Second day of trading Forex - I love stop losses!

[NickF]

Hi All,

It's my second day trading a $2000 Forex account. First day I gambled and I ended up $51 on plus. Today I decided to gamble more responsibly and I set stop losses around 1:2 for each trade. The day didn't start too well, out of seven trades, five closed quickly on negative. On one I feel I had bad luck, since it was just the end of the wick of a candle stick that triggered the sell response. On the other ones, I can only blame myself... Anyway, I was not too disappointed about five losses in a row, so I kept going. I decided I need to learn quickly a proven method to earn money and the introductory courses from Forex helped. I rediscovered the MACD indicators and I was able to recover from all my losses. The day has not ended yet, but so far I am pleased with how is going on. The part I enjoy the most is that I can trade to a level that I feel comfortable with - so what I define today as a good day is having any profit (ideally above $5), and a bad day, losing more than $5. Until recently, I was down to about -$6, while now I am above $8. I will leave a few trades overnight and I can't wait to check tomorrow morning to see how much money I made (or lost) overnight. Life is good!

Cheers,
Nick

 

[NickF]

Hi All,

It's my second day trading a $2000 Forex account. First day I gambled and I ended up $51 on plus. Today I decided to gamble more responsibly and I set stop losses around 1:2 for each trade. The day didn't start too well, out of seven trades, five closed quickly on negative. On one I feel I had bad luck, since it was just the end of the wick of a candle stick that triggered the sell response. On the other ones, I can only blame myself... Anyway, I was not too disappointed about five losses in a row, so I kept going. I decided I need to learn quickly a proven method to earn money and the introductory courses from Forex helped. I rediscovered the MACD indicators and I was able to recover from all my losses. The day has not ended yet, but so far I am pleased with how is going on. The part I enjoy the most is that I can trade to a level that I feel comfortable with - so what I define today as a good day is having any profit (ideally above $5), and a bad day, losing more than $5. Until recently, I was down to about -$6, while now I am above $8. I will leave a few trades overnight and I can't wait to check tomorrow morning to see how much money I made (or lost) overnight. Life is good!

Cheers,
Nick

I have to remember the critical times when markets open. The Japanese market took the EUR/USD to a sharp fall, and at 5pm our time, the UK markets opened, they brought it back where it started from.

Out of my last 10 positions, 9 closed at a loss. Now I'm around -$10. I started gambling with more money, to recover my losses. After all, since I've been playing on Forex with real money, I never encountered a loss at the end of the day!
This is going to be long day... I'd be happy to end the day with $20 of profit

Nick

 

[NickF]

The blood bath is still going on. I am down to -$12.33 I was worried I lost my edge, but after that I chilled out when I remembered that I don't have an edge! Lesson number 3. A stop loss point can not get me out of **** all by itself. Time to apply the George Constanza tactic! I need to do the opposite of what I am tempted to do!

Nick

 

[DeepState]

The blood bath is still going on. I am down to -$12.33 I was worried I lost my edge, but after that I chilled out when I remembered that I don't have an edge! Lesson number 3. A stop loss point can not get me out of **** all by itself. Time to apply the George Constanza tactic! I need to do the opposite of what I am tempted to do!

Nick

CDS spreads at major global banks have moved sharply to decade high wides upon the rumoured return of NickF who, from his house under the Heathrow flight path, sways the currency market with mega-billion dollar bids and offers, most of which never transact. When "Nick the spoof" was questioned on his trading methods by the IMF after SDRs flash crashed last night by 6.7%, NickF responded "kiss my rhino a**e boys" via his publicist. Monetary authorities tracking terrorism funding movements reported large transfers between Swiss Banks and Lichtenstein family accounts, one of which was called "NickF Milking Markets (Cayman)".

Emergency meetings are being convened in Washington at the request of US Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, who has moved NickF to the top of the financial stability risk list, displacing Greece. Christine Lagarde was unavailable for comment, returning to Washington from a recent meeting of European Finance Ministers in Latvia. She appeared visibly distressed as she boarded AirForce 1 which had been dispatched urgently.

When questioned about these developments, George Soros fell silent and could be seen to mouth "Oh F**k, NickF is back."

 

[NickF]

Stupid AUS200, it was supposed to go down! Anyway, who is moving it, now after the Aussie markets are closed???... And how in the world did I set my stop loss so large, I would lose a fortune until it is met... Time to take another (well deserved ?) loss... Or maybe should I wait some more? Maybe a fortune it is to be made, if conditions come right?

PS - whenever I was looking at the chart, it was not moving at all! Later I discovered I was on an 1 hr timeframe. When I went to 5 mins, I could see some idiots keep raising the price of AUS200! I am quite angry on them!

 

[NickF]

CDS spreads at major global banks have moved sharply to decade high wides upon the rumoured return of NickF who, from his house under the Heathrow flight path, sways the currency market with mega-billion dollar bids and offers, most of which never transact. When "Nick the spoof" was questioned on his trading methods by the IMF after SDRs flash crashed last night by 6.7%, NickF responded "kiss my rhino a**e boys" via his publicist. Monetary authorities tracking terrorism funding movements reported large transfers between Swiss Banks and Lichtenstein family accounts, one of which was called "NickF Milking Markets (Cayman)".

Emergency meetings are being convened in Washington at the request of US Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, who has moved NickF to the top of the financial stability risk list, displacing Greece. Christine Lagarde was unavailable for comment, returning to Washington from a recent meeting of European Finance Ministers in Latvia. She appeared visibly distressed as she boarded AirForce 1 which had been dispatched urgently.

When questioned about these developments, George Soros fell silent and could be seen to mouth "Oh F**k, NickF is back."

DS, I am glad at least one of us is having fun!

 

[NickF]

I have a plan... I will close all transactions and I will get out for a few minutes. Then, I will come back and pretend it is tomorrow! It's impossible I will have such a trail of bad luck tomorrow!?

 

[NickF]

I have a plan... I will close all transactions and I will get out for a few minutes. Then, I will come back and pretend it is tomorrow! It's impossible I will have such a trail of bad luck tomorrow!?

I went outside and I fed one of the stray cats that learned there is free food at our place! It's the first time I convinced her/him to eat from the bowl in my hand.
My luck is coming back. I recovered to -$15. Probably it has to do with feeding a hungry cat. Now all the trades look crystal clear.
After all, all I want is just 0.0000000001% of the total volume of trades to be mine. This surely can't be so difficult as other people claim to be? I have a theory, that say the people who make a lot of money in Forex, try to scare away beginners like me, so that they get all the money just for themselves! Well, I have bad news for you, folks! I am here to stay!

Nick

 

[Jens]

I started gambling with more money, to recover my losses.

Nick

It all sounds a bit too familiar. The best is to walk away for a bit and clear your head, before you "attack" the market again

 

[NickF]

It all sounds a bit too familiar. The best is to walk away for a bit and clear your head, before you "attack" the market again

My head is totally empty, there is nothing to clear!

 

[Jens]

CDS spreads at major global banks have moved sharply to decade high wides upon the rumoured return of NickF who, from his house under the Heathrow flight path, sways the currency market with mega-billion dollar bids and offers, most of which never transact. When "Nick the spoof" was questioned on his trading methods by the IMF after SDRs flash crashed last night by 6.7%, NickF responded "kiss my rhino a**e boys" via his publicist. Monetary authorities tracking terrorism funding movements reported large transfers between Swiss Banks and Lichtenstein family accounts, one of which was called "NickF Milking Markets (Cayman)".

Emergency meetings are being convened in Washington at the request of US Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, who has moved NickF to the top of the financial stability risk list, displacing Greece. Christine Lagarde was unavailable for comment, returning to Washington from a recent meeting of European Finance Ministers in Latvia. She appeared visibly distressed as she boarded AirForce 1 which had been dispatched urgently.

When questioned about these developments, George Soros fell silent and could be seen to mouth "Oh F**k, NickF is back."

that is gold

 

[Modest]

Remember Nick... When in trouble.. Double!

 

[NickF]

Remember Nick... When in trouble.. Double!

That HAS to be a good rule, because it rhymes! Why didn't anybody tell me about it before? Some people keep the best till last...

 

[NickF]

OK, time for a new rule for me. Today I lost about $22, which is significantly more than what I intended for one day. At some stage during the day I was in front with $10. In order to prevent the loss of funds too fast, I decided to limit my gains or losses for the day to +$6 or -$3 (whichever comes first) and to invest only $1000 per transaction. After all, my intention is to keep myself involved and learning, not to earn a living (or lose a living ) from it. As DS said, Forex may be not the best investment method out there, but there are plenty of rules and strategies that are common to investing (one of them being discipline).
If it happens I recover my loss of today in the next days, I will allow myself to increase the daily limit.
The rule remains valid until tomorrow morning.

Nick

Day 1 = +$51
Day 2 = -$22

 

[evilk9]

OK, time for a new rule for me. Today I lost about $22, which is significantly more than what I intended for one day. At some stage during the day I was in front with $10. In order to prevent the loss of funds too fast, I decided to limit my gains or losses for the day to +$6 or -$3 (whichever comes first) and to invest only $1000 per transaction. After all, my intention is to keep myself involved and learning, not to earn a living (or lose a living ) from it. As DS said, Forex may be not the best investment method out there, but there are plenty of rules and strategies that are common to investing (one of them being discipline).
If it happens I recover my loss of today in the next days, I will allow myself to increase the daily limit.
The rule remains valid until tomorrow morning.

Nick

First off, I know text is pretty 2-dimensional but it seemed like you were slightly frustrated earlier. Remember don't chase your losses! If you have had a couple of trades in a row go bad, take a breather and come back later, the markets are always going to be there! whether that be two hours later, two days or even two weeks! Unfortunately your account won't be after irrational trading

 

[NickF]

First off, I know text is pretty 2-dimensional but it seemed like you were slightly frustrated earlier. Remember don't chase your losses! If you have had a couple of trades in a row go bad, take a breather and come back later, the markets are always going to be there! whether that be two hours later, two days or even two weeks! Unfortunately your account won't be after irrational trading

Thanks k9, you don't sound so evil
It is good advice.

I was not that frustrated, this is a risk I am willing to take, as long as I end up with some useful knowledge at the end of it. Of course, it is more fulfilling when you end up the day on positive, but I usually learn more from mistakes.

Today I learnt to treat trading more seriously and be more disciplined. Even if I don't play with big money, if I don't follow proper practice, it's not going to be very useful.

Nick

 

[NickF]

I came to my senses and I decided to do Forex trading on my demo account. Better to lose virtual money than real money Modest gave me good advice (to try to double or triple my virtual money), thanks for that. I will get involved in some backtesting, to see if I can find a strategy that worked in the past, while learning some more technical analysis.

Nick

 

[NickF]

1396 transactions and counting...

Hi All,

Just an update about my Forex trading. I started on a $2000 real account in April 2015 and I completed so far 1396 transactions. I am pleased to inform that more of them were in the right direction. Only few of them went the wrong way. But I am not so pleased that the few ones had the most weight on my balance. At its lowest, the balance was under $1000, so I lost over half of my funds. At that stage I decided to add another $1000, because I felt I need to have enough funds not to get a margin call. In the meantime I try to be more conservative in my trades and typically I don't get above 40% margin used. Which is probably still far too high.

I consider my biggest weakness is not cutting the loss soon enough and in the beginning I was also adding more money when the loss was increasing. Now I don't do that often. I also long abandoned the stop losses and this could be a mistake. Another potential problem is leaving transactions overnight, without a stop loss, which could be really damaging.

On average, I lost about $0.57 per transaction. Trading commission was -$317 plus another -$78 rollover fee. Profit/loss of trade was only -$347.68. Initially I was doing a lot of smaller transactions, up to around 15 pip. Now I try to get above 40...60 pip. I also discovered the contrarian indicator SSI, and I seem to have some success using it, although I am still not clear, since it doesn't match too well with the alligator indicator.

So, a highlight for me is not losing all my money in first few months of trading, although I lost significantly more than I intended. I hope that in the future I'll be able to limit my losses better. And perhaps setting a daily goal, such as making $5...$10 per day or losing no more than $4. I am aware this is very high for my available funds, but I feel it may be achievable.

In the meantime I started doing the online course Machine Learning, from Stanford university. I am on week 4 out of 11 and I am very pleased with the course so far. I also attempted starting a Python course, but I abandoned it after a week. I'll probably do that after ML course, I can't focus on two courses at the same time, having a full time job. Once I get the knowledge, I'll try to apply what I learnt.

Nick

 

[minwa]

I came to my senses and I decided to do Forex trading on my demo account. Better to lose virtual money than real money

Nick

Hi All,

Just an update about my Forex trading. I started on a $2000 real account in April 2015 and I completed so far 1396 transactions.

So very same time you said you will start demo, you started on a real instead ?

Winning trades more than losing trades means nothing, as you have found out your account is down.

Did you back test like you said you would ? I'm guessing not as you went live straight away.

What commissions are you paying ? For a small $2k account it is cheaper to go for spreads based only, not commissions based FX trading.

If you executed the same strategy over 1k+ trades since April '15, then I am impressed at that part that you could stick to same method.

 

[NickF]

So very same time you said you will start demo, you started on a real instead ?

Winning trades more than losing trades means nothing, as you have found out your account is down.

Did you back test like you said you would ? I'm guessing not as you went live straight away.

What commissions are you paying ? For a small $2k account it is cheaper to go for spreads based only, not commissions based FX trading.

If you executed the same strategy over 1k+ trades since April '15, then I am impressed at that part that you could stick to same method.

I started the demo, as I said. It was only much later (almost a week) when I moved to the real account The thing is, if I had not worked with the real account, my interest in Forex would have probably lasted two weeks. If it's not real money, I get distracted and get into other things.

Yes, I totally agree that the percentage of winning trades has little to do with success. In fact, I would be in a better position to have lost almost all trades, as long as the balance was up... But probably, that would have been even worse for my moral, than losing money

I did not use the same strategy over 1k+ transactions. I don't have a strategy yet. I am finely tuning my intuition I've done a few tests, most of the time I tried going with some form of the alligator signals. But I was not always pleased with it. Sometimes, out of 10 opened transactions, about nine were on negative. At some stage, I tried going with the momentum, if some pair was going one direction for some time, I was going with the flow and that didn't end up too well. For about two months I've done something right and I increased the account almost $500. I think back then the main thing was to always go with the long term trend. Probably that is one thing I will pay attention to in the future.

I am with FXCM Australia and I pay on spreads. I haven't paid too much attention to how many pips it costs me, I think at best times and for some pairs, it is one pip. But sometimes it costs me 3 or more pips, when I trade at market and there is a large difference between bids and offers.

I have some plans with combined neural networks, once I put together a system for learning and testing and I hope that may work better than my own trading - I would trust it more than myself, but I would try to use a monitoring system that would get out of all trades if things go badly (like reaching a loss of $50). I haven't progressed much in the last year, but now I understand better the sample C# code provided by FXCM and I can execute it and do small changes to it.

Nick