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In my mind I saw forex as temporary, as I belonged to futures. In july there was a fiscal mess here in Italy that pushed many traders out of forex. I took the chance and went back to futures daytrading. Now the fiscal mess is resolved and we can trade forex again.
I'll try forex long term + futures news trading for a while.
I just made a winning news trade on 6G... 10 minutes and stop. Now going to work.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Ok, as I said before, today I did some news trading. I followed just two news releases and traded for a total of 20 minutes. No problem with my job as I can see a news trading just like a coffe-break, so no time pressure.
I did well (+$431.25), and my mind is clean. Let's see how it evolves.
BTW, execution at velocity was blazing fast during news time. However, NinjaTrader (chart trader) duplicated some of the trades on the sim account, while I did them only in the real account. P/L is splitted between sim and real account. During trades I heard "Stop filled" and "Target filled" several times, while having no open positions... that was a little scaring. Poor ninja, what a baby!
Some other good news trades today.
This morning I had a meeting with a client, which took all the morning. In the afternoon there were two news releases that I followed, scalping some ticks on 6C and CL. A total of about half an hour trading, with a result of +$240.
Regarding time, this approach fits well with my job. I will try to be consistent.
My first trades on CL, it is a bit of a monster, it can move very fast and abruptly. First two entries were stopped out after 1 second, the third worked.
Another day of news trading. Today I had some distraction but managed to close net positive anyway. Result: +$167.50.
So far, I'm loving this approach. I schedule the trading time the night before, so I have a clear time management during the day. Not bad.
After reviewing the last days of news trading, I realize I have to improve profit taking, in fact I usually get only a small part of the move after the news.
The month is ended and it is time to evaluate the results.
The first chart shows the month over month % return on account for the last 10 months, and the % equity line.
Until 06/2010 it was only forex position trading, from 07/2010 it was only futures daytrading (almost 100% scalping).
I was clearly more profitable in forex position trading, but I know I can do better with futures daytrading.
Starting from October, I will start forex position trading again, and will do both forex and futures.
The second chart plots the month over month % return on account and the boundaries of my annual goal, which is a monthly compounded average gain between 5% and 10%.
So far my actual trading (orange line) is in line with my annual goal. I'll try to make the orange line rising a bit more into year end.
My worst day ever. It's my fault. I deserve this for not being humble and for thinking I could easily beat the market.
After the first good news trade I started thinking "hey, news trading is working well, why don't hunt for more and make it a great day?". So I took many trades here and there, without a technical reason, and ended the day with a lost of $1192.
If I stopped after the first trade, this would have been an "average good day", which is certainly better then "the worst day ever", isn't it?
This is the first time I really felt overconfident and greedy, I recognized this feelings and was aware that it was bad, but I couldn't stop myself to go on. Greed is a beast, now I know for sure.
Lesson learned.
In computer programming there is the concept of "pair programming", where one programmer programs and the other watches and doesn't let the other make mistakes. "Pair trading" would be useful, for sure.
@jagui, glad you shared. It is beneficial to do so. Hopefully you will learn from this and not repeat it anytime soon.
It seems to me what failed you today was your execution and lack of discipline. Both come from experience. You gain experience by making these mistakes then learning how to not repeat them in the future.
"Worst day ever" type days are the ones that can and will completely ruin a trader, blowing their account up. You must learn to not allow these days to happen. It is bad enough that a lot of traders allow a bad day to wipe out one or two weeks of gains, but sometimes a "worst day ever" day can wipe out a year of gains. I don't know if this is the case here or not, but the point is that neither situation is allowed if you want to be long term consistently profitable.
So, I would ask you at this point -- what will you do to prevent this from happening again, if you've learned your lesson? And I mean what will you really do. Not just say or wishful thinking, but steps you can truly take, which means they must be simple, straight forward, precise steps that you can easily measure yourself on to determine if you are accomplishing them or not.
Not exactly. Today I was another person. Greed changed me and how I traded. From today I must learn to never be greedy anymore, so I can be myself at trading. Sure, I have to improve execution.
I'm well capitalized, so this is not a big hit on my account (about 3% loss). However, I did not respect my daily loss limit. It will never happen anymore. My daily limit is written in stone now. I wish trading platforms had a way to impose a daily loss limit.
Average good day. That's how all trading days should be. I was nimble, traded with humilty, and thanked the market for the few pips it gave me today. News trading as always. This is me. Result: +$275.
I'm adding the London open and the New York open and close as "news events", that usually have an impact on markets and occur at a specific time, so I can also trade these events during a break from work.
Next thing I have to improve is to take a little more profits. Usually I can get more from my positions. However I'm happy with a few ticks and a high winning rate, so I still don't know if and how hard I should try to push profits.