Most of you are back at work this morning.  For some of you, this is the first day at work for 2009.  SUCKERS!  I am kidding.  But, I am not at work.  As I mentioned earlier, I will be starting school next week at this time.  So this week is spent just tying up some odds and ends.  Like, I need to buy something to haul my books around.  Seriously, the last time I needed one of those was high school!  Anyways, on to other matters.  Will I be trading anytime soon?  I would love to, but the market movements will determine my timing.  I definitely won’t have time tonight.  Canada is playing Sweden for gold in the World Junior Hockey Championships.  This is an  awesome hockey tournament played every year at this time.  I will be watching the game at a friends place.  That is definitely not a time to be looking at Forex charts.  But, you never know!  I might try some day time trading later in the week.  I don’t trust myself to jump into that right at the start of the year.  So, what can I offer you today?  I thought about giving you something totally mindless.  Something to get your mind of work.  Then I thought about being more helpful than that.  How about something that is kinda funny, but also provides you valuable information.  I got this from XKCD and it is an extremely handy chart!  This is especially true for those of you in the States.

This is the big news of 2009!  A few months ago I gave notice to my employers that I was leaving them.  My job was good, my bosses were awesome, I was reasonably well compensated and was given free reign on when to come into the office.  Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?  Last year I turned 30 and I realized that if there is anything else I want to do that the time to make a massive jump was now.  We only get one chance at life and I do not intend to spend it with any regrets.  I would rather try something bold and fail than not try at all.  I am far too head strong to play it safe.  So, what will I be doing?  I know most people would expect that I will go to full time trading.  Well, the thing about that is that my trading style is anything but full time.  I spend like 30 minutes a day looking at charts.  What the hell would I do with the rest of my day?  Even though I plan to jump into stocks later this year, it still isn’t enough to fill a day and make me feel like I have a life.  So, I asked myself a simple question: if I won the lottery, what job would I want to do?  The answer was exactly what I expected it to be.  Firefighter.  I have wanted to be a firefighter since I was a kid.  Somewhere along the lines I decided to seek my fortunes in the business world and lost track of what I actually wanted.  Sometimes your head can get in the way of what you were truly meant to do in this world.  Over the last few years I have found myself thinking about the life of a firefighter more and more.  The challenge was that I would have to take a year off work to go to school.  Here in Ontario there are a couple of colleges that offer a pre-service course that is approved by the Ontario Fire Marshall.  I applied and was accepted late in 2008.  I will spend 2009 as a full time student (and still a part time trader).  My days will be spent studying and working out.  I am definitely looking forward to this new challenge.  At the end of the year, when my program is done, I will have to start applying to fire departments.  It could be a long time before I get on, maybe even a few years.  I have made this my goal and will keep moving forward for as long as it is an option.  The only thing that will stop me is if I have an injury that would not allow me to pass a physical and will not heal.  Short of that I will be a firefighter sometime in the near future.  For those of you who follow this blog you can definitely look forward to a little change of pace.  I will be talking a little more about school, health and fitness.  Of course you will still get all the details of my Forex trades and I still hope to come out with a strategy guide for all of you that will be completely free.  Since the life of a student is rather leisurely, I will be able to spend some time working on developing a strategy for trading stocks.  I will be very careful with this as the stock market isn’t quite as liquid as Forex, so even if I can accurately pick directions I may not be able to find shares at the price I want.  It will be an interesting adventure!  Don’t worry, in between all that serious stuff I still plan to bring you comics and stupid videos.  Happy 2009 everyone!  Hopefully my example can help inspire some of you to take the steps to achieve your goals.  You can either sit there and dream about how nice a change would be, or you can actually do something about it.  You don’t regret the things you did, you regret the things you didn’t do.

No trade for me this morning.  I have plans to go out and I don’t have time to watch the charts.  I am looking at them right now and I don’t see any pattern.  I could just enter a trade but it would be a total guess.  I might as well throw all my money in a poker game if that was how I traded.  Anyways, I have another video of Chubbs that I still have to throw together.  I am hoping to have that done sometime soon.  For today, you get a C & H cartoon.  This is just kinda funny.  Not only that, it moves.  That makes it twice as awesome.  Enjoy!

Wow, a Forex trade!  I lied when I said I would stay away until the holiday season was over.  I try to give myself that blackout period to avoid any end of year mistakes.  But, I woke up this morning and was bored.  I haven’t done any day time trading in a long time.  I figured it would be a good exercise to gauge momentum in the EUR/USD.  I watched the charts and saw a pretty easy pattern setting up.  I was only going to give myself a small target of 2 pips.  I got into a sell trade at 9:47am and was out seconds later with my 2 pips.  It turns out that I judged the momentum perfectly as the Euro continued down another 20 pips!!!  Even though I missed out on all those pips I was pretty happy with the results of my exercise.  I judged the movement of the currency and gained some money.  How can you argue with that result?  Considering this day time trading is a little out of my comfort zone right now, I may try again tomorrow with similar expectations.  I wont be looking for 10 pips gains.  I will stick with my 2-3 pip goals.  Here is the chart and details of today’s deal.

Trade Summary:

Sell EUR/USD - 1.4293
Close Trade - 1.4291
Pips=2

We might just have a white Christmas after all.  Toronto got pelted with a good dumping of snow today, so I decided this was a good day to work from home.  Once again I have no trade for you.  I had no idea that market went all screwy.  The spreads are staying wide even during the day right now.  The Euro gained a couple thousand pips on the US Dollar over the last few days as well.  Definitely not my happy time to trade.  So many traders love these movements because they are in for large swing positions.  I look for 2-10 pip gains when the markets are ranging well within reasonable bounds.  When people complain about sideways markets is when I am happiest.  I will have more time on my hands in the new year, so I am planning on moving into stocks as another way of trading (and keeping this blog interesting).  Since I can’t bring you anything Forex related I will stay on the topic of snow.  Below is a pic of Chubbs playing in the snow.  And, because that may not be enough to entertain all of you, I also added a C & H comic.  You can use that as a funny take on the Frosty take.  Or, a perverted suggestion on what to do with all this snow.  Either way.

*Chubbs still doesn’t know whether to walk on the snow, or eat the snow.  Now, lets see that C & H comic…

Alright, last night went a little better than Monday.  I was worried I would be either too jumpy and hop into a bad trade or I would be too cautious and watch opportunity after opportunity pass me by.  Not quite.  I put up my charts and took a look at what was happening with the EUR/USD.  I noticed a nice little pattern forming for me and I decided to grab it.  I got into a sell trade after the Euro went a little over my upper barrier but came right back down.  I don’t mind if the currency flirts with my barriers…you know…play a little “just the tip” for a while.  I just can’t have it fully penetrated.  OK, enough sexual innuendo.  My timing on the sell trade was interesting.  As soon as I got in it bumped up by about 2 pips.  That is my only regret.  I was watching my entry price and I was hoping to get it to that level.  After that it went against me for most of the time I was in this thing.  Hell, this thing even went back and played with my barrier again.  I didn’t get out of the trade because it was still set up to drop.  I know sometimes I bail on trades even when I am even, but that is when the conditions have fundamentally changed.  When I look at the charts and realize I would enter into the same trade then I wait it out.  That patience was rewarded.  It finally shot downwards and I closed off the trade.  I took my profit of 5 pips.  I debated staying in longer, maybe looking for 10 pips.  I didn’t want to get too greedy after a bad trade the day before.  I prefer to get more bold when I have already made a good profit on the week and I am willing to take some chances.  Today I may not get to trade.  I have a hockey game and am going to a friends place straight after work.  If I do manage to fire up the charts then I will post the details.

Trade Summary:

Sell EUR/USD - 1.2940
Close Trade - 1.2935
Pips= 5

I was really excited to trade last night.  Market conditions were good too, I managed to get a 1.8 pip spread from the broker!  In retrospect I was way too excited to get trading today.  One thing I am always cautious of is getting into a buy trade when the currency is coming down off a high for the day.  When the currency has peaked and is dropping you can’t count on upward movements.  Sure, things may move into a new high…but it just isn’t likely during the evening hours on the eastern part of the North America.  Last night I had the EUR/USD coming down from a high for the day.  I watched some movements and looked at the last couple of hours and drew a strong upper barrier and a very weak lower barrier.  I knew this.  I avoided getting into one buy trade simply because of this.  For some reason, I lost my focus and just wanted to bag a few cheap pips and end my day and brag to you all about how amazing I am.  Yeah, the market bitch slapped me a good one!  I saw some jumpy upward movements which I mistook for momentum and got into that buy trade.  I hit even a couple of times but the momentum failed and things started dropping again.  This trade looked bad at negative 4 pips and I decided to pull out.  I went to close out at negative 5 and the fucker slipped another 5 damn pips on me!  That closed my trade out at negative 10!  that one hurt.  I was glad to just get out.  I looked at things and figured I could go for a larger and longer term sell trade.  I turned off the computer instead.  It would have worked out and I could have easily made up my losses.  I do my best to avoid trading twice in one night.  Especially when I was a monumental idiot and didn’t follow my own rule: don’t buy off a high.  So, I was likely to have a fucked up perception of things and needed a revenge trade.  It probably would have worked out but it would have been bad.  It would have excused my lesson.    That would be worse I think.  I have my rules for a reason.  They keep me in profit.  I only wish my timing to exit this trade was sharper as it would have save me 5 pips.  Oh well.  New goal for the week: recoup my losses today.  This should be fun!!!

Trade Summary:

Buy EUR/USD - 1.2928
Close Trade - 1.2918
Loss = 10 pips

Yeah, I didn’t want to end the week with a bad trade so I stayed out of things again last night.  Once Tuesday hit I was pretty sure that I would just skip the week and let things settle down after some massive losses on the Dow and TSX.  I am also cranky because I didn’t sleep a wink last night.  I managed to injure my wrist a while ago and I think I aggravated it yesterday…damn thing was killing me!  Oh well.  I am hoping things calm down next week and I can get into some trades.  I might have to be bold and just jump in with both feet.  Let’s see how gutsy I feel.  Instead of a trade I bring you a really clever comic from XKCD.  This one speaks so much truth it’s insane!  I am sure every girl has guy “friends” that they know wants more but they are willing to hang out and undermine any other guy she dates until the timing is right for them to pounce.  This is just a funny way of coming clean about that plan of attack.

I was pretty sure I would stay out of things in the Forex world again last night.  I was right.  For one thing, I had a hockey game and didn’t get to look at my computer until about 10:00pm.  I did notice a pretty nice range for the EUR/USD.  It was moving up and down quite nicely.  The problem was that the spread was a little too large for me.  It was around 2.3 pips.  Considering the range of movement, that was a little high.  These are things to consider when trading Forex.  You may be able to pick the proper direction, but you have to pay the spread on the start and end of the trade.  So, I pretty much had to pick a directional movement of 10 pips in order to gain 5 pips.  I like to have a range that has plenty of room to support that.  The currency was moving, but not that much.  Even if I was planning a 2 pip gain I would still have had to pick a 7 pip direction.  I just didn’t feel comfortable with the way things were going.  And, I was tired as hell.  I got a bunch of emails last night asking 2 things.  Why I wouldn’t trade all the time if I seem to be able to always make a profit?  And, when will I release my strategy guide?  The first question was easy to answer - it is because I stay away from the market when things aren’t ideal that allows me to have a high win percentage.  I would rather trade only half the year and win 90% than trade the full year and drop to 70%.  It’s all part of the mindset of a calm trader.  Trading can be like crack and you can blow a lot of money by getting too caught up in the excitement.  The answer to the next question is: RELAX!  I just came out with the idea the other day.  Even though I plan to offer it for free doesn’t mean I want the thing to be worthless.  If I put my name on something I want it to have value.  Speaking of value, since I don’t have a trade to report I might as well entertain your ass.  Here is another gem of a comic from Explosm.

Once again, I decided not to trade last night.  I didn’t even fire up the charts.  I may actually stay away for the rest of the week.  The charts didn’t look to bad when I look at them this morning.  It looks like the EUR/USD was moving in a manageable range.  Since I didn’t even look into it last night, I am not sure what the spread was like.  If liquidity wasn’t there then that would have stopped me from trading anyways.  I have been giving more thought to creating a detailed report on how I trade.  It would be nice to see someone take my strategy and do even better than I do.  I will just have to figure out how to structure the lessons.  So much of this is now “feel” and I need to write up some rules that I used to follow when I was new at this.  How much would I charge for this?  Absolutely nothing!  It would be free.  I am not here to sell you an ebook.  My strategy is simple so it isn’t anything that you couldn’t figure out on your own anyways.  It might just take you a while.  I will get to work on that and keep you updated on my progress.  In the meantime here is an XKCD comic that actually is related to Forex!