Trading Heroes

Here are the trades I’m watching going into this week. I have started testing double inside days on the daily chart. It seems to work pretty well but the jury is still out. If you don’t know what a double inside day is, click here for a good explanation.

These are squeeze boxes, surprise boxes and inside day trades.

- GBPUSD ID

- EURAUD SU. ID
- EURCHF SU, ID
- EURJPY SQ, ID
- EURUSD SQ, ID
- EURCAD SU
- EURGBP ID

- USDJPY SQ, ID
- USDCAD ID

- CHFJPY ID
- CADJPY ID

This is a great story of how an aspiring trade stuck with it and finally became successful.  Click here to ready more.

I just got back from New York and I had a great time!  I’m feeling a little sick though and haven’t been trading this week.  It’s too bad because there were some really nice breakouts in the past few days.  Anyway, I just noticed that it’s been awhile since I held a contest, so here it is:

The winner of this contest will receive the book How I Raised Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions - and You Can Too, By Annie Duke with David Diamond.  It is the story of Annie Duke, one of the best female professional poker players in the game; how she got her start and how she became successful.

click here to learn more about the book

There are many correlations between professional gambling and trading and this book may help gain some perspective into how to manage risk and become successful.

To enter the contest, leave a comment below with the following:

• Who is your trading hero?
• What do you like to trade?
• What one trading related thing would you like to learn about most?

Remember to leave your email address so I can contact you if you win. Winner will be picked by random walk. Contest ends November 30th, 2008. Good Luck!

This item on my wish list is something that I have been thinking about getting for awhile.  It is the Dell Inspiron 9 Netbook.  As the term implies, it is pretty much only made for checking email and surfing the internet.  At just over two pounds, you can throw this little thing in your purse and go! Not that I currently carry a purse, but if I buy a bag for this laptop, unfortunately it would look like a purse and for all intents and purposes would BE a purse.  To buy a bigger bag would defeat the purpose, right?

Anyway, I digress…I really like it because is it so small and light and has a solid state hard drive, so no moving parts to break.  All I would need to have on it is Windows, Excel, Word, Yahoo Widgets, Firefox and my forex trading platform.  The battery is supposed to last about 3.5 hours which is great for such a small package.

The only problem is that the hard drive is only 16GB.  But with only a few applications on it, that might not be a problem and I could always add a 16GB SD card for more storage space.  It would be great for trips and everyday tasks like updating this blog. The price is also very affordable, so if it broke on a trip because I accidentally sat on it while boarding the plane, I wouldn’t be too distraught.  I’ll probably pick one up after I make enough in my trading account to pay for it.

Check it out the current discounts now: Dell Inspiron 9 Netbook

Small size that is.  Small lot size of course. Get your mind out of your pants.

I got an email from a fellow trader commenting on my blog and he mentioned that Oanda has fractional lot sizes.  This would help me place wider stops when the situation requires it.  I was actually thinking about moving over to Oanada because they also have very tight spreads…most of the time.  The only drawback is that on the crosses, the spreads can get really wide if liquidity dries up.

Fractional lot sizes allow you to trade say 400 units instead of having to trade the standard micro-mini-full lot sizes of 1,000-10,000-100,000 units.  That can definately be an advantage if you want to take a really small position to test the waters.

I am seriously considering doing it.  My current broker FX Solutions has been great but I primarily picked them because of their great charting platform.  Now that I use Metatrader for charting, there is really no need for their charting platform and smaller spreads and fractional lot sizes would be a definite benefit.

I’ll let you know what I decide.

I will be on vacation starting tomorrow in New York, so I won’t be trading much.  I will post if I come across anything interesting while I am there.  My short and very flexible to do list includes the following:

• Museum of Modern Art
• Avenue Q (I’m not a big fan of Broadway musicals, too much singing and dancing, but this one comes highly recommended)
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Birdland (Jazz Club)
• Museum of American Finance (Yes I’m a nerd)
• Pro hockey or basketball
• Empire State Building
• Anything involving good booze and eats.

Do you have any favorite NY to do’s?  If you do, leave a comment, I would be interested in any NY secrets that you may have!

Not a bad little trade.

Long 1 AUDUSD @ 6894
Stop @ 6865 (-29)
Target @ 7267 (+373)

Took profit at 6969 (+75)

Breakout box is on the left.  I have to thank the Rob Booker webinar folks for alerting me to this trade.

click for larger image

Short 1 GBPCHF @ 8397
Stop @ 8457 (-58)
Target @ 8025 (+372)

Entered on squeeze box breakout.  Got stopped out for -58 pips.

Click for larger image

There wasn’t much confirmation from the other pairs, so I should have been wary.

I just completed another round of testing on the GBPJPY 1 hour charts, testing only the head and shoulders pattern. My parameters were:

• Look for bounce of right shoulder near the same level as the left shoulder.
• The bounce has to be confirmed by a candle that either shows a long wick at the left shoulder level or a sharp rejection of that level.
• Place stop 15-20 pips above the rejection candle of right shoulder.
• Target previous swing low/high and be sure reward/risk is >= 1:1.

Here are the results:

Read more »

I’m a hip-hop head and say what you might about the Jabbawockeez and their mainstream B-Boy success but you have to admit that they are pretty impressive to watch.