Friday / March 20, 2020 / 1:30 AM PST There is plenty of room for improvement, but I still look positively on the direction this week's performance suggests my trading might be headed going forward. I'm no longer modifying my charts in any way, shape or form...just learning to trade them more effectively, leaving me with a lot of time to focus on other things now.
Saturday / March 21, 2020 Last week's trading was carried out using my one-hour and five-minute chart setups, which again, I am not modifying in any way. However, looking for ways to at least somewhat close the gap between last week's performance and the corresponding room for improvement led me to drop down to the one-minute level, where I did indeed see a thing or two I could do differently that might potentially enable me to trade more effectively, especially in light of the market's current volatility. But despite what I wrote in my last post, executing the changes as effectively as possible would have to see me make adjustments to the one-minute configuration, which I did... But I will be curious to see how well this configuration trades once the markets are no longer so wild (assuming it proves to be satisfactory next week).
There's no denying that your equity curve is going up. It is jagged, sure, but overall up is excellent in any time, but especially now. It is encouraging! Keep on truckin'!
Monday / March 23, 2020 / 10:00 AM PST The chart attached to post #362 needed quite a bit of tweaking, but seems to be much more accurate now that it is configured as pictured below...
Monday / March 23, 2020 / 5:00 PM PST Today's One-minute Chart Conclusion: It would appear that the best trade setup is to identify Forex pairs that have a clearly trending (orange) universal baseline, and then enter positions as rates bounce off the bottom of the lower region of the intermediate (purple and pink) price range envelope when the universal baseline is rising, or off the upper region of the envelope when the universal baseline is falling...
Tuesday / March 24, 2020 / 9:45 AM PST I've now decided that the intermediate (purple and pink) price range envelope was not as important as noting exactly when rates are making a actionable short-term reversal/turn. So, I deleted the intermediate envelope and colored the black envelope from Post #366 purple and pink instead (the one with the dotted-line bands in the image below). I then added a blue moving average cluster to work in tandem with the green moving average to let me know precisely when to enter and exit positions (the green moving average was too lagging)...
No, I'm just taking notes. I had to postpone getting started when I emptied my OANDA account to do Christmas shopping last year. Then I hit up an old client to replenish it, but their organization didn't have any work for me until February. I now have more than enough money to get started, but the project isn't over yet, so I'll just continue adding to what I have saved, and begin with that much more of an opening balance, because I have to be free to trade full time! Last week I made like $60 in a single day off my $400 Tickmill demo account trading off 60- and 5-minute charts (which seem to at long last be absolutely finalized) thanks to market volatility, only to have everything sour on me the next day. I therefore dropped down to 1-minute charts to analyze what went wrong, and reconfigured my lower settings accordingly. It is extremely likely that my 1-minute chart setup is now finalized as well, given that I only MAKE money whenever I use it while monitoring it consistently. But this is why I HAVE to wait until trading full-time before accessing my live account. I MUST use 1-minute charts and I absolutely MUST manage all my positions to make consistent profits, because the markets are just too darn dynamic NOT to... Note how the numbers (represented graphically by the green and blue moving averages) tell me exactly when to get in and out of positions (highlighted by the navy blue diagonals I drew). However, they cannot tell me this ahead of time! (It can happen at any moment.) So, I have to be at my laptop to let my profits run, and then make the turns when the chart says to. Trading based on the trend (the orange and yellow moving averages) would mean trading with stops that are WAY TOO WIDE. This would open me up to losing money, and I trade to make money ONLY. Consequently, I need to trade with the cycles/waves—NOT just with the trend. Therefore, all I'm going to be doing now is biding my time until I finish the project I'm working on, which is about halfway done at this point, and confirming that this new 1-minute setup really does work as it has been (when I'm monitoring it) in the meantime. In fact, I closed my charts this morning and hadn't looked at them again until now (10:00 PM), because there is really no more reason to. My one-hour and five-minute charts are now set in stone (God willing) and this new one-minute configuration appears to be just about perfect as well, though I will continue to verify this as I'm able, just to make sure (until I'm free to begin trading my live account after I finish this project).
Wednesday / March 25, 2020 / 9:15 AM PST I made a couple of rather subtle yet very significant adjustments to my one-minute chart configuration... ...so that the success rate on my last seven trades was much better than that of my first eight… Nonetheless, this all means I’m back to making nickel and dime trades once again... ...but I’m okay with that for a number of reasons: First of all, it looks like it will keep any losses to less than $2.50. Second, I barely did any trading—just popping in and out now and again—seeing as how I was occupied with other work. Yet, I was still able to get in a total of 15 trades. Once I’m trading full-time, I will get in multiple times that amount, which is still likely to add up to $20 to $30 a day initially, if not a lot more. Moreover, I’m often getting in at times when the market is pretty dead. It will be a lot easier to make money once I can focus on times when assets are trending strongly. And finally, popping in and out meant I had to set modest, high-probability take-profit targets and was therefore unable to let my profits run, something I will easily be able to do once I’m trading full-time, which will lead to some trades being worth a lot more than just $2.02.