Ah, finally something Forex related!  I have previously posted about getting your start in Forex.  You can check out that link for some info on how I feel you should start your journey in this world.  And, if you already started, it can’t hurt to go back and learn some shit!  Now this is something that is probably the most simple topic in theory, and the most difficult in practice.  Not trading.  That’s it.  It sounds so easy.  Right now you are reading this so you aren’t trading.  That’s how easy it is, right?  Wrong.  This is probably the biggest mistake people make especially when they are new traders.  I won’t lie, this was something I struggled with when I was first learning the ropes.  I would sit there at my computer looking for a trade even though I knew I had to be out the door in 5 minutes.  The problem was that I made money so if I just got to get in on a deal I could make some quick cash.  More often than not it screws you over.  You force a trade by seeing something that isn’t really there.  You see it because you want to see it.  Trading is all about pattern recognition and if you really want to you can make a chart look like anything.  Not trading is something that must be practiced.  I know that sounds weird.  Practice not doing something.  It actually works.  If you trade with a demo account you need to work it like you would if it was real money.  I know nothing can actually simulate the feeling of using real money, but use your imagination.  Practice firing up the charts when you are in a bad mood or when you are rushed for time and force yourself to not make a deal.  You will try to rationalize it sometimes and say it is only fake money.  Slap yourself on the wrist and try not trading again!  You have to think that you aren’t paid to trade.  You are paid to wait for the perfect trade!  Waiting for that perfect setup is your job.  This isn’t like using a machine gun, trading is like a sniper rifle.  One shot.  That brings me to my next point.  Rebound trading.  You just screwed the pooch on a trade and you bailed on it.  You are sitting on a loss for the day.  This is probably the hardest time to not trade.  It is for me.  The problem is that you know you have a winning strategy.  Odds are your next trade will score you money.  Let’s get right back in there and make back what I lost.  Hell no!  This is the best way to drain your account dry.  This is gambling and not trading.  It sounds similar, doesn’t it.  Only one more.  Let me win my money back.  This is why most people kill their accounts within 6 months.  You can have five and a half months of wins and 2 weeks where you attempted trade after trade just to win back any losses.  At the end you are broke!  A loss is a loss.  Walk away.  You are paid to wait!  The last reason not to trade has to do with outside forces.  Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows that I avoid news announcements like the plague.  Some people trade these times and make a lot of money.  It is way too risky for my liking.  The spread goes up and you can jump 50 pips a second.  I can’t handle that roller coaster.  I like smoother movements.  So, anytime a news announcement is scheduled I stay away for 30 minutes leading up to it and 30 minutes after.  Sometimes more, sometimes less.  You can tell when the impact of that news is no longer driving the pattern.  Staying away from the news announcements was a bigger issue when I was trading in the mornings.  Since I switched to the evenings it doesn’t affect me nearly as much.  The best way to find out when all these announcements are coming out is by going to Forex Factory.  That link gives you a daily calendar with everything you need to know.  They even rank the impact of the announcement which is a great thing.  Low impact announcements are fairly safe to be in on a trade at.  Don’t even think about going in when those impact symbols are red!  Once again, this is all based on my style of trading.  I don’t like risk.  I don’t need Forex to provide me with excitement.  I am getting plenty of that with my attempts to become a firefighter.  Forex is my little cash machine.  Part of keeping myself in the black is knowing when not to trade.  There is a reason why my account hasn’t taken any hits this year.  I know when to stay away!  Learn that skill and you will find your win percentage will shoot right up!

My god I actually managed to get a trade in!  This was a pretty easy one to see.  I like it when the currency settles into a little valley down near a low for the day.  This makes it easy to get into a buy trade with some confidence.  That’s exactly what I saw when I fired up the charts at 5:45pm and immediately got into a buy on the EUR/USD.  I didn’t have to wait long for this one to pay off.  At 5:49 I got a swift little jump upward that went about 3 pips in my favor.  I decided to walk away at that point.  This early in the evening you generally get very small movements in the 5 minute candles.  I didn’t want to stay in this trade just on the hope I would squeeze out another couple of pips.  Besides, my strategy is all about small gains that add up over time.  3 pips is more than enough for a couple of minutes of work.  I know I haven’t traded much at all this year, but I have managed to make pips every time I do.  I can’t wait until school is done so I can do this more often!  I know I have yet to release any kind of strategy guide on how I trade.  I honestly didn’t think school was going to suck so much of my time.  I am in the middle of my 2nd of 3 semesters.  3rd semester is a lot lighter.  Hopefully I can put something together at that point.  I would be happy to see how much money people could make using my strategy!  Here is the chart for today’s trade.

Trade Summary:

Buy EUR/USD - 1.3834
Close Trade - 1.3837
Pips= 3

This weekend was definitely an eventful one!  I had that awesome experience of playing hockey with some former NHLers.  On Saturday evening we had a little get together at a friends place and there was some damage done to my insides by some of the hottest chicken wings I have ever tasted in my life.  I will post more about that as soon as I get my hands on my girlfriends camera.  After dealing with the dreaded ring of fire, and a nasty hangover, I had a hockey game to play on Sunday night.  I had thought about skipping that game as I felt I was going to be useless out there.  It turns out I probably should have.  In the middle of the first period I went crashing into the boards with an opposing player and managed to injure my wrist.  I stayed in the game because I am not a pussy but I was pretty useless after that.  I couldn’t put any weight on my right hand so I couldn’t even shoot the puck.  I had zero range of motion and the thing was swelling up pretty bad.  This morning I decided to go get it checked out and it looks like I probably have a little fracture.  So, now my right wrist is done up in a cast.  Trust me when I tell you that it is not easy to type with this rock hard thing wrapped around my thumb.  I keep accidentally hitting the track pad and tapping things I don’t want to.  Since it is very easy to make a mistake I will avoid trading today and a mistake there could literally cost me thousands of dollars.  As you can see, it won’t stop me from blogging!  This is one of the reasons I should put more focus on monetizing this blog and building up a larger fan base.  Don’t worry, I won’t forget all my current readers.  I just need to find a way to make money off your asses without ruining your reading experience.  One thing I have to do is promote my posts a little more.  I get a fair bit of traffic already and it is amazing considering I don’t do any promotion.  As a test I used one of my financial posts and tried submitting it on Tipd.  Even with that simple step I was able to triple my blogs unique visitors over 4 days!  I definitely see some good income potential out of this thing.  I already make more than enough to cover my hosting costs plus a little extra cash.  Blogging might end up being a money maker for me.  All I need is a little time, patience and a right hand that works!  Once I get this cast off I will be set.

* A quick shot from my webcam of my injured wrist which has hindered my ability to use my computer

Holy shit it has been a long time since I made a Forex trade!  I just haven’t had time with school and everything.  So, last night I finally had a little chance to fire up the charts and see what was going on.  I honestly didn’t want to do too much thinking.  I just wanted to take the most basic information and pick my direction.  More than anything this trade was just about getting my feet wet again.  Lucky for me my timing was perfect.  I noticed a large downward movement earlier in the evening.  Normally this would keep me off the charts but I really needed to trade.  I saw an opportunity for a sell trade and I jumped on it without hesitation.  I sold the EUR/USD at 9:46pm.  I was in the trade for about 1 minute and then I walked away with a 3 pip profit.  I know, not a huge gain.  It did feel good to actually make some money in the brokerage account of mine again.  Hopefully with the end of my first semester on the horizon I will be able to get more trades in!  Here is the chart and details of last nights deal.

Trade Summary:

Sell EUR/USD - 1.3358
Close Trade - 1.3355
Pips=3

Oh my poor little robot.  I had already mentioned that last Friday my robot got the shit kicked out of it on a couple of bad trades.  This was mostly the result of having weighted these trades very heavily.  It’s tough when one loss is about 10-15% of your capital.  Things started to look back up for the start of this week.  I was hoping to be able to report that the robot managed to get back to where we were last Wednesday.  No dice.  The robot got pimp slapped on some trades during the day and I am now down about 23% from my initial deposit into the demo account.  Again, I am using a demo because I don’t know anything about this robot.  I plan to give it another couple of weeks to see how things go and then I might scale back the pip target/stop loss down from the default setting of 40 pips.  But, you do need to give these things time to work out.  Every trading system will have some losses.  As you can see from the details below, I do have one large trade still open and it is in profit.  If it hits the target I will be back to last weeks total.  One thing that you should notice is the drastic rise in buy trades.  It was something I bitched about over the last two weeks.  I noticed the EUR/USD rising and couldn’t understand the sell trades.  It seems the robot figured it out and has been buy happy all week.  Since the currency actually was rising I think the timing on the entries was poor because these stopped out even though the currency ended higher.  One obvious way to solve this is to make the stop loss much larger.  That is not what I will do.  I like the security of the 1:1 risk:reward ratio.  You can click on the image below for more specific details on the robot’s activity to date.  The graph is a great visual as to what has happened.  You can see the very sharp drops.