I have. My current pairs I keep on my charts are the EUR/USD, EUR/JPY, AUD/USD, USD/CAD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CHF, EUR/AUD, EUR/GBP, EUR/CHF, and GBP/CHF. I have taken trades on many pairs besides the CHF, as I am often impressed with their spreads but haven't gotten a feel for its movement yet. Was intending for a solid trading day, but a lot of work kind of made me bypass it and ended up being a two hour maintenance session. However, I did edit my trading rules, market notes/observations document, and looked over some charts for a bit. As I have just completed redoing my money management plan and everything, I should be set for a little while. I have plenty of work with exams coming up and also may be away for the weekend, but I should do some trading and get my ten hours in for the week.
Oanda. Don't have the account minimum ($3,000) for IB. I also have TOS on my computer and Ninjatrader with a Gain connection, although their spreads are much higher (usually for TOS, its fixed spreads are often lower in illiquidity, but I do everything with Oanda anyway)
GBP/USD makes a case for down elliott ending. In process of ABC Edit: That's on the daily though, I didn't see yours was on the hourly at first
Had to end this train wreck early. Only traded for an hour and a half, but it was a disaster. Took three trades, which were all losers. I closed two of them simply because a few minutes later the reason why I entered no longer made any sense to me. The last one was just wrong. Total lost 22.9 pips on the three trades. I donât even care about the losses, I just see weakness in everything I do. Most of my trades are losers, so how am I supposed to have confidence in anything when it every trade I make is worse than chance? When I see a pattern my entries are late, and the direction is wrong anyway. I did figure out one thing today. I donât give a shit about losing money or pips â reducing size changed absolutely nothing. I fear failing. Thatâs it. Iâm also impatient and clearly donât know what Iâm doing. My longest hold today was fifteen minutes. My entries are based on the 5 and 15 minute charts. I only hit one stop, but Iâm just entering trades and then seeing a few minutes later that it wasnât a good decision. And I have eleven pairs on my screen now? I donât know whatâs going on with one and now I need eleven? I saw a few plays I was correct on, but was too indecisive to take any â too expectant of failure. I also donât seem fit to trade. I ate dinner and was looking to come back because in my mind I had to trade, not because I wanted to; itâs a negative expectation, and so is every new trade. I was taking another not because I was confident that I knew what was going on, but because a profit may return my hope â my hope of succeeding, that hundreds of hours of spare time may be worth something, that maybe I know something about what I clearly donât understand. Iâm not going to say that Iâm oblivious to market movement; I sometimes have very good analyses. I definitely did not feel this way when I was trading London, even though I took many losses. Something is not right with me right now. I need to take a break from trading. Iâm not going to look at a live chart for at least the rest of the week. Iâm going to look at a few resources I have on my to do list and some research time. If I feel the same way at the end of the week, I wonât trade next week either. Maybe I will just take a week off. Iâll sleep on it. Iâll also make a list of things Iâm going to do to change my trading. I will surely cut my pairs down to something more manageable, like three.
I would like to reflect on my trading thus far through a new thing Iâve decided to do, but first I would like to say something about what happened to me yesterday. Basically, it was really ugly. It is hard to get back into the mindset I was in, but I essentially had a lot of bad things that happened to me outside of trading catch up with me, I let repeated losses and crushed hopes fall on me, as well as poor trading setups and discipline (I was not looking for signals well, I was just hoping for a profit as I described). Most importantly, I believe most of it started with the doubting of my potential as a trader. Although I have already faced this with myself, getting it down in writing wonât hurt. I am noticing my mental weaknesses surface in my trading. I normally have great management skills and decision making, and I wisely keep emotions out of my thinking process. This has not been true in trading. I trade emotionally and make very bad decisions. So why is this? Honestly, I really donât know. Perhaps the market simply reveals that I have not crushed my emotional weakness enough. However, I do have a tendency of overlooking things at times when making decisions without extremely open and careful deliberation. This is easy to see in my trading; I see something potentially attractive on the 5 min or 1 min chart, and immediately refute it once I look at the bigger picture. I have noticed this problem, and figured experience would help greatly. My first solution, however, was to move up to the 5 min from the 1 min, and I noticed myself making the same mistake. That explains my trading downfalls, but not why I am questioning myself as a trader. My shortsightedness is apparent in other aspects of the game. When I was analyzing a rising wedge, for example, I was immediately thinking breakout, and it never occurred to me until a book threw it in my face to short the fifth touch to the top of the channel. Based on the way I think, this kind of innovation should be the first thing I think of! Of course that by itself does not matter, but I have eleven pairs on my screen now. How did I not foresee the complications of keeping track of them all on 5 and 15 min charts? I mean sure I was able to limit them down somewhat and trade a few of them when I saw opportunities developing, but with that much information I couldnât internalize anything, and my analysis was never profound enough for any pairs. Again, this is a simple learning experience, but there are many other examples, and my lack of vision is really beginning to question my potential for success. I saw it on every trade I took yesterday, and truthfully on most trades I take. In conclusion, what kind of trader am I? Well, as I scan forums and books and articles I realize that I know far more about the markets and market philosophy than many traders do. Yet, they are profitable. I am not. They have learned from their mistakes very well, yet I have not. They are obviously capable of making good market decisions, and yet I am not. Why? Likely it is experience, but who can know? My weaknesses are staring at me, and it seems I am far from conquering them. Maybe I will learn, but maybe I wonât â this dark cloud has been building over me for quite a while now. No, I haven't quit trading lol.
I would just like to say real fast that it was not my intent to turn this FX thread into a personal psychological analysis like it is right now. Originally I was hoping that I would be trading well and objectively after a shorter period of time, and it would be a tool for personal refinement as well as a discussion of trading the EUR/JPY. Anyway, since this hasn't happened at all, I feel a bit guilty. I doubt there is much I can do to help, but I have talked to several people about brokerages and spreads, as well as sources for learning the market (I spend a lot of time looking for resources). If there is anything I can help you with here, feel free to post or shoot me a PM. Regards, Greg