Day 38

Start Balance                     $15,661

Today's Profit Target             $201.28 (Day 35)
Required Position size         202,400 (JPY)

Trades

1     +100,200K     USDJPY         *1.5 pips          (3:02)
2     +200,400K     USDJPY         5.1 pips            (0:04)
3     +100,200K     EURJPY         *-6.2 pips         (1:56)
4     +100,200K     USDJPY         *9.0 pips          (1:29)
5     +200,400K     EURJPY         7.8 pips           (0:23)

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

Total                      17.15 pips         ( $353.13 )

End Balance          $16,016

Project Status 

Day 38 end target  $16,398
2 Days Behind (pulled back one day since yesterday)
$382 behind schedule or 18.24 pips on tomorrow’s pip value.

Comments

Today was another day with some pretty volatile behavior. The markets this week are very unforgiving.  I assume the lack of participants is resulting in much bigger, faster, swings and without any prior indication in terms of news or chart patterns providing clues.

This blog seems to be increasingly about what should have been done in hindsight but hopefully I’m learning from this and making better trade decisions with the knowledge. Today I was convinced that the USDJPY was going to break through 120 as the USD had been getting some support over the last few days. The chart looked very supportive of this view so this was the pair to focus on today. With more confidence I should have just put one full sized position on when I did and been patient, my entry price was 119.85 so there was excellent potential to get a lot of pips quickly if it triggered stops through 120. After 3 hours of waiting I started getting impatient as there was little real movement and it was frustrating as every time it popped up it was just as quickly pushed back down. Trade 2 I took while trade 1 was open and it was a very fast 5 pips from 119.86 to 119.91. After another 15 minutes I lost patience and closed out the first trade for a few pips as I was getting worried maybe it wasn’t going to progress and may actually fall instead as the EURUSD & GBPUSD had started to tick up. There was also a lot more movement in the EURJPY and it also looked primed to go higher. Switching pairs at this point could have been a huge mistake but it did turn out well in the end. After waiting through 30 minutes of little movement in the EURJPY position I regretted switching pairs and re-entered the USDJPY for 119.92 (in my share trading past, this is something I’ve always struggled to be able to do, i.e. re-enter a position at a higher price after selling out of it, but for whatever reason I find it psychologically a lot easier in the currency market where the concept of ‘value’ for a pair has no meaning to me).  1 hour later and neither pair had moved and then out of the blue I got slammed in the EURJPY, just like I did in the EURUSD the day before. The pair sank 20 pips in less than 5 minutes. It looked very similar to the day before, i.e. a quick fall through a thin market so I took the view that a quick bounce was on the cards. And just like yesterday I had banked enough credit to be in a reasonable position to try it despite sitting on a large open loser. The bounce up came but it was a very nervous first 10 minutes as the first bounce failed and I was starting to look at being seriously in the red. Another ten minutes later and both the EURJPY & USDJPY took off upwards together. My large EURJPY position recovered from being 5 pips down and I banked nearly 8 pips. At the same time I closed out the half sized EURJPY for a loss of 6 full pips (at the worst point this was 12 pips), but the best of all was the USDJPY which did exactly what I had predicted at the start of the day and surged through 120. I closed it for 9 full pips (18 pips really as it was half sized) at 120.10 just 4 pips off the top before it retreated. It actually collapsed down to 119.6 a couple of hours later before marching all the way back up again. After the scare with the EURJPY and the extreme volatility I was very happy to get out for the day with 17 pips but if I'd have stuck with my conviction at the start and took the full position in USDJPY at 119.85 I could have got 25 pips and with a lot less stress. This market is really hairy at the moment and I’ll be glad when Golden week is over.

So in summary I pulled a day back today and a new milestone was achieved with the bank now up 60%. I’m still 2 days behind but I’m still happy to try and chip away back to schedule.

Oh! And did I mention Liverpool beat Chelsea to make the Champions league final which made today’s pips even more sweet especially as I only had 4 hours sleep before getting up to watch the game, hardly ideal preparation for trading. I’ll be getting well pissed tonight to celebrate so there might not be any trading tomorrow.