my journal

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Yeah, I trust your wisdom quite a bit, you know that. And you understood that I am not into books, nor being taught stuff, or being told what to do.

From now on, anyone could just quote the paragraphs they recommend to me. I am into reading paragraphs.
 
My trade, made over 4 hours ago, is still open. I even turned off all trading programs.

Today my big concern was work instead. My small office is made of boss plus 4 people. Two of them work. I work the most after the boss. Two of the people don't do anything. The suspicious transactions reports keep coming in at the speed of 5 per day. I keep on registering them, doing statistics on them, writing and calling for missing documents, but the ones that are complete are only 4 out of 5 that we get. I fall behind on 1 report per day. I warned the boss about this, and he doesn't seem to realize how big this problem is.

The terrible thing though is that after I get all the missing documents and register the reports, the rest of the office has to process the reports get more details about the suspicious transactions reported and evaluate whether to send them to authorities or not. This part is longer than mine. They're four doing this job, including the boss. Well, they can only process about 10 report per week, out of the 25 we get. So, I fall behind on 5 reports per week, as far as registering, and they fall behind on 15 reports per week, as far as processing and sending to authorities.

This is going to be unbearable because right now we're 150 reports behind and no one seems to be worried about it, except me.

We either get better employees doing the job, or the boss starts asking less quality or the boss gets fired and so do the employees. But he seems relaxed. Maybe he's used to being in a state of emergency. Or maybe he's not realizing where we're heading.

Up to this week, I've always been able to be on top of all my work. Now I've started to fall behind. Because, as few people work at all, more and more work is demanded of me, and I can't keep on increasing the amount of work I do without decreasing the quality. Yet no one accepts that my quality decrease, and everyone increases the quantity. I am in an impossible situation, unless I start increasing the hours I spend at work.

Here's my plan. I'll let some disaster happen to alert the boss about the state of things, about the fact that we're heading for disaster. If the most organized person in the office, the only organized person, can't stay on top of his work, and all the statistics and work is in his hands, the office is in trouble. I don't want this to happen, but in order to not let it happen, I have to anticipate disaster, I have to let the boss get a taste of what will happen. Therefore I must first of all not stay longer during the day, because that would only postpone disaster. Second of all, I'll start refusing jobs. The most important and noticeable ones. So the boss and the other offices relying on me will wake up to the fact that I am overloaded with work.

I've already started with a guy who's from another office and once a month he asks me for a whole day of assistance on tables, pivots and databases, statistics and more, all on excel. Today I told him: look, I am too worn out to be able to focus on the tables you need. I did 80% of the work, and I am refusing to go any further. Because i am really tired. It's all true. But maybe I could help him out if subconsciously I didn't think these guys asking me for help are slackers who spend their whole day nothing and then ask me for help when they're in trouble. The guy said to my boss that it was "easy" and we both laughed at this, when my boss told me, and said "why doesn't he do it himself then?".
 
Lost 280 dollars: Trade closed according to plan.
This trade lasted about 5 hours. Way too long. I knew after just an hour that my trade had most likely failed, but for a few hours the averages were still in my favor so I kept it open. But no longer... instead I kept it open even after.

Future exit rule to be added to plan:
If the trade is still open after one hour, close it as soon as both averages are against it.

Because it means it didn't go as planned. First of all because after one hour that momentum in your favour is pretty much all gone, and second of all because this is confirmed by the fact that the averages are against the trade. That's when I should exit.

So far these are my trades, all made according to all rules:
1 takeprofit
2 takeprofit
3 aborted at 1 tick profit
4 stoploss

I am confident that with about 1 trade per day, this should be the future rate. About 2 wins out of 3 trades. I am pretty confident about this. No matter what markets will be like, with pivots + correlations + trend on my side, there's no way I will lose money. Actually I should even bet 2 contracts as soon as I'll have one month of profits to back my opinion.

In the weekend I've got to remember to test the few rules I added to the system. I am very happy with this system. It's the first time I have a system actually, in the sense of respecting all its rules. I also know that i can't add too many rules or else I will fail to follow them, and i might add rules that don't always work.
 
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NEW VERSION OF SYSTEM

HOTKEYS
Set up hotkeys:
"B" for "buy 1 at market" with 20 ticks bracket order,
"S" for "sell 1 at market" with 20 ticks bracket order,
"C" for "close position".
----------------------
CHARTS
SET UP THESE CHARTS ON IB'S TWS:
1 WEEK AND THEN 4 HOURS OF ES, CL, GBP "line" mode
2 DAYS OF EUR.USD@IDEALPRO 15-minutes CANDLES WITH PIVOTS
4 HOURS OF EUR.USD@IDEALPRO 1-MINUTE CANDLES WITH 15-periods and 210-periods moving averages
----------------------
RULES
ENTRIES can be made if:
1) you haven't lost over 250 dollars for the day (from discretionary trading)
2) your entry and your take profit are >=10 ticks away from any pivot lines
3) you have looked at "correlated" chart (1 week and then 4 hours)
4) the 225-period ma is in favor by >= 5 ticks
5) the 15-period ma gets crossed by price (in favor) after touching the other side >= 3 minutes
EXITS
1) Bracket order of 20 ticks.
2) You can exit early if you wish, but not increase the distance of the stoploss.
3) If the trade is still open after 1 hour, close it as soon as both averages are against it.
 
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**** them all. I ain't going to work tomorrow. They wear me out and this is what they get. They rely too much on me and... **** them.
 
1) you haven't lost over 250 dollars for the day (from discretionary trading)
2) your entry and your take profit are >=10 ticks away from any pivot lines
3) you have looked at "correlated" chart (1 week and then 4 hours)
4) the 225-period ma is in favor by >= 5 ticks
5) the 15-period ma gets crossed by price (in favor) after touching the other side >= 3 minutes
 
It has to fall more and then bounce back up, for a long signal to be triggered.

It'll take hours before it goes my way and I'll get a signal. But this is just great: despite feeling like ****, frustrated about work, here I am, waiting for a signal. Very good test to see if I quit my compulsive gambling habits. This would usually be the most favorable time for compulsive gambling, but, so far, I've felt no desire for it. Maybe because I have really understood that I can make money this way, with the system, and i've understood that I'd really lose money the other way.
 
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What sense does it make to improvise everything, to go by instinct, when my instincts are so misleading, when i can be profitable by following some simple rules that still allow me some discretion and still allow me to feel like I am needed and that I am doing something? Would I rather make money in an hour or go against the trend for hours and hours and have to double up when I am losing and totally lose control over my actions? I would rather make money in an hour. I would rather have a majority of small wins (20 ticks) and a minority of small losses (20 ticks), than a majority of small wins (20 ticks), and a minority of huge losses (200 ticks).
 
1) you haven't lost over 250 dollars for the day (from discretionary trading)
2) your entry and your take profit are >=10 ticks away from any pivot lines
3) you have looked at "correlated" chart (1 week and then 4 hours)
4) the 225-period ma is in favor by >= 5 ticks
5) the 15-period ma gets crossed by price (in favor) after touching the other side >= 3 minutes
 
Long

Snap1.jpg
 
EXITS
1) Bracket order of 20 ticks.
2) You can exit early if you wish, but not increase the distance of the stoploss.
3) If the trade is still open after 1 hour, close it as soon as both averages are against it.

Snap1.jpg

I was doing some heavy hoping, as usual, that it'd go my way, especially when it hesitated for a few red candles, on its way to the target profit. But I felt less stress than on my first trade, which was something special to me, because it was my first non-gambling trade, and I really wanted it to go well.

I appraised that the time was right, because any trend that prevailed during the night (CET), tends to go on all the way to 9 AM CET and a bit later. Correlations were saying that everything was going up and there was room to go up more. Pivots were ok, and there was room for rising more. So I made the trade. At the start, despite all conditions being there, I waited price to correct for a few more 1-minute candles before going long.

So far I am quite happy with my non-gambling, as it seems that even if I am in a frantic emotional state during the trading (certainly it's not non-emotional trading), I manage to follow the rules, and reap the benefits.

So far this is what happened with my non-gambling trades:
20091130: takeprofit
20091130: takeprofit
20091201: early exit with 1 tick profit
20091202: stoploss
20091203: takeprofit

I can't say it'll be profitable, but it's definitely not unprofitable. At the worst it will be a breakeven trading, which is better than losing thousands per year, as I've been doing until now. I think I will go for 2 contracts per trade as soon as I reach 10k of capital, and out of 20 trades I get a win ratio (including if I make a few ticks by exiting early) higher than 66%.

"WHEN WILL IT STOP RAINING?" ANALOGY
This method seems almost too easy, almost as if it were unfair to follow such a method. I basically do the opposite of what I've been doing: I go with the existing trend, hoping it will continue, rather than try to pick a top or a bottom. There's no challenge at all. Before this I felt like I was a genius in trying to pick turning points, and now I feel like I am being stupid in thinking that it will do what it's been doing. Yet I make money, because the turning points in one day are on average two (they tend to happen at 10 CET and 22 CET), whereas it keeps on doing what it's been doing for the rest of the time. So if you enter at any time in one direction, your best bet is to bet it will continue to go where it's been going, because you'll only have two moments at which you can be right if you try to pick a turning point. It would be even obvious, but people like me who look for challenges in everything, try to challenge themselves to become better, will look for the challenge and go for the top and bottom picking. In reality what I've been doing is as if, when it's raining, one said: "i am now going to predict exactly when it will stop raining", and then "ok: now it will stop raining, and this was exactly the last drop". What the others do is "it's raining: I bet it will continue", and "it is sunny: I bet it will continue". In short, I went from a "when will it stop raining?" method, to a "it's going to keep raining" method.

Unlike Elder's use of bulls, bears and hogs analogy, which sucked and caused his drowning in the bath tub, this sun and rain analogy is much better. So I congratulate myself. Yes, because rising in the markets (stock market and similar) happens as often as sun (at least here). And rain happens as rarely as falling (even though markets fall faster than they rise, even the EUR). So it's a perfect comparison. If it's raining outside, you get the umbrella, and you don't say "it will stop in five minutes". And if it's sunny you get your sunglasses. All these years I've been taking the umbrella when it was sunny, and saying "it will start raining soon", and got my sunglasses when it was raining, thinking "it will be very sunny in exactly one minute".

I am finally starting to understand that I have to stop being an anticonformist as far as trading at least. I always thought and wrote here how I think it's best to do the opposite of what crowds do, not watch the most popular movies, read the most popular books, listen to the most popular music, and now the market is forcing me to follow the trend, unless I want to keep on losing money. Probably following the trend is the best behaviour in many other fields, where I act unprofitably as well. But trading is a field where you understand immediately if a behaviour is profitable or not, and where it's clear from the start that your objective is profit. So you're forced to look for the cause of your unprofitability and then you're forced to remove it: no matter how much this will go against your nature, because your nature is in the way of your reaching the objective, which is clearly profit.

In other fields, like with women or on your job... your objective is not as clear. No wait: the objective is sex with women and promotion on the job. So maybe in that field it is harder to identify the cause of your failure... no wait: it's just the same. Everything is the same: the objective is as easy to identify, and the mistakes you might be making are as hard to detect. I think the difference is that I wanted to make money more than I wanted to have sex or be promoted. And the reason is that with money you don't care about sex, nor promotions, because you can buy them both. I mean, you can quit your job.

Other than this, I must note that weather and seasons are much better analogies for prices and trading than animals, like that Elder guy used, which caused me to drown his book.


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Now I'll go to work, and tell them I am there just for one pivot table and then I'll go back home because I am too stressed out by them and by the burgeoning amount of work they're giving me, increasing at the same time quality and quantity demanded of me, and all relying on my work, while they go for long coffee breaks. Then I'll definitely come back home, by lunch time.
 
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**** it. I changed my mind. I am not going to work, nor am I calling in sick. Let them think whatever they want. They know anyway, because yesterday I told them I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to how much everyone was relying on me, and expecting me to do everything they can neither do nor want to learn to do: so they can keep on going for coffee breaks while I do their work for them. It's not fair. If they want to fire me, so much the better.
 
1) you haven't lost over 250 dollars for the day (from discretionary trading)
2) your entry and your take profit are >=10 ticks away from any pivot lines
3) you're monitoring "correlated" chart (first 1 week and then 4 hours)
4) the 225-period ma is in favor by >= 5 ticks
5) the 15-period ma gets crossed by price (in favor) after touching the other side >= 3 minutes
 
Happy to see you're progressing Travis.

As a bit of added food for thought, you might consider (or pilfer ideas from) this trend-following strategy here: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=208630

Key rules:

So basically here the rules for this system when looking for an entry point:

1. MA's must parallel and pointing in the same direction
2: price must be in the area of SMA lines to look for an entry
3: There must be a confluence of support and resistance in that area, Fib number, previous swing high or low, round numbers, trend lines...etc
4: Wait for the pullback and continuation formation on the trigger chart.
5: Set stops above the pullback on a down trend and below on an uptrend and do not move them.

later on restated as...

1) Spot a vali d trend as per the rules.
2) Find the level of strongest Confluence support/resistance where a new swing may spring from.
3) Wait for a retrace to that level.
4) Zoom into shorter time frames.
5) Read what price does at that decision-taking level : Does it breach through? Does it enter a period of consolidatio n? Does it bounce off it?
6) Recognize any possible reversal formation.
7) Wait for price to confirm that reversal formation/breakout, don't anticipate the move.
8) Has the ret racement trendline being broken yet? It's always a big plus!
9) Elaborate your Trade Plan : stoploss, targets, possible news announcements, reasonable time scope for the trade, etc.
10) As the reversal formation is confirmed, enter the market.

Other things:

Another thing I should mention too, is look at the Average daily range, and make sure you have enough room to make the trade in the direction of the trend, in my charts I have and indicator that shows me the current days range and the average daily range, and using the ADR and round numbers intself has netted me a lot of good trades, rememebr those round numbers are areas where stops and targets are set by many of the big players and more times than not when the prices reaches those numbers something will happen look at the chart showing the USDJPY and looked at the price action around the grid lines...those gridlines are the round numbers..this is my trading chart...

also

My SL and TP I try to maintain at least 3 to 1, that is why looking at the long term charts has a lot of bearing on my entries. I set 2 targets, when the first target gets hit, I close half the position and move my stop to BE and then from there I intratade manage the rest of the trade.

and


So what happens if all looks good on the setup chart and everything is saying we have an opportunity and we draw our lines and then switch to the trigger chart and the pair stalls out? Well what we do then is really draw the lines showing S/R on the trigger chart, and then wait for the breakout in the direction of the trend, I like to use the same methodology and wait for the breakout, pullback and continuation, when the market is sideways that seems to be the easiest to trade when it breaks out, triangles are handled the same way. If it breaks out in the opposite direction of the trend then you do nothing...always wait for a breakout in the direction of the trend, wait for the BPC (breakout pullback and continuation) and then enter the trade, sometimes it will breakout with such momentum you miss the trade, but it comes back, some people trade the breakouts with a lot of success but I like to wait for the BPC to happen before I enter.

Sometimes it will get into a range during a trend and you handle this the same way, as soon as it breaks out of the range wait for the BPC and enter the trade (Unless you like to range trade of course). All the basic patterns still hold true for this system as other systems like the Head N Shoulders, double tops and bottoms...etc Just be sure to set the stop loss behind the event that got you in the trade.

Disclaimer: Haven't tested, can't vouch for it. (But it does seem rather sensible.)

Hope you feel better soon at work.
 
1) you haven't lost over 250 dollars for the day (from discretionary trading)
2) your entry and your take profit are >=10 ticks away from any pivot lines
3) you're monitoring "correlated" chart (1 month to 2 hours)
4) the 225-period ma is in favor by >= 5 ticks
5) the 15-period ma gets crossed by price (in favor) after touching the other side >= 3 minutes
 
looks like a fall now
1:30 going to be volatile with all the news, so watch out for that.

GBP/USD large bids @ 1.6615 (Correlated to EUR/USD) and rumours of Chinese central bank selling off today in the GBP/USD

Cheers
 
Thanks for the information.

I'm short even though one of the requirements wasn't met. Broke my rules.
 
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