Friday, May 21, 2010

weekly review.

Not much to review this week, otherthan I got MC (Margin-Call) again.
While waiting for my account to be re-funded (by mid June or end of June), now I have plenty of time to talk about the 3 times MC and summarize some about this year's trading..

1: May 2nd, Sunday night, I was keep buying EUR/USD and also some personal reasons affect my trading/thinking. Before I sleep that night, I give back all the yearly gains (about 1000 pips) on that trade. Then I hold on to that trade.
2 days later, I was stopped out by MC, with maybe 40% in my account.

2: I jump right back in again, buying and hold, couple days later, stopped out with 20% account.

3: This week, also Sundaynight, I was shorting and left the position overnight, stopped out with 10% account.

2 of them triggered at Sunday night, don't know it's because I'm over confident on Sunday or tend to over trade on Sunday. Giving back yearly profit is bad, but worse is to keep the position and let it go without stop. I had it 2 times before these 3 MC, in that 2 times, 1 came back with a nice profit (I was trading AUD/USD rate hike), and another one end up MC a different account, that I was trading the NFP, I still remember last year, there were once the NFP number was super good, and I keep buying eur/usd, got stopped out at 1.42 level.

I'm trying to find common cause of these 3 MC happened in this Month, I found out some symptom.
1: They all happened with out stop.
2: I tried to talk myself that I'm really good at trading if I don't got these 3 MC. There is actually some fundamental reason behind the MC. I tend to get a winning day for everyday, yeah, everyone is trying, but I won't admit a losing day easily so I traded until it wins. The problem is, I lose control with risk management when I trading for longer time. I remember early in the year, I use to write the trade first and then get into the orders. That way I have my risk on paper. Later on, I traded pretty well so all the paper gets out of the way and that's where the risk control become an empty title.
3: more than once, I decided not to trade the Asian session because of overall I don't get good performance on that. Good setup is always there, but it involves chart/price/news and Time Frame!

Good example is, there is a nice cup and handle setup today right before the news, do you trade it or do you wait? You Wait, because during the news, Oanda expand spread to 10 pips that kills your profit/risk!

I know I can get out lots of rules from this account crash, but they are useless cause I have short memory, long list of rules are just for writen once and then gone. There need to be 1 or 2 at most simple rules I need to force myself to follow. I know I have stop on 99% of the time, in fact, it's the default setting in my Oanda trading platform. Plus my account was just destroyed and funding it later on will take a while. The pain is still there so I don't think keep stop in place will be a problem for me for the next 6 months. The problem will be trade selection, I can allow myself a 40% winner vs 60% loser, cause I got bigger on winner due to my trading at the support/resist point.
And each trade, the risk is pre-set, at least the first trade of the day it is. And if that's a winner, I'm done for the day most likely, if that's a loser, I through the risk control away and trade until it's a winner. This is what's happening now, I need more trade selection process and need to understand and accept that I can have 40% loser.


1: Never remove stop anymore!

2: Pick your trade: including risk and time frame before the trade.

2 comments:

  1. I don't have much time because it's after 1 a.m. my time but I want to share few thoughts right now. You had one MC, others were simply your reaction to having MC. So you shouldn't look at them at all. Those two mc later were just trying to put things back where they were before first MC.

    "1: Never remove stop anymore!"
    I don't believe that you will obey that rule. If you could you wouldn't have problems in the first place. I say that from my own perspective because I'm like that also.

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  2. Thanks for the comment FX.

    See, one side, there is always the case that I won't be good, because if I can be good, I would be good at the beginning, and something in our life doesn't change.

    On the other side, people do improve, and I firmly believe that I had improved since I started trading and I will keep improving down the road.

    We are not really trading the market/stock/fx, we are trading ourselves and whatever the trading was, it will change and only if we can improve ourselves to a different level, we cannot survive in this market in longer run.. And have fun at the same time.

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