ForexSpirit

I haven’t had anything really pressing to talk about in the last few weeks, so this update is just a mish mash of various thoughts and observations.

I’m still on the price action trading path. All trade entry, exits and market musings are still being recorded. I’m not spending as much time as I would like actually reviewing those recordings, so that is something I am planning on addressing.

March ended up breakeven, which considering it was the first month of putting into practice what I was learning I’m pretty happy with. Trading the 5 minute charts began to catch up with me just over two weeks ago, resulting in a burnout phase. I’ve experienced these quite a few times before. It just meant that it was time to down tools, step back and not trade for a week or two.

This break offered me another opportunity to evaluate how things have been going so far this year and try and determine if I was happy with the method and my progress. I mulled whether to stay on the short term charts (5 minutes) or if I should bump up the time frame a bit. Was I going to trade strictly on price action, or try and weave what I had learnt into previous strategies I had tried? Did I want to stick to going all in on a trade, or try scaling in and out?

I was solely tempted by doing all these and more as I mulled things over. In the end, the only thing I have decided to do is move from the 5 minute chart up to a 1 hour chart. The main reasons for doing so are to allow my trading to mesh more easily into my daily routine and to lengthen the times between burnouts. On the 5 minute chart I was either looking to scalp 10 pips or grab 40 or more pips if I saw the potential for a bigger move, with initial stop losses in the range of 10 to 20 pips. Moving up to the 1 hour chart, I have to increase my targets and stops accordingly. So now I’m gunning for 50 pips minimum, and around 200 if I see the potential for a strong move, with a stop loss of around 50 pips subject to the prevailing price action.

I was using Oanda’s demo platform (FXGame) up until just before I took my short hiatus, but it started having serious reliability issues (like not being able to log in at all for a few days in a row). It drove me nuts enough that I have switched over to my live Oanda account, but instead of trading my usual position size of around 10:1 I’m keeping it low key at just 1:1.

This might also be useful in that I’ve started to play around with Currensee a bit more. Currensee only tracks live account trades and it was only recently that they actually added Oanda as a supported broker. Before that I had an account that I could do absolutely nothing with. Does anyone else use Currensee? If so, what benefits do you get from it to date?

If anyone wants to become friends or form a virtual trading team on Currensee, feel free to contact me. Mention my blog if you do so, as I block all invites as a general rule if I have no idea who you are or why you’ve chosen me.

Last nugget of trivia relates to my fingers. I’ve had a long standing (bad) habit of picking the skin around my finger nails. Disgusting, I know. But I have pretty dry skin most of the time and idle fingers would often attempt to smooth things out, often resulting in cuts and just making things worse. It has always been an ingrained habit and one I’ve attempted to banish many times.

Trading is in many ways all about forming new habits and sticking to them. A few years back I remember thinking that if I couldn’t change my habits when it came to my finger nails then how was I ever going to stick to habits that would benefit my trading. I was pretty sure that I’d only ever make any sustained progress on the trading front if there was improvement with my fingers. Probably the weirdest link I’ve ever made about trading on this blog!

The good news is that I actually have made enormous progress on my finger nail picking habit over the past two to three months. The key has been putting in place a new regular habit that prevents me even having the chance to make a mess of my fingers. The new habit simply involves moisturising my fingers with a good cream. I’m only ever really tempted to rip up my fingers when the skin is bone dry. With moist skin, running my fingers over the nails doesn’t pick up any dry bumps that makes me want to sort them out. The quality of the cream has actually been a key component. Previous creams I’ve used just didn’t last long enough and dried out too quickly. Since I’ve started using a Bigelow cream I just have to apply it twice daily. I’ve added the application into my usual brush teeth, shave, etc. routine.

Sometimes it’s the little things that give us hope yet!