Items Tagged With january 2007

Firstly, Happy New Year.  Remember that reasonable new year's resolutions promote success.

Secondly, the Wall Street Journal says the dollar usually posts modest gains in January regardless of events and data.   Will Dollar Get a Pop?  

Thirdly, I don't care what the WSJ says.  I'm sticking to my rules.  I went GBP/USD long this morning and started off 2007 with a 96 pip gain.

I think it is important psychologically to get off on the right foot.  Bad habits tend to propagate with me if I slip just once.

I figured I'd try something new that isn't necessarily Forex related.  I enjoy when someone enlightens me with interesting links out there on the internet.  Therefore, I might try to post my own regularly.  These links could be forex related or not.  After all, we all need things other than trading in our lives.

Shoppers Bite Back (http://www.consumerist.com)

The Consumerist is a daily must read.   We've all had our issues as consumers and this site brings them to light.

We Are Capitalists (http://www.thinkingstuff.com)

Forex related post by Sharky who doesn't see anything wrong with signal services or selling your own trading system.  After all, we are trading to make money.

Trading Involves Sitting... A lot of It. (http://www.fitday.com)

Try to stick to that New Year's Resolution.  Use a free weight loss and diet journal.

Get your news the democratic way.  Here is a list of the social network sites.  I visit Digg very often throughout the day.

http://www.digg.com

http://www.daylife.com

http://www.topix.net

http://www.newsvine.com

http://www.gather.com

http://www.inform.com

I've been pressed for time this week.  I've been busy at the full-time job that actually provides me with a living and I'm not talking about Forex trading.  

After starting the year with 6 straight winning positions (4 h-system, 2 lien schlossberg's), the losing took over yesterday.  Lien Schlossberg sent out 2 trading signals yesterday, both losers and then I lost on a GBP/USD trade during the European session this morning.  I'm up 62 pips for the month of January.   I am not mentally affected by these losses as much as I once was.  When I first started trading, it seemed like every loss was the end of my trading career.  I'm not going to lie and say that I like losing because I don't think anybody does but it's all part of trading and everything else.  I don't know if this has anything to do with my upbringing but I never considered myself a sore loser nor was I one to dwell on losing.  If I lost a soccer game or basketball game in high school, I wasn't happy but I didn't carry it with me long.  I'm actually more affected when other people lose.  When the Yankees lost in the playoffs this past year, I was disappointed for days.

Those of you that have been doing this for a while know that losing is part of trading and many times losing more than winning is common.   I think it's also very important to keep emotions in check when you're winning.  If you get ecstatic about being up 300 pips and you feel on top of the world, you can feel much worse when that eventual loss knocks you back down to 50 pips. 

I had a decent start to 2007 with two h-system trades this week.  The first generated a profit of 96 pips and the second, a profit of 120 pips.  So after the first week of trading this year, I'm up 216 pips.  These were the only two trades I stuck with this week.  What happened to the trades that I didn't stick with?  The first was the GBP/USD trade I mentioned earlier in the week that I just guessed on direction. http://www.forexproject.com/Blog/Investing_and_Trading/Forex_Is_No_Guessing_Game
After placing the trade, better judgment took hold and I closed it at break even.  This trade would have turned out to be unprofitable.  Another trade I placed was a short AUD/USD.  I closed this too after opening it at break even.  This trade would have been very, very profitable.  I'm still glad I closed it though because my focus was being taken away from my current strategy.  This trade was more experimental than anything and once again, better judgment took hold.

I didn't take any Lien Schlossberg trades this week.  The first trade call came in when I wasn't ready and by the time I was, the first target was hit.  The second trade call was profitable but for the currency pair NZD/JPY.  Oanda and FX Engines don't directly offer this pair so I would have had to do it in the legs.  This means if they were recommending a 1 lot NZD/JPY short trade, I would have had to short 1 lot of NZD/USD and .6982 lots of USD/JPY.  The entry would have been fine but exiting more difficult.  I couldn't use their recommended target or stop for the NZD/JPY so I would be forced to manually watch this pair's real-time price to know when to close out my "legs." This was just more trouble than it was worth so I passed on the trade.  Their service was profitable on paper; 39 pips.   This is just my opinion but they definitely seem like they are playing it ultra cautious to kick off their paid service.  Another issue is with their actual calls.  They never have a predetermined entry price, they always make the call at the market price.  This doesn't give you sufficient time sometimes to enter the trade.  First you have to receive and read the email or text message.  Then you have to open your trading platform.  Then you have to place the trade.  I'll continue to see how it goes but this week was a wash using their service.  I still have the opportunity to cancel at the end of the month at no cost to me if it doesn't work out.

NFP this morning created some nice moves as usual.  I just watched from the sidelines, hesitant to "guess" before the release.  The movement was so rapid after the release that I just wouldn't have felt comfortable entering a trade.  Maybe one day I'll be able to trade economic releases but it's definitely not in my plans right now.  

Smart trading....

The Lien Schlossberg forex trading signal service hasn't worked out well so far.  It isn't so much the losses they have incurred as much as the inability to act in an expedient manner to execute a trade based on their signal.  Here are a couple of reasons why it hasn't worked out for me:

1. I lost a little bit of confidence in them last week.  They made a couple of trades last week that I felt were impulse based on previous losses.  This is strictly my opinion because there is no way I could actually prove this.  I could be totally off base.  They did state in a weekly recap email that they made "boneheaded" calls.
2. As I've stated before, their trade calls have to be followed very closely.  When I get a text message or email from them, I must execute the trade right then and there.  They have sent out trade calls during many different times so I've had to be on my toes.  I can't always be in front of a computer with my trade platform open though so this has not been easy.  For instance, yesterday I was in a USD/CAD trade that had a set profit target and stop loss.  They jumped in at 7:15 am to tell me to get out of the trade.  I couldn't because I was in transit.  Instead of making a tiny profit, I lost 4 pips.  This is totally acceptable to me considering the ever changing market conditions so this is not a knock on them.  This is more a question of whether these type of trade calls fit my schedule. 
3. I haven't received the trade calls via text message because they failed to be delivered.  I don't have real-time access to my email all of the time but I do to my phone.   They finally stated after I had asked them a couple of times that Verizon was failing to deliver some of their text messages due to overload.  It seems like they may have addressed this issue.  I'll have to wait and see.

A regular visitor to the site, Simon has started his own blog.  He is not unlike me or probably many of you.  After spending many years furthering his career, in his words, his "brain is wasted in this industry (even though I'm well paid), and my real passion has become trading."

You can find his blog at http://simonsupertrader.blogspot.com 

There's a quick read in the Economist regarding the inflation concerns around the world.  The Bank of England unexpectedly raised rates; who's next? Many speculated that the United States would start lowering rates this year but instead, we may see rate hikes.   

"The most worrying possibility was raised by Mervyn King, the head of the Bank of England, last year: that China, India, and other rapidly growing Asian nations may have been behind the low inflation experienced by much of the world in the past decade or so."

Bobbing Back Up?

There are many fraudsters using currency schemes to rip people off?  Surprised? Not a surprise to me.  The Wall Street Journal visits the subject in the Saturday edition.  

Get the article while you can.  I don't know how long this link will last because this article is meant for subscribers only but it works for everyone right now. 

The Villains of Currency

I've talked to a couple of people today about Soul Trader suffering a 48% draw down in December.  This shows how humbling the market can be.  He has since shut down his site but if you haven't read his last post, here it is.  We can all learn something from this.  You can also read the entire article from Google site cache.

Source: http://grailtrading.blogspot.com

Bit of a double edged sword on this post.

Firstly to report results which are rather shitty, and second to suspend / close the blog, possibly forever. Reasons to follow.
First of all lets talk turkey about the results.

The month was terrible - in fact the worst that we have experienced in the 14 months trading it, however not the worst on record from our tests.
We suffered this month a 48% drawdown. we suffered this drawdown at a point when i was supposed to be enjoying a holiday in New York - it was 30% when I left the UK and 45% when i got back. needless to say due to things beyond my control, much of my holiday was totally spoilt.

The month of December ended up at -45% on the account - from £100,502 down to £55,000 The system still works and is within parameters but the money management, which at the end of the day is the bit that creates the severity of drawdown, was at fault and has since been rectified.

We were running the account at 100% efficiency - which meant that at a max drawdown there would just be enough in the account to sustain it. what i didnt take into account was the psychological pressure of actually getting close to reaching this level and seeing the account decimated.

Even after five years of trading the market can still humble you, and this drawdown certainly has. so if you are reading this and you're a trader - dont ever think you have this thing licked until you are sat in your superyacht with the obligatory Russian hooker eating a mouthful of pork sausage.

Its also uncovered some other rather unsavory elements of life that i wont discuss on here, those reading this know what i'm referring to and i dont know wether to apologise profusely or call the lawyers - one of those morals Vs money type events. Today i reckon the lawyers, yesterday i thought forgive and forget - you know the kind of pickle i mean? One thing is for sure it won't go away by pretending it doesn't exist so fun fun fun the first week in Jan one way or the other. The ball is in someone elses court at the moment so we will see which way it lands by the 5th Jan.

Back to trading metaphors now ... The new Rocky film has a great scene where balboa is telling his son what makes a winner. Something along the lines of "it aint how hard you can hit - it's how hard a hit you can take and still remain moving forward" - well, never a truer word was spoken.

Ive took a large 'hit' on my account and i've rode the punch. I'm bouncing back and still moving forward. I ain't saying that i'm a Balboa but i'm sure as hell not through yet.

So, to this point i hope that youve enjoyed the journey and it's with sadness that I am to close this blog.

Grail goes on and will I am sure go from strength to strength with the lessons we have learned.

However I am bringing this blog to an end. It may be temporary or it may end up being permanent. The chances are that i will update the blog at sometime in the future just to let you know that it's still ploughing on, however it will not be regular and may never happen so just check back every 3 months or so.

There are a few reasons for my decision, some of which I cannot talk about at the moment, however the main one is that because of the blog I am getting emotionally involved when the system has a losing month. The fact that it's in a drawdown at the end of a month shouldnt matter because it peaks and troughs no matter what the date is - the fact it's at the end of the month is immaterial.

Getting emotionally involved in the trading of a mechanical system is not good - you start to analyse every facet of the trades and it can drive you nuts - it almost did in New York and I can't have that.

It is more important to me to make the project a reality and produce the money for my and my teams future than it is to tell you about it and massage my ego. So i'm afraid the blog has to go. It's been fun and all that and thank's for the massage (Rub & Tug??).

The soultrader diary blog will continue with various bits and bobs - might even post up some pictures from New York soon.

For now, please everyone enjoy the rest of the holiday break and here's to a prosperous 2007 :) Thanks for reading.

Trading Forex this month has proved difficult.  The last couple of months of 2006 was smooth sailing compared to the first 17 days of January.  Similar to yesterday, I've had a couple of losses that have dropped my monthly tally to -76.  http://www.forexproject.com/My_Forex_Goal/

I've lost a couple of trades on my own today and Lien Schlossberg had a losing call today also.  I've lost 110 pips using their service this month.  On a side note, I received an email from them yesterday asking me to confirm that I wasn't giving away their signals on this site while a trade was still open.  Supposedly, a visitor to this site sent them an email saying that I may have been.  I've never posted anything in real-time stating any of their trade specifics so I don't know what they're worried about.  

This is sort of unrelated (or is it) to the email I was talking about above but I'll continue voicing my opinions and critiques with integrity.  I'm sure I'll continue to get emails from people once in a while who aren't happy with them.  I don't usually mention these emails because it's better to just address it with them directly and then let it go.  There should be an understanding that this site expresses my opinions and my opinion only.  If someone isn't happy with my take, they are certainly welcome to comment.  I don't censor comments and never will.