$$ trading update

nfp was a complete disaster for us. we went in heavy and got smacked like a farang trying his hand at muay thai. and it's not over, the fall out will continue till wednesday at least.



so before i cry myself to sleep in my beer, what happens in between nfp's?



clearly nfp is having a huge negative impact on the system. half the profit disappeared in two nfp's. the question is - what's my goal? is it to trade fully automated or is it to make money?
if i leave it to run on it's own it'll probably putter along quite nicely, doing about 15% or so a month, if i intervene once a month i think it can do 30%.
i mean, how much of an inconvenience is it really to switch of a computer once a month for 10 minutes?

$$ trading update

wafting around. have a range of about 1 to 2% on balance, equity hovering around 2 or 3% change a day. activity is about 25% of normal.





basically all the majors have gone into tight ranges. nfp prognosis is not to good either. last two years all it does is cause high speed ranges. rarely do we get going after the data release.

not much else to say, just have to wait out the doldrums. long as we don't lose money, which we are not. so all good.

$$ trading update

32.58% up since december 8th, another 1% since last report. but we have 6% open unrealized.





banked so far 0.2% for the month of jan. we restarted well and fast, which bodes well for future close outs. nfp this week, so depending how we go in i might close out again.

$$ about the 25 000 pips wednesday

i got a few questions about the 25000 pips last wednesday. think it was wednesday anyway.

truth be told, thursday with 3000 pips was a bigger day. pips rarely reflect what's going on. i've asked fxbook to do a milestone posting instead. so when i'm up say 1% they'll post that instead.

the big pip counts come from partial tp's. i open at say 1 lot and tp say every 10 pips move 0.1 lots, so i'll end up with 10 partial trades each broadcasting like it was a full trade, tp10 x 0.1 + tp20 x 0.1 + tp30 x 0.1 etc at partial lots. for what was a 100 pip move, I'll bank 550.

what is relevant is the entry signals. the big trades. sometimes if the markets are slow i'll turn a pair in a few hours, but mostly i'll keep them for a few days. although they are at least 5 min delayed, because of the length of time they last, they are a very good reflection of my current view on a pair.

to see what's going on in the account, best to pay the blog a visit every now and then. twitter is ok for general overview of how the day is going and a broad view of entry levels. about 80% of my trades close in profit. so they're quite good entry signals. wouldn't suggest trying to follow them though, unless you're at the wheel 24/7...

$usdcad

i'd say this puppy ready for a nice long, no?

in fact

looks like we did very well friday, 3% unrealized, now we wait and see monday..

 
 
 

trading update

sorry folks. i'm prepping for saudi, going for four months. i had to intervene on the automated trading, and you can see the wobbly result. i'll fight it back to 3k and then go fully auto again. keep you posted....

trading update

fighting back hard now. after the dollar doldrums which lasted for june - july. by the looks of it, apparently it does that every year. with the current global turmoil i'm looking forward to a nice volatile rest of the year now that july is drawing to a close and we're starting to see life in the market again.

trading update

recovering again. going to take some time i guess...

trading update

had a real big smack overnight. not entirely unexpected. we do draw down about 10% from time to time. question is whether this is the end of it and we got up from here or if there's more to come. we wait and see...

trading update

cruising along....

nzdjpy

slow as well...

gbpcad

closed for a whopping +600

eurusd

going to break down i think.

eurjpy

turned this one...

eurjpy

man, have this potion for 3 days already. wish it'd go somewhere.

eurjpy chart update

still haven't banked a cent on this one, hopefully today!

eurjpy

crap

nfp didn't go well. that wasn't entirely unexpected as we generally don't do well in that kind of market, i.o.w hyper gyrations with no direction. then when i wake up i see this account crashed and the EA went into emergency mode and took us out of everything. painful as that is, its going to take us a week to get back in again, meaning we'll miss most of the dollar move that started on friday. we gave up about 50% of last weeks profit in this mess. good news is we're still well up. at least 12% for the week. guess we see how it goes, but going to be a slow week i think, till we pick up speed again.

usdchf

trading update

took a pounding on NFP, 'scuse the pun. we generally don't do well on the NFP, the last say ten has been a complete waste of time. one or two gyrations and then nothing happens. i guess after 25% in a week a draw down is to be expected. so let's see what next week brings.

update summary

ya well, not much i can say - figures are simply incredible.

just want to point out this is still demo. we've added 10 pairs, bringing us up to 30 and we still need to test a duplicate login. we have one change to make for restarts and then we go live. just small technical changes.

latest balance

hit a few bumps...

eurusd

shorted at last, waiting to see if it carries, cause this against the trend.

gbpnzd

also well up. can't complain.

taking profit

took profit on most of my positions and reversed a lot of them. i'll do some charts later. think i did about 10% yesterday.

taking profit

banked some, 4% to go...

update

oh well, almost back to where i was again, doesn't tell the whole story though, i have 5% unrealized. and that will continue to climb till we have a direction change. market is really trending well, so i'm not opening or closing many trades. just have to ride this move out see how much we can get from it.

oops...!!

took a knock there, but early still...

euraud

this level looks pretty significant:



should imagine when europe kicks in we'll go through with alacrity or bounce hard.

frustration

i must say i find the forex world really frustrating.

the first problem is of course that brokers make money when you lose. if you don't lose they have back office functions which will make you lose. like changing the volatility of your feed, iow's they put spikes in your feed. they can flag your account - and i quote here from someone with back end experience - "make life difficult" for you.

of course the industry could have been set up to make people succeed, but the kind of mind that exists purely to profit at any cost wouldn't even consider that. its vulgar to say the least.

i have the software to out trade them. took me years to develop. i feel sorry for any house that tries to shake out my trades. they're going to be working real hard to try and throw a system that trades 30 pairs and calculate signals over with 24 hours worth of data. little volatility not going to shake my tree.

what i do find most frustrating is people just don't believe i can do this. whenever i tell people what i do, they either think its illegal, impossible or if i bring up the business side unsellable. i can literally make multi-millionaires, but most people i tell what i do and what my results are give me a string of reasons why what i'm doing everyday is impossible. that despite the fact that i been fighting this thing for five years. almost everyone i know is an expert in forex and investing and know exactly why this can't be done, including the guest house owner i'm staying in, well as soon as i explained to her what forex is. i suddenly understand very clearly why some people become wealthy while others don't.

so stuff it. i'm not begging anyone to get rich, i don't need extra funds. i make money trading forex with a black box and i don't care if you don't believe me. stay poor, find a few more excuses if you need to.

i'll be in the jungle for a while. good luck with that "working for a living, bond slave" thing.