Almost on New Years Eve I realized what had worked for me so well in 2012, averaging down and spreading, wasn't going to work in 2013. January was a rough month. Off to a bad start and just barely broke even by getting lucky on the last day. Got flat in Feb and started revivng the old ES tactics in my paper account. I don't know if I'm ready to go live yet. I think 2013 may be a good scalpers market, if you are ready, able and willing to hold the positions you get stuck with and can take a loss at a moments notice
I don't know, this trading with stops is just so aggravating. Not so sure there is a trend to identify. Occasionally the positions get really large. Hard to go to sleep without a stop. 2012 was great for currency correlation. Especially if you could get in and out on some extreme. It was like almost on New Years eve 2013 the correlation was broken. Probably something to do with JPY. It's no longer safe to average down and go to sleep. scalp why you are awake, go home flat? stops in es are one thing. stops in forex are another. hard to make money in forex if you don't average down until the mkt changes, I see very little reason to add to winners
Sorry to hear. '13 has been good to me. Volatility picked up nicely early winter producing some good tradable moves. Averaging down tends to work best in flat, low volatility markets, ime. That mean reversion gives the trader lots of second chances to double down and be when on the wrong side. When the market finds direction, it rarely looks back. Maybe advice is only useful if someone takes it but I view the market in very simple terms. On vacation now in the grenadines. My mom took us on a family trip. Bit of a european vacation at the start re the snow storm.
I'm ok now, just needed to tweak a few things and modify some rules oddly enough, using time orders has been a working compromise all my money is made adding to winners, but most of the time I first have to add to them when they are losers can't do anything about the winners that turn into losers, that's where the time stops help
I think you might have gotten lucky with the average down spreading thing, but to be honest I never figured out what it was you do in FX. I would go back to the drawing board. Try swing trading with stops and targets off Daily/4hr/1hr charts. Use some stat analysis, work on your techs, one eye on the price action, one on the wires.
average down and up, right now It's just sitting there. Neither of us are doing anything. I'm short aud and cad and long eur and gbp. So nothing is moving in my favor. It was the same way yesterday, but I made out ok.