The Sixth Dimension- Reaver's Trading Journal

Quote from NY_HOOD:

fair disclosure: i am a huge fan of my man REAVER.
i'll be checking out the journal my friend!
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Hey bro how's it going? Good to hear from you man!

I'm doing a cutter with my pal Winny for the summer. Yayeh!

Have a good one bro, thanks for dropping by!
 
still with the test my man,working well. winny is one of the best in my view,at least for me. works great,i actually blow up. i like the oral winny. winny,deca,and a small amount of test.winny gets those red blood cells cookin!
 
Quote from NY_HOOD:

still with the test my man,working well. winny is one of the best in my view,at least for me. works great,i actually blow up. i like the oral winny. winny,deca,and a small amount of test.winny gets those red blood cells cookin!
More...

Add some boldenone.
 
I have decided to start posting in the ol' journal again.

Posting in the journal helped organize my thoughts.

It also helps keep me more accountable when I post something publicly. Also, and perhaps even more importantly....I enjoy receiving feedback and commentary from others.

We are all only human and sometimes having an additional set of eyes on a market or an alternate viewpoint can make for a huge improvement in trading.

Hopefully I'll be able to get some the old crew back in here and maybe even a few new faces.


Quote from Reaver:

Alright, here goes-

Yesterday, while spending an otherwise boring Saturday, I was inspired by Pabst's excellent journal to begin my own here at ET.

While I am not under the illusion that anyone here particularly cares how I trade, I think it would be very helpful to me if I were to publicly post some of the ideas I have for trades, and maybe receive some input from the other guys here.

Again, to illustrate, I saw in Pabst's journal how Atticus and a few other very insightful traders had some very powerful input that helped me out tremendously in my own thinking.

Hence, the title Sixth Dimension, which is generally considered to be societal values, or more officially, prevalent attitudes in a community that evolve in response to a complex web of human interactions....while not specifically correct in my case, it will be accurate if my journal offers insight for someone else's trading. Perhaps it can make a difference in more than just my perspective.

Maybe a palette of ideas can be created that could influence one's trading.

I think that is the secret to trading....no painting by numbers to be done...but rather a collection of ideas and understandings that allow a person to gain a type of intuition and confidence in the market. I believe trading is an art. Yes there are a few concepts that comprise the "science" aspect of it, but once you get the ideas down, it becomes an art.

A little about me for those who haven't put me on ignore yet- I am 26 years old, I have been trading about 2 years or so. I was first inspired to trade by having to exchange my currency when crossing borders while in the military. It hit me right away that there had to be a way to exploit the exchanging of currency to one's benefit. This was most notable with the Lira back in the early 00's....Crude perception, but it was the start of something much bigger for me. I always knew that people traded stocks, but didn't realize there were exchanges for currencies and things like that..at least exchanges that people like me could trade on. There was a big gap between my initial inspiration and when I finally started my trading education in late '05. Lots of things in the way at the time thanks to those assholes in Al Qaeda (and co) and my moving to FL upon getting the hell out.

My trading-I am very much a discretionary trader. I swing trade for the most part. I have always been into art of all kinds, music, drawing, etc . I guess I am biased towards comparing trading to mainly an art, but I truly believe it is about intuition and processing of the concepts in each individual's unique way. I trade currencies (my favorite for nostalgic reasons) and will be branching out as time progresses to grains, etc and maybe even options if I can figure them out.

My Goals- I started out with approximately zero dollars when I began trading. I spent most of my saved money in moving to and getting set up in FL. I made a small deposit into Oanda, and started increasing size as results permitted. I have been saving everything possible and trading my way up to the point I can quit my current job in mortgages and do this thing full time. Tough game, but what the hell in life is easy if it's worth having? I'm almost there....

Hopefully there will be some ideas presented here by me and others (if I'm lucky) that someone out there can use to further there own trading ventures.
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I re-posted my basic bio above. About the only major changes to note are that I am now 27 and I am now trading full-time (as of September).


Corporate life was getting intolerable. I am not the type to put up with that kind of shit. I'd rather die broke knowing I took a risk to achieve freedom than to sit there pissing my blood into another man's cup for a middle class income.


I do not look down on anyone if they prefer the security of a steady paycheck, everyone is entitled to their own decisions. I am just saying that is not the life for me. My basic outlook is that the typical American is so totally fucked by taxes and regulations, etc that about the only way to achieve freedom is to strike out on your own and do something different.


Now that I have reached the initial goal of trading full-time, my major goal in life is to parlay my trading into a position where I will be able to volunteer my time (and money) to help veterans and disadvantaged children. I know that sounds cliche', but it's true.

Life is good down here in FL, surprisingly cold, and it's nice growing my hair out. My Viking (and Cherokee, for that matter) ancestors would be proud. ha ha


Okay, that's pretty much where we are at this point. Some market commentary will follow shortly.
 
I am a little rusty at posting my journal...usually I type it up in shorthand in OneNote or keep it in my head. Once I get back in the swing of things the information will hopefully be a little more digestible.



Here's what I have for tonight so far:


Looks like the uptrend may be rolling over in usd/chf.

I entered a short position at 1.1441 and will look to scale in from that point.



Trend is strongly down in the aud/usd pair as well as eur/usd.

No entries just yet, but will look for reasons to go short.



Entered short on usd/jpy from 90.01. Trend looks like it wants to continue down, so I took a short position.



Looks like gbp/usd has been on a highway to hell for a while now. I am looking for a short term rally of maybe a day or two, but for now I am looking for reasons to go short and most likely scale in until I get strong evidence the down trend is over.



I am seeing some very strong trends right now in the currencies, but they also look like they could reverse at any time.

These are crazy times for the markets, and it's always tough to make calls when everything could totally change from one minute/hour to the next.

This is what I am seeing so far, and will do my best to update if anything develops/changes.


Markets are essentially one huge clusterfuck right now, and it behooves you to trade them accordingly.


Stay frosty gents.
 
This is a post I made on a thread yesterday regarding the basic idea of momo/trend trading:


-----------------------------------

My reasoning for trend following is basic human nature.

Something starts moving, and once that happens, there is a good chance people will hop on the bandwagon.



Something I stole from Jim Dalton who stole it from Malcolm Gladwell regarding the spectrum of the way people react to change:

Innovators: Early Adopters: Early Majority: Late Majority: Laggards.


My interpretation is the basic concept of trendfollowing for me is to try to get in on the "Early Adopters" or even the "Early Majority" stage, catch a wave and then trade it off to the "Laggards". Most likely you won't get a chance to be a part of the "Innovators" stage, unless you magically pick the top or bottom.


I agree, I don't think markets are necessarily serially correlated on a DIRECT DAY-TO-DAY BASIS. However, over a period of time there is an enhanced probability for trend direction to continue over a larger time period. Therefore, I believe a trend can be spotted and exploited.

If one is trading on daily bars and they buy on the close of an up day, they probably have a 50/50 shot of the next day being up or down. However, over a period of time the odds increase that the human nature/majority will prevail and the trend will become apparent.

--------------------------------------



This is a graphical representation of proper trading:


fag1.jpg



Yeah BNB, we're looking for you.







P.S. The full thread can be found at: http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=150723&perpage=6&pagenumber=1
 
Not bad for the first day back on the journal.


Closed out the usd/chf for a loss of around 60-70 pips or so. Still think the trend may be ending soon, but so far the chart says otherwise as of the recent moves so I closed out and will look to re-enter short if anything comes up.


The usd/jpy was good for 300 pips, and gbp/usd was good for around 200.

Closed half the position on these spikes and it looks like things are retracing a little here....

These markets are very fickle and I get jumpy when it comes to holding on after spikes in my direction.




So far for the first day:

usd/chf- 70
usd/jpy +300
gbp/usd+200


These numbers are approximate, but close enough. Hard to get exact numbers because I scale around positions.
 
Taking small shorts in aud/jpy and gbp/usd.....


Short from 1.3719 in gbp/usd

Short from 57.7 in aud/jpy


May decide to get out or continue scaling in depending on what develops.
 
Ouch! Damn, sharp moves against me almost immediately.

Glad I decided to play these shorts with small size, as mentioned earlier. Always start getting nervous with these kind of moves in FX these days....it seems like once you finally see an obvious trend develop, you catch a reversal spike. ha ha

Ain't that life?



Added to gbp/usd shorts- avg price is 1.3929

Shorted eur/usd at 1.2943

Added to aud/jpy shorts- avg price 58.4

Shorted eur/jpy at 115.06



These might not work out so well for me, but the trend is down and it's a pullback...so basically the idea is to short when that happens. ha ha


I can't predict the future, so I am forced to trade by the rules (or at least try to :p) for now.
 
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