Sunday, August 18, 2019 / 10:00 a.m. PST So, here is my initial plan for this week so that I am trading for dollars rather than pennies using a 0.02 lot size… First, I deleted “the tube” because I do not need to refer to its slope for direction and it suffers from too much fluctuation and has too narrow a price range to be useful in terms of locking down entries and exits. Instead, for direction, I will be looking to the slopes of the gravitation line and the global price range. I will wait to enter long positions when these two measures are trending north, and wait to enter short positions when they are trending south. For entries and exits, I will be using the Donchian channel and the orange local-price-range envelope to establish levels of support and resistance in tandem with hooks in the purple and gray clusters followed by green trigger line crossovers to pinpoint entry and exit levels. These will constitute my "launch pads" and "landing sites." NOTE TO SELF: I mistakenly labeled the "trigger line" as "anchor line" in one of my posts. This does not really fit, so I will discontinue doing it. So, perhaps I will begin referring to the new blue moving average as "anchor line" instead.
Sunday, August 18, 2019 / 6:30 p.m. PST USDJPY was nicely structured for a buy at the open when it was down around 106.21, but I did not take the trade because Tickmill was showing about a 10-pip spread at the time. Often I won’t get a nice setup at the start of the week until about 24 to 48 hours into la nueva semana. But happenstance has been kind to me this week in giving me an opportunity to test my plan early. Of course, with everything that’s going on regarding China and Great Britain, who knows what might happen, so I’ll just have to hope that no crazy news breaks any time soon. Also, I don’t have the luxury of waiting around for the perfect entry levels, so here is a rough description of the situation(s) as they stand... EURGBP looks unquestionably bearish at the moment, so I would like to see it fall from its present pullback, where it now sits at 0.9133. I will be looking for USDCAD to fall as well—from 1.3274. I would expect to see GBPJPY climb from 129.18, and GBPUSD to climb from 1.2138. These four are the only potential opportunities I see at the moment.
The gravity line has gone neutral on formerly bullish Cable pairs, at least for the time being, and it is actually reversing north on EURGBP. For these reasons, I have exited all three positions prior to the rates reaching the opposing river banks. If I were monitoring the positions, I would still be in the trades and remain so until I got an actual exit signal (let my winners run). But that won't be possible until next month at the earliest, so I'm happy just to get some evidence that there might actually be merit to the plan I laid out this morning, and that my goal of a 1.8% return per day—everyday—is not necessarily in the realm of the ridiculous, God willing.
NOTE TO SELF: Just for the record, it looks like all of the Cable pairs would have paid off quite nicely had you remained in the trades.
Sunday, August 18, 2019 / 11:55 p.m. PST At 0.6425, NZDUSD is creating the conditions you laid out this morning. Look for it to fall over the next 24 hours. (If it does, this will be the last time I post an entry of this kind, since I'm beginning to suspect that NPP may have reached a level of validity and reliability where I will no longer be helping myself through this type of activity, but essentially providing a highly profitable signal service at no cost, which was never my design.)
Well, it's time to go beddy-bye, so I'm cashing in on NZDUSD right here. USDCAD is being stubborn! But hopefully the rate will drop a few more pips before I turn out the lights so I can retire for the night knowing I don't have to worry about things turning against me while I'm unavailable to bail before it all goes bad (and I can finish the London session with all five trades having experienced profitable outcomes). In any event, going forward I will no longer be calling trades in advance. My very first post said... "I'm starting this online journal to assess my proficiency at reading the 'signs of the times' to see that which lies beyond the Forex market horizon," and this is something I no longer feel the need to do.
Thursday, August 22, 2019 / 8:30 a.m. PST Last night I was handed a major setback when it appeared that a couple of pairs, like AUDJPY, looked like they might be trying to reverse their universal direction, and other assets, like the Cable pairs, experienced radical pullbacks. As a result, I had to stop trading certain pairs and had to reenter positions with others to make back most of my losses so that I am now only -36ȼ in the hole for the current 24-hour market cycle. But this whole situation would have been avoided if I had been actively trading and therefore reinforces my preference for trading full-time. Even were it not avoided, active trading would have let my profits run this morning so that I would have been deep into profit territory by now instead of -36ȼ behind. It’s like Al Books says, you cannot make money trading unless you are flexible, because you need to go where the market is going, and the market is extremely flexible. Well, the only way I can act on this principle efficiently is to be monitoring and managing my positions actively.