# CFD and Forex Trading



## prawn_86

I have taken out a 14day free trial with cmc markets, for their cfd platform, and am considering putting 2k into cfds.

i am trying to agressively grow my portfolio, and cfd's offer the leverage to do so. small % moves can result in big gains (and losses) but im willing to have a crack. 

will see how the trial goes.


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## It's Snake Pliskin

Have you thought of the market makers tricks and how they make money? I use direct access because I only like to trade the markets and not the broker as well. Macquarie has a reasonable platform.


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## prawn_86

I have considered the risks Snake, and thankyou for your concern.

Ultimately, as with my entire share portfolio, it is money i do not absolutely need, so if worse comes to worse it wont break me. Not that i want that to happen of course.


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## prawn_86

My account with cmc markets has been approved, so next week i will start trading CFDs with my own money.

I will stay in the top 20 at first as they have the best leverage %, and are also a bit safer IMO.

i am going through the charts now to see what may be a possible buy. i am not going to rush into buying and will probably only buy one or 2 stocks at a time and trade them short term with trailing stops.

should be interesting...


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## prawn_86

My CFD account is now set up and ready to start trading 

I am going to wait on the sidelines until the market sorts itself out.

At the moment im looking at:

A short of the index tomorrow if the Dow closes down again overnight

WES, NAB & OXR all at curent or lower prices, once we are headed in the right direction.

Possible AGK as it seems to be recovering well but its a bit early to tell.


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## prawn_86

Short on WES @ 43.39 just after open.
3% cfd - 
amount: $10196.65
margin: $305.89

Missed out on selling it today as i was at work, but stop has been moved to b/e though.

i think it will get stopped out tomorrow morning unless the dow drops again tonight.


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## prawn_86

Stopped out of WES short at b/e.

Long on RIO @ 110.05
Amount: $10014.55
Margin: $300.43
Hoping for a spike after a big drop today

Long on NAB @ 40.73
Amount: $10182.5
Margin: $305.48
Report to be released soon with dividend details, should cause interest.

Long on WES @ 43.33
Amount: $9965.9
Margin: $298.98
$1.40 dividend coming up on 8th nov, plus this held up really well today so i decided to enter.


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## prawn_86

Closed out RIO @ $105.60
4% loss
($424) including brokerage.

Holding NAB and WES in anticipation of dividends. 

Sitting on the sidelines with the rest until market stabalises.


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## prawn_86

Also put a short on the index futures earlier tonight.

Closed it at b/e.

So far out of 5 trades i've had 2 b/e, 2 are still open and one massive loss.

Maybe i should stick to investing...


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## vishalt

lol you still can, as long as you watch your gearing. 

good thing you got stopped out of the index, it rallied hardcore today


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## prawn_86

I took some profits today and decided i need to sit out for a bit and refocus. I dont really like the market conditions at the moment so will get back in when there is a good trade to be had or when the market has more direction.

I have also been trading the index with a fair bit off success and will continue to do that until another share opportunity presents itself.


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## prawn_86

i sell out and NAB takes off...

dammit


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## vishalt

I held on and I gained the profit ?

As I said theres no reason for NAB to be at that price when all the other banks are breaking life-time highs, its just free & easy money.


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## prawn_86

I picked up some AMP again, they look like they should bounce of support soon.

I am very frustrated with myself, but i guess thats part of the learning process. If i had held on for a week instead of selling RIO at a loss i would be in a nice profit. I think i need to expand my timeframe a little. Especially in a bull market.

I think that if the US Fed cut rates on wed then we will see another good rally, with 7000 being very acheivable for xmas, especially if our rates go up too, which will bring more overseas interest.


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## prawn_86

Topped up AMP on todays weakness. Happy to hold for a while. The furthest i can see it sliding is $10 but it usually has very strong support is from where it is now.

Also bought back into WES. The div yeild + franking credits are still over 5% with ex date on the 8th so i can see it getting pushed up another couple % before the ex date.
Every 1% it rises the div yeild falls by 0.5%. so im predicting a 2 - 3% rise from here.

This is all providing the market holds up.

I might get up early tom morn to see wat the Fed does, and possibly put a couple contracts on the DOW.


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## prawn_86

Picked up SGB at open this morning after reading their report.

Stop has been moved above b/e now and im hoping that if the US Fed cuts rates tonight our stocks should push on again tomorrow.


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## prawn_86

Sold SGB at $37.20. It seemed a bit heady at this level so i sold only to watch it climb another 1%. 
Cant complain really as this has been my highest % profit trade ever.

Added some more AMP at 10.09. Just couldnt help myself. It always bounces very well off $10 so the downside is limited. My average price is now $10.20

Holding WES. Ex div tomorrow, but i think the sell off should be lessened by the (hopeful) approval of the Coles takeover


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## prawn_86




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## Sean K

LOL Prawn. It's all lessons in the big scheme. There will be many many more losses!!! Enjoy.


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## Garpal Gumnut

What direction will you trade?    gg


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## prawn_86

That post was made a while ago gg, and i am now again waiting it out, as i discovered i am a better investor than trader


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## Garpal Gumnut

I understand, it took me years to get a margin loan, then instalment warrants. Now I'm trying to learn as much as I can about options. Just go at your own pace. Its not a bad time in history to be undecided, you are in the majority. CFDs seem quite risky and skewed towards the market makers.

gg

gg


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## prawn_86

As some of you may know, i have been trailling a forex scalping method, off and on, for quite some time now.

I have finally grown confident enough to open a live account, and will start filling out the paperwork with Oanda today.

I initially plan to trade small lots, just to ensure that my psychology while trading live is the same as what it has been in the demo.

I will put $1k in the account and then if my psychology is right will trade with a 50% margin, meaning a gain of just over $1 per pip. This way i can have a S/L at 5 pips back and that is only risking 1% of capital.

I will post daily and/or weekly trade stats updates, but will continue to post my actual trades in the Cyrox thread, here:
https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8896

Wish me luck


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## prawn_86

As some of you may know, i have been trailling a forex scalping method, off and on, for quite some time now.

I have finally grown confident enough to open a live account, and will start filling out the paperwork with Oanda today.

I initially plan to trade small lots, just to ensure that my psychology while trading live is the same as what it has been in the demo.

I will put $1k in the account and then if my psychology is right will trade with a 50% margin, meaning a gain of just over $1 per pip. This way i can have a S/L at 5 pips back and that is only risking 1% of capital.

I will post daily and/or weekly trade stats updates, but will continue to post my actual trades in the Cyrox thread, here:
https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8896

Wish me luck


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## Joe Blow

Good luck!


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## Sean K

If you go OK, I might toss you some $$ and you can provide me a ROI.

What's your prospectise say?


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## prawn_86

LOL Kennas.

Im pretty sure it's prospectus : but i think the management fee's are pretty exorbitant


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## Sean K

LOL, Mr Rum told me it was a prospectise. He's a bit scatty these days. eeeek!


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## prawn_86

Ok im still in demo mode, but im just waiting for Oanda to certify my ID docs.

I have attached my trade stats for the week. It would be nice if some 'real' traders could comment, cause i have no idea what those figures mean 

Oh, and its also done in pips, not $ value as im not live yet, so its assuming equal sizings for each trade.


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## prawn_86

No one out there got any comments/advice?


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## Sean K

Drink more rum.


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## prawn_86

Just thought i would post it cause i like the look of it!

If only it was live and the 50 was % of acc size...


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## Sean K

Nice, mine goes the other direction. 

Bad worm!!


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## Trembling Hand

They don't look to bad Prawn. Obviously one or two 10 to 15 pip winners would make them look great. as well as eventually finding more trades.

Oh and drink more rum.


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## prawn_86

I agree with needing a couple of big fat winners.

Im only taking a few trades as my target is 5 pips per day, so once i get that i close down to stop overtrading. There are easily more trades there, but i dont want to get greedy at this stage

I dont drink rum sorry guys...


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## prawn_86

Ok im not going to be able to trade tomorrow, so here is my weekly breakdown. LIVE for the first time 

I started with $475 in my account. When i went to the bank i forgot about the transaction fee, so there wasnt enough in my acc to make it a flat $500, but you get that.

Im currently trading through Oanda with 5000 units (half a micro lot, i think   ), my margin is about 37% for each trade. This means that each pip is worth about 60c. This way if my SL gets hit it is just under 1.5% of initial acc balance lost, this is within the 2% risk per trade.

*Return for the week = 7.71%.*

A few points:

1. My biggest loss was actually that trade I screwed up, where my TP had already closed my position.

2. The 2 big (>$10) winners make a huge difference, but even without them it is still profitable.

3. I need to either get my losers smaller, or increase my win rate.

4. I need to cut back on my stupid trades, and stop trading once i have my target.

Those things said however, i really cant complain as it was my first week and hopefully i can continue to charge on 

Any advice/analysis appreciated.


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## Largesse

nice work mate, i'm following with keen interest.

students reprazent


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## Largesse

also, do you mind if you throw up that spreadsheet as a downloadable .xls? 

i'm retarded at excel


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## Sean K

Nice work Prawn!


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## prawn_86

Well that was a terrible week. No other way to describe it. I began the week 7.7% up on my initial account balance and after slaughtering it finished only 1.2% up. Lost a total of 46 pips this week

All my stats are now pretty terrible. Im going to spend the weekend working out what was so different between the 1st and 2nd weeks.

I know what i need to do i just struggle with the discipline/execution:

1. DONT TAKE STUPID TRADES.

2. Cut losers shorter.

3. Get my hit rate up (55% is woeful for this method). Looking to get to at least 75%, but it will be a long slow process to get there again.

So here is my plan of attack:

1. Go back over my previous 2 weeks charts and try and pick the difference.
2. Only look for the high prob trades where the market is moving a lot.
3. If i feel the slightest bit uncomfortable: dont enter a trade


Im going to have one more week on the E/J to see if i can have a better one, otherwise i might need to re-evaluate and move back to the E/U, where the spread is less, but so are the moves...

Comments/critiques most welcome.


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## Naked shorts

Ugh, I hate the E/U. Its hard because the euro is made up of 16 different countries. so to trade the e/u effectively you should be looking at the economies of 17 different countries.

I would also highly recommend that you open an account with http://www.tradethenews.com/ it would have saved me a few times if I had caught onto it earlier.

Also may be worth sitting in this chat room for a bit...http://www.ircforex.com/chat/ 

Also make sure you check this calendar before you open a trade
http://www.forexfactory.com/calendar.php

It might be worth you looking at the JPY/NZD to trade. Do some research on "carry trades" and you will understand why.

 good luck!


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## Naked shorts

Oh one other thing, I like the way you are doing your graphs in excel. You are treating your trading like a business (a way to make money), instead of gambling (the way suckers loose money).


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