This week was a bit of a tough week and yet it was one of my more profitable weeks in a long time. Finishing with an additional 2.23%, I would say that I am quite happy with my results. (MSP System by jsmith133 | Myfxbook ()
Isn't it strange how so often we do better when the challenge is more difficult? I find that to be the case. This week is an example. It was a tough week to trade (The USDCAD is still quite a ways against me) and yet I had my 3rd most profitable week in 2015.
I think that part of the reason is because we really have to focus, trust our decisions, and believe in how we view the market. I, for example, strongly believe in horizontal support and resistance levels because they just seem to work again and again. (Without getting into possible compliance issues, that was not a strategy recommendation. If you want any kind of a recommendation from me - lower your trade size) This week I constantly found myself getting into trouble with trades - especially in my auto trader. Therefore, to wash out these losing trades, I had to step in quite a bit with some manual trades. So many of those did well. Very few of these trades off of the horizontal S/R levels ever went to their profit target. If I would have waited for them to reach their targets, then I would have lost money on them or just broken even. But how much does that suck to have a profit on a trade and then turn around and only break even or lose on the trade? This is the reason that I have become so comfortable with just closing profitable trades. Closing lots and lots and lots of trades when they are profitable makes for very nice trading returns in the year. Small trades sizes and closing trades when they're profitable - incredible investment education and advice!
Here are the results from my trading yesterday in one of my accounts:
Here is a picture of the USDCAD, of which I am very bearish on and have a rather large position (relatively speaking). As it climbed back up and tested this trendline toward the end of the chart, I added to my short position and took that off the table for the ~$14 profit that you see above. I had no desire to stay in it any longer because the goal of it was not to make a bunch of money. The goal of it was just to make a little bit in case something goes terribly wrong on my overall USDCAD position and this helps to supplement the losses. And, if it does end up going in the direction that I would like, then I will just be that much more profitable. And, being that this has closed below this horizontal support on the 60 minute chart, I am becoming even more confident that we will get a decent move down starting next week. (I may even add another very small position to this in order to get a few more pips out of this)
You could also see that I was in the GBPCAD yesterday in this account. The Autotrader got me in on a short position (shown in the chart below) and it immediately started going against me....like really going against me.....i mean, did I mention that it started going way way against me?
I saw a strong resistance level (confirmed on the Daily time frame) and so I shorted there and, fortunately, the auto trader shorted there as well. So this got me out of the trade with a decent little profit. Additionally, it was such a fast move down (CAD news release) that I got more out of the trade than originally expected. My manual trade that I entered I took with less profit than what the Autotrader did. That is because, once again, I just wanted to close the trade out having made some money. My goal is not to be moving into my dream home tomorrow, my goal is to be making money over and over and over again for a very very very long time. This is how you and I succeed in the market.
Did you see how far it went against me and how "immediately" it went against me? Sure is a good thing I had a very small trade size....and even with that small trade size, I still came out with a nice percentage profit on the day (1.01%).
So why is it that we tend to do so well when the conditions are more difficult? …