Forex Experiment

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.

Trade Profiles

Last Posted - 4th May

Day 35

Start Balance                         15,470

Today's Profit Target                 $201.28 (Day 34)
Required Position size             199,000 (JPY), 166,400 (USD)

Trades

1       +99,500K     EURUSD        *-2.2 pips (1:21)
2       +99,500K     EURJPY         *-4.4 pips (1:19)
3       -99,500K      USDJPY         *-3.6 pips (0:15)
4       +66,900K     EURUSD        *-3.1 pips (0:36)
5       +99,500K     USDJPY         *-6.9 pips (4:13)
6       -166,400K     EURUSD        -5.5 pips (1:25)
7       +99,500K     USDJPY        *-7.6 pips (3:42)
8       +99,500K     EURJPY         *2.8 pips (2:13)
9       +99,500K     EURJPY         *3.3 pips (0:28)
10     +99,500K     EURJPY         *2.8 pips (0:14)
11     +99,500K     EURUSD        *2.8 pips (0:11)
12     +99,500K     EURJPY         *-0.7 pips (0:16)
13     +99,500K     EURJPY         *2.2 pips (0:09)
14     +99,500K     EURJPY         *1.5 pips (0:42)
15     +83,200K     GBPUSD        *16.8 pips (0:16)
16     -99,500K      USDJPY         *-4.1 pips (0:03)
17     -99,500K      USDJPY         * 0.0 pips (0:09)
18     +83,200K     EURUSD        *-4.0 pips (0:11)

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

Total                           -12.8 pips         ( -$240.87 )

End Balance              $15,229

Project Status 

Day 35 end target  $15,700
3 Days Behind (2 days back since yesterday)
$541 behind schedule or 27.59 pips on tomorrow’s pip value.

Comments

Today was one of those days I just shouldn’t have traded, I didn’t feel right from the start and consequently only had the courage to trade half size lots with the exception of one trade. Instead of trading halves I should have just had a day off, again, hindsight is a wonderful thing. The problem being of course this project really doesn’t provide much room for having days off and I’ve already miscalculated how many days holiday and non-trading days there will be. So achieving the goal in one year is now likely to require more than 10 pips per day on average. Having said that, this week has really had very little to do with getting 10 pips per day. Since losing 33 pips on Monday I just can’t help myself wanting to get back on track. This is a major problem as it is encouraging me to over-trade, but I’m not sure what the solution is yet, losing days really do suck big time, especially large losing days. I’m also very unhappy with the big increase in the number of losing days of late, 3 in the last 7 is just way too much.

So what happened today? Well it was really quite tragic but the end result was far better than I could have hoped for at any point during the day. There was a few position sizing errors today, Trade 1 half size was wrong, it should have been 83,200 not 99,500, I compensated for it by opening trade 4 a litte later, open concurrently, which made it an effective full size. Trade 17 I got the wrong size as well. It's just careless really and I should be past these basic errors by now.

I was down all day and was looking at a very bad losing day at several points. The first 7 trades were all losers although I did have some winning trades before they were all closed out, as a few of those trades were on for several hours. 18 trades is far too many and I had 10 losing trades, my worst in 1 day. It was also a long day, 10 hours from starting the first trade to the last trade. I just couldn’t get it right today and trade 15, the only notable trade, really saved the day for me. This was quite a high risk trade as I was down 21.5 pips at this stage and the GBPUSD can move very quick, but for once in the day I was very confident of it coming off. The pair had recovered after a huge sell off the previous day and was pausing along with all of the other currencies awaiting the US GDP figures. The figures were well anticipated and continued upside looked very good. I put on a take profit stop on the pair as Oanda often widens the spread around announcements so you can’t really get out without paying a big price in spread cost. As it turned out the spreads didn’t widen but it got so volatile it would have been hard to know what price you would have got with a market order. Anyway the trade went perfectly to plan, the figures came out, just as expected the USD got sold off more against every currency and my stop took me out 5 pips from the top of the spike. This got me 16.8 pips and got the day back down to a relatively nice 4.7 pips down. I tried a few more quick scalp trades but none of them came off.

So the week in review. I started the week 1 day behind and then had a terrible start on Monday taking me 6 days behind schedule. I followed that with three very good days to get back to being only 1 day behind again, but I couldn’t complete the week with a positive day on Friday. After Monday though I would have probably have taken this end state, clawing back 3 days in 4 is pretty good. Next week I need to return to being more patient, forget about trying to catch up, and just try and let it happen naturally. I want fewer trades each day as the current day’s activities are giving me no free time to do analysis and look for up and coming trade opportunities. The bank is up 50% in less than 2 months and despite the small size of the bank so far I think that has to be considered very good in anybodies books, so I probably shouldn't be so hard on myself.

Day 34

Start Balance                 $15,026

Today's Profit Target         $196.11 (Day 28)
Required Position size     194,100 (JPY), 163,650 (USD)

Trades

1     +163,650K    EURUSD       2.9 pips       (3:32)
2     +194,100K    EURJPY       21.8 pips      (1:47)
3     +81,825K      EURUSD     *-6.1 pips      (0:00)
4     +81,825K      EURUSD     *0.4 pips       (0:16)
5     +81,825K      EURUSD     *-0.6 pips      (0:00)
6     +81,825K      EURUSD     *1.9 pips       (0:13)
7     +81,825K      EURUSD     *2.4 pips       (0:03)

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

Total                      22.65 pips         ( $443.75 )

End Balance          $15,470

Project Status 

Day 34 end target  $15,566
1 Day Behind (1 day improvement since yesterday)
$96 behind schedule or 4.91 pips on tomorrow’s pip value.

Comments

I didn’t start trading until really late today after watching Liverpool perform miserably against Chelsea  at 4:30 in the morning I had to go back to bed and catch up on lost sleep. The currency markets continue to baffle me but nothing will puzzle me more than the lack of desire and effort the Liverpool players showed in such a massive game with so much at stake.

Consequently rather than being to active today, and after yesterday’s marathon, I decided to choose a couple of positions and be patient. It paid off big time with the EURJPY position. I bought the EURJPY just below 162 and when it got through it triggered stops and I’d banked nearly 22 pips in no time after having sat on a couple of pips for an hour and half. Trade 1 was in and out of the money for hours and after closing Trade 2 I decided to close it out for a few pips. As usual it was at this point I should really have stopped for the day, and as usual I didn’t. I had 24.7 pips from two trades at this point. Anyway I switched to half size and consequently had a bad loss on the next trade, it always seems to happen that way. 4 more quick scalping trades and I’d had enough.

So another very healthy pip day since blue Monday has brought me almost back on schedule. Just 5 pips behind, it would be incredible if I was back on track by the end of the week (tomorrow) as it took 15 days to recover the last time I was 6 days behind.

Day 33

Start Balance                     $14,344

Today's Profit Target             $186.16 (Day 28)
Required Position size         183,100 (JPY), 154,400 (USD)

Trades

1     +183,100K     USDJPY         -4.4 pips     (7:04)
2     +154,400K     EURUSD         6.2 pips     (0:21)
3     +154,400K     EURUSD         9.6 pips     (0:00)
4     +183,100K     EURJPY         1.5 pips      (0:03)
5     -154,400K      EURUSD        1.8 pips      (0:04)
6     +77,200K       GBPUSD        *7.7 pips     (0:08)
7     +91,550K       EURJPY         *1.0 pips     (0:33)
8     +77,200K       GBPUSD        *-2.5 pips    (1:20)
9     +91,550K       EURJPY         *3.5 pips     (0:07)
10   +91,550K       EURJPY         *4.7 pips     (0:26)
11   +91,550K       USDJPY         *0.0 pips     (0:00)
12   +77,200K       EURUSD        *2.1 pips     (0:25)
13   +91,550K       EURJPY        *-0.4 pips     (0:28)
14   +77,200K       EURUSD        *1.5 pips     (0:32)

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

Total                          36.4 pips     ( $682.55 )

End Balance              $15,026

Project Status 

Day 33 end target  $15,365
2 Days Behind (3 days improvement since yesterday)
$339 behind schedule or 17.27 pips on tomorrow’s pip value.

Comments

Wow this was a very busy day, I traded like a madman from 10:30AM to 8:30PM. It was a public holiday in Australia but that doesn’t effect the market with the exception of a quieter AUD obviously.

Way too many trades to go through today but with the major exception of the first trade they were all very short term quick move scalp trades. The first trade was actually a huge disaster in the making and this could have very easily been a losing day. I had it open nearly the whole day and it was down 22 pips at the worst point. I was very relieved in the end to get out with only a 4.4 pip loss, funniest thing was getting paid $7 in interest for having it open for 7 hours. I was in and out of the next 6 trades while trade 1 was still open and after going past the 10 pip mark I switched down to half size. Apart from trade 1 everything was just going really well and my confidence was high, the EURUSD & EURJPY particularly were so predictable for short term pips and everything was coming off. At 8:30PM I was seriously thinking of continuing on but decided better of it.

Finished the day with my highest pip win so far, biggest $$$ day (win or lose), pulled back 3 days to be only 2 days behind and the account reached another milestone by passing the 50% increase mark.

Day 33

Start Balance                     $13,973

Today's Profit Target             $181.38  (Day 26)
Required Position size         179,200 (JPY), 151,200 (USD)

Trades

1     -179,200K         USDJPY          2.0 pips     (0:41)
2     +151,200K        EURUSD         1.0 pips     (0:02)
3     -151,200K        AUDUSD          8.2 pips     (0:01)
4     +89,600K         EURUSD         *3.7 pips     (0:48)   
5     +89,600K         GBPUSD         *4.0 pips     (0:10)   
6     +75,600K         EURUSD         *1.1 pips     (0:22)   
7     +89,600K         EURJPY          *-7.25 pips   (0:19)
8     -89,600K          USDJPY          *-2.0 pips     (0:31)
9     +75,600K         EURUSD         *2.4 pips     (0:19)
10   +89,600K         EURJPY          *1.3 pips     (0:06)
11   +75,600K         EURUSD         *0.8 pips     (0:00)
12   +89,600K         EURJPY          *5.3 pips     (0:19)

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

Total                          20.46 pips     ( 370.38 )

End Balance              $14,344

Project Status 

Day 33 end target  $15,166
5 Days Behind (1 day improvement since yesterday)
$823 behind schedule or 44.19 pips on tomorrow’s pip value.

Comments

After yesterday’s big loss today was a must win day at all costs, at least psychologically. Consequently I stayed away from the EURJPY and GBP early on until I established some credit. I was incredibly cautious starting today and it paid off with 2 small pip trades and then the 3^rd one a news related trade in the AUDUSD which got me 8.2 pips super quick and pushed me over the 10 pips mark. From there I was taking no chances and halved the position size, only I didn’t quite get it right. I set up the default position size to be 89,600 which was half on the JPY but half on the USD should have been 75,600. I didn’t notice until later but this mistake actually resulted in an extra 1.3 pips on the first two half sized USD trades. After trade 6 didn’t move after 20 minutes (same old story, sleepy EURUSD, at least sleepy in the Asian time) I closed it out for a pip and was now up 19 pips. At this point I probably should have called it a day and it seems whenever I think that, the next trade, if I do continue, always goes bad. Today followed the script and of course I chose the EURJPY (the most volatile pair at the moment) to have my first losing trade of the day, in 19 minutes it slammed me for 14.5 pips (7.25 full size pips) and as usual I was full of regrets about not going with my instincts and quitting at 19.

The next 3 trades all ended up being open at the same time and as there was some correlation between them it was not overly smart of me to do that. I ended up closing them all out at the same time and I could have done much better out of all of them. But I had to close them out when I did so I had no real complaints in squeaking out an extra couple of pips in total. Trade 11 was open for nearly 2 hours and hardly moved, and this was during the European and London openings. What is going on with the EURUSD at the moment? At times it just doesn’t move at all, seriously weird. It was actually the last trade I closed as I was in and out of trade 12 whilst that was still open. I was very happy with that last EURJPY trade although under different circumstances (ie, not being 6 days behind) I would probably have held on for a lot more pips, perhaps as much as another 30 as it pretty much went straight up, shame really as that would have brought back on schedule.

End result - a good day, probably too many trades, but at least not many losers. I pulled a day back so the road to recovery has been established.

Day 31

Start Balance                 $14,615

Today's Profit Target         $193.57
Required Position size     192,200 (JPY), 161,700 (USD)

Trades

1     +192,200K     EURJPY         -24.2     pips     (0:19)
2     +80,850K       EURUSD        -3.5       pips     (0:43) (*actually -7 pips on half size position)
3     +96,100K       EURJPY         -5.3       pips     (0:27) (*actually -10.6 pips on half size position)

Total                  -33 pips         ( -$641.75 )

End Balance      $13,973

Project Status 

Day 31 end target  $14,970
6 Days Behind (lost a huge 5 days today)
$997 behind schedule or 54.96 pips on tomorrow’s pip value.

Comments

It took less than 20 minutes today to get this week off to the worst possible start. This was my worst losing day in $$$, my second worst losing day in pips and my first day without a winning trade. In a heartbeat I’ve gone from being less than 1 day behind to being 6 days behind. Large losing days like this really need to be avoided but sometimes it’s just unavoidable.

The mistake on all the trades today was trying to pick the turning points that would re-establish the big picture dominant uptrend whilst still in intermediate downtrends. Unfortunately the intermediate downtrends were all strong and there were enough clues there that there might not be a quick turn. The strong uptrend of the EUR now seems to be replaced with uncertainty and a lot of unpredictable choppy behaviour, possibly topping behaviour in the EURUSD & EURJPY

The first trade selloff was so savage it just knocked the stuffing out of me and even switching to half size at -24.2 I had a massive uphill struggle to save the day. The next two trades were pretty similar, not as violent going against me as the first one but it took me this long to realize the overall trend wasn’t returning any time soon. I was past the 30 pip hard stop loss for the day in less than 2 hours and it was over for the day.

So not a good start to the week and very annoying as I was confident on Friday that I would improve this week. The last time I fell 6 days behind it took 15 days to get back on track. The key is going to be to resist the temptation to fight back quickly and end up doing a lot more damage to the account.

To add insult to injury, today I started another trading bank & system at my Interactive Brokers account. It is a slight variation on this experiment and I won’t be publishing the results so there is less pressure on me. There won’t be any scalping trades in this account either, all the trades will be more planned so the idea is to spend less time staring at screens for these trade opportunites. I’m shooting for 12 pips per day instead of 10, whilst sticking to the same absolute -30 pip cutoff for a losing day. The starting bank happens to be $14.3K and the end bank, if it can be achieved, would be a quite incredible $695K in 1 year. Anyway although I won’t be reporting the performance of that system going forward I will say just as this week got off to a bad start so did this new bank/system, down 39 pips on 2 trades, with a supposed 30 pip hard stop. What a tragic day all round.

Project Statistics

Last Posted - 4th May

                                                       

Elapsed	Profit	ABS %	Dly %
Days		Return	Return
59	$6,053	60.5%	0.8%
Avg Win	Large Win	Win Trds	Lose Trds
$91.30	$429.49	171	91
Avg Loss	Large Loss	Win/Loss
-$107.05	-$470.75	65.27%

Day 30

Start Balance                     $14,287

Today's Profit Target             $188.16
Required Position size         184,100 (JPY), 155,600 (USD)

Trades

1     -184,100K     USDJPY     -7.5 pips      (0:15)
2     -155,600K     AUDUSD     7.5 pips      (2:08)
3     -155,600K     EURUSD     6.0 pips      (0:30)
4     +184,100K    USDJPY     5.0 pips       (2:24)
5     +77,800K      GBPUSD    *6.1 pips     (0:10)   (*actually 12.2 pips on half size position)
6     +77,800K      EURUSD    *-5.7 pips    (0:42)  (*actually -11.4 pips on half size position)
7     +77,800K      GBPUSD    *3.6 pips     (0:01)   (*actually 7.2 pips on half size position)
8     +92,050K      EURJPY     *2.5 pips     (0:08)   (*actually 5 pips on half size position)

Total                  17.55 pips ( $327.96 )

End Balance      $14,615

Project Status 

Day 30 end target  $14,776
1 Day Behind (pulled back 1 day from being 2 days behind)
$162 behind schedule or 8.47 pips on tomorrow’s pip value.

Comments

Today was a much better day and I think it’s safe to say that good trading discipline returned after being AWOL. After a poor week of trading I was glad to finish the week doing the right things. The big difference today was patience, I didn’t jump straight in as soon as I saw any old opportunity like I had been doing earlier in the week. Today I waited for the best opportunities.  The first 4 trades I was quite happy with the end results although they could have all been better. Trade 1 was unfortunately just really badly timed, I got the short term trend right but was just too early with the entry and there was still some volatility in it’s movement. I couldn’t risk hanging on as it was an entry near the top of a range and it could have easily powered on up if it hit some buy-stops. If I could have held on, or entered 10 minutes later there was an excellent 30 pip move down that I could have got a good part of. I think the lesson here was despite the loss I should have re-entered with a new trade when the downtrend did show itself. Trade 2 was very good, and the kind of trades I like best. The AUDUSD was range bound tracking sideways but the range was just big enough to potentially make as much as 15 pips. At 8 pips I closed half with the intention of letting it run if it broke out of the range. It didn’t really move and after 2 hours I closed it losing a ½ pip on the deal as I closed the second half at 7 pips profit. Trade 3, as is common with the EURUSD in Asia at the moment just stopped moving, so I closed it happy with 6 pips. Trade 4 I entered after the USDJPY looked to have finished it’s short term downtrend and looked to have great potential to move a long way up. I closed half at 8 pips and left the other half hoping for a big ride up. It didn’t come off and I ended up closing the second half for only 2 pips, dropping 3 pips from the original 8 pips profit that was on offer.

So after 4 trades and feeling pretty good about how it was going, I had reached the day’s target with 11.1 pips. I decided to continue on seeing as how I dropped back 2 days yesterday and had some catch up to do and as is now my new strategy I dropped to half size lots so as to not do too much psychological damage and go too far backwards. Trade 5 was very quick and the best trade of the day, typical that it was on half size. I had 17.1 pips now and Europe  had only just started to open, the GBPUSD trade 5 was riding part of the opening move, so with hindsight I should really have just taken a short day and called it quits. I had a break and had another look a couple of hours later after the open had settled down but I couldn’t really get back in tune. Trade 6 was a shocker, I was caught in a swift sell off of USD and JPY pairs. Whilst I was in Trade 6 however I managed to scalp Trade 7 which allowed me to hold on with trade 6 probably longer than I should have. Ultimately I sold not far off the bottom of the downswing and it totally recovered, but I would never have been able to hold on to ride it back up as it went too far against me. After getting a couple of pips on trade 8 I was back over 17 pips and decided that would do for the day.

So in review this week has been quite un-enjoyable, I’ve traded really really badly, with the exception of Friday. Having said that I’ve still finished the week with 48 pips and started and finished 1 day behind schedule so I have to be thankful that I didn’t fall further behind.

Full Results

Last posted - 4th May