ForexSpirit

2011-01-04 09:32:00 I completely forgot about keeping a journal yesterday, the first trading of the year. Hopefully not an auspicious sign. Listened to a very nice presentation by Don Millar yesterday on prepping for the new year. The webinar is available for download from Linda Raschke’s website. Direct link. Just the slides.

I’m also going to try and use the Personal Scorecard that Don makes available to see how well it works for me.

I also read an article that just refreshes the power of doing one thing towards your long term goal each and every day.

2011-01-04 13:29:49 Pre-holiday trends seem to be resurrecting themselves. Had eight entries this morning. The first was a poor one in sterling, right in the middle of some barbed wire. The following seven were decent (including a second attempt in sterling). EUR/CHF got taken out at BE on a whipsaw.

2011-01-05 15:04:05 All the market movement today was between 7:00 and 10:00 EST. I’ve been just letting the positions that survived the European session (2 out of 5 placed during the Asian session) play out as the USD continues a second day of bullishness. I’ve been finding it hard to read how EUR/JPY and guppy are with the moves down in euro and sterling and the rise in yen, so I’m not jumping in just yet. Although I have an inkling that we might be at the start of some sustained yen weakness and that both these currencies will break out of their down trends.

2011-01-06 10:38:12 Attempting my first real stacking exercise as euro attempts once again to pierce through support between 1.3055-80. I have three entries all within 10 pips entered on the initial thrust down.

2011-01-06 10:52:17 Price has broken through 1.3050 and all three legs have been moved to BE. I’ve also gotten legs opened on sterling, yen, EUR/CHF and two on EUR/JPY. All but one EUR/JPY position have been moved to BE.

2011-01-07 10:27:09 Rather mixed data with the NFP numbers this morning: poor headline but surprisingly good household survey. This has led to a tussle with lots of back and forwarding. No real clear direction yet, but my bet is that after some more ranging we’ll see most pairs continue to move how they have been this week.

2011-01-07 10:29:01 Sterling is firmly stuck in a 1.5350-5600 range which was narrowing up until yesterday. It had another run down to 1.54 this morning but has moved back up to 1.5550. I think there’s a good chance we’ll see a strong breakout in one direction soon. To that end, I’m willing to place some trades to be in early on that breakout. Once I get a decent leg or two on this pair I think I’ll overcome a lot of the lingering doubts I have concerning my ability to trade on pairs other than euro. If I can make a profit on sterling I can make it on anything!

2011-01-07 13:17:28 Just pulled the plug on a guppy trade that I had placed earlier as it broke out from yesterday’s high (and above the morning’s NFP aftermath). I didn’t identify a SL point at entry time, which was poor. Sterling has been weakening over lunch, while yen is slipping too. On the hourly chart, it looks like we might have a three push up, so there’s a distinct possibility that the downward trend from mid-December might resume. If so, I think it might be more driven by sterling weakness, which could see GBP/USD break south too.

2011-01-07 14:35:47 After just updating my trade history spreadsheet with closed trades from the past three weeks two things struck me. One was just how many trades I entered during the last week of the year, a portly 20 trades. So much for taking a complete break over the holidays! I got more actively involved that week after reading how Graeme (PipEASY) generally found December to be one of the best months for the millipede method. The second is that my percentage of losing trades is trending down, which at least confirms the feeling I had that I was making better entries (still plenty of improvement possible here).

2011-01-07 22:34:11 I’ve found the Performance Scoreboard to be really useful and filled it out every evening this week. I modified the categories slightly to be more in line with my trading style. You can see how I rated myself here.