After this Russia invasion, I opened up my paper trading Forex account. I made some basic guesses based on money moving into safe havens and out of the Euro (and GBP to lesser extent). On $40,000 pretend margin dollars, I profited $16,000 within 48 hours. So I decided to give the real thing another try. I have money in a Forex and a futures trading account. Here's what I've noticed about my trading and psychology so far. It's a lot different when it's real money obviously. I'm making predictions based on publicly available information and my opinions of where things with move in the short to medium term. However, I've noticed that I can't resist taking profits when I'm about 10-15% profit. My trades are between $6k-$15k margin each. However, this leaves me in a position where I often have a bunch of currently negative trades open. For example, if I think the EUR/USD will go down over the short to medium term, then I will still hold the pair even if it immediately goes up after I buy it. What do you think of this trading strategy? It will mostly involve major currency pairs and commodity and index futures. Example: I bought CLM22 at 100.37, then couldn't resist selling it at 102.12. After that, it went up to above 107, so I definitely missed out on potential profits... But then it went down below 100 before going back up to the 102.40 level it's at now. My predictions are based on things that could take several weeks or even months to materialize, but I find myself having a hard time holding them more than a single day if things are going my way.
Screw the "what if I held" shit. That does not work in this current market action. Take your profits quick, and stay the hell out. Trust me.
You made money? Congrats! You could be writing a post about how you came so close to 107 but got greedy and sold at 100 for a 2 loss... Woulda-coulda-shoulda is the last psy framework you want to trade within.
Thanks. And the exact numbers were... $1750 profit on $14400 margin in 8 hours. That's just over 12% return in 8 hours. In terms of annual ROI, that's 13,307% lol. That was my logic for closing the trade even though I thought it would go then higher
What I was saying was, do not be ashamed of the measly profits you think you are taking. You are getting out with profits. Always a good thing. I'm not in my right mind because I am two months into this drawdown, and it is affecting my brain in a bad way.
I really need to think of an exit strategy in case things don't go by way even after waiting long enough. Cause right now one bad trade could wipe out 5 good ones.
That's the real trick, ain't it. I thought I could use time as my edge, but this whole inflation+Fed+Ukraine war combo was not something I anticipated. Never traded through a war before. But even on an intraday basis, the same idea applies. With this vol, one can make 1 great trade, but 4 more trades can wipe out the gains. Oh man, it sux. Keep on keeping on, farmer John. Of course, there's a video for that, farmerjohn. I always aim to please.
One thing I don't like about this strategy is that I miss breakouts when they're good for me (capped at 10% gain) but not when they're bad.