Let me explain the title. Here is the last 10 years of my life, the short version. -28, married with a couple little kids, lots of fun. -Multiple attempts at trading everything. Always busted my small accounts, except the last 2. One was my keystone trading account. I was up small and quit to trade my own money. Two was my own money account. I was up about 10% (500) my first month and decided to quit until I had more capital to work with. -Full time online poker player for about 7 years. Made high 5 to low 6 figures a year. -Started going crazy (literally) from WAY to much poker and WAY to much computer time. And way too much taxes/medical bills. I won't bore you with the details but my 100k income wasn't good enough. -Joined the army one year ago, am now a combat medic/68w. I am very happy with my current situation. I love my job and only have to be on the computer when i feel like it. When I was a pro gambler I would get very frustrated because I made huge amounts relative to my stakes but could never move up because of our ridiculous expenses. This journal will chronicle my capital growth(hopefully). Risk capital will be allowed to grow, instead of being spent on living expenses as in the past. My plan is to only trade the EUR/USD, because it works the best with my schedule. I can't daytrade stocks like I used to due to work. I will also be including my poker results here, partly for entertainment value and partly because there is a good chance some of those profits will be swept in to my trading account. I play poker about 10 hours a week, and will be following the markets as time allows. I'll be breaking down my style of trading over time. I'm kind of busy so I probably will post only occasionally. Here is a summary of financial goals I hope to accomplish over roughly the next 5 years. Career: I have 3 years left of my army contract. I plan to get out and go to school to be either a nurse or physician assistant. Poker: Play small stakes prop games while in the army, and build up to roughly $30k bankroll After the army, shift $30k to pokerstars to complete supernova elite, which takes a year and is worth roughly $90k cash. I was on the path to completing this only playing about 20 hours a week before I joined the army, but this all fell apart due to some mental issues. That is a story for another day. Forex: Trade conservatively with initial capital, and get more aggressive(size) as profits build. My goal is to build positions to capture hopefully large moves. I resumed my gambling activities on August 1st, after finishing my medic training. 8/1 Capital: $10,012 Poker: $12 Trading: $10,000 9/1 Capital: $11,698 Poker: $1650 Trading: $10,048 Right now I'm probably a little better at poker lol. But I like the long term prospects of trading much better.
Trading style: I take entries off candlestick patterns. I pretty much only trade engulfing bars, hammers, inside bars, and a pattern I have noticed that I don't think has a name. I'll put up a picture of it later. The candlestick signals must be in line with other factors, such as fib retracements, horizontal S/R, or trendlines. I don't really use any indicators, although sometimes I do have an MA on my charts. I will be focusing on the EUR/USD because I just don't have time for more than that. I would rather trade one product well than many poorly. Most of my signals will come off the daily and 8 hour charts, but I will go to lower timeframes to try and get an entry with a smaller stop loss. Risk will be limited to $50 a trade initially, hopefully less. Targets will always be much bigger.
Here is an example of the types of trades I'm looking to make. The two red horizontal lines I drew off the monthly charts as strong support. Price bounced of them and then broke a trendline. Finally we see a pullback followed by a bullish engulfing bar, marked with the red up arrow. The next day I would be watching the smaller timeframes to build a position with small stoplosses. I didn't make this trade because I wasn't trading yet, but this is pretty much my ideal trade, and obviously they won't come along very often.
Here is an example of the candlestick pattern I like that I haven't seen a name for. It is a big range bar with a big body that is followed by a small range bar near the previous bars extreme. In this example it would be a short signal when the low of the 2nd bar is broken a few bars later.
Decided to drop the poker. It is taking all my computer time because I always go for the quick money when I have a few minutes to spare. Gonna focus on the trading now, think it will be good long term. Will be posting some thoughts on the markets the next few days and some positions I am looking to get in to.
Since I dropped the poker I'm gonna be adding a few pairs to my watchlist. Looking to short AUD/USD this week, unless it comes through with a breakout here. Not quite ready to enter yet but getting close.
I'm looking to short AUD/USD as well - seems like everyone is. Makes me wonder why it hasn't started dropping yet...
OK short AUD at .9422, scalped a rather large position for my account size a little bit at a time, stop loss to breakevenish now, gonna see if this breaks. Thats my approach, to scalp entries with low risk, move to BE, and see if I can catch a big move. I got in just under the hammer on the 15 minute.
Just a note, I was extra quick to get to breakeven here because it is countertrend, gotta be careful going against the flow. Not something I normally want to do but this trade really appeals to me on the longer term charts.
I don't know if you follow SSI on fxcm. They release their traders positions twice a day. Right now their traders are short at a 3:1 ratio. Generally speaking, their traders are wrong so it makes a good contrarian indicator. Of course sooner or later they have to be right... Anyways if you are interested google "ssi fxcm". It is a pretty interesting tool. I also follow the cot report but that is obviously a more long term thing. I look at this trade as kind of a longshot to work(picking tops pretty hard) out but I really like the R:R.