April Results

Closing out April with a boring day without any new trades. At today's open, yesterday's trade was still alive, and later closed for a loss. I am down 4.7% since inception, but if I had started trading April 1, I would be up 2.6%. So a lackluster month following the results of Jan-March, but it's well within the expected results of the system.

Update for 20100429

Took a trade after 12pm because it popped up on the 15m while waiting for confirmation of a trade on the last bar of the 30m that didn't end up confirming. Maybe it was a bad idea, but really, in all my back testing, I tested taking trades until 1pm, and they were even mostly winners...

I dunno. Going to bed with an open trade for the first time though! Will update this post with status. It's still at break-even right now.

Otherwise, down 2.6% since inception (4/19/2010) without counting the open trade.

Edit: it was a loss.

Update for 20100428

Exciting day! I had three trades, comprised of 1 full win, 1 full loss, and 1 partial win because of a reversal signal (I was short E/U and an E/U buy came up). HOWEVER, at second glance, the reversal signal was not actually valid (what looked like a peak on the chart was not a peak when you checked the overlay levels which I hurriedly forgot to do), and the trade continued to profit that I was not a part of.

Here's the detail on that reversal: I had plans to meet up with a guy at Starbucks to swap a wired apple keyboard for a wireless one (a deal for me), and I had a tough time getting wireless setup once I was at sbux. I finally did, and by the time I logged in, it was already a few minutes past the time when I should have closed the trade. Price was in my favor at that point, so I moved my SL on the trade to where I would have closed it out had I been at the screen at the time. Price retraced, hit the moved up SL by a pip, and I was out with 1/3 the profit. With nothing else I could do, I closed the laptop and waited for the guy I was meeting.

I came back to my apartment to see the E/U had blown through my original TP level. Now, I can play what-ifs all day long, but I imagine if I had just called the guy I was meeting and said I was running 15 minutes late, I might have caught that the reversal was not a real reversal, held on to the trade like I should have, and ended up with full profit. Who knows.

At the end of the day, I thought I got a $30 break on a computer accessory, but I (arguably) ended up with a $570 opportunity cost. Lesson learned: most people are forgiving, and if you KNOW something is coming up, politely ask them to wait while you deal with it.

Down 2.6% since inception (4/19/2010)

Update for 20100427

What a wild ride this shit is. Two trades this morning, both losers (putting the loss streak to 5!), and then the mother of all shitty setups comes along and is a winner! Probably sounds worse than it really is, but I literally had to force myself to take that trade. My head was definitely in the dumps thinking about what could be 6 losses in a row, which never popped up in two years of backtesting.

I've been trying to look at a member suggestion of combining stochastic divergence with the pair divergence as a confluence, and so far it hasn't really tipped the hand of any short-term trades yet, as there usually isn't any stochastic divergence with them. I'm only 10 trades in though, so I'll keep an eye on it.

Down 4.2% since inception (4/19/2010).

Update for 20100426

The drawdown begins! Haha. Had two losses in a row this morning. The trade setups were very much alike, but the first retraced almost immediately and the second almost hit TP but then shot down to the SL. Loss streak is currently 3!

On a brighter note, if I had been trading since the beginning of April, I would be up 4.9%.

Down 2.6% since inception (4/19/2010).

Update for 20100423

I had one trade today for a loss; it wasn't a very good setup. Price went down to my exact SL level and shot back up! It would have still been in play if I wasn't using the 75% SL method, so I don't know yet whether or not it would have been a win without that SL modification.

Up 1.9% since inception (4/19/2010).

edit: it would have been a loss even at the 2X ATR full SL amount.

Update for 20100422

No trades today, as the E/U and U/C were very correlated all day. In the future I hope to spend more time working on other trading ideas on days like today.

Up 4.3% since inception (4/19/2010).

Update for 20100421

I was pretty sleepy today between 3-6, but thankfully bedtime has arrived! Had one trade today, and it was a win. Found the following a little disconcerting:

I'm not one to cry over bank intervention, but it just seems weird that it would bounce back so quickly and happen twice in a row, you know? Those are 5 second bars. It appeared on my Alpari US data feed and the market tab over at forexfactory.com as well, although the range on the Oanda 15m bar is wider than the market tab.

Anyway, up 4.3% since inception (4/19/2010).

Update for 20100420

I took two trades today, and they were very similar setups around the same price levels. The first won, the second loss. I fatfingered a calculation and lost an extra 0.1% than I planned. C'est la vie!

Up 1.2% since inception (4/19/2010).

I'm Live!

My last day at my day job was April 16th, and my first day trading was April 19th. I'm pretty happy that all the setup has gone mostly to plan! My account is with Oanda, and I filled it with a little more cash than I thought I would be able to.

Yesterday was pretty cool. I had one winner and one loser for a net gain of 0.6% on my account. I'm trading fixed fractional money management, with each win being 3% gain and each loser being 2.25% loss.

The only trading method I'm trading right now is the pair divergence method, previously linked to in this blog. I've had one trade today, and it was a winner.

I'll be using the "performance record" approach detailed in The Tax Guide for Traders to report performance (this will become increasingly relevant as I withdraw cash from the account to live off of):

Trading gains and losses = TP - PI + MIE

where

TP = ENA - A + W - BNA

where

TP = Total performance

ENA = Ending net assets

BNA = beginning net assets

A = Additions

W = Withdrawals

PI = Portfolio income

MIE = Margin interest expense

This blog will serve as my trading journal to post summaries and thoughts to, while my (private) trading log will keep all the gory details of my trades. I'm keeping the older posts that have little to do with my current situation for posterity's sake :)