A better entry

As I wrote in the previous post, entering at the resistance and going for the breakout is dangerous for my approach. Today I entered at the local temporary roof, as price was doing little HHs and HLs and could move up. Price moved back, just 1 pip above my stop... (and the doctor told me : no stress!..).  Then price reversed and I had some gains. A better entry is pointed by the arrow, on the MA.

Preparing for the break

I have stopped trading in the last days because of a health problem. I had only these trades a couple of days ago. As price was going to break the resistance (previous high), an intense movement forward and backward took place and my stop was hit. It was too risky to widen the stop, waiting for the almost sure (?) breakout. I have done this in the past and payed  a lot.. A tight stop method like mine is vulnerable when applied on breakouts. That's why I apply it mostly when price is in a mid-range.

Bye bye Steve

"Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” 


“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Last hour

Last hour of the US session. I had the last ticks of the extreme sell off, then I felt that the market was going to correct a little before the bell. But anticipations are theory, I wait to see that on the chart.

Anatomy of a loss

Late session again, just before the Friday's close. First trade entered late and gave a predictable loss. Second one was even worse, a revenge trade. I had to close it at my max acceptable loss, -9 ticks and then price reversed (as always happens). The two winners who followed were correct. Total -2,5 ticks. I was tired and despite that I spent my time and some money in front of the monitors and missed also a night at the movies..

Bits

Not much on this late session (busy week for me) when market is calm, preparing for the last move before the bell. Not expect more this hour, although I could initiate the last trade much earlier.

Swing

Opus

  Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar: The Technical Analysis of Price Action for the Serious Trader (Wiley Trading)
"This is not a book one can read. It is for study. One who studies this book is immediately faced with a challenge, visualize every phrase with what you have seen on a chart".

I was reading this in my hotel nights. Not suitable for the newbie, not a easy piece of trading study but it is the best book on price action I have read so far. There are many faults and repetitions and the writing is dry at best. Al Brooks is a serious man and he makes your effort to grasp his opus as big as possible, in order to increase your own effort!.. He is clever but also scholastic. He lucks one quality only : intuition. Trading is also intuition.

Back to trading

Back to charts, after a week of business traveling. I missed all the sound and the fury of previous days but I kept my rule to not trade in hotel rooms.

So today I followed the ES decline and had some ticks of gain. On the same time I was examining the collapse of the euro on an other monitor. It was tempting to follow this, as the gains could be much higher there, but I feel more secure on ES future now. More "stable" market, no slippage or price hunting, as I wrote before. I may trade again the euro in the next days, when it calms down. No casino feelings for me anymore..

Straight opening

No tricks at this NY opening : a straight, easy to catch, move up and then, boredom.

End of week

Quick gains and the priviledge to close for Friday and week early.

Risk

Risk taken at the last trade. But risk is considerably lower on E-mini trading (compared to highly volatile eur/usd). So this instrument "begs" for higher stakes with lower targets.

Day 3

One more day with S&P future and I am more than delighted! Razor-sharp precise moves and executions, no instant pull-backs (just to hit my 6-8 pips stop), (almost) no spread or slippage, the lowest commission and the profound sentiment that THIS is the scalper's instrument par excellence. A scalper can here enter trades with 10-20 contracts (or more) whithout fear of slippage or stop hunting due to lack of liquidity,  and go for 2-5 ticks easily and with minimal risk.

I entered a short at NY opening (16:30 my time) -tricky time- and got a loser. The rest was quite simple. 22 pips (I should say ticks! lol) today.

ES again

A few ticks here and there, on ES again.

New toy

I am a Gemini by sign and conviction : I cannot stay in one place, occupied with just one thing. Although profitable on the eur/usd market, I started, during my vacation, to study (off-line) the S&P future's charts. What I liked most was its smoothness : rarely violent events, but quiet, peaceful moves up or down. Much less stop hunting, due to the HUGE liquidity (10-times the eur/usd liquidity), which makes the false moves more difficult to produce. A perfect micro-climate for the scalper. I realy admired how perfectly (technically) the market is moved by the big guys : I only need to follow them.

So today I had my first live trades with the new toy. I traded just 2 contracts in a lazy, post-holidays session, while euro was completely flat. The first trade was wrongly entered far away from the median and it was inevitable to close it with a loss. Last trade could go further.

August

Eur/usd was in an almost perfect stuttering mode during my absence. Obviously the stakes are elsewhere for now : on eur/chf (spectacular drop on Aug.9th and rebound), on S&P future, not mentioning Gold of course. It is again the "casino fever" feeling in the markets (which I profoundly dislike), due to new fears about world economy.. This mentality is dangerous for a scalper, it can keep him trading endlessly and greed is the best way to lose money and your mind.. I will try to trade less and selectively in the next days..

Back from heaven

All good things come to an end, so did my vacation on the mountains and lakes...I was running around this lake every morning in the past weeks..I am back now.

Vacations time

I am on the mountains with family now and i intend to stay here till Aug. 15! My happiest period of the year, I am delighted to spend all my time with the kids, in a splendid location. No internet connection, but the ipad works full time (off-line), with pre-loaded books and the daugthers' games.. Euro can move up or down, i can hardly notice that.. Enjoy your summer you all!..

Going with a pace

Late entry - early exit

Post-NFP

Despite my false direction at the start, I took fastly (10 minutes) my 20 pips for the day and closed charts.

You must be fast

First trade was an easy one : last move up propulsed by the previous steam and sharp move (see the slope of the band). I knew it was probably a little move and because of that I closed at +5, almost at the peak, not waiting for more. Second trade is the best of these three : closed at -1, as soon as I felt the price immoblity (=reversal). Third was to cut the flower at the peak again and get out fast.

Strong bias = dangerous trap

The strongly biased market of the last two days (sharp decline of the euro) made me trade whithout a safety net. Price went to -13 on the second trade (as the max. -10 stop was unefficient yesterday) and I was ready to close with a big loss, as the correction could drive much deeper. Suddenly the price scetched a local lower high and dropped like a stone! I closed at +5 and I couldn't believe I was on the positive side!
Not very professional trading, really...Like a newbie, again..

Going down (obviously)

Free fall after Portugal downgrade, everybody was sure the euro was going down sharply, except me. This hesitation produced mediocre entries-exits. Average execution generates also bad luck : price reversed in my favor exactly after I was exited with a 10 pips loss (7th trade), the maximum loss I could accept.

Funny (phony?) stories

The latest and shortest joke has just 3 words : American judiciary system!!!

I knew for the very beginning that all this stuff was a bad b-movie, pure (and poor) creation of a mediocre screenwriter. That's why I was mad (and I wrote here) about the treatment and the public demolition ("perp walk" etc) of the man who would be the next president of France.

 At the beginning of this cheap story, the maid was a "honest and hard working woman". Now she is a liar, a "hooker" or simply a manipulated person or an agent. It took 2 months to the NY police and attorney to know who the maid really was. Enough time for Strauss-Kahn to step back from the head of IMF....

""The justice system is already screwed up - too many innocent people wrongly convicted and no way out. DSK's money saved him, never forget that."' (a comment from a "deep America" reader, in the NY Post tabloid).

Money is not that important

All the money of the word cannot bring you the joy of life of this young lady, the hapiness to sing in the streets with friends...

Day off

Day off today, as the June target was met and cannot jeopardize this on the sometimes sharp month's fixing (last day of month).

Enjoy the day

Target met in 50 minutes. Closed charts and pc after this. Euro may reach 1.44, 1.45, who cares.. Time for reading, swimming or music now.

Tuesday-2

The daily target of 20 pips was reached with these, but at a price! Huge risk taken twice, big anxiety..

Tuesday-1

I insisted too much on the -8 trade, despite the fact that price was fighiting against a previous high on the hourly. Last trade closed in time, because of this.

3 trades a day

My fear with trading is always the same : to be trapped in the spiral of endless overtrading. Today I had a day which I consider as the perfect one :  reaching (almost) my target (20 pips) in just 3 trades, in less than an hour.  I can't stand the continuous stress, all day long, in front of the monitors anymore, I must care about my health and I have to make my pips with high stakes in the shortest time possible. Life is elsewhere..

Going up and reversal

Last trade closed at the middle of the move because, at this point, I totalled my 20 pips/day target and I wanted to secure this and stop trading for the day!

Last chance

Got the last train to go south, after missing the previous (and safer) opportunity to do the same.

Up and down

I insisted too much on the wrong direction on the first trade and got a -8 in no time. The gains came after this, in a natural way, just by following price.

Extension

On the second trade of this, 1/4 of position was closed as soon at it got positive, at +1. I had the fear that price had overextended north, so a correction was very probable. Despite that I left the rest of position to run with stop at breakeven and closed 1/4 at +10 and the resting 1/2 at +10 also but a few moments later.

And this

Price following

A few moments later, it was easier to follow the price and make some gains, keeping always a tight stop.

Casino thrills

I was lucky enough to close trade a few seconds before the madness episode. It was 5 minutes after the news and with no particular reason, price dropped 70 pips and raised 80, all in 19 seconds!!! How can anyone trade under these conditions and stay alive? Forex becomes a casino little by little, with all the thrills and the suckers hooks of a casino. I feel a growing deregulation of the currencies market and a wise man should stay aside for a while.

At the very same time of this episode, the ES future (S&P index) was calm like a zen garden. I monitor this instrument also in the last weeks and I now understand the thousands of traders who trade this for an income. No big thrills, quite, steady moves and more safe to gain a few ticks here and there. More soon..

Post NFP with futures

Tight stop (6pips) saved me on the first case and putted me out of the trend on the second. Total 21 pips.

Move up, twice

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.