Transitioning to markets available in Australia's time zone

[Joe Blow]

Let's get this thread back on topic please. It's an interesting thread on an interesting topic. There's no need to provoke, insult or attack others.

 

[fiftyeight]

Clean out your inbox, I'm trying to reply to your attempt at abusive PM's Nice job on calling me a c-bomb before it got deleted too, classy

Haha

When I was a super fresh newb, I had not opened a book and had been on ASF for maybe a week I was lucky enough to be on the receiving end of some GB hate mail

Entertaining yes, educational no. Optimisation = Curve fitting Really, no way!!!!

CanOz on the other hand has provided some great material in this thread as always :xyxthumb:

Who knows, maybe this thread will inspire TH to come back to ASF

 

[cynic]

Just thought I'd stick my head in to remind everyone that there already exist some great banter threads that could make good use of some animated input!

 

[skc]

I can also do some (Back)tests on the most successful pair by tightening up the stop and going for larget targets. Obviously the win rate will drop, but the wins should get larger. This would indicate that i may be able to use a trailing stop.

Would you like to suggest anything else?

Re: setting stops.

One of the most important lesson I've learned about posting on ASF is to have a stop. I have a 3-post stop loss. If I spent 3 posts on something / to someone and it's not heading in the direction that I like... I execute my stop.

Let the other person win. Accept that his belief of what you are doing will no be changed, and his desire to analyse every little thing you do psychologically on incomplete/wrong information will not waver... regardless of how much you argue your case.

Your stop has been way to wide.

Execute the stop now.

P.S. It will also improve your trading!

 

[CanOz]

Re: setting stops.

One of the most important lesson I've learned about posting on ASF is to have a stop. I have a 3-post stop loss. If I spent 3 posts on something / to someone and it's not heading in the direction that I like... I execute my stop.

Let the other person win. Accept that his belief of what you are doing will no be changed, and his desire to analyse every little thing you do psychologically on incomplete/wrong information will not waver... regardless of how much you argue your case.

Your stop has been way to wide.

Execute the stop now.

P.S. It will also improve your trading!

As usual SKC, great Advice...I shall execute the initial stop....

 

[Gringotts Bank]

As usual SKC, great Advice...I shall execute the initial stop....

It was bad advice in this case.

Firstly, every bit of my input to this thread was high quality. Go back through it without the 'I don't like GB' filter and see what you missed.

Secondly, my provocative and relentless approach had a design. Since you'd decided to trade using a discretionary approach, I needed to know how you'd respond to repeated harsh feedback (simulating trading losses). Woud anyone else even think of doing this?

So here's what I found: you responded with mild annoyance, then head-in-sand (denial) and then you just sat back and waited for others to rush in and 'save' you. Since people are consistent, this is most likely how you will carry out your trading. Only the first response was useful because it was real; everything after that was... well, you know. You're attempting to block negatives, and that will force your mind to seek out negatives in the form of trading losses.

This is where you say "thanks for your concern " in a dismissive manner.

Anyway I'm done. The 'thumbs up buddy!' posters are not going to know what to do if your account slowly dwindles over the course of years. I was attempting to help you avoid that possibility and instead, profit.

 

[CanOz]

It was bad advice in this case.

Firstly, every bit of my input to this thread was high quality. Go back through it without the 'I don't like GB' filter and see what you missed.

Secondly, my provocative and relentless approach had a design. Since you'd decided to trade using a discretionary approach, I needed to know how you'd respond to repeated harsh feedback (simulating trading losses). Woud anyone else even think of doing this?

So here's what I found: you responded with mild annoyance, then head-in-sand (denial) and then you just sat back and waited for others to rush in and 'save' you. Since people are consistent, this is most likely how you will carry out your trading. Only the first response was useful because it was real; everything after that was... well, you know. You're attempting to block negatives, and that will force your mind to seek out negatives in the form of trading losses.

This is where you say "thanks for your concern " in a dismissive manner.

Anyway I'm done. The 'thumbs up buddy!' posters are not going to know what to do if your account slowly dwindles over the course of years. I was attempting to help you avoid that possibility and instead, profit.

You really are a piece of work aren't you.

Actually I responded to you with patience, because I posted on a public forum.

GB, I have not seen a single real equity curve or live trade posted by yourself. What credibility do you think I should afford you? I have been polite, even in the face of your seemingly blatant disregard for my posts and your wish to push whatever you believe and value onto me. So, in keeping with my options, you're added to my list of people to ignore. The other choice is to abandon the thread.....which I may do after my 100 trades. Goodbye GB!

 

[Gringotts Bank]

Sorry Canoz. I went about things in the wrong way, that's for sure.

The rest of this refers to me. For someone who was stressing the importance of only doing 'what works', my advice didn't actually end up working for you. So when I read back through the thread, that glaring fact stood out to me. It's not that I don't know how to help, but I went ahead and did something that I knew was going to end up in a bun fight. No matter what aspect of life one considers, advice is never really helpful, especially when delivered with a superior/offensive tone. It doesn't matter if the advice is logical, perfectly pitched, word-perfect or insightful - advice just isn't the way to help people, and deep down I knew that. But I went ahead...

The question I had to ask myself is: So why did I go ahead? And that's where I had to admit to myself an underlying motive - a mistrust and annoyance at you for repeatedly questioning and dismissing various content I've posted whilst being a member here. So the problem is in fact not yours, but mine.

Not to be too serious about all this, it's only an online tiff - one of thousands happening around the globe, no doubt. But it's good to set things straight. Also, I want to demonstrate that I do walk the talk and that I'm capable of shining the spotlight squarely and honestly at myself, understanding my responsibility and forget about any/everyone else. With trading it's a bit different, but it's the honesty and directness which are the crucial components. That's where I've seen growth which has helped profitability.

I wish you'd said "I don't need any advice thanks" at the start of the thread! Not only would it have saved me some time, but it's probably true too.

Some might say 'why write a big apology?? Just get on with it!'. I find it useful for myself. Selfish motive, aimed at personal growth and with the aim of not repeating mistakes.

 

[CanOz]

So we've had a bit of a bad run and looking through my journal its mainly from over trading, shoe-horning trades fit my playbook....when in actual fact they were poor setups.

I'm cutting the pairs down from 27 to 18 as its clear to me i have too many to watch and too many that are correlated anyway.

Still have more testing to do on my new combined session breakout play. Also there's merit in looking at a combined session breakout failure play where if the breakout fails a trade is taken as the opposite of the range fails. I have enough options on the breakout system to test this as well. My balance in the account had fallen below 5k to 4953.91 so we'll be using 4900 for the risk calculation.

 

[CanOz]

A quick update, its been a frustrating week on my FX account, i'm in drawdown with allot of back to back losers and the winners just haven't met any decent R/R targets.

Today i lost all the data on my journal, as well as another file i had in Excel. For some reason it prompted me to open comma delimited. I tried to rename the file and lost the whole workbook. It turns out there is a video in the manual about opening the Edgewonk work book. I've not had this problem before, i don't know what i did wrong, but its extremely frustrating to lose a whole journal. I am really keen to use the power of this data base, but if they make it so complicated that you need a PHd to operate it, whats the point...

So i'll keep the trades I've got pending today, but next week will be spent rebuilding the journal.

 

[VSntchr]

Today i lost all the data on my journal, as well as another file i had in Excel. For some reason it prompted me to open comma delimited. I tried to rename the file and lost the whole workbook. It turns out there is a video in the manual about opening the Edgewonk work book. I've not had this problem before, i don't know what i did wrong, but its extremely frustrating to lose a whole journal. I am really keen to use the power of this data base, but if they make it so complicated that you need a PHd to operate it, whats the point...

Ahh, I sympathise. I've never lost a whole journal - but once or twice ive lost a days worth of stuff and had to revert back to my backup...even that is enough to make me

 

[CanOz]

Ahh, I sympathise. I've never lost a whole journal - but once or twice ive lost a days worth of stuff and had to revert back to my backup...even that is enough to make me

I was furious, i smashed my laptop screen in the process:frown:

 

[VSntchr]

I was furious, i smashed my laptop screen in the process:frown:

Tried to embed THIS. But it was too large. lol.

 

[CanOz]

Tried to embed THIS. But it was too large. lol.

Like this?

 

[fiftyeight]

I'm cutting the pairs down from 27 to 18 as its clear to me i have too many to watch and too many that are correlated anyway

Probably stating the obvious here but make suer you don't introduce survivorship bias when you reduce your pairs. With only 100 trades until review removing just your worst pairs may seriously skew the results

 

[CanOz]

Probably stating the obvious here but make suer you don't introduce survivorship bias when you reduce your pairs. With only 100 trades until review removing just your worst pairs may seriously skew the results

Yeah I didn't have many trades with the more illiquid pairs anyway...

 

[CanOz]

A bit of an update, i'm still trading my currency plan, still rebuilding my journal. I went into a 5% drawdown and have since recovered some of it, still down though. Only have one open position and i'll wind that up before NFP tomorrow night. Next week i should be able open more positions as some pairs present better opportunities and we'll have the first of the month out of the way.

Since i now have long term HKFE data from NT i'm putting together a trading plan for the HHI. I like the HHI because it has less volatility than the HSI, thicker depth. Actually its much like a cheaper version of the FTSE for price, volatility, and tick value at 9 AUD. I need to do some screen time with this market before i trade live though, as i'm a little out of practice and I've not really ever just focused on this market. I only have 3-4 solid plays to try for the HHI. So i don't think it will setup every day, but i think a few days a week initially. A solid play is something that i believe through screen time or testing that will work more often than not at my risk levels.

I hope to have a trade update on the currency trading tomorrow, number of trades/wins/losses etc.

 

[CanOz]

Nice 'powder keg' setting up on the HHI. Looking for a push up to 8664, however we have a line in the sand at 8408 where we would look for a return to 8200 as an alternate scenario. We may consolidate further and i'm not looking for trade in the 8460-8505 zone as i would expect some choppy trading there unless there is news...

 

[CanOz]

Ok, i was able to export my trade data from FXCM and do my stats.

Here's my Equity curve for May. Pretty dismal.

Wins 14 | W% 33 | Avg. Win $33.02
Losses 28 | L% 66 | Avg. Loss 24.87

To engineer the turn in the equity curve i have been taking fewer trades during the Asian session, using a trend filter to try and stick with the main larger time frame trends, using a wider stop, but less trade risk (.75%). Peak to trough drawdown was 10.7%

 

[CanOz]

One other thing, i think i tend to try and hang on too long to these FX trades. I'm going to start and take some profits where significant obstacles are coinciding with 2 and 3r. It seems with FX it is best to take the profit and get in again later. It always seems to swing back for another opportunity. like they're constantly shaking weak hands out.