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You just reminded me that I was lucky enough to be able to do the same for my mom's last two years. Tough time but quality time and I'm better for it too. Best wishes whatever your situation.
Quick update.. My mom is about the same which is good. Spending a lot of time with her which has been awesome! I am managing to work in trading in a few days a week but the rest of time is spent on work and family. Worst part of the last couple of months is I cant get enough sleep. Typing this up now with my eyes half shut
As I mentioned, I have been working in trading where I can. I have had a lot of personal growth over the last couple of months; I have a plan and a strategy laid out on paper. I am progressing on learning how to trade just one strategy. I am not changing the strategy. I keep a personal journal everyday I trade. I understand the importance opportunity and risk. There has to be a balance between those two to make things work. I not sure I would have learned this without being in the TST combine.
Speaking of the combine; right now I am trying to determine which combine fits my trading style based on risk and opportunity. I have sliced and diced their trading business model every which way and I can tell you there is little room for error. My weakness right now is not holding the trades till they play out. I am always cutting them short and limiting my profit. I had a trade today which went 50 ticks higher after I exited the trade. Ended +30 but it could have been +60 or better.
As far as my overall goal; I have been taking one thing at a time and making good progress. I am still learning but each day I am becoming more confident. Today for example I started the day off really bad and was down 120 ticks. I fought back to BE by the end of the day. The best part was I was not stressed about being down. I knew the opportunities I had left and was comfortable with the risk so it came down to me having the patience to wait for my setups. This was an amazing feeling. I know for a fact I could not have done this 6 months ago.
Till next time.
Robert
Below is my trading plan at the 50,000 ft level
Have a plan (check)
Have a strategy (check)
Trade the strategy (check)
Learn to manage Risk (Continuing and ongoing)
Figure out what combine I should be trading (in progress)
Learn to take the trades when they are there. (in progress)
I have been exploring the different setups for volume profile and have found this one to my liking. The basic premise is to wait for a balance area to develop and play the breakout of price out of the balance area. Place a buy/sell stop about 5 to 10 ticks below the low volume area.
Over the past year I have put all of my focus into TST to learn to trade. A few weeks ago I got the urge to trade real money so I fired up the FOREX account which has been sitting with 10 bucks in it for a year and refunded it with $200.
This is the first time I have looked at a chart other than CL and the three sisters in over a year. My perspective on trading has changed; I was more concerned about losing money than I was making money. This is a departure from my thought process in the past where I always put how much I would make first. The irony is by focusing on risk I was able to make more money in the end. My main goal still remains to get a TST funded account but I am finding this diversion a nice break from the daily learning process.
Chart time frame: I did not want to day trade but I didnt want to hold for weeks either. After messing around with different chart times I decided to go with a 4 hour chart. Gives me a plenty of signals but I dont have to manage every hour of the day.
Entry Signals - Meta Trader has an extensive set of entry signals available so I started searching through their library and stumbled upon the Turtle Trader indicator. This is based off the Turtle Trader rules for entry. After looking at the charts I liked what I saw and went with it. I have 13 currency pairs I am monitoring. I am looking for pairs which trend 100 to 400 ticks and will be sticking with trend reversals. I am not interested in reentering trends on a second entry signal. The entries are discretionary meaning I will not take every signal. Example of this would be USD/JPY on Friday which had a huge 4 hour bar for the entry signal. Experience has taught me this is a high risk trade.
Position Size: In order to control my risk and stretch my money as far as possible I went with the smallest lot possible which is 1000. If there is one thing I have learned from TST is you cannot become profitable long term without controlling risk. I plan on experimenting with pyramiding additional lots once the trade goes positive. The Turtle method provides a formula for doing this which I plan on looking at in more detail at a later date. I may even use this for my TST trading.
Stops are set to 3% of account equity. This is a little higher than I want to be however it is necessary based on the movement of the pairs on the 4 hour time frame.
Results: Last week I traded NZD , CAD, AUD . I was three for three up 230 ticks. Equates to $23 when trading the micro lots. Made .83 cents in overnight carryover.
Robert
EDIT: Exits are discretionary. Right now I will exit on any sign of weakness.
Chart setup example with entry signals. Arrows indicate entries; dots indicate exits.