DO NOT REVENGE TRADE.

Learned about FundSeeder today from ChatwithTraders. Long term goal would be to be able to succeed and get on the top of FundSeeder

Starting the week feeling pretty good about my positions and where I want to be. Watching different pairs for entry points. I feel like by doing the due diligence early on I know where I want to go and just have to watch the market for entry points. Swing trading is definitely fitting my life style a little better.

Starting the day profitable. Closed trades on USDJPY (before announcement) and AUDJPY that I held since last week. So far the swing trading strategy seems to fit my lifestyle and trading style better. Its a reminder to stick to trading plan and focus on Swing Trading focus while avoiding major economic news because of the swings. Looking at some opportunities in EURUSD.