July 2008 Update

Okay then....time for a July update

July was a pretty good month, so i can't complain. However I think it could have been better, so that's something to shoot for. I only traded with half the leverage i should have for the first part of the month, but by the end of the month I was right where i need to be and it felt pretty comfortable.

Out of the month we had one holiday and I had a weeks worth of vacation with the family. Funny thing is I made a majority of my profits after returning from the vacation. I must have needed it. During the vacation I didn't look at one chart or read one bit of news.

So these results are a little less than 3 weeks of trading. I let my emotions get the best of me 3 times and it caused my some additional profits. Sometimes i get my hands on too much information, so I need to work on filtering out the economic noise.

I'm currently flat with no open positions. I'm not sure if I will enter before the Unemployment figures tomorrow or not. I might see how things settle down first. I'll make the decision when i do my nightly recap tonight.

I still need to finalize my Mentorship with Dirk, and turn in my Blueprint worksheet. The class has done more for me mentally than I could have imagined. It gave me a entire new view of approaching the market. Just wish I would have found it when I started a few years ago. It would have saved me from falling for some of the scams. Man what i could do with that money now.

Total July 2008 Trades: 16
Total July 2008 Winning Trades: 15
Total July 2008 Losing Trades: 1
Total July 2008 Break even Trades: 0
July 2008 Increase/Decrease: +9.21%

Summary:
June 2008: +8.6%
July 2008: +9.21%

Trade Well....
Brent

June 2008 Update

Okay....time for an update then.

The last time i left off i discussed how i decided on Dirk or "DayForex" as my mentor. The class started in early Jan 08, and things are just now finishing up with it. I have a few more documents to complete for him and send, but for the most part I'm finishing the last phase. I'll probably keep some kind of membership to keep the interaction with the rest of the group, because i find it helpful.

So June was my first real month trading with what I've learned. I've listed the results below. I feel pretty good about the month and what i achieved. I know some of the folks in the group that have been trading the method longer than me had much larger months, so that gives me something to look forward to.

The other thing to keep in mind is that I was in Paris the first week in June, so I didn't start trading until June 9th.

Total June 2008 Trades: 19
Total June 2008 Winning Trades: 17
Total June 2008 Losing Trades: 0
Total June 2008 Break even Trades: 2
June 2008 Increase/Decrease: +8.6%

Sometime in the future I'll try to summarize my take on the DayForex mentor program.

Trade Well....
Brent

Found a Mentor

Well I decided on a Mentor. I chose the author of "Bird Watching In Lion Country" BWILC; Dirk du Toit. I've been participating in his MP 2008 class since January. During the last two months I've met some great people, who are also trying to make it as a FX traders. Over the next few months I'll try to give some highlights of the class without giving away to much. So I'll stick to what I'm going through and my progression instead of talking about the material we are covering.

The last two months have been truly amazing. I had my first ah-ha moment and I now realize how much of the wrong stuff I know and how little of the right stuff i know. Dirk has thus far been a true mentor. It's like going back to school. A lot of work....it's fun but it is work. It takes an honest effort to stay on track with the other folks. I feel i have made more progress these last two months than i have over the last 2+ years. To be honest....it feels great. We start a new series of exercises this weekend and I'm looking forward to getting started with them.

Until next time.....

Trade Well...
Brent

Maybe it's time for a change.....

I read and hear this a lot so I though it was worthing writing about. We all know the old say 90% of traders lose, so here's something to think about. We all follow the same rules, read the same books, and visit the same websites...

For example we've all heard these great sayings...

• Only trade x% of your account
• Cut you losses let you profits run
• Your reward to risk ration should be at least 2:1
• Plan your trade and trade your plan
• Backtest, backtest, backtest
• Price is king

Okay quick question....anybody consistently making real money following these rules?

I know my blog is full of these concepts, and I'm actually thinking about removing them because I feel it misleads people.

Bottom line is your are doing what you are suppose to, but you are still in the 90% losers section, so obviously these phrases, books, and guidelines are not working otherwise there should be a lot more winners.

Maybe it's time to take the road less traveled on....

Trade Well....
Brent

Fundamentals

This entry is about something that total changed the way I approach the FX market, and it's Fundamentals. Back in May of 2007 I had just finished two books that both caught my attention. The first being "Bird Watching In Lion Country" (second read), and the second being "Way of the Turtle" by Curtis Faith.

To make a long story short there was a phrase in the "Way of the Turtle that really made me think. Faith referred to the currency market as a "Fundamental-driven market", in which the trading is not the primary force behind the movement. Rather larger macroeconomic events and forces drive the price. Faith also stated that this kind of market has the greatest liquidity with the cleanest trends and are the easiest for trend followers to trade.

Now this sounded way to familiar. It was the same information I learned in BWILC, so I started to reread BWILC. However this time i caught onto more things then my previous read. Different mindset I guess.

So I made it a goal to find out who the main players were in the FX market and how they make their trading decisions. Well 41% of their decisions are based on Fundamentals and 26% is based on Technical Analysis. Those statistics told me that I was trading at a disadvantage, because about 90% of my trading decisions were based on Technical Analysis.

So i had to change my game. I started to research these macroeconomic events and I researched what Fundamentals drove the markets. I needed to find out how a particular news event affected the market, not only in the short term, but the larger picture.

This changed everything for me because i realized i didn't know enough about the market I was trading. I was good at my IT job because I knew a lot about it, and I was confident in what I knew. I wanted that same feeling when trading, and that's what I'm continue to improve on in 2008.

Also thought you might find this below link helpful...

http://www.ny.frb.org/education/addpub/usfxm/

Trade Well....
Brent

New Layout - RSS enabled

I've changed my template to allow a site feed. So for those that have requested me to enable RSS it should be working now. You can subscribe via the right menu or at the bottom of the page.

Trade Well...
Brent

Month Ending - December 2007

Another month has come to and end. All in all I had a pretty good month. All results below are single lot trades, but don't concentrate on the PIPS that's misleading. When you are looking at performance try to concentrate on Win/Loss %, Risk Reward ratio, and increase in account percent.

Okay so here it is...

Position Trades (4hr charts and above)
Total Trades = 12
Wins = 8
Losses = 2
Break Even = 2
Win/Loss Percentage = 80%
Average Win = +99.5
Average Loss = -38.5
Total Pips = 719
Increase in accounts = 7.85%

I haven't Daytraded for several months. I'm just not able to fit it in at this time.

When I reviewed my trades for this month I was very pleased, and I'm glad I ended on a good note. My percent growth this month is good, but I believe it will also get better as I grow as a trader. Currently I'm only trading a little less than half of what my normal risk should be. As my confidence grows, I'll continue to increase my risk until I'm at the optimal level. No rush though, because the one thing I've learned is that you can't trade with scared money. Well at least I can't.

Trade Well.....
Brent