What Really Turned My Trading Around

Discussion in 'Trading' started by chrh1234, Dec 14, 2011.

  1. chrh1234

    chrh1234

    Trading has became so easy for me nowadays.

    Yet looking back, it was a really hard journey. 4 years. Only a few did. What a journey. I wish to share my success with other traders, since I do not wish them to go through what I went through.

    I started with FX. Got a few newbie runs with good profit, then thought I was god. And failed horribly. Got really scared. So, I decided to be a true student of the craft.

    I tried everything I could find. Everything. The only thing I did not do is to pay for and attend a FX course, since I’ve always believed most of them are quite BS. I needed help, but I could not find the right person to help me. I didn’t know who to look for at all. So, I had to work on my own.

    Later, I met a few extremely successful traders who are willing to help. Some of them saw my work and are interested. I am indeed very grateful for their help, but I also knew I still had to work something out on my own. It’s like a father teaching a son how to fish, but the son eventually, one day, has to go out there and stand up on his own.

    The only advantage that I have is programming skills I attained as a software developer. So, with that, I started to work and research even more, creating many indicators. Not many survived the test of time.

    I figured if I cannot even trade with small amounts with micro accounts, then I can’t be qualified to trade larger amounts, so at the 2nd year, I went live, with $25. My basic goal is to keep the account alive and intact with $25 within the week. But I kept blowing it. So I reloaded and tried again. It was till I hit upon something. And that $25 account survived for the week. I was doing something right and I quickly set my heart onto identifying what is going on.

    So I was lucky not to lose too much money. I am now almost hitting the black and into green in terms of my short but intense trading career. But certainly I am very happy to see my trading log today. Red red red green red red…. To green green green green green red green.

    I no longer trade FX much nowadays, since I find trading Crude Oil and Gold much more attuned to my personality. But it doesn’t mean the strategy / system that I have here will not work for FX. It does, since I started from FX and created this system from there.

    I hope I did not to bore anyone with my story. So I am going to show some screenshots for my maiden thread here in this forum. Pictures speak for themselves and are indeed louder than words.

    Please do post questions. Questions will help everyone to learn faster, since its more objective. Even stupid questions can actually bring about important issues we had never thought about. I do not believe in spoonfeeding, since most traders I’ve encountered seem to already have some idea of what they are doing. So questions are the better way.

    What do you see in this chart? BTW, this is a Crude Oil trade entry of a recent trade, which I took profit off just now. Quite a routine one IMO, to take 400 pips profit off it eventually. It was worth the wait.

    Yup, what do you see in this chart? Would love to know what do you guys see. I am still learning myself, but I know this system does work very well. But I would like some feedback too.

    [​IMG]

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  2. Here's what I see:

    Chart 1: 4 trends and 1 sideways

    Chart 2: Shorting oppurtunity

    Chart 3: Cautious long potential, depending on higher order chart
     
  3. chrh1234

    chrh1234

    Very nice basic analysis. What 4 trends do you see?

    Chart 1 and Chart 2 actually go together. I took the entry.

    Chart 3 is the exit. And you are right. I took a cautious long and exited quickly. 8 pips. Its not much.
     
  4. chrh1234

    chrh1234

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Here's a EURJPY Long trade that I just took. The entry survived for 7 hours! Its a pretty tight SL worth 20 pips (including spread of 4 pips). I don't know if its going to survive, but what I did is to open 3 lots. Then used 1 of the 3 lots to BE the overall position. Now I am free to let it run.

    O BTW, this is also EURJPY near its decade low. What a nice place to long it.

    Coming back in 8 hours. See ya later.
     
  5. trendo

    trendo

    To the OP

    IMHO it would be more productive (and impressive) if you were to post your game plan in advance of taking the trade. Targets, stops, money management, that sort of thing. Then post charts to illustrate your reasoning. What do you think of that idea?
     
  6. How about the risk of reverse engineering?
     
  7. Here what I believe is a harsher truth: finding an edge is not enough. Even if you had the proof that it is an edge (and I am not sure if you do have the proof (not the statistical proof), you would still need to deal with other more difficult problems: yourself, and the capital.

    The last hurdle in my view is risk capital.

    Trading is a sport of the already rich. The people around here would not help, because they cannot. I know that they cannot, because they have seen top notch edges on this forum, and they did not reach to use them, which proves they may not have risk capital available.

    Other points:

    1. I doubt 4 years is enough. Even 25 years is not. I did once an analysis that shows that you would need 250 years to really prove the experimental edge.

    2. I noticed that you mentioned that you needed help, and have tried to find someone who can teach you and you did not find him/her. A lot a people say it, but I doubt if there are many who really did a search. If you really did what you say you did, I would not be surprised if you are not one of the rare few.
     
  8. trendo

    trendo

    The OP said he wanted feedback on his system. It's hard to give feedback without knowing what the system is.
     
  9. As Hershey would say, the right trend line defines each. Draw a line to the right of each best fit sequence. This technique is 100 years old.

    :)

    *edit* now I see it, the first one is the higher order (longer time frame) chart. The left trend line is your exit.

    In that case it would mean the final long would be countertrend.... not worth taking IMO. Sounds like you did fine though.
     
  10. The most important aspect of trading is exits. Where are your profits set and more importantly where are your stop losses set ?
    Not easy, not easy....too tight on the stops = many small losers. Too tight on the profit setters, and you never have a big winner...which is critical.
    Yeah, I'm in software and I backtested a thousand indicators 10 years ago....even customized them. Never found a decent one to satisfy my requirement for a straight-up equity curve.

    Donchian however was profitable....but only before commissions. After commisions ? Straight-down equity curve !!!
     
    #10     Dec 14, 2011