Holy crap I made a trade today!  I finally had some time this late afternoon and I figured I would check out what’s happening on the charts.  I spotted what seemed like a fairly simple play on the EUR/USD shortly before 5pm.  I felt a small retreat on the price would cause some jumping as people bought in.  As usual, I was comfortable getting in on a buy at this time because I am looking for small gains.  It looks like my move was the right one, although my timing could have been better.  My trade bounced around a little bit before it finally broke for a few pips profit.  I managed to grab 5 pips, which is more than I usually go for!  Here are the details.

Trade Summary:

Buy EUR/USD - 1.4962
Close Trade - 1.4967
Pips= 5

Last night was a little dicey for my tastes.  I will save you the suspense, I still traded and made a profit.  Unlike most days, I didn’t like the way this one played out.  Since I am usually only looking for 2-5 pip gains, I don’t like when trades work against me more than 5 pips.  Most nights I would bail on a trade that went against me because the charts stop lining up and things start looking screwy.  Last night I actually stayed in the trade even when it was against me by 9 pips!  The movements were very jerky and the EUR/USD looked like it didn’t know what it wanted.  I felt that I would get a crack at a positive trade and stayed in until my low goal of 2 pips hit off.  I immediately walked away and was rewarded with a slip in my favor of an extra pip.  The trade actually went positive for me earlier but it wasn’t long enough for me to exit.  All in all this was juts a weird trade.  I think I may have been more lucky than good.  I guess my discipline allowed me to get out without getting greedy!  As you can see by the chart, if I had stayed in I most likely would have hit my limit and walked away with a fairly large loss.  I think the problem here was entry timing.  I really should have been more patient.  My upper barrier proved weak, but I didn’t give the market enough time to prove that for me.  My trades don’t usually take 27 minutes like this one did.  Tomorrow I will get a chance to do things right!  Here are the details…

Trade Summary:

Sell EUR/USD - 1.2576
Close Trade - 1.2573
Pips=3

Well this worked out nicely.  I just finished explaining my thoughts on Forex and now I have a trade to show you from yesterday evening.  I am especially proud of this trade because the EUR/USD was pushing down all freakin day.  That made it tough to find a range to work in.  I finally found a lower barrier that I could work with and I waited patiently for a buy trade entry.  A buy trade in these conditions can be very dangerous, so you need to get out quickly when things go bad.  This is another example of strong support from my correlating currencies.  The USD/CHF was tipping me off to a little upward swing.  I got into the buy at 7:25pm.  This one fluttered around for a long time.  I got a little nervous and thought about bailing when I was at zero and could have walked away with no loss.  The USD/CHF kept me thinking I could at least bag 2 pips from this movement.  So, I waited.  Finally at 7:33pm I caught a little movement and walked away with 3 pips.  Not bad at all.  Remember what I wrote about trade exits?  See, I am still learning.  I almost walked away from a nice profit.  The reason I didn’t is that I had confidence in my reasons for entry and nothing changed in the charts to make me think this was no longer a good trade.  Gotta have faith in your system!

Trade Summary:

Buy EUR/USD - 1.2674
Close Trade - 1.2677
Pips=3

As I think about developing a strategy guide to outline exactly what my trading strategy is, I often think about what got me into this whole Forex world.  Like most of you traders out there, there are quite a few reasons that all came together.  The first major reason was that I wanted money.  I wanted lots of it.  And, I didn’t want to do anything to earn it.  Unfortunately I learned that was pretty much impossible and anyone selling that idea is only padding their accounts and not yours.  The other major reason was that I always had an interest in the stock market and wanted a chance to apply some of that knowledge.  So I was turned on to Forex.  This was like a dream come true.  Forex has a ton of retail brokers, low deposit requirements and a market that is liquid for most of the day.  My problem was that I had no freaking idea what I was getting in to.  Over the next year or so I soaked up a ton of info by buying ebooks that promised to make me $3,243,564.00 a year.  After reading most of that crap I learned almost nothing.  I did get into some more expensive courses from some other pros.  Some I liked.  Some I didn’t.  All of this and my trading experiences lead me to break out of the mold of my mentors and forge my own strategy.  As you can tell from my charts, there really isn’t much going on.  My theory is that the market is so much bigger than I am so 4 million indicators on my screen still only leads me to an educated guess.  The key is to find very simple signs that a currency will be moving in a direction and then knowing when to get out.  Trust me when I tell you this, the very last thing you will ever learn is when to exit a trade.  That is something I am still working on to this day.  It all seems so easy when you use fake money in a demo account.  When it comes to your actual dollars, your emotions will get the better of you from time to time.  Anyways, back to the reason I posted all this.  I don’t want people to waste their money on the crap people push out there.  Sure, Forex robots sound great…but you really should know how to trade on your own so that a robot can augment your trading.  Nothing comes without a little work.  Take the time to learn Forex and it will be worth it.  You wouldn’t trust a doctor who completed med school over night, so don’t think you can become a trading expert because you read an ebook.  You really should ignore the crap and start your training over at Baby Pips.  This site is free and loaded full of awesome information.  They have a link on the main site called “school” that starts you off in Forex kindergarten and takes you right to college.  Did I mention this is free?  Honestly, 99% of the ebooks and courses about Forex that cost a fortune don’t give half the information that Baby Pips is giving you for free!  From there it is all about finding a trading style that you are comfortable with.  Some people like to carry large trades.  Not me.  I am in and out in moments and am happy as a pig in shit when I have 2 pips.  Compare as many strategies as you can.  Try them in demo accounts.  After time you will find the one that fits you best.  Once you have that one it is time to go live and put the pressure on.  Even if you only risk a dollar a trade you need to know what it feels like to use live money.  From there you need to constantly re-evaluate.  The markets will change.  Your life will change!  I changed jobs and trading in the morning no longer worked for me.  I shifted my strategy to something that works in the evenings.  One thing is certain, you should never stop learning.  People who became complacent are the same idiots that sank the stock market.  Hehehe…I probably shouldn’t get into a rant about that.  I am definitely trying to have some kind of Forex strategy guide out mid year.  How much will this valuable information cost you?  Absolutely nothing.  And, it certainly should not be your bible.  It should only help to form your own strategy.  That’s how this game works.  That’s what separates the people who will make a killing in Forex, and the dreamers that will never achieve a thing.

Sorry for the very late post today.  Considering how busy I am this week, I am shocked that I was able to get a trade in.  I have tests and mid-terms in pretty much every class of my firefighter pre-service program.  On top of that I also have a presentation due.  But, I am still a trader.  I came home around 8pm tonight and just fired up the charts to see what was going on.  This trade is actually pretty interesting.  My reason for entry wasn’t based on the current movement of the EUR/USD.  I was watching one of my correlating pairs, the USD/CHF, and noticed my lower barrier was holding strong.  I predicted an upward movement in that currency.  Since that pair usually does the opposite of the EUR/USD, I got into a sell trade at 8:30pm.  I don’t trade the USD/CHF because the spread sucks compared to the Euro.  As I suspected, the Euro then ignored it’s upward movement and dropped slightly.  I walked away when I was up 3 pips but it slipped down to about 2.5 pips at 8:31pm.  I will call it 2 pips because I like to round down.  I was a little upset with my exit on this trade.  I really had nothing to signal an exit but I got out just because I really wanted to be able to show you all this type of trade.  As I say, I could teach you all to do this better than I actually do!  Below are the two charts I really made use of on this trade.  You can see that I don’t have fancy looking indicators or anything like that.  You can have all that crap on your screen and still have no idea how to win a trade.  I keep my tools and rules simple.  My gains aren’t huge but I don’t lose too often!  When you don’t have much in the way of draw downs you can risk large amounts on your trades.  I won’t tell you how much I made on this trade…but if I had a $100,000 account then this trade would have bagged me about $1,100.  That’s over a grand in just one minute!  Don’t let people tell you that it is all about the pips.  That’s bullshit.  What good is gaining 50 pips a trade when your win percentage is only 60% and your losers hit you for 100 pips?  That type of trading pimp-slaps your account.  My style of trading may only get me 20-50 pips in a month but I don’t fear those large losses.  As a result I can weight my trades very heavily.  That’s what makes my trading strategy very different from anyone else.  This also makes my strategy very safe!

Trade Summary:

Sell EUR/USD - 1.2604
Close Trade - 1.2602
Pips= 2

*here is the screen shot from the actual trade on the EUR/USD

*this is the USD/CHF which actually lef me to the trade

Last night I had a nice little trade that I am very pleased with.  The reason I am so pleased is that I was so confident in my lower barrier that I got into a buy trade even though the Euro was coming off a low candle.  This one was very much momentum based.  And I mean that in every way.  I had just fired up the charts when I smelled the trade.  I very quickly did some checks and then got into the buy at 7:06pm.  Shortly after 7:08pm the EUR/USD went in my direction and I closed out with 3 pips.  Now, I only had a two pip target on this trade because I was working between a very small set of barriers.  We are only talking about 20 pips here.  So, I wanted to safe within that area.  Keep in mind that the spread was around 2 pips, so my trade actually had to move more than just the 3 pips I gained.  That’s how it works!  The EUR/USD rose a bit more after my trade but what the hell do I care.  I weighted this trade pretty heavy anyways so I made a tidy profit.  Funny how things work out.  I managed to get only 4 pips in January and the first trade of February gets me 3.  Hopefully I can get more out of this month.  I do have a million things to do for school, especially when you consider time at the gym.  Many days I can only look at the charts for an hour or so before I have to leave.  If things don’t line up properly then I just walk away.  You will never catch me trading just for the sake of trading.  I would rather finish the year having gained only 50 pips than break my rules.  My rules keep me in the black while most everyone else in the investment world lost money!  Here are the details of this trade.

Trade Summary:

Buy EUR/USD - 1.2813
Close Trade - 1.2816
Pips= 3