The big loser

Last Friday morning I was watching the market after the European bank stress test results and things had settled out after the announcement. There was a bit of a downtrend and it was supported by my indicators so I was starting to scalp short positions. This is what my charts looked like when I got in:

 The red arrow on the upper left is the 15 minute candlestick right after the stress test announcement. The red circle is where I entered my trade. The charts on the right are what my indicators looked like going into the trade. I felt comfortable short because of the recent downward trend and the formation on the tactical indicator on the 15 minute chart. I probably should have waited with the 30 minute so oversold but I thought that I could still easily get my 5 pips. I also thought that if I didn't get them right away the worst case scenario would be a retracement over the next hour and I would get out either way.

This is what I was looking at when the market closed on Friday a few hours after entering my trade. The red line and circle show my entry point. It never showed any strong signs of retracing and by market close I was down 94 pips. My longer term charts were all showing over bought so I felt confident that it would retrace at some point in the next few days.

This is what I saw Thursday morning. The red circle lower and left is my entry and the the circle near the top is where I decided to take my loss. You can see that once it crossed 1.2980 it kept trying to break back through to lower levels and it was never able to do so and finally broke upward. I believe that it could still retrace in the near future but I am glad to be out. While I was watching this trade on Thursday morning I was re-watching some training videos and the presenter was talking about the opportunity cost of being in a bad trade and how sometimes it is better to take your loss and start fresh rather than spend a lot of time trying to get out even. Hearing that again in this context definitely influenced my decision to take my loss. I had been able to make some trades while I was in this trade because I am always careful to not over leverage but I could only trade in one direction and I was trading scared. I would compare it to being in a fight with one arm tied behind my back.

I still have a lot to learn about trading and I learn far more from bad trades than good ones. When my trading has gone so well it is good to have a reality check. Not every trade has to be, or can be, a winner and sometimes it will be better to take a loss and free up my account and my mind and continue trading rather than wait it out and miss out on other opportunities to profit.

Last week's trades

Hey everyone,

We went up to Oakley over the weekend and we stopped on a dirt road next to some sheep to show the kids. Liam was watching a movie so when I asked him if he knew what kind of animal's those were he looked up for a second and said, "Oh yeah, those are elephants." Then he went right back to his movie. I guess his movie was better than seeing some silly elephants. I attached a screen shot of what I look at when I trade. The image is wide because I have two screens. I keep my indicators up on my right screen and I usually keep my Metatrader 4 platform and dailyfx.com's live news feed up on my left screen. On the Metatrader 4 window I expanded the trade log so you could see all of the trades that I made last week. As of Friday my account is up 116% since I started live trading five weeks ago. Over that period I have averaged $232 and about 2 hours of trading per day. I did get a little greedy and got into a bad trade Friday afternoon. I am still in the trade and my indicators are still looking good for a retracement. I am looking for 1.2815 on the EUR/USD pair. I will let you know how that goes next week. There are a few of us that are starting to communicate on a regular basis about our trading, especially the trade we make every day at 3pm. If you are interested in getting in on the action we are always looking for more people. The idea is that together we are greater than the sum of our parts.

Until next week,
Ben

Last week's trades

Hey everyone,

Last week we spent a night at the Homestead in Midway. In the morning I turned on the TV for Liam and as soon as we found a cartoon he said, "Dad, start it over." We have had a DVR his whole life and he has never really watched live television. A few minutes later he came over to where I was sitting and said, "Dad, I can't find the pause button on the remote. Can you pause the movie so I can go potty?" I guess we are both pretty spoiled by our DVR.

I have attached a list of all of the trades that I made last week. A few of them were also on the last email. My net profit for the trades opened between Sunday, 7/11, and Thursday, 7/15, was $904. My account is now up 92% in four weeks of trading. Not too shabby for a couple of hours a day at most. I didn't make any trades on Friday because I was impatient on Thursday and got into a bad short that just closed at 5:45 this morning. I made the mistake of thinking that I knew better than my indicators and I ended up picking the bottom for the day with my short position. Fortunately the indicators also showed me that the probability was very high that the price would dip back to my exit in the near future and it did just that this morning. Even with swap fees my bad trade turned into a net gain of $170.92 with a little patience. If you have some money to trade this program is worth checking out. A few people have shown interest in starting a trading pit with me but I think it is a case of the more the merrier. If you are interested in joining our group drop me a line. Until next time.

Ben

Trading log

The latest news

Hey everyone,

I wanted to say hi and let everyone know what I am up to. Kim and I cut Liam's hair yesterday and we decided that it was time for his first mohawk. He wasn't too thrilled about and he said, "I look like the top of a dinosaur." So I said,"Isn't that what you want to look like?" Liam said, "No, I want to look handsome!" It gave us a good laugh. I also have recently completed a sophisticated day trading course and have begun trading a system that I am seeing great results on a daily basis. I included a screen shot of my results for today just so you could see. My best day so far was $430 in just a few hours of trading. My account is up 78% since I started trading just over 3 weeks ago. I don't know how long this will last but I wanted to make sure that if you had some money to trade that you checked this program out. I know of a couple groups that are doing trading pits and I would like to get something like that together with people I know so we could all help each other out. Until next time.

Ben