|
|||||||
|
Well, I hit the reset button last month on Zen Trading. And no, I didn’t accidentally trip over the power cord or kick the power strip with my foot under the desk. I intentionally closed ALL my Zen Trades and started over. Why did I do that? Click here to continue reading January 2010 Zen Trading Results >> 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. January Zen Trading to come! Here are my Zen trading results for the past month. Click here to see the November 2009 Report (PDF) Final result was a +10.46% gain.* Click here to continue reading November 2009 Trading Results >> Mid September through October 2009 was the testing period for Zen Trading. There were a couple of bugs that had to be worked out but it is now a feasible trading system. November is the first full fledged Zen trading month and here are my results up until the third week. I also had to build an Access database to create this report. Initially in this post, I thought that I could get by with an Excel spreadsheet but because of the way I trade Zen, Access turned out to be the only way I could create the reports I wanted. This report still isn’t where I would like it but it’s a work in progress. Click here to see the trading results in PDF format. I was actually doing better in October so I still have work to do, but this is the first time in my trading life that I am consistently profitable. I was also on vacation for a week so I wasn’t trading as much as I normally like. If you don’t have a PDF reader, click here to download one from the Adobe website for free. Whew, a pretty good month. I didn’t make big money but I am geting more consistant. I’ll take that any day of the week. I was up $6.55 on a begining balance of $495.62 for a +1.3% gain on equity. I’m actually very close to getting back to my original deposit balance when I started this account. That doesn’t seem like much but is a major accomplishment for me. I had a total net of +120 pips and 64% winning trades. Here is my statement: July 2009 For August I plan to do a lot more backtesting on a very aggressive system and continue trading short term GBPJPY trades. Hope you are trading well! Hugh June was a positive month. Unfortunately, it was because of one trade that was a mistake. To me that is unacceptable because it wasn’t really because of my skill. I am feeling more comfortable reading price levels and have been studying Chris Lori’s Pro Traders Club more intently as of late. Here are my trades for June 2009:  Click above for larger image Here are my results thus far for the year. That blowup month in January is killing me. Right now, my goals are to get back to breakeven and add money to my account so I can make more substantial sums. Two winning months in a row, I want to make it three!
In looking at my results for June, I have realized that I don’t take enough risk on some trades. When I am right on these trades they don’t pay enough to make up for the losers. I have to make my risk per trade more consistent so I can pay for the losers. I also have to find a way to maximize my winners. This can be done by stacking positions or leaving a little of the position on. Although I didn’t have as many trades as I need to trade for a living, I had a pretty good month. Here are the May results:
Grand Total: +446 pips up this month, which equaled a total of +1.2%. It was the best month in awhile, but I can do better. Here are the trades for April:
Grand total: -668 pips Not a good month and not nearly enough trades. I need to figure out a way to do more trades (and improve the winning percentage of course). Here are the trades for March:
Grand total: -20 pips Although it was a negative month pip wise, I still was positive +0.1% on total equity in the account. One glaring thing about this month is the number of trades. 4 trades in a month?? If I am going to trade for a living, I have to do better than that! Here are the trades for this month:
Grand total: -261 pips Of course, all of the lot sizes were not the same but the net negative result is still a concern for me. This -261 pip loss translated to a 1% loss for the month of February 2009. This month started so well and then it went straight down the tubes. I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to reach my goal of being profitable every week. I guess I have to go back to the lab and do more testing. I had a win percentage of 48% and lost 3.8% of total capital this month. This is so frustrating, I just keep going back and forth, not making any headway!! The good things this month were:
I’m starting to pick up some momentum and I am feeling more comfortable in the trades that I am taking. This was my first month trading with Oanda and I must admit that trading fractional lots is doing wonders for my results and my ability to sleep at night! This month I made +2.0% and did a total of nine trades, with Click here to continue reading December 2008 End of Month Results >> I’ve been slacking on the end of month results, but here they are: This month wasn’t too bad, -0.6% with five trades, two winners and a winning percentage of 40%. This is about right considering that I was only trading box breaks. This was my last month with FX Solutions. Switching to Oanda and IBFX next month. I have to figure out a way to execute more trades. Not overtrade of course, but start to develop systems that are more consistant. Not a bad month in spite of the volatility. I was up 7.7% and I added some funds to my account to triple the account size. Hopefully that will help me set wider stops when necessary. There were 7 losing trades, 4 winners, for a winning percentage of 36%. I have to work on improving that. 8 trades -1.2% on the month. I got one decent trade of +100 pips, but it wasn’t enough to make up for all the bad trades. One thing that I have come to realize is that my account balance is a little too small. It is forcing me to set stops that are too tight in come cases just because I only want to risk 1% of total capital on the trade. I am going to deposit money in my account and get it to the point where I can afford to lose at least 100 pips on a trade and still have that only be a 1% total loss on the account. That should give me more breathing room to set the stops wider if the situation dictates. |
|
|||||
|
Forex trading is a high risk endeavor and may not be suitable for |
|||||||
