Greg's Forex Journal

Quote from jinayu:


Some questions:
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Hi Eddie, nice to have a fan.

1. What is helpful and not helpful in a trading book of chart patterns? Everything that you don't know. :) For me it was just a handful of new ones, but I also thought his breakout strategies were interesting.

2. I have thought about programming, but it's not usually my thing. Maybe at some point in the future.

3. Never read Schlossberg and don't know what the dailyFX crew is.

4. I have one 17'' laptop. All my charts are in tabs on the bottom - I usually only look at one at a time (for now).

5. This is a good question, but I don't regret anything - the better question is what would I do differently knowing what I do now. Firstly, focus on trading. I spent just as much time on a website for about four months last spring, and I also spent more time than I'd like watching CNBC, fooling around on forums (writing stuff), and a few other things. It's not that I wasted all that much time, but I don't have that much. Make the most out of your time and cut out the BS.

6. Besides the threads I've mentioned (I think there were four total including both PA threads), none were consistently helpful. You are better off looking for something in particular that you need help with and finding/asking it. The best strategy IMO is sending PMs to people who know their stuff and asking a specific question, where they learned about something, good resources in general, etc. Make sure you can't find the info anywhere else (don't piss them off). For example, when I saw the 3BR and couldn't figure it out anywhere, I searched the forum and PMd someone who mentioned it as a pattern they use. Simple as that.

Edit: I don't take back the 1 min because I now approach markets very differently and learned some very good lessons in the process, but I would never recommend it
 
Would like to say that there is a lot of value perusing ET and other forums, but atctually all the best threads were referred to me by others.

I was only about a third through the second PA Journal thread, but the main traders’ charts I was looking for left the thread, so I’m giving up on that. This leaves me with no more threads on my to do list, and I really only have maybe four or five more sources to check out on things like fractals and wolf waves before I move on to slowly picking up Elliott Wave.

After, I spent a good amount of time making quality images out of maybe ten things I’ve put aside from sources including the thread (got lazy and threw them all in a word document). Then, it was studying the hard way – screensaver and T-pain for 35 minutes.

Today’s Ideas: Picked up two major things from the PA thread I’d like to share. First was the strategy of a trader I labeled as an innovative breakout trader (just a few intraday charts and you can pick out a trader’s strategy like it’s nobody’s business if you know what to look for). Anyway, he did many trend-following breakouts successfully, but did a play I found more surprising. There was solid resistance at a point, but PA closed above it solidly three times, and he didn’t take the trade – the market was not trending. Then, it fully pierced for the fourth time before pulling back and offering a beautiful entry signal off of it, and he took the trade for a nice profit. I took the play as an inspiration for patience and the wait for very good signals as opposed to simply trading everything.

The other was Stealthrader’s idea of moving the stop to +1 when the trade went +5 ticks your way (Eminis). The idea is to lock in a profit therefore take very few losses, and take the hit of getting stopped out more. He went on to say that these profit stops end up nullifying his losses, so when he is really right, hits a target, etc. is when he makes his profit from a clean table. I think I might do this as well as opposed to moving stops to B/E. I always hated when profits turned to losses, why should I let them turn to even either?


Chart: I haven’t posted a chart in a while so decided to put one I made in here from the EUR/USD top a while back. I have posted a chart similar to this at one point I think in my other thread. There are two important features: the first is the pattern, which is obvious, but the second is the development, which is not. The top TL that hits the wick is the easy part: simple hourly close to close, but this was not the best trendline. The more aggressive one ended up being an hourly close and a 15 min open or something. It’s good to know that the TL is there, but may not be something you can always have (it was one of maybe 5 I had on an experimental chart as it was playing out).

Edit: now that I'm thinking about it I think the better TL was actually the wick low seen in the last upburst, which ending up also hitting another significant point on the 15 min
 

Attachments

I spent most of the early part of the day setting up the Oanda sub-account for my 3 hour and daily trades. This took quite a long time. I started out with 7-8 currencies that could be traded with fair spreads, but decided that this was far too many. I now have four: the EUR/CHF, AUD/USD, EUR/GBP, and GBP/USD. Two have the dollar, two the euro, and some nice CHF, AUD, and GBP worked in. These pairs have acceptable spreads around the clock, and I figured it is better to start out with less rather than more.

Another solid hour was spent setting up my new spreadsheet to keep track of performance in each account. Both have completely reset P/L and $1,000 even.
I also finished the last of my non Elliott Wave sources besides Trading in the Zone and Inside the House of Money, and then spent time editing my market documents (rules, money management, to do list, etc.).

As it is around the end of the month, I decided to go through my monthly editing and maintenance of my market documents. I very much enjoyed editing my trading rules, because I was able to see plenty of things where only one added month of learning and experience allowed me to both see many very stupid preemptive rules I made when my trading was going bad, and also how great many of my other rules really are.

Unfortunately, I spent about 7.5 hours today just on maintenance stuff, and I am nowhere near done. I still have one more document to edit, organizing my bookmarks in firefox (it’s a mess, I do it every few weeks), and computer maintenance (antivirus, antispyware, backup flash drive, backup computer).
 
Second edition of my monthly reflection:

12/29/08 on the Month of December

I have decided to write December’s reflection before the end of the month as it is a Sunday night and I am editing the rest of my documents in order to save time for watching and trading later.

Strengths: I am nearly finished studying market patterns with the current sole exception of Elliott Wave, which is only in the middle of my research priority list. I have not traded since my last monthly reflection on 12/4/08, and I see myself in an entirely different situation from that point. Instead of feeling the feeling of defeat and looking for a new direction, I am once again on top. Perhaps I still have a long way to go, but I am far more educated, wiser, and have developed and in execution of a fantastic market plan. I also believe that the trading innovations I have come across have given me all the inspiration I needed to do the same thing in my own line of work. I have done a small amount of this simply with my improvements of other traders’ rules for setups, but I feel that many of these ideas have really opened my potential as look more closely for them myself.

Weaknesses: I am concerned with two main things at this point. After the trading problems I had, I am a bit eager to see how I will respond emotionally again to the market. I believe I have excessively gone over my entry strategies and things I’m to look for in exit strategies including the important of closes (which will help me a lot), but there is still a decent portion of my trading that will remain subjective. Secondly, I am getting an increasing feel of pressure to begin going live. Although this is a great driving force, I fear that it will make me go live before I’m ready, and I will have another breakdown but with real money. I must recognize that I need to prove consistent profitability to preserve capital, and also that getting a job next summer won’t be the end of me (even though the chances of getting an internship are low…). After all, although 12 weeks of 40 hours of trading hours would be great, and I really could use the head start in money and trading to begin working toward some outside plans, it still won’t be the end of me.

Things on my to do list: Besides my intent to begin learning Elliott Wave, the majority of my priorities are now dealing with watching the market, making new charts and images for my screensaver to progress my learning (which I have several sub-strategies), and easing into trading. Looking for new resources is very low on this, but if I stumble on something I will scan it for important information like I have been.

Goals: I would like to come out at or above even between my two accounts over the next month. I would like to add the possibility of the week-to-week basis, but as I do not know what movement will be like New Year’s week and I have to go to school for the last week of January, I am not sure how possible this will be, simply because I may take very few or no trades during these times.

Ideas for improvement: screen time, screensaver time, and a lot of analysis for learning as well as a slow ease into trading.
 
I was too sick to really get out of bed yesterday, but was well enough to get some work done today. My concentration was too low to read anything or trade (like I originally had planned), but it was fine for about 1.5 hours of screensaver time and finishing up several things on my to do list.
 
I have decided to begin spending about an hour per day preparing my resume, searching for summer internships in my area, and applying to them over the next few weeks. It is just now beginning to seem too risky to depend on trading, and even if trading works out to be depending on it with such a thin asset base is risky.

The fact is that if I can get a good internship paying $5,000 - $6,000, that would allow me to ensure that my expenses are covered for the next year. It also comes out of the idea that a $2,000 account is very small when it comes to living off of as well as pursuing aggressive growth (have to support myself out of college), and the surplus income from an internship would ease the financial strain even if I am able to do it.

My original plan was to go back to my old job in the evenings, but I am not extremely confident in the health of my car (pizza driver), and if trading didn’t work out my finances would still be borderline. It also doesn’t help that the job gave me tendinitis in my shoulder, which is now a recurring injury that is not healing well at all.

Looking for an internship is the wisest thing I can do right now. Risk management a malignant little concept. :(
 
Quote from TraderGreg:

I understand I could be late with the play, but I'm not sure I have the expertise yet to get the reversal before it happens all the time. It's just one of many signals in my arsenal.

I'm not sure what you mean completely on the rest. Are you suggesting a trend-following strategy in which you try to catch the next wave after a retracement? Also are you meaning the breaks of swing lows and highs - because I'm not a breakout trader
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I'm only commenting on 123 pattern, i have not read your thread and do not know your method of trading the faster TF's, you are trading break of highs/lows (relevant to the 123 pattern TF) IF you're trading the 123 pattern.
What i'm saying is i preffer to enter on the retracement of that "123" pattern, i hope that clears any confusion, good luck with your trading.
 
Just re-read my post about getting a job this morning, and thought I should clarify. Of course I'd rather be trading than getting a job, but that's not the main problem.

The problem is that I see few investment banks and brokerages hiring (there were zero at my school's huge career fair this fall), and those that are are likely not looking for college freshman for their quality internships.

So, since I can't really go back to the pizza driver job or restaurant job that actually pay decently (back and shoulder problems from various sports and overwork related injuries - don't ask), I am left to near-minimum wage jobs or getting very lucky with an internship.

I will do my best :)

Thanks for the clarification on the 1-2-3, Baron.
 
Sorry to hear that - it's an extremely tough market out there right now. The good news is you're just a freshman, and getting an internship even for your sophomore year puts you ahead of the curve.

Keep your eyes out for opportunities and don't get discouraged. You never know when luck will go your way =)
 
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