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 :)

No posts = Quiet before the storm

Getting ready to go live...

Update on where I'm at

I've been trading FirstStrike Plus since March 1st, and I've decided against continuing trading the method for now, because its returns over the past 8 months are not consistent enough. I am currently following a thread/method introduced at forexfactory.com under the name "Pair Divergence Method" which can be found here: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=160679

I've back tested it so far over 7 months and the returns are staggering. We're almost through November, and I'm almost done testing March, and the returns for those time periods are looking excellent as well.

I'm not giving up on FSP or DIBS, but I do not feel I can currently rely on them for my "bread and butter," so they will stay on the shelf while I get settled.

If anyone happens to read this and knows of a good CPA that prepares traders' taxes, shoot me an email or leave a comment. I just finished attending two webinars from www.tradersaccounting.com, which were very informative, but I don't necessarily want to decide to use them yet. Thanks!

Oops!

Never wrote that trading plan...hmmm. Guess I should get on that.

Just for information's sake, I opened a $100 account at oanda, and I'm trading weekly based on the First Strike Plus method at http://infiniteyieldforex.blogspot.com. I'm also tracking DIBS trades, but unfortuntely I can't stay up and trade them at this point in time -- still trying to work it out though.

It's funny how much you learn

I think blogging your progress is an awesome way to see how far you've come since you started. I look back on this after almost a year, and I'm looking at "ingot54" trades with a "james16" perspective, and some correlate, where others are like "there's no way I would take that trade now!"

I'm going to start a real account with some chump change soon (max risk $2/trade), but before I do that, I will for sure write up a trading plan and post it here.

Adding new strats to trading toolbox

I've been researching the James16 chart thread at www.forexfactory.com recently, and I really like what I see. I won't be providing daily updates for the ingot54 system anymore unless I get in on a trade.

I might try to post the other trades here still though, just depends how much time I have :)

Update for an update

Update

• EURUSD: (short 3 lots) Closed +70 pips profit due to fishnetting on the daily. There will be more opportunities to trade, so I'm not too worried. Our system said to get out, so instead of not leaving the trade much room to move about (i.e. moving stops to BE and letting it ride), I took my profits. I'll keep an eye on it and see if taking profit with one or two lots and keeping the stop at BE would have been a better idea.