Day 36

Start Balance                     $15,229

Today's Profit Target             $198.68 (Day 33)
Required Position size         196,200 (JPY), 164,300 (USD)

Trades

1     -98,100K         EURJPY      *-1.4 pips     (0:42)
2     +82,150K        EURUSD     *-8.2 pips     (0:30)
3     +82,150K        EURUSD     *-5.4 pips     (0:19)
4     +196,200K      USDJPY      14.2 pips     (1:06)
5     +196,200K      EURJPY       1.0 pips      (0:05)
6     +98,100K        USDJPY      *0.6 pips     (0:54)
7     +98,100K        EURJPY      *1.7 pips     (0:22)
8     +196,200K      EURJPY       0.0 pips      (0:09)
9     +98,100K        EURJPY     *-2.6 pips     (0:10)
10   +98,100K        USDJPY      *1.6 pips     (2:23)
11   +164,300K      EURUSD       4.9 pips     (0:05)
12   +82,150K        GBPUSD     *4.7 pips     (0:09)

* half the full sized position. this is the equivalent no. of pips if the position was full sized.

Total                      11 pips     ( $220.21 )

End Balance          $15,449

Project Status 

Day 36 end target  $15,977
3 Days Behind (same as yesterday)
$527.37behind schedule or 26.2 pips on tomorrow’s pip value.

Comments

This week is going to be very slow during the Asian session as it is Golden week in Japan. Consequently all but the very first trade where taken during the European session. The movement was stuttered during Asia and it was just too hard to pick anything that didn’t just stop moving. Also the spreads didn’t return to normal until Europe opened today making Asian time trades a bit more expensive than need be.

My confidence has still not returned after so many losing days of late and this has resulted in me bottling it and mostly placing half sized positions. I have to get over this as it’s of course just adding to the number of trades I have to do each day and making the day longer than it needs to be, it’s also encouraging me to over-trade rather than wait for the best opportunities. Having said that, if I’d have gone with full size positions today the first three trades would have busted me and it would have been another 30 pip losing day.

I guess I got lucky then today, as the first trade I felt really good about, trade 4, I put on the full size and it came off very well with a 14 pip win and bringing me back to flat after 3 losers. Perhaps the moral here is to not trade if I don’t feel confident about it and stick with the full size. Had I done that today I may have just done the one trade, a situation I would love to get back to. A few weeks ago during that great 14 day winning run I was averaging less than 5 trades per day and since that streak ended I’m averaging nearly 9. It is noteworthy that none of the 4 full sized trades today were losers (3 winners and 1 flat).

There was nothing particularly interesting about today’s trades worth commenting on except to say I tried the exact same trick as last Friday with the last trade of the day. Everything was lining up just like last Friday with the USD pairs appreciating in anticipation of the announcement of the core PCE Price Index in the US. I followed the same procedure with a take profit stop in place and this time the spreads did blow out when the announcement came out. All the GBP pairs spreads temporarily moved to 20 pips making it too expensive to get out. I didn’t get the same huge move as last Friday’s GDP but it was good enough and when the spreads closed again I got out with 4.7 full sized pips. My take profit stop was eventually reached half an hour later which could have netted me another 5 full size pips but I really wanted to just end the day with a positive result and I got 11 pips which will suffice. I have to discipline myself to stop when the time is right, and although this day wasn’t overly long, I was still at the screens most of the day even if I only placed one trade before Europe.