jmot Wishes You A Happy New Year!

Posted by jmot in Thursday, December 31st 2009 under: General No Tags

It always gets a bit nostalgic when it approaches the end of the year. Time for a round-up. So how has your trading progressed this year?

My 2009 trading journey recap:

It is NOT possible to trade small timeframes when holding a full time job. Nope, not even the hourly or four-hourly timeframe. The psychology burden to get to the charts when the time calls for it is simply too tremendous. Whenever I need to access my charts, my boss is always asking for me. Murphy’s Law at its best.
Some daily timeframe forex trading systems have their own set of problems.
- Firstly, different closing times for the daily candle for different brokers.
- Secondly, for my brokers, the daily candle either closes when I am still in the traffic jam on the way to the office or during office hours (again!).
- Thirdly, when trading daily charts, trade opportunities come far and between. I got to monitor more forex currency pairs (and make sure they are not correlated). It is even better if I can monitor more markets.
Started to use EA for backtesting
Thanks to Max’s sharing, I have acquired many new and important concepts in trading from his amazing research in expert advisors.
Well, learning how to trade is still tough and I tried to identify the challenges.
Ah, I also attended 2 low-cost courses - 1 by Tom Yuen and 1 by Ray Barros.
The best trading book I got my hands on this year is undoubtedly “The Way of the Turtle“. The concept of “trading edge” illustrated at its best.

Some burning unanswered questions:

I am still trying to figure out how successful traders like Edward Ponsi, Tom Yuen and coconut trade in such a “carefree manner”. Edward Ponsi and Tom Yuen don’t even keep track of the success rate of their trading strategies.
Scale in - I cannot understand under what circumstance can a trader be confident enough to scale into their positions and how money management comes into the play when a trader is scaling into existing positions.

Looks like I still have more work to be done next year. Success always feel so near yet so far.

As the new year approaches, I’d like to wish you a FULFILLING NEW YEAR and MANY HAPPY 2010 PIPS AND TICKS!

inpost image by Normaron Fishion

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9 Comments Already

ck Said,

January 1st, 2010 @6:02 am

keep the faith mate… and keep reading and learning. it’s been a rough journey for me too… balancing career, business, trading and family.
let’s make 2010 a one to remember. happy new year!!… and great pips abd ticks to you too!
- ck :O)

michael Said,

January 2nd, 2010 @11:03 am

If it is still a rough journey, one learnt from the wrong teachers. Should be profitable if learn from real trader.

coconut Said,

January 2nd, 2010 @5:17 pm

“Thirdly, when trading daily charts, trade opportunities come far and between”

when you are not prepared, opportunities always comes at the wrong timing.

so prepare yourself first, who cares whether the opportunity will come or not.

January 2nd, 2010 @5:22 pm

“Edward Ponsi and Tom Yuen don’t even keep track of the success rate of their trading strategies”

if you just forcast on the risk, rewards will take care of itself. in another words, count your losses but not your profit.

January 2nd, 2010 @5:46 pm

“Scale in - I cannot understand under what circumstance can a trader be confident enough to scale into their positions and how money management comes into the play when a trader is scaling into existing positions.”

you forgot about “scaling out” of a position as well.

look, following trend is difficult to learn, even for the “trend following” guy like you.

not until you know how to follow a trend, would you be able to know how to scale in and out of a position.

you have no basic to do it, no proper system to rely upon, it will render you absolute confusion.

you can’t properly following a trend becos you are too forcast on your money on hand. you will ask, if you don’t cut your profit, it will be surely be gone. and this is only part of the problem but a big one.

so if you are lucky enough to be in a trend, tell yourself the profit/money is not important. just follow your proper trend following system.

so the question is, do you have a proper trend following system?

January 2nd, 2010 @6:05 pm

oh yes, your trading system should also be able to tell you where are the opportunities in the markets, look at all the markets, not just currencies.

how about the bonds, the trend following guys out there are searching for a short position (not me).

stocks, the professional are still waiting for a entry point that didn’t comes.

ya the yen, i’m still waiting for my next entry, still early though, the trend had hardly started.

the gold, hmm, i might want to short it if he allows me to.

how i know? not only i watch the market closely, i also have my “fishing net”, my system all ready, just waiting for them to fall into place, into my “net”.

January 2nd, 2010 @6:23 pm

but i must says i have a weakness in my system, i can’t chase a run away market, always missing it.

may be some one is kind enough to help. or may be it is as far as i can achieved and no more.

Forex educator Said,

January 6th, 2010 @11:21 pm

Jmot, happy new year to you. I had found my own proven system, good luck in your findings.

MIBLUE Said,

February 1st, 2010 @9:14 am

You may want to try http://www.getforexalerts.com. They have trading alerts.