No trades -enjoy music!

Bank holiday today, no trades, a day devoted to music, listened at least 25 lps since morning. Among the new albums, the latest of my favorite jazzman of the new generation, the sublime Marcin Wasilewski from Poland, the fantastic "Faithful". Lyrical and genius.

The secret garden

Trading room moves outdoors

For those who asked about my (very simple) configuration : here is the outdoor trading room in my garden (from May to Νovember). An ordinary Vaio (i5 proc with 4gb ram, Win7/64-bit, main and backup connections) connected to a 23'' monitor (with 3 NT charts, DOMs, spreadsheets) and a ipad for news and browsing, plus a pair of good loudspeakers for listening to music (all the time). And Rocky, the pupil.

I am well protected against the rain and the sun. My only worries are a few ants who fell off the pine tree above and try to find warmth inside my laptop...

I love outdoor life and I am a better trader outside. A lot of ideas come to my mind, here, under my pine tree..

End of trend

Trends are like old stories : they have a beginning, a middle and the end. You can't catch a story or a trend at the end. Here I got some lousy pips at the start of the move and then I missed the main part of it. Because of this, I insisted to continue long, while the steam was getting less strong. Result : two consecutive losses.

Three parts

Entering late in the trend and scaling out trades in three parts, in order to avoid a reversal. Besides that, some risk was taken on the 3.66 trade.

Going down

Going up

Going up with lousy trades and serious risk taken at the end.

Moscow trials

In a civilized country like the US, a few NY cops and a low-rank judge named Melissa can easily destroy a man like DSK, on the simple accusation of an other person. I know, I know, the presumption of innocence is a vice of the "old Europe", where the human rights (of the criminals too) are respected.

I am still under the choc of seeing a man  I admire, presented in a show, as a  trapped beast (an old lion in a circus), as the new Al Capone,as a serial killer. This could never happen in Western Europe.

Second attempt

A few more trades below the 1,4270 resistance. I didn't believe that the breakout was imminent, so I closed every time the price approached the "roof" and on the slightest pull back. Obviously the strong move was the other way round (down) but I had already stopped for the day when that happened.

Attempting a break out

I came late to this, while price was trying to break 1.4270. Only two trades, as a range below the roof was profiling.

Going down slowly

DSK

How can a (very) clever man be trapped in such a pathetic and cheap american b-movie plot?

Again

Scaling out

Futures are perfect for precise application of scaling out positions strategy. On most of these trades, I closed 1/3 of position at +4-5 pips and waited more  for the 2/3. That's why the decimals here, they express average win/loss.

Afternoon

Only two

Back to morning sessions with two trades only. Clean futures market and fills, entries with stop limit orders, 0 spread.

Splitting, again

Unnecessary fragmentation of a move into several trades, due to the tight stops, moved to breakeven once in profit.

Self-confident (?)

On the -5 pips trade I took an enormous risk, as the result of a strongly bearish market, which makes you deadly confident . It could be a disaster..

Post-NFP with futures

The amazing thing with this is that I was able to enter a trade a few seconds only after NFP announcement, as the spread was already at 1 pip and that was quite impossible on the spot market, where a large spread is present for a minute at least after announcement.

Microsurgery

One important gain at the beginning and then super conservative treatment of the uptrend, as price was at 4H cart resistance. All but one entries/ exits were filled at 0 spread and whithout slippage. 20 pips with less expenses than usual and precise, pain-free trades.

Scalping + futures = Microsurgery.