My Trading Journey thus Far
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Thread: My Trading Journey thus Far

  1. #1
    Hi all,

    I'm quite overdue to do this. I've been trying to write about my brief Trading Journey thus far, for some time now but haven't been able to put pencil to paper due to a lack of confidence and ego humiliation.
    But it's time to come out of the closet and share my ideas, views and experiences on this wonderful pass time.
    That I want to be entirely open and transparent, and as silly as what I need to say might sound I need to say it.
    By beginning this thread I hope to meet a few like minded traders since I really don't have any friends that are interested in Trading and this produces a bit of emptiness inside.
    I feel a need to share my perspectives and opinions and ideally with experience get better at work.
    I totally love trading btw in my short time that I feel as though I have found the Job that I want to pursue for life.
    I've been an avid reader of theforexintuitiveforums for a long time, but my few posts I have made come out wrong and dumb sounding so I presumed that it would be better to say all of it in my own thread.
    I will post all of my transactions, though occasionally it may be after the fact. The reason being I'm a complete time carer of a 1yr old baby boy so Trading is that tiny bit harder for me.
    Win or lose I will post for debate.

    Therefore my name is Con, I'm 44yo, married with 3 children. I live in Melbourne, Australia.
    I stopped working full time in Sep 09 to assist my wife look after our new born infant, she has since gone back to work so I'm now MR Mum.
    We own our house, have no debt, so that I have the luxury of studying to trade at my rate with no financial strain that I feel is of extreme importance.
    My hobbies are AFL football, Horse racing, tinkering with Computers, Motorcycling, Cars and ingesting.

    So just how did it all start?
    Well August 09 whilst slaving away as a humble Clerk to get a unappreciative Transport business on Night Shift I'd notice a jingle on the radio. ” Learn to Trade, it's cash earning money”
    It's not often that I really care about jingles but I've always been interested in Trading but not known it.

    A few years prior while working for a Large Brewing company the word” Day Trader” became very much a buzzword.
    The Herald Sun started a weekly column, everyone was speaking shares, our company was also giving away business shares on interest free loans.
    My work friend and I had been curious as his friend was apparently a successful trader.
    I remember coming home one night, putting up an internet trading account with my bank and financing it with $2K.
    When it was setup, I bought stocks in 3 companies. A telco, a mining stock, and also a new online trading firm. Well to cut it short my $2K became $300 a couple of months later.LOL
    Actually I recall the Telco ( Onetel?) Going bust, the mining stock went from 3c into .05c which was that. WELCOME TO TRADING !!

    OK that was my intro, no prep, no guidelines nothing just jumped straight in, not charts....
    Quick forwarding back to Aug 09, I filled in a web form and has been sent a dvd. I was completely stoked, adored it, the notion, the charts, the terminology, I felt just like a reborn Wall Street broker. LOL
    I was going to throw 3K to a 2day weekend course but I did not. A tiny voice in my mind was telling me it's a waste of money. I mean I spent 3K doing a Comptia A tech course which taught me nothing whatsoever that I didn't all ready know.
    It was really just a rehearsal of knowledge needed to pass ex.
    Therefore I thought that I should research this further before committing.
    Then I found Baby Pips, a wonderful intro into the world of Forex out of A-Z.
    The banner links directed me to FXCM, my 1st broker along with a demo account has been born.

    So I began demo trading understanding absolutely nothing whatsoever besides the Baby pips school. Well how easy is this??
    The game plan was simple...A pair of Bollinger Bands were the tool of choice.
    Look at the charts for 15 mins before leaving for work, place 2 transactions. Come home in the afternoon cash them and put another 2 transactions, go to sleep, wake up cash them in and open another two etc.
    All transactions were 100K lots and from the end of week , I left $1200. Week 2 I created $3000.
    That was so damn easy why did It take me all of my life to find this...HELLALUYA BROTHER!!!
    I strung 15 or so wins in a row !!!!!! Money for Jam !!!! .... LOL

    that I demoed for approximately 1 month I think, so it was time to go LIVE. FXCM was the only broker I knew of besides GFT. Since GFT was referred to as a bucket shop and FXCM was a real” Non dealing desk” broker they got the nod.
    I opened up a $500 mini account on 200-1 leverage. I adored the noise of leverage. To restrain $10K with a mere $50 sounded like a dream come true.
    At this point of time I felt quite nervous about placing on my 1st trade. Don't understand the reason why I use to have a couple bets on sports and Horseracing all of the time with fairly good results, a couple wins a couple of losses but usually around even or slightly infront so I'd think.
    Ist transaction lasted two mins and I won $10.
    WOW a win, I was glad to get that out of the way. No prizes for guessing what was to follow....... .
    I blew the account, 1st Margin Call I read about on Baby Pips, in a little over a week.
    That frightened the life from me. Not that $500 meant much for me, I mean I've blown thousands over the years on cars, motorcycles etc.. But just the way it fell apart following a successful stint at demo had me imagining WHY??
    And so fast...I did the maths and thought I can't afford to blow $25K in 12 months.

    PlanB was in order...learn more and demo more!!!
    I did a course offered by FXCM which was free for account holders. This was a slight step up from Baby pips. I read a novel,” Currency trading for Dummies” good name, and a few more demoing. At this point of time I was experimenting with time frames. MA's, all of the bells and whistles. Again I was having good success with Demo, $2K per week no matter.
    OK prepared for another shot. This time I thought $1K account was better, room to breathe so to speak.LOL

    At this stage I began to observe news events and enormous moves in short duration. I understand you guys know where this is going, haha...
    BUY the spikes was a no brainer. LOL
    OK a few more unsuccessful transactions. Then the big one in which I still haven't recovered from. I understand you need to proceed, but 1 big loss comparative to account dimensions could leave deep wounds. This one still haunts me although I know why I just can't let it move!!!
    After observing AUD moves with RBA meetings, and making some good cash on the demo on this egy I was going live.
    I had convinced myself who Interest rates weren't going up that day. EURO dramas were beginning and a bit of fear was creeping into the markets.
    My egy was 5 mini lots buy or sell based on the decision.
    Eyes firmly focussed on theforexintuitivecalendar, hands were shaking, worried as... The outcome came out and it was a black figure, AHA that I was right,'SELL”!!
    I wanted 100 pips, I thought it was a given. It actually went my method for more than 20 pips and then began reversing. Nah it can't undo, IR didn't go up so that I held, saw my gains go from and $110 to minus. I told the wife what ever I say do not let me cancel the trade...My stop was previously yesterdays high, it can't break that hopeless!!
    Obviously I dropped $500 in one swoop in a little more than 1 hour.
    I could not know till the evening news came on TV saying IR went upward, WTF???
    AHHHH my mistake, I looked about theforexintuitivecalendar and required the expected increase because it didn't happen. On the lookout for a red or green figure it was black and I assumed they didn't go up. Neglected to observe the expected column.
    Together with my new account dwindled down to about $100 I took another dumb commerce about the USD/JPY, my most despised and expensive pair and watched another margin call.

    OK 2 accounts trashed, demo good, what is going on??
    I can't answer this, it still plagues me.
    Strategy, Emotions, so many Issues. They say the Markets will work out what sort of person who you are and that's dead right.
    At the time that I felt as a torn apart plogical mess, these times I still do.

    The problem here was that I couldn't and still can't replie demo results in real accounts. So what is the solution to this??

    It's obvious isn't it?? SACK YOUR BROKER !!!! LOL

    Not that FXCM were to blame specifically for my flaws but I felt that my account together was cursed. Infact which was my motive on their account closure form.
    A few things I didn't like: The platform, although pleasant and easy to use, the EMA's would proceed into another position if you went back a couple of days to look at history and return the EMA was in another spot. WTF ??
    If you refreshed it was good, but go back a couple of days and again it moved, how can I know which is right??? It was obviously repainting determined by periods on your display but it was sufficient to peeve me off!!
    Amongst other things were I'm sure every traders pet hate, taken out by 1 pip only to see price reverse, do not you just hate that!!!
    I felt as though they had been gunning for my mini lot. LOL
    It took me a while to figure out that I was placing my ceases where my limit order should have been. Rather than buying or selling from that point and waiting for a retest of price, I'd use quit sell or buy orders over the price action and placing my stop loss where the retest price action would happen.
    This drove me nuts.... .thankfully I really don't do that anymore, Well maybe occasionally but not as regular. I was a sitting duck for the market to take out me no matter if I picked the wrong or right direction. And of course that the risk reward ratio could be horrible with this egy.
    Please note I am not specifically having a go at the broker just expressing my feelings and thoughts of my trip thus far.
    I've got a lot more to add but I'll leave it here for now and proceed when I have some more time.
    I really hope I have not bored too many people.... .

  2. #2
    Hi Jillsaab,

    Thanks for your Answer. I don't want to harp too much with this particular broker but I also was experiencing crashes while trying to shut down trades. Some error messages also.
    Ironically I never blew any demo account. I had been trying to keep the entire thing as close to real as you can.
    I do not demo anymore. I've a lot more to mention in continuation of my initial post but I use Metatrader with a micro account as one of my accounts.
    Yes the emotions are self sabotaging. I don't understand why they have manifested, I never really ever worried or idea about losing money in any other part of my life but with Trading it disturbs me in bucket loads.
    At this stage I likely consider myself to be a much greater analyst then a Trader. Possibly a start for most.
    As far as egies go, I've had too many. Chop and change a lot, combine up time frames. I now just wait for a good candle to be the trigger but I'll get more into that later.

  3. #3
    Now if only I was a complete trader with confidence I could carry out my thinking with no fear or guilt. With my life being so busy with the baby it is tough to concentrate on Intra day setups which I like as I enter and exit as a jack rabbit.
    As you want to exchange to match your lifestyle and character type this to me is a classic conflict of interest.
    I must concentrate and egy some long term trades. Days or weeks. But in itself it is like telling a junkie to break up on the equipment for a couple of days.
    I'm hoping by recording all my ideas here that it will induce me to follow my egy lose or win.
    Easier said then done I know but you want to start somewhere.
    Here's a weekly AUD/USD.
    Triple shirt, fall, retracement, failure to penetrate the 8860's. It is really set up to take the next dip towards the 8390 mark which is 61.80 fib weekly long term top-bottom.
    Look deeper and knowing that currencies like to make higher highs or lower lows along with the 50.00 fib at 7933 looks likely and ultimately 7700 seems like a destination but possibly weeks away. All confirming indiors are bearish. Your stop loss would be 200 pips, Target potentially 1000 pips.
    Risk reward awesome, in terms of cash mangement I would be risking 4 percent of my account. I can only use 1 mini lot unless I find a much better entrance then the rest of the non. Decisions, decisions, ideas anyone????

    Daily shows verified top and much more bearish, trendline break potential retest of trend line or 50% retracement of Friday's candle.
    These transactions do go, but sometimes not straight away and not to their full destination but it will not seem great.


  4. #4
    Still Another Installment I like for the kiwi. I enjoy these setups. They might be considered counter tendency but they're short term reversals in my publiion. A spinning top on thursday, a great reversal bar on Friday cutting throughout the trendline and an important support line in 7160. Support after broken becomes resistance ? The weekly looks even better. Price in a channel, analyzed a break and formed a great pin. While some believe that is a bullish movement and it possibly, first it's coming down to get a taste of shallower waters.
    7160 looks a good entrance on a retest of the support line. 7035 looks a good short term target a 61.8 fib degree of the May high-low. Cease would be above the high of Friday's candle. RR is a bit better then 1:1 but that should play out quickly a day or two imo.


  5. #5
    OK I will continue with my Journey a bit later. I've put pending orders on these 2 setups. Screen dump shows the installation. The transactions conform to my own trading plan which I will post later too. My current broker is IG Markets. I picked them for a host of reasons that I will talk in depth another moment.
    One thing that I enjoy about this broker is the capability to put pending orders on the market while the market is closed on weekends. Both these pairs shut quite bearish on Friday and pretty much every other pair and equity market also. Chance of these gapping back on the open and my pending orders not being triggered. I've had my fair share of missed opportunities because of this nature of trading but I'd rather forget a trade then enter one at an unfavorable price which gives me a worse then 1:1 risk benefit. If that is the case and price never revisits my order price I may hunt down a 4hr bar on retracement. We'll see how it goes...


  6. #6
    Well that is interesting, both my transactions removed from the open so that my thinking is in the right direction. Problem is they forgot to pick up me on the way outside. Even worse is the kiwi got to my exit stage obviously without retesting my entry point, spent hours and is currently bouncing. Ozzie bouncing additionally. OK so this tells me you of 3 things. This was the down move and it's going to make a new high.LOL
    It is likely to retrace a little and come down a few more without triggering my orders or it's likely to do as my egy suggests become short term bulls and capitulate. Asia and London prefer to do things different so that is ok.
    I've picked a trade based off a daily candle therefore this could take time. I'll check back in 19 hours and see how another candle closed and whether the boat picked me up.
    Hopefully which I understand isn't a good term in Forex it doesn't decide to change course and go Melb-Darwin instead of my Melb-Tassie destination.

  7. #7
    While I am awaiting my trade to happen or not I will contact my story. So armed with a Go Markets account and a few success in the trading I thought I must re load a little more money and give it another shot. I was deciding in which broker to enrichen.LOL While I retain the Go account as a micro account I wasn't convinced I wanted to exchange this account for a mini. Why? Well it is probably just me but as far as many folk like Meta trader and there's no denying it's more bells and whistles then anything else I have seen so far it'd have its flaws that I wasn't sure about. I loved all the templates and trading egies that members have designed to fit straight on the platform but I really disliked how you could not scroll the chart up, down and sideaways. Perhaps you could but I just could not work out how with my fiddling. I had been use to FXCM trade station which enabled this. Also a dislike using the two platforms is that you draw a trend line or fib and it shows on all time frames and makes the chart too hard to see. I understand with meta trader you can alter the properties to some particular time period but it is a bit fiddly particularly when your viewing all the pairs. Another bug bear was that the connection would disconnect and reconnect regularly with the server. Not a drama for long duration trades but because I had been scalping and playing 5 mins timeframes without a ceases sometimes while I was watching, it would be somewhat discerning.
    Execution was ok, a small pause but it never crashed although it appeared it wanted too.

    Not completely glad I went to a broker expedition. I suppose that is exactly what we do at some point. I came across 2 brokers that intrigued me. CMC Markets and IG Markets. Both have offices in Melbourne and do daily talks on Sky company channel so imo are equally reliable. Another alluring thing was that they do CFD's. So this started up a completely new range of products. Shares, indexes, EFT's, bonds, commodities, livestock, soya beans etc.. Like a child in a lollie shop I loved the idea of having access to a multitude of markets even when I don't exchange them today I might well do in the future. Which to choose? Why not give both a go? LOL

    Currently this newbie who will hardly exchange and less then 12 months experience in the markets has a selection of 3 brokers. LOL
    I believed each one could serve another purpose. CMC were conducting a promotion that was to enticing not to have a go in. Join with $500 and get a complete week of free trades on the TIQ Aussie200 index. They wear your losses and you also keep your winnings.
    2 mini lots per trade maximum, hours have been melb time 10.00-4.00pm. Fantastic!!!! My chance to be a full on day trader with their cash, how ludicrous, I'm going to clean up were my ideas. LOL
    At the time the wife was home too so I mentioned in a couple of weeks I am a complete time day trader no interference at all .
    I had been looking forward to this, flashes of celebrity trader, largest winner ever in the contest had been flying through my ideas...
    As we understand fantasies take a back seat in reality. When the opportunity arrived I had far too many commnts and things going on that week to take it seriously. But I had a game plan: Let the first hour decide direction, then place on your 2 minis and determine what happens at 4.00pm. Following this closing time all trades are shut down. I only had $500 in the account and in 200-1 leverage and a 48 hour reimbursement turnaround I couldn't be completely reckless or I'd confront a couple of days of no trading when I blew the account. So just how did I honest??
    Well it had been quite gloomy, following the week I dropped nearly $200 but since you had been reimbursed after each day so hence your profit loss was calculated daily and wrapped over I ended up a winner by about $80. LOL
    It was a slow week but Friday was the big moving day in which it moved nearly 100 points however I picked the incorrect direction. LOL
    While CMC offered products that I was interested in as well as sent out DVD's and trading literature their entire trading platform was a astrophe imo. Very slow, both the internet model and desk top appliion. Placing a trade, adjusting it and quitting a trade was a frightening experience. I placed about 4 trades outside the TIQ contest with them and had to call the helpdesk each time to shut it down. Hard to fathom but by default a trade had been 50K, you had to toggle down for smaller lots. Then to get out you had to buy or sell another order was started. It got really perplexing like you sold 10K aussie to get you out had to buy back 11K USD for instance. Gold even more perplexing by the ounce. Perhaps this is all easy for old timers, to that which I had experienced so far it was a nightmare. I made mistakes by purchasing 10K and buying back 50K and I knew I could not win using a platform that just wanted to make life difficult for me so I gave up and withdrew my funds. So that was Broker number 2 on their way.... .
    Which brings me to my current broker IG Markets. Why select a bucket shop? They offer all the products I need or might want in the future. Even if I don't exchange the other markets I love to see what risk appetite is doing. I can guage what the dollar index is doing, Gold, Bonds, the VIX index which is starting to grow up btw indiing some volatility up the street. A one stop store. Their spreads are not the best for many pairs similar to FXCM but maybe not as good as GO MARKETS but I am attempting to escape from Intra day and 2 minute scalping practices so it does not matter to my little mini lot trades. As I mentioned I will put trades out market hours, I could also take out a guaranteed stop on my trade for a small charge in the event the market moves or openings savagely against my place. The entire trading platform is internet based, all of your information is saved on their servers. Finest part about this is the ability to exchange from any PC terminal and all of your fibs, fashion lines and templates stay put. My favorite thing is their trading appliion Pro-Realtime. It's a professional software program that does it all, including attributes like Auto-chartist that scans each of the pairs and tells you some patterns that are forming or have just formed. Any fashion lines or fibs you put on any time period stay as you place them and are not observable on other time frames. I actually like this as I will leave my traces and not lose sight of this big picture when I return to smaller time frames I will see how moves played out, left a station, re entered etc.. You can create your own custom indiors and rear evaluation. OK I am not using half of the attributes but they're accessible for future use. The one draw back is that you need to pay $60 per month for the freedom. I know what your thinking but all you need to do is set 2 trades per calendar month and it's reimbursed. They just need to make sure you really trade with them. Execution has been good, no crashes, trade from charts if you would like to, Drag and drop etc..
    They have a nice entry to the area of trading using a program that steps you up more than 8 weeks out of 5c pip, 10c, 25c and then a mini lot.

    Anyhow this where I am at. I've deposited $5K from the account and I am having another crack in the market. I have a trading plan which I will discuss next time. I would like to stick to my egy ( well as soon as you can ). I'll only place trades that conform to my egy. I'll see them out, win or lose. If I lose more then 20 percent of my beginning account then I shall quit trading and determine why. I've got the micro account together with GO Markets to fine tune my egy if it falls over.
    Ok I will check back in about 10 hours and see if my trade has triggered. If not I need to determine exactly how the Daily candle closed and when my pending order entry remains valid......

  8. #8
    Checking my trade set up this morning and still neither trade has triggered. The Aussie closed with a bullish candle but closed under a second resistance line in my chart at 8700. My pending order is 8760, 70 pips off in the present time. My order is simply under the 200 ema so a good chance today with some news due it will make a dash for it and I'll be in. My indiors stochastics and macd are supporting a fall I just need my order to come in to play. On the otherhand it might not go over the 8700 line. It's wedged in between most of my EMA's so no doubt it's some thinking to do.

    The kiwi is farther away from my order 100 pips away. It closed bearish candle, really hit my limit too. Pretty good service line where it bounced off. Not sure if it's going to retest my entry point. Stochs and macd supporting a collapse.

    At this point It's awful tempting to place new market orders underneath the price action. That would guarentee I'm in the trade sooner or later. However, if I do I'm compromising the security component of my installation. I'm very confident that price won't revisit my stop area for quite some time. It seems to me that both these pairs will be slammed, possibly new limits will likely be designated in case my orders have struck.
    Then again I might be completely incorrect
    Oh well I need to stay patient and wait patiently, not certain how long to wait patiently because my setups normally fire up straight away.
    OK stick to your guns, I'll re evaluate things in 23 hours of time.

  9. #9
    OMG I'm in the Commerce. Stress, fear....

    Okay so some bullish RBA moments gave the bulls some pleasure and away she went, I guessed as much.
    Now this happened a week, some good news got the aussie going but was not able to hold some profits.
    All previous week's bull moves were on quite light volumes, last Friday's party crash were on higher then average volumes. Sky News company channel is my source of information.
    The kiwi is also making a bull run based off the aussie good news it is 40 pips out of my market order where I am sure a big package of bears will be anticipating.
    OK I am grateful I am documenting all this material as I'd usually change tact at this stage. Hold company is the order of the day. Let's see what tomorrow's candle attracts...

  10. #10
    Hmmm I wake up this morning to observe that the candles that are closed and its not good. The Kiwi trade triggered by a huge bull bar 130 pip day surpassing the 12 span ATR of 92. Not good for my own shorts. The aussie worse almost 200 pips daily surpassing the 12 span ATR of 111.
    OK I'm doomed no doubt about it, how do I minimize the collateral damage?
    Now been Wednesday is a poor day for shorts, I have observed that over the following 24 hours prices move up since the triple roll kicks in on Thursday morning barring any worldwide astrophes that's.

    Ok things to do, last night before sleep I had a sneek peak and I was 20 pips upward. The old me would have cashed that in and lived a different day but it defeats the purpose, I want to stick with my egy.

    OK I'm honing in on Intra day chart to find out what I can do. The kiwi has shaped a foundation on entry excellent.
    Well at this point my trades look unprofessional, the installation has changed so that it makes no sense in keeping them open. Even if they change course and they may it is not worth fretting about. Preserving funds is the title of the game when your wrong.

    A new hourly close over yesterdays high and I'm bailing and there's still some chance for a little retracement, giving me a chance to get out with less reduction. Wishful but possibly!

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