weekly review

Monday:
Sunday night was doing alright, buying low and selling high on range trade. made my points.

Monday morning wasn't right, son was waking up 4 and 6, I was late to the screen and saw we goes up, so jump in after a pretty fast pull back with thinking of not to trade the pull back and 3 red bar on 1 minute for 20 pips.. traded anyway with TILT, which risked about 200 pips (with bigger size position) and end up with probably 20 in return... crap, this was exactly the way how I blow off my account last time and I still don't learn.

Monday night was ok, buying the pull back after a breakout. made my points.

Tuesday morning, market dropped another 100 pips, but is out side of my trading time zone, so no worry, I was taking profit too early in general as the market is choppy, could go bigger size and longer hold if I trade after the breakout. Also Oanda is lagging IB little bit.

Wednesday morning, the pair was choppy but moving up, 1.3525 was previous resist, and it was broken, I was able to trade with the trend, but need to buy on the dip of ema62... I was doing ok because of trading with the trend, there were just not much mistake you can make..

Thursday morning, the news was good for SPY but also good for USD, I should have been short, but long instead, painful trading with broken rules to get to BE. I also longed GM which distract me somewhat. Shouldn't trade before the news, first order was right before 7:00. Also the relationship between e/u and SPY is broken today.

TILT on Thursday night, the pair break above 1.3670 and I keep shorting, lost about 2 weeks gain... and also it was too late at night so didn't get up to trade Friday morning... DAMN, I was just learned 2 important points:
1: get up 15 minutes early.
2: prepare the work from previous night.

2010-11-10

Today is an interesting day, it reverse in the middle of the trading session, I would lose everything including my underware if I keep on one direction only.
The market was really bearish on Monday and Tuesday, today it was more bearish to begin with and then turned in the middle, I got some short, but nothing flys. It's OK, I was only aiming for 10 to 20 pips anyway, so this saved my ass.

As of the short week, there won't be much trading activities tomorrow and Friday, lets' summarize what happened to me in trading this week.

Monday was a good day, It was bearish on Sunday night and carry over to Monday morning, I was able to short and short, but I didn't let the winner run or follow the market, I was hitting my goal for the day then left. Which means I left more coins on the table.

Tuesday was confusing, which it popped back and I had no idea where to go, so I shorted gold which is at high and got stopped out before it reaching my target. This was stupid.

Wednesday was down and down and reversal all the way back up, I was able to capture some short, see, if I continue to short like what I wished on Tuesday, I would have lose everything again. So it's really hard to tell.

Thursday was a great down market, it dropped from 1.3720 to 1.3660 in my trading hour, but I was expecting a lighter market as US BANK and treatury closed, however, CSCO miss in earning report drag down the entire market which is perfect for short, this IS the time to go all-in. I was pretty protective and only traded 2/3 size... damn it. And I wasn't able to let the winner run, well, it run slower as it IS a holiday. I guess the trading error I have is still the effect from Wednesday.


This is the good datapoint and goal of this blog, to keep track of different days of market movement and my own response to the market.

See you next week.

A year ago.

A year ago, 11/6/09, I started this blog. Now I looked back, there were so many things changed.
1: account size
2: The way I trade.
3: The expectation I have about the market and about my own performance.

There are things not changed.

1: still using Oanda.
2: I'm still suck.

The Timeframe and chart I trade.

I'm starting more and more often to trade 10 seconds chart and 1 minute chart, 5 minute and 15 minutes is only for support/resist and 1hour-3hour-daily is mainly for bigger trend, in fact, the best case is use 1 minute for trend and 10 seconds for entry.

Following the trend is hard to get decent entry, but less risk as well.

As long as I control my average in size and think about what if scenario, I'm ok with trend following.

Current view of the market.

SPY is topped at 1190 level, as long as that stays, we are still having the potential of going back to 1040. I believe we will be choppy within this range to make our yearly gain at less than 10%.
Today ES was down 10+ points and closed within 5, bull is still around.

USD/JPY is temp bottoming at 80 level, I feel it's going to break below 80 to 79 or 78 and then the real bottom there and then we back to 90. Just like eur/usd couple month ago break to 1.19/8 and now is back to 1.40.

EUR/USD is topping, we have resist at 1.41 and we are due for the pullback to at least 1.36.
We will revisit this after next week's FOMC meeting.

Friday Thought

I was trading well this week, the smaller account (after blow out, now I trade with smaller size) gained over 20%, and I didn't feel much pressure during the week. There were probably one or 2 times I went all-in with this smaller account, and there is only one time I use the reserve.
If (and only if) base on this ratio, I would need 5 weeks to double this account and 25 weeks to get all the losses back for the current account. If I double up every 100%, it will be 11 weeks, that will put me in the end of Jan 2011.
This is a very aggressive goal and I'm sure I won't make it, so I will actually doubling my account with more funding from the reserver after 4 weeks of profitable trading so that my target ratio will be smaller, hopefully I can still get the same place by Jan 2011.
Trading is a long term goal, there should be any day / week to make me or break me.

Now let's talk about why I'm success this week, I mainly focus on how market moves, and because of the big loss last week, I wasn't really want to trade and I was watching here and there, but I clearly remember what the loss I have and what was the reason for it, it was fighting against the trend. This week, I still trade the same support/resistant type of setup, but I am more careful with the trend, and I can spot the difference of stronger trend vs. weaker trend on 10 or 5 seconds chart, with also the help of watching at price change real time. When price approaching a specific range, for example 50, the seller will try to stop it from going above 50, so you should see a slow down in the move, if the price movement continues, it can break and then because of the stop order, it accelerated, and most of the time in stronger trend, it stays above 50. So I was able to follow the stronger trend and fade the weaker trend. This is one reason of the success this week.

The other reason is, I am able to take some loss during the trade with out holding onto them for too long. Before, I was also able to take loss for individual trade, I cut them quickly because of stop-loss order, but I wasn't able to mentally take the loss for the day, I have to trade it back. This week, I did. I was able to identify the right timeframe and trading entry, when it's not working for me, I just stop, as I'm gaining any advantage on the market, why continue. This is always tomorrow that I can trade it back, no one day should make me or break me.

So 2 factors, 1: read the market and movement strong/weak. 2: risk management, always think of what if you loss this trade.

Bye for now, it's raining here in west coast, it sucks. It keeps my kids inside and they want to go out and play.

2010-09-17 -230 pips

1: daily is up 3hourly up hourly flat 15minute down 5 down, 1.3030 is ema62 of 1 hour chart.
2: News to come is: just came usd cpi, match exp.6:55 U Mich.exp 70.
3: What's the main event just happened that move the market? and is it trendy? no change overnight, it push up to 1.3160 then the middle east selling push it to 1.3040 level, now we bounce back to 1.3060 level. meanwhile, sds drop to 30.29, crap, my average price is 30.8. I will be out if it breaks 30 and stays under.

4: What do you think the market will do today? dropping.

5: Were you right about the market? (After the trading session)

6: What's the trade? Is it related to the previous loser or winner? short pop
Do you take half at 1R?
How many pips it risk?20

what's the daily limit and daily risk now? 60/20/3


1: keep leverage low is helping. I have 2 acount, they are pretty much same size, acc1 is 50:1 and acc2 is 1:1, which is just my reserve, so I trade feels like 50:1, but it's really just 25:1 overall size, this helped today other wize I will be all in at the middle of tilt anyway. BTW: this change happened after the JPY trade. Since I break even for the year, I decided to lower my risk.

2: today wasn't down that much, the break to 1.3040 level was pretty fast, but it didn't stay there, my strength is to short the pop in a down trend, it's different this time, it's bouncing from 40 and never stays below it. Then it form an up trend all the way to 96. There is no point short (or even trading) when I was -60 pip.

3: I traded UMich also, and have 50 pips in pocket for a moment but didn't take it. And I moved my stop to BE and it was taken out on the 2nd bounce of the down trend. As I always do, this should be changed, because I was down -200 + pips, doesn't mean I can get it back in 1 shot. I always try to do this, that's cause my TILT. If I stop trading for the day, my mind will get reset in couple days, and then I will be trading from my new account size as a base. I think lossing is not a good thing, but learn from losing is good. As I had tilted so many times, today I realize that what cause my tilt and how do I avoid more. Sometimes strick rule helped as well. Like today, I have a 300 pips max loss, that's why I stopped at 230. ANother note is, when I was down 100 pips, and I asked myself, do you want to risk another 100 pips or do you want to stop here today, sure I risk another one, this is not the right choice as I was doing it purely against the current trend, even the trend is about to change any moment, it's not the point of this trade, it's the point about this strategy and this mind TILT. And also the risk control, lossing 100 pips is not a big deal, but losing 300 pips is, how to loss 100 pips is also important as if I lost in multiple trade with right stragegy, it's much better than lost it in TILT.


BTW: I thought of ALL-IN at 1.3090 as well, it would be +500 pips now...

weekly review

-90 pips this week, most of it (60) are from FOMC reaction. The rest are just not working setup, on the plan part, it's 10:10. Next week's target is 10:5.

misstakes:
1: didn't do as I predict in the post, and didn't write why?
2: trade on 10 seconds entry, but not taking profit at half, also set stop on 5 minutes chart, so bigger lost.
3: leave trade over night with too wide of target, it's getting hit on stop first.
4: didn't find true div but jump in anyway.
5: need to name first picture as P...... and so it can connected to each other on 15 minutes.

week of 2010-06-27
1: no trade on FOMC, as it moves too quickly. unless I'm trading with the trend.
2: no trade on 1 minute chart when at remote, too slow to react.
3: try more follow trend trade.
4: In trending market, DIV on one didn't work well on 1 min chart... DIV on 5 and 15 did.


More learning cycle more better.

key success for this coming week:
1: Keep a plan in place and follow it.
2: follow the trend.
3: Don't trade 10/1 chart when remote.

weekly review

This is for review the week of 06/18/2010.
Pips: 0, and trades are 8:8, not the win:loss, but planned:unplanned. 

Overall, it feels good, as I started the week with much more unplanned trade and ended the week with lots more planned trade. even though the biggest winner comes from unplanned trade, biggest loser comes from unplanned trade as well.... As expected, unplanned trade are just too hard to manage and follow and review.

There are some lessons learned and there are changes made for the template, basically the template is driving what I do in planned trade, after following the template,  I should be able to get a sense of the market, knowing the trend or the range, setup a plan and follow it. There are needs to have more than one weapon/setups to deal with different market condition, otherwise I get bored.

Pipwise, I didn't get much this week, but this is a different feeling compare to a week ago, I won't have a blow out account even I had much more losers as I have stop in place and money management in place to keep me in the game, also don't look for the setup that you want to trade, look to feel the market and so far it's working. next week will need to track if my read/prediction about the market is on target or not. and if not, why? is it because of different technical level or because the news changed everything.

weekly review

Go back to last week's review, here is what I have planned for this week:

1: Never remove stop anymore!

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

I met #1. And I met #2 4 out of 5 days. Friday I didn't trade with my plan.

Lession's learned this week:


1: trade your plan, break the plan will always make it worse.
2: you don't need to trade bigger size to get all lose back, and you don't have to hold until profit hudge.

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.

weekly review and monthly goal.

A month goes by so fast.. here is the weekly number:

4/25/2010 4
4/26/2010 79
4/27/2010 21
4/28/2010 -108
4/29/2010 43
4/30/2010 16

Total of 55 pips. Biggest lost came from FOMC trade. I was having a short bias, so even have some smaller position (1/4 size) before the news, that didn't hurt me much on the stop loss, but that short bias hit me hard that I keep on shorting.


As of Monthly, total of 381 pips, 14%. This is so far my best month:
Jan: 63
Feb: 359
Mar: 19
Apr: 381

Seems like I should only trade every other month... LOL, let's see what will happen in May 2010.

The goal is:
1: follow the trend on 1 minutes, buy the dip or short the top at EMA62.
2: Against trend on double top with 5 more minutes apart between the tops (or bottom).
3: Have a plan and trade the plan.


I cannot increase my size as I had 2 times break the rule last week, I will keep this in mind and if next week (first week of May) I don't break the rule, I will increase my size to 1.5x.

weekly review

4/18/2010 39
4/19/2010 5
4/20/2010 26
4/21/2010 3
4/22/2010 40
4/23/2010 19


Total of 132 pips, more important is, I didn't have any rule breaking day....

1: follow the trend on 1 minutes, buy the dip or short the top at EMA62.
2: Against trend on double top with 5 more minutes apart between the tops (or bottom).
3: Have a plan and trade the plan.
4: Keep the current size, and if I don't have any RB trade, don't have any 5x trade this week, I will increase my size to 1.5x next week.

weekly review

4/11/2010 -173
4/12/2010 181
4/13/2010 19
4/14/2010 13
4/15/2010 33
4/16/2010 3

Total of 76 pips this week, again the goal for next week is:
1: follow the trend on 1 minutes, buy the dip or short the top at EMA62.
2: Against trend on double top with 5 more minutes apart between the tops (or bottom).
3: Have a plan and trade the plan.

weekly review

4/4/2010 1
4/5/2010 -5
4/6/2010 -35
4/7/2010 61
4/8/2010 8
4/9/2010 17


Total 47 pips this week.


Goal for next week:
Trade these 2 setups:
1: follow the trend on 1 minutes, buy the dip or short the top at EMA62.
2: Against trend on double top with 5 more minutes apart between the tops (or bottom).
3: Have a plan and trade the plan.

weekly review and monthly goal.

Here are the numbers:

3/28/2010 12
3/29/2010 38
3/30/2010 -34
3/31/2010 4
4/1/2010 21
4/2/2010 19

Total of 60 pips for this week, as I traded 6 days, average 10 pips a day.

The goal is to focus on execution of the plan, and try to use limit order as much as posible, not market orders.

There are 2 type of setup I should be trading.

1: Support or Resist play, when a support or resist is approaching, the price would either break through it or bounce from it. I shall watch the reaction at the key level and follow or fade the move. In execution, I shall short the pop or buy the dip.


2: Pirce moves in one direction with strong trending. I shall follow the trend and buy the dip or short the pop.

weekly review.

3/8/2010 14
3/9/2010 31
3/10/2010 -177
3/11/2010 95
3/12/2010 49

3/8 65
3/9 118
3/10 -73
3/11 85
3/12 6


Total of +12 pips... The 3/10 is really a killer and I wrote about it in my post. I never feels this happy that the week has ended finally, so that I don't have to trade and can spend some time with my family.. Also review my chart!

I am doing work with FXCC, it shows interesting report, the above pips number was calculated by myself, it's converted into full size pip, as I normally traded with half size so that I can scale in/out.

Here is the number from FXCC, for the *pure* pips number, size is not a factor, I added to the 2nd column of table. Now I can see that I traded bigger size when I'm losing.... WTF#$%^&*@

1: sunday night was good, follow the trend and easy 2R in pocket.
2: Monday is good, pick the reverse point and easy profit.
3: Tuesday was also good, choppy market, picking top and bottom
4: Tuesday night was bad, keep on buying the bottom, should have keep my entry and timing... only on the previous level.
5: Then the rest of week was revange trading to get the loss back, I mainly traded base on my P/L, not the chart or the market.


Action taking:
1: I need to have written plan again before the trade. and need to have levels of S/R and only trade these levels
2: will try to follow the trend when on 1 minute chart, EMA 5 is above or below EMA62, meaning it's trendy short term, and short/long in reverse on 10 seconds chart, see how it goes.

weekly review.

First week after increase the trading size, got bumpy with it..

3/1/2010 23
3/2/2010 31
3/3/2010 11
3/4/2010 31
3/5/2010 3



Total of 99 pips and 2 rule breaking days (Monday and Friday).

More detail reviews to come.

I had plan to review my trade over the weekend, that's still on going, I also want to try the tools from forex control center, see what's my performance down to single trade level, never install that software, will give a try tonight.

EUR/USD ranging from 1.3840 to 1.3440 this week, couldn't break either up or down.
1: following the bigger trend, it's ranging and I was fighting it.
2: Fib number works on longer time frame
3: contral the size to 10 / 20 /40 and see.
4: Let the winner run is the key to success

Goal for next week:
1: write a plan and follow the plan.
2: Take profit at 1R and let the rest run.
3: follow the trend in breakout and short the bounce or buy the dip.
4: Don't trade off session, 8:00 PM.

weekly review and monthly review.

I'm done for the week and the month. Today there is some interesting market movement, we yoyoed in fx market, E/U end up at 1.3540/50 level.

Weekly number:
2/21/2010 8
2/22/2010 9
2/23/2010 38
2/24/2010 0
2/25/2010 -6

Total of 49 pips. And I reached my monthly goal as well, that's why I call it for the month. Starting next month, I will be increasing my size and max risk will also be increased.

By looking at my jornal, the biggest problem is my rule breaking trade, if all the worst case happened, I will be -800 pips in the past 4 months. There need to be some review and plan/action in place.

I don't have much time to work on my trading, I do have time in front of the computer but I feel I'm not focused, my eyes are looking at the screen but not my mind, and I'm losing my sleep because of some bad trade (for example the one on 2/23).

We bot a mini-van, now I'm a complete mid-age family man. :)

I'm having skype account now, it's active when I was trading, I feel it helps to keep connection with couple trading friends (Thanks Alex for bring this up). If the readers want to get connected, please email me your skype ID. Again, I'm trading mainly PST time frame.

Happy weekend everyone... ops, it's NOT Friday yet.


lessons learned this week:
1: in off session, I can wait for the price to reach the s/r line, so have limited order at the line is better than giving up 1 or 2 pips. because it's less chance to true breakout. Also in off session, it moves less and spread wider, 1 or 2 pips makes big deal.

2: following 1 minute ema62 is so easy to trade.

3: rule breaking == failure

weekly review

2/15/2010 2
2/16/2010 36
2/17/2010 15
2/18/2010 36
2/19/2010 6

Total of 95 pips, not bad. The bad part is, I had 2 days of rule breaking, each of them result in 36 pips profit.
here is the thing, on the first one, I agree it's a totally rule breaking, because I moved my stop and average in, so it had -200 risk at one point, and I end up getting 10 or 20 pips in profit. This case need to be avoid next time.

The 2nd one, I was actually keeping my stop in place, so I get maybe 10 or 15 stops, that end up of -110 pips at the biggest, then I traded with much larger size (3.5x), and end up with 10 or 20 pips result. See, I don't have a daily trading limit, not a hard one, I use to set a 100 or 70 loss limit, but if I reach that point, I won't stop but keep on going, untill the market close or the active session is over. Is this really wrong? I mean I didn't move my stop and I'm just keep trading, it's like I lost continuesly in couple days.

I guess I was still wrong, with -110 pips in mind, I couldn't make the right decision, that I tend to take profit at my BE point, which happened in both days.


Goal for next week:
1: write a plan and follow the plan.
2: Take profit at 1R and let the rest run.
3: follow the trend in breakout and short the bounce or buy the dip.

lessons learned this week:
follow the trend is better.
Get out when you are wrong. Follow the trend is not easy after it stalls for a while. Market goes up in spike and range in turns.. When it's in range, it's better to buy low and sell high, in spike, it's better to follow the trend and buy pullback and short pop up.
again, follow the trend is better.
keep stop in place is the key, also as part of the plan.