Messala's FX trading journal!

[Messala]

Hello Traders!

In this thread, I will make my attempt to document every trade I make in my own live account starting today! I will try my best to post almost simultaneously with the trade entry/exit/change.

BTW, I trade currencies, usually just the majors. I try to close my trades within 24 hours, but that can vary depending on the situation. I use the following to make my trading decisions:

1. support and resistance
2. trendlines
3. different time frames
4. candlestick patterns
5. 50 and 200 ema (for confirmation)
6. Bollinger bands (for confirmation)
7. Fibonacci retracements (for confirmation)

By posting my trades, I am hoping to:

1. get valuable feedback from fellow traders
2. be accountable to others
3. surprise myself!

Thanks for reading!!

Messala

 

[Messala]

I'm writing this post at 0840 GMT NOV.10. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to post today's trade when I put in the order, so it won't be classified under "live calls" this time However, here it is for those interested:

**********
TRADE FOR NOVEMBER 9, 2009
BOUGHT EUR/GBP LONG @ 0.8948 (APPROX. 2300 GMT NOV. 9)
CLOSED @ 0.8968 (APPROX. 0500 GMT NOV. 10)
MY S/L WAS 20 PIPS, T/P WAS 20 PIPS
TOTAL P/L WAS 20 PIPS
**********

Messala

 

[Yamato]

Good to see you've also started a journal. I hope you won't quit after a few days like the hundreds of journals that were started here. I am going to keep you company just in case you don't feel you're being read enough.

I read your profile and it made me think of my trading experience before I abandoned discretionary trading to embrace a full automated approach: up and down, up and down... and never knowing if I had finally learned to be consistently profitable or not. And I am assuming you are a discretionary trader, like almost everyone else.

Even though every once in a while I'll place a discretionary trade out of boredom, and lose a few hundreds or thousands even, my experience is that discretionary trading is no good. It's just a bad method. Based on what I know now, discretionary trading is to automated trading what a man with a knife is to a man with a gun. I know I am preaching in the desert because almost everyone does discretionary trading. But almost everyone loses as well, whereas with automated traders it is close to being the opposite: almost everyone doing it makes money consistently. Now think of this: I've never been profitable in 12 years of discretionary trading, and I've always been profitable in 2 years of automated trading. What does it say of discretionary trading? That it's a bad bad method.

 

[Messala]

Hi there travis,

Thanks for posting a reply...makes me feel as though I've already got a readership

I'd love to hear more about your automated strategy...there was a time where I was interested in designing such a system, but abandoned the idea early on. Well, it's close to 2am Pacific Time here and I have to go to bed, but maybe just for starters...a question: is there a way to automate a system based primarily on support and resistance? Maybe using Metatrader? Thanks for now and I hope to see you on again soon!

Messala

 

[Yamato]

Well, I could talk forever about my systems, but I won't do it here, also because I've already done it on my journal. However I will enjoy answering all your questions (unless the question is "tell me everything about your systems").

...is there a way to automate a system based primarily on support and resistance? Maybe using Metatrader?

I use tradestation, and I don't know anything about Metatrader, as the other software was tiring enough to configure. Absolutely there is a way to first test and then automate a strategy based on support and resistance. There is a way to test and automate anything you do via discretionary trading. I do not believe very much in support and resistance nor in volume. These two famous methods are not methods I found to be profitable, maybe due to my limited programming skills. (The fact that there is a way to test and automate a method doesn't mean that method is profitable).

Actually I did build 2 systems on support and resistance now that I think of it. But in that system I call support and resistance "high" and "low" of today, so I forgot about it. Right, because the first thing we have to discuss is what exactly support and resistance are. On that particular system, I identified support and resistance as today's low and high, and that system simply bets on prices reversing when they get near those two values, at a given time of the day. I can't tell you everything about it or else I'd feel like I am disrespecting my hard work.

 

[Messala]

Well, I could talk forever about my systems, but I won't do it here, also because I've already done it on my journal. However I will enjoy answering all your questions (unless the question is "tell me everything about your systems").



I use tradestation, and I don't know anything about Metatrader, as the other software was tiring enough to configure. Absolutely there is a way to first test and then automate a strategy based on support and resistance. There is a way to test and automate anything you do via discretionary trading. I do not believe very much in support and resistance nor in volume. These two famous methods are not methods I found to be profitable, maybe due to my limited programming skills. (The fact that there is a way to test and automate a method doesn't mean that method is profitable).

Actually I did build 2 systems on support and resistance now that I think of it. But in that system I call support and resistance "high" and "low" of today, so I forgot about it. Right, because the first thing we have to discuss is what exactly support and resistance are. On that particular system, I identified support and resistance as today's low and high, and that system simply bets on prices reversing when they get near those two values, at a given time of the day. I can't tell you everything about it or else I'd feel like I am disrespecting my hard work.

Going with the daily lows and highs sounds logical, although a bit tougher in the forex market due to its 24 hr nature, and also the fact a daily candle opens/closes at different times depending on the broker/software. So not everybody would be looking at the same thing. Anyways, that's something I may look into in the future. That will be my next challenge!

Thanks for now, and I'll be looking for your journal and other threads as well

 

[viclondon]

Hi Messala,
interesting thread, here you have a second reader.
I use Tradestation for futures and Button trader for forex, both can be used in some way for "automating" support and resistence strategies. But you should specify what you mean by support and resistences, as Travis said.
Tradestation is very powerful, but it requires decent programming skills and the learning curve is quite steep if you want to master it fully. BT is quite simple, but gives you a lot of very flexible strategies and allows me to place my orders (even limit or stop trades) and go to play golf; it will take care of execution, targets and stop losses (even 5 different levels of stops mixing trailing and break even stops).
AFAIK BT does not allow to act on moving averages, while Tradestation should do it with programming.
I do agree with what was said above and I am in the process of trying to get more and more automatic and less discretionary in my trading and BT is a great addition for this purpose.
Please let us know more about your strategy.
Good luck with your journal and keep writing

 

[viclondon]

I do use daily lows and highs quite a bit for Wall Street future trading, especially when the high or the low of the day matches floor trading pivots or other resistences (like an important MA, or a previous supp/res).
I find that WS futures in most day is stuck in a range and fading the high low is a profitable strategy.
On Forex I use other strategies