LearningToPimpPips trading Journal - "Additional Stream of Income"

[LearningToPimpPips]

Looking back at the history of the 207.97 line, every time it was broken going long, the position would be good for 60 or more pips. 1 time would have required about a 75 pip retrace, but it broke through on the next candle. Based on this, I entered long at 208.07 (7 pips for the spread and 3 pips to make sure of a break of the 207.97 line).

I decided to do this as a standard S/R line break. I currently have a .18 lot with a take profit at 208.50, and a 2nd long at 208.07 with no take profit.

Both positions have a 70 pip stop loss.

Update: I closed my first position at 208.39 for a 16 pip gain ($54.56 - only 16 pips because this is half my position making 32 pips) I closed this position because it bounced from 208.48 3 times in the last 45 minutes, and started showing signs of retrace based on my experience yesterday. I moved my stop loss on my 2nd position to break even. I also was heading out to lunch and didn't want to leave unattended.

Let's hope this sucker rolls through 209.

Update 2: I closed my 2nd position. London is closed and it is getting later in the afternoon the the US. I decided to close the 2nd position and take the pips so that I have a target to reach my 75 pip weekly goal tomorrow.

Full trade summary

.18 lot G/J 208.07 long sold 208.39 16 pip gain ($54.56)
.18 lot G/J 208.07 long sold 208.52 23 pip gain ($76.66)
Full trade: 39 pip gain ($131.22)

Weekly summary:

short usd/chf 1.0310 out at 1.0280 loss 30 pips (-29.18)
short eur/jpy 1.6360 out at 1.6360 0 pips (-1.86 swap charge)
long eur/jpy 1.6392 out 1.6399 made 7 pips (+6.68)
long gbp/jpy 206.58 out at 207.00 made 42 pips (+40.14)
Short Eur/JPY 163.68. stop out at 163.98 loss 30 pips (-14.31 and -2.78 swap charge = -17.09)
Long GBP/JPY 208.07 made 39 pips ($131.22)

Weekly pips: +28 ($129.91)
Beginning balance: $3,521.00
Current Balance: 3,650.91
Weekly return (+3.8%)...where else can you get almost 4% weekly return.

Still have tomorrow...

Lessons learned summary:
- be patient through retraces, but don't get greedy over a couple of pips.
- trailing stops require the client to be logged in.
- Out of 6 trades, 3 winners, 1 break even and 2 losers isn't horrible given my experience. If I had more experience, this could have been 5 winners and 1 loser and my pips could be about 83 pips. The reason to demo trade for a while until comfortable with the software. But its good to know I could be at my goal if I did things correctly.
- Also need to get better at managing my stop loss risk. I had an error in a spreadsheet I'm using that calculates the number of lots to trade. I realized that my trade this morning on the break of 208.00 was actually a 10% risk instead of my plan for 3%. That's why my return for the week is so good.


Current pending trades:
E/J long scalp on 164.47 line
E/J long S/R trade on break of 164.97 line
E/J short scalp on 163.10
G/J short scal at 202.55 and 201.50
G/J Long S/R trade on break of 209.00

[traderjosh]

Great job LTPP. Excellent Trading. Got close to that 209.00 Mark. I like the pending trades area of your post.

[LearningToPimpPips]

Originally Posted by winphil

hello guys! I just joined this forum about 3 days ago and I need all the help I can get.Am new to forex and having gone through Nicks analysis,I must confess I need help on how to draw the S/R lines on my chart as well as how to use them.
Can anyone be of good help?

Hi Winphil

I have about 4 weeks experience with S/R trading, so not much more seasoned than you. I'm using this journal to not only to track progress in terms of pips and profits, but also to track progress as a trader and show a progression of experience. I recommend it for anyone.

I'd advise downloading and reading the NickB eBooks available for free on the site, he has them in the strategies section of the forum as sticky posts. There are 2 of them, one covering trading S/R lines, and one covering scalping (http://www.forex4noobs.com/forums/fr...ms-strategies/). ABout 50 pages of a pretty easy read to understand what he does. My thoughts on reading this is that it has to be more complicated than this to be profitable trader, but its not.

In terms of your questions, I'd recommend looking at the 'Videos' tab of the website. He has a video on placing S/R lines. Also, there is a thread to download the webinars...Nick did one in December and one recently in May. They can be downloaded in this thread (http://www.forex4noobs.com/forums/ta...ad-thread.html). Post 1 is December's webinar, and post 9 is May's.

He goes over placing these important lines.

For GBP/JPY, you can take the thick green lines from Nick's chart as the S/R lines. Usually, during a weekly signal video, he'll scroll up and down the price charts a little so you can pick up additional lines that Nick trades. You can simply take the lines from the videos and place on your chart.


If you want to draw lines for other pairs, I'd recommend picking one that is talked about on the forums a little (NZD/JPY, EUR/JPY...maybe a couple others) and post a question asking for some validation. One of the valuable contributors will likely give some analysis on your efforts. I've found this to be a overall good mentoring site trying to help others learn more.

Good luck with the pips.

[LearningToPimpPips]

OK, had a wipe out on one of my pending trades.

Eur/JPY ran down to 163.08, which triggered my short scalp at 163.10, and immediately retraced. Even if I was awake, I probably would have lost this trade. There was a lot of downward price momentum, and a sign of a reversal candle pattern on the 15 minute chart, but it continued a bear after that. I wanted to look to see if this was just a losing trade, or would I have done something different if I was watching this trade live. My conclusion is this was a losing trade regardless. ALthough, most trades I've been setting 3-5 pips past this line to ensure a little stronger break. I didn't do that on this one, so maybe I should make that a best practice.

Anyway, results:

.35 lot short E/J 163.10, stop at 163.40 Loss 30 pips ($-99.51)

[traderjosh]

Originally Posted by LearningToPimpPips

OK, had a wipe out on one of my pending trades.

Eur/JPY ran down to 163.08, which triggered my short scalp at 163.10, and immediately retraced. Even if I was awake, I probably would have lost this trade. There was a lot of downward price momentum, and a sign of a reversal candle pattern on the 15 minute chart, but it continued a bear after that. I wanted to look to see if this was just a losing trade, or would I have done something different if I was watching this trade live. My conclusion is this was a losing trade regardless. ALthough, most trades I've been setting 3-5 pips past this line to ensure a little stronger break. I didn't do that on this one, so maybe I should make that a best practice.

Anyway, results:

.35 lot short E/J 163.10, stop at 163.40 Loss 30 pips ($-99.51)

Just wondering if you are using 30 pips tp or sl on this pair all of the time or just on this trade? Have a good weekend.

[LearningToPimpPips]

Originally Posted by traderjosh

Just wondering if you are using 30 pips tp or sl on this pair all of the time or just on this trade? Have a good weekend.

I'm starting with 30. This seems like a good moving pair, but not as much a G/J.

My plan is to do 30 for scalp, and 50 for S/R and refine from experience.

When I go live towards the end of June, I will likely not live trade this pair until I feel more comfortable.

[LearningToPimpPips]

OK...

Week 3 wrapup:

Detail of trades:
short usd/chf 1.0310 out at 1.0280 loss 30 pips (-29.18)
short eur/jpy 1.6360 out at 1.6360 0 pips (-1.86 swap charge)
long eur/jpy 1.6392 out 1.6399 made 7 pips (+6.68)
long gbp/jpy 206.58 out at 207.00 made 42 pips (+40.14)
Short Eur/JPY 163.68. stop out at 163.98 loss 30 pips (-14.31 and -2.78 swap charge = -17.09)
Long GBP/JPY 208.07 made 39 pips ($131.22)
.35 lot short E/J 163.10, stop at 163.40 Loss 30 pips ($-99.51)

Weekly Summary:
-2 pips (+$30.40)
Weekly Beginning balance: $3,521.00
Current Balance: 3,551.40
Weekly return (+.86%)

Cumulative (3 weeks)
Pips: +83
$'s: +$787.13
%return: +28.4%



Goals:
75 pips /week


Pips needed for goal: 225

Lessons Learned:

The ones I stated below are very important in post #21.:

- I'm in the 209.00 break on G/J b/c I had an automated trade setup. I would prefer not to be in at this point. Need to pay attention to this.

Pending Trades:

E/J long scalp on 164.47 line
E/J long S/R trade on break of 164.97 line
E/J short scalp on 163.08
G/J short scalp at 202.55 and 201.50
G/J long S/R on 210.55
G/J short S/R on 206.55

[LearningToPimpPips]

OK...more lesson's learned over the weekend.

I am glad I am demo trading to learn the platforms and timing. I have 2 very valuable lessons over this weekend.

1) I lost 70 pips on a full position due to the significant gap down on G/J over the weekend. As I posted, I tried to close my position on Friday as I had not deleted the automated order for the 209.00 break on Friday. Apparently, my trading platform does not allow trading after 5pm on Friday's, which I missed by about 5 minutes.

Not a good start to the week.

long .16 lot (1.6 min) G/J 209.08 s/l 208.30 Loss 78 pips (-$118.58)

2) I had done some automated order cleanup for the weekend. Unfortunately, I deleted 2 potentially profitable trades:

In my pending trades section, I had deleted the E/J short 163.10 (scalp) and G/J short at 206.55 (S/R). I looked at the charts on Sunday night, but I forgot to reenter my trades for the week. Consequently, I missed 2 very profitable trades from my pending order list to the tune of over 100 pips.

Ughh...I am making so many mistakes while learning the platform.

I need to reenter automated trades on Sunday night that I close out on Friday to protect me from the weekend. And be diligent about ensuring my pending trades match my
entered trades and alerts.

Lesson learned as I could be up over 30 pips for the week even accounting for the loss on the 209 break.

3) My money management is better. I am at 3% on all trades right now.

4) I did have a successful smaller scalp trade today on the E/J 162.60 line. I entered a scalp for 30 pips. The trade got within 1 pip, and started to retrace, so I closed with a 18 pip gain. I learned from last week about not getting greedy over a couple pips.

.25 lot E/J 162.60 short scalp s/l 162.90 t/p 162.30 closed at 162.42 gain 18 pips ($42.95)


5) As the E/J was pushing downward, I saw that the 162.60 line was going to get broken based on the strong downward start to the week. I entered an additional short sell at 162.69 with a small position. Hard to tell if this was strictly emotional from the frustration for the trading fiasco over the weekend losing 70 pips due to human error, and not realizing a 100 pip gain due to human error.

Anyway, I did a 20 pip scalp here, and the price action was so strong down, that I got 22 pips before the position closed.

Recap
.07 lot E/J 162.69 short scalp s/l 162.89 t/p 162.49 closed at 162.47 gain 22 pips ($14.70)



Ugh...As simple as the trades look, it is difficult to manually keep pending trades, alerts, and automated entries in synch. I need to improve and focus on this.

THis was particularly valuable to learn about weekends.

OK...down 30 pips for the week and its early Monday morning.

I've learned a lot here...frustrated, but appreciate the learning experience.

Here's to a profitable week.

[rogan]

Mistakes are good because you'll learn from them for next time..

Good luck this week !!

[LearningToPimpPips]

OK...haven't posted to my trading journal in a while.

I've been really focusing on learning more about price action and patience on holding positions. I've entered many trade over the last week (60 to be exact) and made profit on 40 of them. Pretty nice huh?

Well, I haven't been using stop losses, so my account balance has actually declined by 1061.11 to a balance of 2374.91.

I have 3 trades that have contributed the most to the decline in this balance. A 580 loss, 380 loss and 225 loss. Outside of these 3 trades, my study has been break even....even slightly profitable. Also, 2 of these 3 trades would have ended up profitable if they were let to run a little longer; meaning only 1 or 2 candles more. ONe of the trades would have still been unprofitable and, had I left the position open, would be over a 500 pip loss right now.

I won't post the detail of the trades, but the disciplined trades I made were profitable and i think I had a 80% winning % on them.

I am done with my price action movement work, and feel more comfortable. In general, I need to let a trade play out better, but need the intuition to know when its a lost trade. Last night, I was in 2 trades that I almost closed for losses, but the price was ranging and not trending, so I let it go thinking the range would come back. Both trades hit profitable.

Although I don't like being in the market, I'd like to get in make pips, and get out, I understand better now what to do.