In case anyone is curious, my plays for the night (all of which have been entered): short EUR/USD short EUR/JPY short USD/JPY short EUR/AUD short GBP/USD Haven't decided on a holding time, but most will be a few hours to overnight.
Hey Baruch! Yeah, doing extremely well, thanks for asking! Apparently though, so are you... I see your thread is coming along very well - it's become one of the largest journals on ET! :eek: Well, what can I say? Basically, as I pointed out, I only come here occassionally now for entertainment - like when I've got a free hour of waiting for nothing to happen - if you know what I mean. I've indicated that my personal belief is that there's little point in trying to convey my knowledge and theories here, since trading is really something where everybody has to find his own path. Here are no hard-fast rules, and no matter what (particularly I) say, it can be torn apart and kicked around, so I leave the discussions to those who know better. Another point is also that these days I've got lots of theories, systems and approaches which I'd rather not share publicly, for various reasons. You will find that if you hang in long enough in this career, you may get to a point where you make discoveries you'd rather not like everyone to know. Guess it's part of the business, but it's also just another point to the truth that everybody has to find his very own path and complete approach. As for myself, I'm very happy with the framework I'm utilizing today. As for my faibles, Once again I'm doing lots of scalping (trading the ranges, but going for i.e. 5-10 pts on the DAX typically, so not exactly tick trading), mainly day trading the really liquid issues such as ES, ER2 and DAX. I'm also swing and position trading a diversified bundle of my 10 favorite issues, which are: AUD, EUR, JPY, ES, NQ, AX(DAX), YI(Silver), YG(Gold), ER2(Russell200), ZN(10-Yr T-Note). Position trading has been so good over the past 2 months, it has almost made as much as day trading! It seems I've been on the right side of the market in every issue by betting on a US interest rate hike and general economical uncertainty. Most of the position trades I called on this thread months ago (such as AUD short) I'm still in, and the AUD has yielded me over 15% gain by now, on the largest position in my portfolio. Also, I went and am currently short on Gold, Silver, JPY, ZN and ES. My only significant long is the USD, and has been so for quite a while. However, I reckon things might be (at least temporarily) bottoming out soon, so I am looking to exit or at least lighten up most of my positions over the course this week, not least also since it's getting rainy here and I will be flying off to a 3-week holiday in the sun early next week. As for all the other traders here - particularly newbies - the best recommendation I can make is don't trade the index futures. I don't care how fancy everybody thinks the ES, NQ, DAX etc are. They are extremely competitive, and the reason I trade them is that they provide very decent liquidity in comparison to i.e. many currency futures, and perhaps a tad of madness. They are professional markets, for professionals, and I really mean it. To those who are starting out, or just trading small size, I see no reason whatsoever why anybody would trade such saturated markets, while there is such an abundance of opportunity to be found elsewhere, such as in the forex markets, or even stocks. And if you really want to make it a lot easier for yourself - don't day trade at all, but rather pick a handful of decent, nicely trending issues such as AUD, JPY, USD and perhaps some metals, use simple logic and a little bit of fundamental education to enter with the trend changes, and just stay in until you get an opposite signal. I could not put into words how easy and at the same time rewarding this can be. Congrats to the popularity and quality of your thread, Baruch!
Hope you enjoy your vacation, Scientist. Sorry to see you cutting back on the board as I always enjoyed your posts. Steve
Thanks, Baruch. They're working out pretty decently for the most part; GBP/USD isn't really cooperating just yet, but the others have some "acceptable" gains.
Whatever your outcome, make sure you don't take it too serious. Things can only do you emotional damage if you let them. And if you have emotional damage, it can be hard to alleviate and get back into the flow. Just put as much money into every trade as you're cheerfully willing to lose, and you'll be fine. If you fully accept the risk of every bet, you're halfway there. The rest is history. Best is to just accept that anything can happen, and that the outcome of a single trade really doesn't matter in the long run, particularly if you have a good strategy. All the best wishes for your endeavour...
Hi Scientist, Thank you very much, brother. It's really nice to hear you are still doing not only OK, but excellent. I hope a lot of our readers will read your comment - not once, but twice.