Friday 24 July 2015

The EA Rollercoaster

Two days ago my account was up 40%, today it is only 6% up.   There were 3 trades that the robot opened with the same currency and for some reason didn't automatically close out at break even.  Lets have a look:

 
 
 
You can see the 3 entries with the vertical lines and Ellipses on this hourly chart.  30 hours later there was plenty of opportunity to adjust the trade manually, close 1 trade in profit an 2 trades in the negative with a small loss.
 
Ultimately it's my fault.  My trading was going so well that I just set and forget and didn't bother to review open trades on my demo account and kept busy enjoying Europe while focusing on profits in my real account.
 
The challenge I'm having now is monitoring my real account and demo account.   It's easy to get overwhelmed and to get lazy. 
 
All in all still in the positive overall, a little disgruntled, but it's a good wake up call to stop spending time with hobby traders and focusing on trading on my own, streamlining my trading with both accounts.
 
All you can do when that happens is chalk it up as experience and learn from it.  For me it's a matter of figuring out an easier way to monitor multiple accounts and writing some safeguards for number of lots opened for one currency.

Thursday 23 July 2015

Silence is Golden

It's 9am Vienna time, I'm in bed just waking up, and I get an instant message asking me if I made it out of a trade that was in the negative.  Not how I wanted to start my day. I haven't even had my coffee yet and I'm bombarded with small talk about a trade from a friend.... That's a major pet peeve of mine...

There is a saying that "Great people talk about ideas, small people talk about people". 

The same goes for Forex.  Real traders talk about the big picture, hobby traders talk about trades.

So when my friend for the hundredth time asks me about a trade and if I'm still in it, I see red... after all I have already asked him a dozen times not to ask about my trades or how much money I made but instead focus on the bigger picture. The market. The trend. Entry and Exist Strategies.  

Well I guess this is where it is time to draw the line and treat him like all the other "Hobby Traders" and distance myself and not talk about trading, period.  No need for back seat drivers that do nothing but distract.  And they do so on purpose thinking it's fun.  Perhaps you have the patience for it. I don't. Especially when I'm waking up and haven't had my coffee yet.

Silence is Golden.  That's why you hear hardly anything from the professional traders, they go on about their business and cash in on their trades.

Tuesday 21 July 2015

Managed Account Update

Here I am in my home town of Vienna Austria (Europe) , that's right, Europe, no Kangaroos in Austria, surfing the net and I thought I'd give an update on my managed forex account.




It has been a good month.  I'm back home and considering relocating.  I'm eating great meals, drinking amazing coffee, and enjoying lots of great Gelato and Sweets.  Trading is going well now that I'm rewriting a lot of Metatrader functionality and adding new functionality with custom indicators and expert advisors, allowing me to fine tune my Managed Forex Account.


As you may know, my managed account was off to a rocky start as it was unattended.  That's the thing about these Expert Advisors and Too Good To Be True Robots, they work for a short time and then they bomb.  Why?  Because you need human interaction.  Thanks to my custom Metatrader code I now spend about 20 minutes a day, an hour max and do a daily review of the charts and then for the most part "Set and Forget". Although when I do check the charts I'm typically exiting a trade early, in the positive of course, and missing out on a few extra pips.  But that's how it goes.


In any event, it has been about 3 weeks since my last update and I'm up 40% this month thus far.  The latest up-to-date numbers are below.