Choo choooooo

Chugging along with NT to chart and Oanda to trade. Yesterday I lost and today I'm breakeven (that's including spread). While not the greatest, I'm happy that I've been improving. I lost much less than when I posted about trading retarded and I'm watching for good setups. Sticking to my rules (for the most part) no doubt has improved performance. In fact, if I would have stuck to them completely, both today and yesterday would have be very small winners.

Must remember to:
-Cut stalled or reversed trades early!
-Only trade when ADX 25+!
-Trade with direction of CCI.

Lastly, I've added Eur/Chf to the mix. Found that when Eur/Usd retraces or stalls, Chf often continues to trend. Larger spread though, generally 2.1pips. So to trade it I want a stronger trend than normal to give me more chance of making profit with the increased spread so ADX+35 on Chf.

Get it, got it, good.

I've found that I've had quite a few losing trades because I was anticipating a larger move than was being shown at the time. I.e. I'm 1 pip in profit but holding on for 3+ more. Then it would reverse, stop me out, then continue where I thought it would go. Frustrating. However, I figured that if I use Oanda for trading and NT just for charts (I love their charting), I could just grab those very small, quick pips and get out. And since Oanda spread is lower than MBT spread+commission a 1 pip profit in MBT/NT would be 1.5 - 2pip profit in Oanda. Getting those quick pips is something I'm familiar with because I started out with a similar method scalping the Asian session a while back. So I brought that over to the NY session and the last couple days have gone well (today's graph posted). Some losing trades but more small winners + a couple nice sized winners. So far, so good. Just gotta get in and get out quickly. Get the pip and get the fuck out. If it continues strong then stay in, if it stalls or reverses at all get OUT!

Oh yeah, Oanda doesn't have a close position button like NT. You have to put in a reversing trade to close. Initially I had a 2 pip S/L but I once tried to close earlier but due to slippage/lag it didn't show the stop had been hit. So I reversed the position to close, only to see that my stop was already hit so I had entered a trade in the opposite direction. Yikes. I closed immediately but still lost a couple pips because of it. To prevent that in the future I moved the hard stop to 10 pips (as an emergency stop) but manually close at 2.


Also, other lessons learned...

1) Go WITH the trend. Use CCI to confirm where trend is at.
2) Don't trade initial break out. Fills are horrible. By the time I get filled the market is often slowing and retraces a small amount which hits my stop. Trade the second break on the retrace. Much better fill.
3) Don't trade into support/resistance or traffic. Trade past the the lines. Trade past the traffic.
4) Watch markets at ADX 20+. Trades at 25+. Anything less is uncivilized.
5) When rough, get the pips and call it a day. When markets are trending smooth, stay with it and ride the good fortune.

Trading like a retard

Look at this. Looook at this. All those trades...that's just ridiculous! This is how it's gone since Wednesday. What am I even thinking there? Most of those trades were losers and break almost every rule I set for myself. Price was moving fast and I jumped on and off constantly. I kept changing strategies and pursuing different ideas. Got to the point where it felt like I was playing slot machines. So stupid. As my first post here said, my challenge has been consistency. Posting this will drive that fact home further for myself. From this point on I'm sticking to my rules exactly.

Before writing this blog entry I wrote down my rules on paper and will trade by them for one week without deviation. 1 week sounds silly but for me that will be a great step. 1 week leads to 2, 2 weeks leads to a month, months will lead to solid habits, and so on.

Monday it's on at the break of dawn.

Day 2

Sat down at the computer right after that nice rise/decline in the middle, and prices were then slow and choppy. The second trade was a mistake, hah. I meant to press the buy button and hold it down until ready to let go to execute, which you can do on Oanda, but not on NT apparently. NT immediately executes. It worked out though.

First day with Ninjatrader and MBT

Today was the first day I traded live with NT and MBT. Used to trade Oanda. Sipped a cup of tea and listened to soothing music while trading. Off to a good start.

Consistency

Consistency in Forex has been a challenge for me. I will keep track of my successes and mistakes here in order to grow the former, prevent the latter, and to learn from both.