ForexSpirit

It’s been six weeks since my last journal update. With the start of a new month I thought it was time to document what I’ve been up to trading wise since then. As evidenced by my last post, I spent a couple of weeks trying out the Logical Forex indicators.

That essentially brought to a close my daily scalping sessions. I took a break from actively trading for a week and by the end of that week I’d settled on transitioning back to a longer time frame. Going back to my millipede trading was always on the cards but I wanted to make sure that I’d given scalping a fair shake. I previously mentioned that I didn’t want to give up scalping too soon, as I’d surely regret it later on. I’d think that if only I’d stuck at for a few more weeks or months something new would click and I’d be a master scalper. That thought still niggles at the back of my mind but I think at this stage any new advances or insights would take a considerable amount of extra time to achieve.

The rationale for scalping in the first place was to take a break from the millipede approach so I could focus on getting better at my entries. It was never originally about dumping millipede and focusing exclusively on scalping. Scalping became so engrossing that I actually ended spending far longer doing it than I had foreseen. I thought I would spend a month or two getting more practise at entries. In the end I was scalping for six months. I certainly got a lot of practice and hopefully learnt a lot. Before I went back to the millipede something else caught my eye that I wanted to play around with first.

Buff
I came across Trading in the Buff and purchased it. It’s got one single price action idea that I’ve not seen mentioned anywhere else. It’s novel and is one of those pieces of information that means you see something new in a chart that wasn’t evident to you before. After you’ve read a glut of trading books and other trading resources (forums, blogs, etc.) you’re often glad if there is one good nugget of information that you can get out of spending your money on a new book or course. In that respect, Trading in the Buff was well worth my $77. I now have another price action setup in my arsenal. I spent two weeks tracking and testing it out on a few different time frames (mainly 30 minute and 4 hour) across eight different pairs. In the end I decided it wasn’t something that I would want to trade completely in isolation but it’s definitely a part of my toolkit now that I’m back trading the millipede.

Alerts
As part of my shift back to long term trading I knew I was going to want a VPS so that I could setup alerts. Being able to set alerts on when price reaches a certain level would free me up from having to keep an eye on my charts night, noon and day. A big part of the fatigue from trading off the long term charts (hourly or 4 hour) is having to constantly check what going on in the market. If you do it too often every minor move looks like something significant and you get pulled into taking too many entries.

By setting up price alerts I can focus on price levels that have significance to me based on what sort of setups seem to be playing out. For example, if a breakout seems to be underway and I’m more interested in trading it as a false breakout I can set a price alert and wait to see if price comes back within the range. If there’s a trendline I can have a setup a price alert if the trendline is broken.

One of the other reasons why I like the Trading in the Buff setup is that it is not something that needs to be acted on immediately or when the current candle closes. The setup identifies a support or resistance level and so I can place a price alert for price touching that level well in advance.

VPS
This time around I decided to try out the service offered by Forex VPS. Everything was painless, from setting up a new account to accessing the VPS and getting my trading software installed on it. I had no issues and thus had no reason to contact their support.

The only setting I had to change on the VPS was to restrict it having only a single session per user. Otherwise if you log in from different locations you end up controlling a different session on the VPS. When what I wanted was to be able to login from work or home and see the same session that had my forex charting active.

For those who need to do this just do the following on the Windows server: Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Terminal Services Configuration > Server Settings > Restrict each user to one session.

After three weeks of using Forex VPS I had a brainwave and wondered if I could setup one my PCs at home as a server. I have a home theatre PC (HTPC) that would be perfect for the job. I just wasn’t sure how I would be able to connect to the HTPC from anywhere. I’d always used Remote Desktop up till this point which requires a static IP address for the server or computer that you want to connect to. My HTPC was going to be behind a dynamic IP since I use Comcast for my internet service.

After a bit of research I decided to try out TeamViewer. In a word it is fantastic. If I needed a second word it would be: free (for non-commercial purposes). It really is excellent and makes connecting to the HTPC from anywhere painless and easy. I also find the connection quality and responsiveness to be better than Remote Desktop. I can connect from any of my PCs, my Android smartphone, even my wife’s Macbook.

I still use FX Solution’s FX Accucharts as my preferred charting package on the VPS. It’s ability to do intersection alerts being the key factor that makes it a winner. In other words, you can have an alert fired off if price crosses a trendline or other indicator you have on the chart. In addition to the more regular alerts: simple price hitting a certain level and time alerts.

Millipede
To round things out, I’ve been back trading the millipede method on my live account since August 23rd. I still had one trade open. It is one of the first millipede trades I ever opened (I started trading the millipede method on 7 September 2010 and this trade was opened on 9 September 2010). The trade was long EUR/USD from 1.2665. Right now the trade stands at 1,600 pips in profit. It would have seen 2,300 pips of unrealized gain earlier this year in May.

Since last week I have 7 trades closed out at BE. I have 4 new open trades. A short EUR/USD at 240 pips, a short GBP/USD at 264 pips, a short USD/JPY at 30 pips and a short AUD/USD slightly underwater at -38 pips. The three trades in positive territory all have their SL set to BE. They’re also baby legs so who knows how long they will last for.

I’ve gotten things to be pretty settled again so let’s see how September fares.