I am always looking at other blogs and trading forums, trying to find good ideas for this blog. Information that you could use to become a better trader: news, biographies, answers to problems or stuff you would just find entertaining. In my web surfing, I came across the term “The Trading Lifestyle” while reading through Raghee Horner’s blog and a Facebook group.
As I thought about it, I realized that this is what I am really going for with my trading and this blog. I want The Trading Lifestyle and I want to help you achieve it too (assuming that is what you want). But what does this mean? It will be different things to different people, but I think it is first helpful to consider the following quote:
“Wealth is what you have left when you have lost all your money.” -Roger Hamilton
Think about that for a second. What would YOU have left if you had no money?
To me, the most important thing about learning how to trade well is
One of the fun things about being a trader is being able to have multiple monitors. At some point it becomes ridiculous, but in my opinion, a minimum of 2 or 3 monitors can really boost your productivity.
Longer term traders may not need it, but it is very helpful for shorter term traders because they can watch multiple markets at the same time or work on a spreadsheet while having their trading platform open.
If you don’t want to open your computer to add another video card, I understand. We are traders, not IT technicians. In addition, if you have a small computer (like me), laptop (and want a third monitor) or a computer that is out of expansion slots, this may be your best solution.
Once you get Forex Tester set up, then it is time to test! Check out this video on how to start testing. Stay tuned for the next video on placing orders.
Well, my fancy ass Access database broke and it was just not worth the time to fix it, so I’m going to have to do this report manually.
Zen Trading in December was not as good as in November. I made $106.92 on a beginning balance of $3,064.23, for a +3.4% gain on the account.
There were a couple of big lessons that I learned this past month. First of all, it is not good to put limit orders on trades that are closest to the current price. This leads to cutting profits short and letting losers run. Initially, I did not want to lose out on small moves so I put in limit orders on all my orders. You know how that goes.
Secondly, I would prefer to close all positions out every night, or at least have a target where all positions are closed out. This prevents carrying losses for an extended period of time. I am looking for techniques to exit initial losers with a profit using the hedging technique at Oanda.
In addition, sitting in front of the screens every night has really been wearing on me. It can be fun at times, but when I get stuck, it is frustrating. Again, I think I would prefer to have a hard stop and profit targets out there.
You never know how much you need the data on your computer until your hard drive crashes. Working in IT, I have seen it so many times. Can you afford to lose the information on your computer? I’m not only talking about trading documents, think about the pictures, music and other personal files that you do not want to lose.
Fortunately, backing up your computer is easy.
Get yourself an external hard drive. You can get them from any electronics store or online. Make sure that it has enough capacity to hold all your data. Here is the one I use: Western Digital My Book Essential 1 TB USB
Plug it into your computer via the USB port, then plug in the power cord.
I would suggest formatting the disk first. After you plug the backup drive into your computer, be patient. It may take a few minutes for the drive to be recognized by the computer. If you are using Windows, go to Start –> My Computer. Find the new drive and right click on it. Select “Format…” and do a “Quick Format.” It will ask you if you want to erase everything, say Yes. Be sure to name the drive something that you can easily recognize. Many times, a drive will come with some backup software that requires you to purchase it after so many days. This is not necessary and most of the time they are just trying to get more money out of you.
Then you need to have backup software. Syncback is a free software program for Windows that I use to backup my desktop computer. Click here for tutorials on how to use it. There is a paid version, but the free one works well enough for me. There are other programs out there, so shop around. If you have a Mac, you can just use the Time Machine software included with OS X to do your backups. Most software solutions are easy to use and make it simple to create regularly scheduled backups.
One note of caution, I would suggest you use software that copies the files as-is. In other words, do not use a program that compresses the files or requires a certain program to restore the files. If you ever stop using that software or there is an error in the compression process, your data files will be lost.
That’s it! did you think it would be more complicated? Now there is no excuse to do regular backups.
Online backup is becoming a more viable option, but I have never tried it. It might work well and maybe I am a little too paranoid, but there is still some information that I would rather keep in my possession.
Do not wait until it is too late. In order to preserve your data, you must take a proactive approach to backups because you never know when your computer is going to crash. Backup regularly and as often as possible. Let the backup run at night so your computer is ready to use in the morning.
Today’s topic isn’t a pleasant trading topic but I felt that it might give you a few good ideas if you are in this situation.
I have never blown out a forex account, but have have gotten close when I used to trade futures. It is not fun. So many hopes and dream shattered. But if you really want to create a significant income from trading, you have to get back up on the horse.
So let’s say you have blown out an account and all your trading capital is gone. What can you do? Well, obviously, if you make more money doing other things like another business or a J.O.B. and can afford to fund another account, then that is the easiest way.
However, if you are like most independent traders trying to get good enough to make a living trading, then risk capital may not be so readily available. If that is the case, then here are five ways you can raise the money from the comfort of your own home.
The Monday Trade strikes again. This time, very swiftly…just the way I like it.
I put in my stop entry orders when the markets first opened and by midnight (my time) the trade had opened and closed for the full profit. If you don’t know what the Monday Trade is, click here for a full explanation.
My target this week just so happened to be the daily pivot (yellow line) because it was exactly 20 pips away from the weekly pivot (blue line). There wasn’t as much room to operate in this trade, unlike in previous weeks, so I didn’t make as much on the trade.
I stacked 21 lots as follows:
4 lots @ 6810
4 @ 6805
4 @ 6800
2 @ 6795
2 @ 6790
2 @ 6785
2 @ 6780
1 @ 6775
Total profit was 380 pips and a +5% increase in the account. Now what do I do for the rest of the week?
This step can be a little confusing when you first start using Forex Tester. In order to prepare the data for testing, it has to be processed so the program can create accurate graphs. Check out the video here:
I had a couple questions on how the Monday trade, aka The Monday Accelerator, works so I thought I would do a post on the setup so you can test it out for yourself.
Of course, this is not trading advice and should be taken as purely informational and for testing purposes only. It is something that I like to trade in the current market conditions, but it may not work for you or may stop working in the near future.
It is very, very risky and only you can decide if it is right for you by backtesting it with software and demo trading. Never trade a system just because someone says it works, always test it for yourself.
So to begin, I will show you how I learned it, then I will go into how my testing and live trading has altered it into something that I am comfortable with.
This technique relies on pivot points. If you don’t know what pivot points are, click here for a brief introduction from Wikipedia. For the Monday Trade, you are only concerned with the central daily and weekly pivots, you can forget about the other pivot points. I only use this technique on the GBPCHF because that is the pair it seems to work best with.
I closed all my open sell stop entries last night. None of them hit…not even close. It was getting to the end of the week and the market was too far gone. I’m looking forward to the next Monday!
I just got through reading, err, listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book Excuses Begone!
Even though this isn’t a trading book per se, I believe that it is important to explore different points of view when it comes to examining my own psychology.
I usually get the audio version of a book whenever possible because that allows me to do two things at once. For example, I listened to this entire audio book over the course of several sessions at the gym. I have finished other audio books while cleaning my car or sitting on the toilet. Audiobooks have to be one of the best inventions ever! But I digress.
If you have never read or listened to any of Dr. Dyer’s books before,
Did the recent restrictions on hedging, 100:1 leverage and FIFO affect you as a forex trader? Probably not. I saw them as a minor inconvenience and as ridiculous as they were, not enough to limit my trading. However, the CFTC in the United States has proposed a new set of restrictions on the US Forex market and this is how it can affect you as a retail forex trader.
Just the facts
First of all, here is the official CFTC press release and the actual proposal:
I haven’t done a video in awhile, so I figured I would get back into it. I think it makes things easier for both of us. Here is the status of my trade so far. It is still early in the week, but I’m not too sure if the trade will be hit. There was strong economic news out of England tonight which drove the market higher.
Here is a step that can be a little confusing, importing data to Forex Tester. If you have any questions, feel free to leave it in the comments section below:
I just signed up for Google Apps and I am very happy with it. As you probably know, the world is starting to move towards browser based applications and Google is one of the leaders.
Their Google Docs offering is a collection of free browser based programs that are similar to Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Since they run in a browser, they can be accessed on almost any computer with an internet connection, without installing any additional software.
I’m sure many of you also use Gmail, Google’s free email service. I have been using it for awhile and I really like it.
Apps is a paid version that offers many of the same features that the free products do. So you are probably thinking, “Why would I want to pay for something that I can get free?” Well, here is my Google Apps review and why I think it is worthwhile to use this service.
I had a couple questions on how the Monday trade, aka The Monday Accelerator, works so I thought I would do a post on the setup so you can test it out for yourself.
