Welcome onboard, just popped back to watch a little - and it's difficult to say where this slide could stop given the last few days very choppy and frustrating trading. dewey, are you position trading, swing or scalping ? [15:21 EUR/JPY: CTAs, Models Throw In Towel, Prices Slide Anew] New York, September 24: With a deteriorating technical picture in EUR/JPY and an equally foul mood among traders, the cross is sliding back toward 135.80. That was the level where stops were triggered yesterday, sending prices down toward 135.50. We have seen more in the way of position squaring from spec accounts today after the cross slipped back below 136.00. US names have been active sellers in the latest slide. More stops are noted below 135.50 and few see prices recovering from a slide below that level. EUR/JPY buyers near 135.80 have emerged with the USD/JPY making a sharp move higher and EUR/USD bouncing off 1.2245.
I believe I am swing trading (not sure if the timeframes are the same as in equity trading, where swing trading is anywhere from a 25 minute hold to a whole trading day). In forex, I usually look to hold a position for :30 minutes or longer, but of course than can change depending on the situations. Anybody know where I can get good Forex news updates? Thanks, Robert
www.ifrmarkets.com is really good. Otherwise www.fxstreet.com , www.dailyfx.com and www.refconews.com are ok. There are a lot of other sites - these were the ones I remembered. I also use www.nasdaq.com/econoday/index.html . EuroFX seem to have dabbed off towards the end - locked in a tight range because of traders shunning the market towards the week close. Gotta go play with the kids.
I completely screwed up today. First, I ended up shorting couple of trades just after the 8:30 EST numbers came out. My stops slipped and ended up losing more than I was planning to. Then I got chopped couple of times at the top. I was able short very close to the top--trying to catch the top was expensive. Then I exited the short early. Reshorted again, exited early and almost broke even. Then after couple of chops, and I started going against the trend by going long with tight stops. I got completely out of phase with the market. 6-7 tick stops added up. I ended up losing -110 ticks today. It wiped of profits of four winning days and some more. I completely ignored my simple trading plan and most importantly money management rule for stopping trading after a certain amount of loss. These are the bad side effects of overtrading. I'll go over my trading plan this weekend and simplify it further. I thought I got it very simple and clear. But maybe there are some loopholes in it and they create some kind of conflict in my head during trading. I read a good advice somewhere about trading plans: While trading, don't think, just execute your plan. One more time, today concentrating in these little fluctuations woke up the trading demons for me!
One thing that always worked on equities for me was to trade only a few times, and once I had a nice profit, LEAVE. I found that if I was racking up a decent profit, greed would set it and the 'more' mentallity would start up, and I would lose most of my profit. What I found in equities, is that the best profits were usually the first few trades, no matter what time they were. Not sure why this is, but maybe it's possibly to get 'burned out' after a couple hours of trading.
My biggest weakness is trying to make up for losses that are due to deviations from the trading plan. At best, I break even those days, or dug deeper holes. The only solution I see is to have a very simple and clear plan and just follow it.
I am in no position to give advice, but remove this from your vocabuary: trying to make up for losses Michael B. P.S. Am I behaving Ebo, or should I go back to "the can"?
This was my biggest leak in my trading, having a few small losses due to plan deviation leading to further overtrading trying to get it back, and just making things worse. Somehow making the first mistake justified making the next one, and so on -- a deadly cycle, until you finally swear on your kids that you will never place another trade outside your system parameters ever again
I trade the EURUSD futures and they're most liquid 8am-2pm EST. This means that I get up at 5am and done by about noon my time. I tried trading during Europe open too but thatwas too much taxing on me.