The Active Forex Traders Discussion

[Udine]

so far so good:

this week up: 10.5 %

three green weeks in a row. I am very pleased.

Udine

 

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[CarrieW]

very nice! I am sitting at 39.01. for days now I have again been going up a few bucks and then giving it right back.

I traded last night and managed to keep some pips banked. still plugging away. I am doing fairly well rebuilding my account so far. I am going to continue to trade and try to recoup my own losses w/o a deposit. (at least for now

Idk when I will reup the account now that I am doing better with profits. we will wait and see. I figure as long as I can still trade everyday I am good.

 

[Udine]

go slowly, but steadily. every day in the green pip zone is perfect !!

you dont need more than a small positive every day and keep compounding

try not to give back. set yourself a target of 1 % per day. when you got it, close the station or go to demo account.

just keep going and stay disciplined, patient and focussed.

Udine

 

[Udine]

Time for the weekly update:

today: + 12.5 %
week nr. 46 + 33 % (this week) / average 6.6 %
week nr. 45 + 28.9 % / average 5.8 %
week nr. 44 + 23.1 % / average 4.6 %

Total to the account since start going live + 85 %

Green pips.

Udine

 

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[garyfritz]

Udine is burning up the charts! Go dude!!

I'm not hitting his pace, but I'm looking better. My system might be pulling out of its slump. This week it took 11 trades, 72% wins, account is up 7.3% for the week. That's up 1.4% per day. I'll take it!!!

 

[Udine]

Udine is burning up the charts! Go dude!!

I'm not hitting his pace, but I'm looking better. My system might be pulling out of its slump. This week it took 11 trades, 72% wins, account is up 7.3% for the week. That's up 1.4% per day. I'll take it!!!

GOGOGOGOGO

well done, do that every week !!

great trading

Udine

 

[garyfritz]

I had a short week, only traded Mon-Wed because of the US holiday. But it was still a good one! Wednesday was HUGE -- all 8 of my pairs signaled. Don't remember the last time it did that. I had only enough margin for 7. All 8 pairs won, and my 7 live-traded pairs made over 10%! Up 15% for the week.

How are you doing, Udine? I've been utterly swamped and have gotten almost no "real work" done all week, so I haven't followed your FF thread very closely...

 

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[Udine]

Just got back from a business trip to Moscow. Traded only monday and tuesday for a +12.5 % to the account. Total up since live start + 97.5 % :groove:

The ff thread I will let go because of the nay sayers, so I am not going to waist my time on them. I have shared how I trade and that was my way of paying back what I learned and make my profits with.

Glad to see you had a fantastic week, lets see if this continues, as that would be awesome !!!

Green pips

Udine

 

[garyfritz]

Up almost 100% in 4 weeks, that's just incredible Udine!

Unfortunately I don't think I can duplicate your results, even with the explanations you gave on your thread. I need to stick with more mechanical approaches that I can wrap my little brain around. On average for the last 2 years' backtest my system made just over 3.1% per per week. That's good enough to turn $50k to $250k in a year. I can live with that.

I've also partnered up with a local trader who has a much more powerful testing platform than I have. We're finding some opportunities to improve my system and make it even better. If only I could boost that system from 3% per week to 3% per day like you get...

But that's not likely so I'm also mining for other tradeable ideas at FF and elsewhere.

It takes time but I'm getting there. Trading is a process just like any other Fastlane endeavour!

 

[Udine]

Gary,

check your mail

Udine

 

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[CarrieW]

I am still bouncing up and down lol. I am at 31.51 today. again I started the week well I was up 2.78 on monday. I was hovering around 37.25ish then in the last 2 days I have managed to give it all back plus.

still trading tho. actually right this minute I am watching... that fed announcement at 8am screwed up all my charts so I have to wait for them to settle out before I can do anything.

 

[garyfritz]

Carrie, when you started following your rules religiously, you started making money. Did your system stop working, or did you stop following your rules?

 

[CarrieW]

I honestly dont know gary. only once out of the trading times I got distracted by stuff going on inside the house and went past my stops. that loss was about double what it should have been. but other then that one time I cant say that I am doing anything any differently.

I have been thinking about it. I will post if I come up with anything.

 

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[Udine]

I am still bouncing up and down lol. I am at 31.51 today. again I started the week well I was up 2.78 on monday. I was hovering around 37.25ish then in the last 2 days I have managed to give it all back plus.

still trading tho. actually right this minute I am watching... that fed announcement at 8am screwed up all my charts so I have to wait for them to settle out before I can do anything.

Carrie,
didn't you have a stoploss in place??

If that is the case, put one in, to protect your account.

Udine

 

[CarrieW]

No I did not.

I haven't been using one for quite some time. I was justifying it because of the size of my account.

since yesterday tho I have been thinking. did you see the spike that happened due to the unscheduled fed announcement yesterday @8am. Had I not been waiting for the 830 announcments to trade my account would be blown up.

Right now I am gambling and not trading properly. I have been hoping that I would get lucky and be able to build my account like this. fact is I am lucky sometimes but then when reality sets in I am still trading like I am lucky and it ends up taking only a few dollars but a huge % of my account. Like I said before I am looking at it in pennies. so 50cents here or a $1 there as a loss doesnt seem like much but in reality in my account it is.

I am going to start using stops and trading like I should have been all along. the lowest point in this account was about $19(even tho I have been up to $39). within the past 3 weeks or so.

I am getting stuck in my bad habits. and my account is suffering. all in all even with the bad trading style at least I have been able to keep $10 of what i have made since the lowpoint.

I am going to have to go back and set some stops on my pendings. I am going to start watching pips only. not money.

I use ibfx and they have that ibfx connect where it posts your trades and you get to see others trades and stats and things. theres people in there that have gotten under 100 pips and grown their accounts by 85% then theres people who have 2500 pips and only grown their accounts by 20%.

obviously the lower the pip people are super highly leveraged. I just need to find the right balance. but first I need to get out of this cycle I seem to be stuck in AGAIN! lol. all I can do is laugh, learn and try to do better. I am pretty stubborn lol.

 

[Giles]

I've been dabbling in Forex over the past few weeks. Will start updating my progress and technique here.

I will be looking to pick up a book to read during my holiday to Vanuatu. Any recommendations? I would love to print off BabyPips.com School!

 

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[garyfritz]

No I did not.
I haven't been using one for quite some time. I was justifying it because of the size of my account.

BAD girl! No cookie!!!

Right now I am gambling and not trading properly. ...
I am going to start using stops and trading like I should have been all along.

NOW you're talking. Trading is not a game. If you treat it like one, if you don't take it seriously because it's a little account, if you treat it like gambling, if you go without stops because it's "too much bother" -- you'll lose. Sooner or later you'll lose. 100% guaranteed.

Trading is HARD. You're competing against pros. You need to be at the top of your game if you want to win. It's like you're playing pick-up basketball with a couple of NBA guys, and you're not treating it seriously because you're just playing on a neighborhood court. If you want to have a chance against those guys, you need to play full-out.

I am getting stuck in my bad habits. and my account is suffering.

That's exactly right. Until you start treating it seriously, until you start trading like you had $100,000 in there, until you trade like you have REAL SERIOUS MONEY at risk, you're gonna keep blowing those nickles and dimes. You're going to keep ratcheting the account up and down. And you're gonna keep reinforcing those bad habits. Cut it out.

You've been at this for FOUR YEARS now since you started this thread. If you enjoy it so much that you want to do it for fun, well hell, with that small an account, it's cheap entertainment. But don't pretend you're doing it to make a profit. If you actually want to make any money at it, then treat it like a business.

 

[Udine]

Garyfritz,

well said. to the point as always

Udine

 

[garyfritz]

Well after making 28% in November, December has cooled off. I'm currently down about 4% for the month. I had a frustrating trade in EU on Thursday -- market spiked up a few pips past my long entry, then it dropped 150 pips in 30 mins and took me out. Without that one I'd be up 4%. Ohwelll...

On the other hand the first trade of the month just barely touched my TP and got me out, then reversed to the SL. Sometimes the trades fall your way, sometimes they don't. You can't sweat individual trades. Just gotta hope you win often enough to come out ahead in the long run.

 

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[garyfritz]

Well, nuts. December turned around and yesterday I was up 9.3% for the month. I had decided to shut down for the year after today's trading. NATURALLY, today's only trade was a big loss. But to add insult to injury, I had neglected to cancel a GTC order from yesterday, so I took a DOUBLE position and a DOUBLE loss. (And NATURALLY this happened on the only large loss in the last 2+ weeks!!!)

So in a day my +9.3% month turned into +0.1%. Still positive, but *damn*.

Ohwell, new year starts next month. Here's to good things in 2012!

 

[CarrieW]

$23.36 thats where I am sitting right now.

I have nothing other to say lol.

I am going to take next week off from trading totally. I am going to reread again my books. then I am going to think think and anyalize everything I can and start over lol.

I have the cash to refill my account, but right now I dont see the point. untill I fix what I am doing wrong theres no point I will just lose it.

whats everyone else's status.

 

[garyfritz]

I was up 28% in November. December was a little slower -- I was up 9.2% on the 20th, and planned to trade on the 21st and then shut down for the year.

Naturally, the one trade on the 21st was the biggest loss I'd had in 2 weeks. And to add insult to injury, I'd neglected to cancel a GTC order from the day before, so I got a double-size position. NATURALLY that couldn't happen on a win...

When I realized I was down more than the position should have lost, I saw I had a double position and closed it out. *poof*, there went my month. 9.2% turned into 0.1%. Ohwellll....

Plan to start again next Monday.

 

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[^eagle^]

Since August I have my Robots running uninterrupted and am up 40%. Not too bad for set and forget. Right now Forex Demolition has been the rising star This week taking in 8%. If you can handle an occasional 10% hit these EAs do extremely well. I completely stopped manual trading to focus on two other brick and mortar businesses. One I hope to see 5 figures by the end of this year. The other is not doing as well because my partner doesnt listen well. But the risk was very low for me so I am hanging in there.

 

[garyfritz]

40% with no interaction is awesome, Eagle! What are you running besides Forex Demo? Has it been performing consistently?

I plan to deploy a collection of systems this year: my breakout system I've been trading, a discretionary approach I'm developing, several others. My #1 goal in 2012 is to replace my income with trading profits.

 

[Udine]

Status update:

I have not been trading live since the 7th of december.

Until then I had an account growth of 176 % since going live.

Since the 7th of december I have demoed and tested some minor adjustments. Which have resulted in less false entries and have resulted in a lot of stressfree pips.

This morning I started trading live again and got my 2 winners (trading time less than 15 minutes) for each 2.5 % so my daily dose of 5 % was reached again. I have updated my thread on ff.com with the information and indicator. If interested I can post here the info also.

Green pips to all

Udine

 

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[garyfritz]

Awesome, Udine! Great for you.

If you don't mind, I'll ask you a few questions here instead of diving into that gigantic thread at FF. :chatter:

Your past systems pretty much required the volatility of the Euro session, so they didn't work well for someone who wakes up about the time the Euro session slows down. It sounds like your new system also works at the New York open, which is good. London opens at 01:00 my local time, so I won't be taking those. But New York opens at 6am my time and that's workable.

Someone on FF summarized your new system as:

Trade London Open and US Open only. (Taking 1 trade per symbol, 2 if it changes direction)
Using FIFO alert indicator, wait for the arrow. (What if it takes hours for the first arrow?)
If there is an arrow, wait for price to break the candle high/low to enter. (Signal stays active until opposite-direction signal?)
10pips TP. 15pips SL. 5pips trail. (Activate trail at 5 pips open profit?)

Period? That's it? No xADR red/green, no RmUp/RmDn, no trades filtered for round numbers, or news, or anything? You talked about xADR and RmUp/Dn in your thread but you said the summary above was perfect so I'm not sure.

Then you size your position so your 10 pip TP is a 2.5% gain for your account. So you're risking 15 pips SL = 3.75% per trade. If you can hit 85-90% as you say, that would work extremely well.

If you had a $5000 account, 3.75% is $375, risking 15 pips or 375/15 = $25 per pip -- so you'd trade 2.5 standard lots with a $5000 account? That's $250k on a $5k account, "only" 50:1, so even us over-regulated Yanks could do it.

Looking at the last few days of EU... My broker is at GMT+2 so London opens at 10:00 chart time, and New York opens at 15:00 chart time.

18 Jan 11:35 (GMT+2) looks like a win, +10
18 Jan 15:20 +10
19 Jan 10:45 +10
19 Jan 18:15 +10
20 Jan 10:45 +10
20 Jan 15:15 +2 or so, depending on your trail

Looks very promising in that short test. Nice job!

I really need to learn how to write EAs so I could turn it loose overnight on the London open...

 

[Udine]

Awesome, Udine! Great for you.

If you don't mind, I'll ask you a few questions here instead of diving into that gigantic thread at FF. :chatter:

No I dont mind. If you have questions just ask !!

Your past systems pretty much required the volatility of the Euro session, so they didn't work well for someone who wakes up about the time the Euro session slows down. It sounds like your new system also works at the New York open, which is good. London opens at 01:00 my local time, so I won't be taking those. But New York opens at 6am my time and that's workable.

Someone on FF summarized your new system as:

Trade London Open and US Open only. (Taking 1 trade per symbol, 2 if it changes direction)
Using FIFO alert indicator, wait for the arrow. (What if it takes hours for the first arrow?) Patience my friend, the signals will come

If there is an arrow, wait for price to break the candle high/low to enter. (Signal stays active until opposite-direction signal?) Yes

10pips TP. 15pips SL. 5pips trail. (Activate trail at 5 pips open profit?)
I have a simple trailstop EA, which automatically kicks in @ 5.

Period? That's it? No xADR red/green, no RmUp/RmDn, no trades filtered for round numbers, or news, or anything? You talked about xADR and RmUp/Dn in your thread but you said the summary above was perfect so I'm not sure. I still look at RmUp/RmDn to see if the daily range has been reached. ATR if it is green its nice, but I still enter a trade when it is red. I enter a trade when the EU and GU are in sync, which giver higher possibility of success.

Then you size your position so your 10 pip TP is a 2.5% gain for your account. So you're risking 15 pips SL = 3.75% per trade. If you can hit 85-90% as you say, that would work extremely well.
With a $ 5.000 account my tradesize would be 1.25 lots instead of 2.5 lots.

If you had a $5000 account, 3.75% is $375, risking 15 pips or 375/15 = $25 per pip -- so you'd trade 2.5 standard lots with a $5000 account? That's $250k on a $5k account, "only" 50:1, so even us over-regulated Yanks could do it.
So with $ 5.000, 3.75 % would be $ 375 /2 = 187.50 risking 15 pips = 12.5/pip.

Looking at the last few days of EU... My broker is at GMT+2 so London opens at 10:00 chart time, and New York opens at 15:00 chart time.

18 Jan 11:35 (GMT+2) looks like a win, +10
18 Jan 15:20 +10
19 Jan 10:45 +10
19 Jan 18:15 +10
20 Jan 10:45 +10
20 Jan 15:15 +2 or so, depending on your trail

Looks very promising in that short test. Nice job!

I really need to learn how to write EAs so I could turn it loose overnight on the London open...

Garyfritz,

Your test is correct, I call it stressfree trading, as you are a very limited time exposing your money to the market, but with the signals you are Fast In Fast Out and momentum will give the 10 pips easily and stressfree.

Just to give you an idea, this is what I wrote for daily and weekly update, this friday:

"The 15M TF has been very kind for me:

The daily update: 22 pips is good for +5.5 % to the account, which makes the weekly total : +30.5 %

calendar week 2: + 16.5 %
calendar week 3: + 30.5 % makes a total of + 47 %"

I also trade on the 5M timeframe, but slightly different, that I have not shared on the forum, but if anyone is interested I can post 15M timeframe and my indicators (for MT4 platform). I am more than willing to share as the market is big enough for us.

Any questions, just ask !!

Green pips.

Udine

 

[garyfritz]

Ah sorry, not sure how 3.75% * $5000 came out to $375!! So you're only using 1.25 lots on $5000 or $125k/5k = 25:1 leverage.

I already picked up your 15M indicators from FF. Unless you're offering more than you shared on FF, I think I'm good there. Thanks!
Gary

 

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[Udine]

Ah sorry, not sure how 3.75% * $5000 came out to $375!! So you're only using 1.25 lots on $5000 or $125k/5k = 25:1 leverage.

I already picked up your 15M indicators from FF. Unless you're offering more than you shared on FF, I think I'm good there. Thanks!
Gary

Hi Gary,

that is about it. Although I have the 123patternV6 indy on the charts as well.
But I assume you have checked the charts

Udine

 

[jas0441]

So I went to a Forex Webinar today at the Rich Dad website. Made me excited about getting in to it. They now want $79 for a 6 hour training class and for a practice account. I am planning to take that class and dive right in. But I am curious, CarrieW you have been at this for years, would you recommend it to others? How much time are you spending vs. how much money are you making? I don't want to be tied to my computer all day to make 1%, but is that what it takes? Thanks for the advice everyone. I have enjoyed reading all the posts here from Udine, Carriew and Garyfritz.