Christmas Week Trading Results

Between the thin trading volume and the holidays there wasn't a lot of opportunity in the Forex markets this week.

In any case, I did manage to eek out a 7.5% gain in net asset value.

This has me thinking. If I was to build up an account balance of approximately $20,000 and maintain gains of 5% or more per week then I'd probably be able to think about quitting my day job.

This task seems doable.

However, at the same time, I have no plans to quit my day job. First, I rather like my current job. Second, it's a lot easier to build up a stake while you are gainfully employed and not relying on profitable trading. I'm pretty sure the added pressure would ratchet up the psychological intensity.

Recent Trading Results

First, some recent results:

Week ending 28-Nov: +23% NAV
Week ending 05-Dec: +08% NAV
Week ending 12-Dec: +10% NAV
Week ending 19-Dec: +45% NAV

This is silly! I'm going to outline some of the events that transpired to help this happen.

During the week ending 05-Dec I acquired some AUDJPY positions in the 58.xx price range. I had a nice trend line indicating that this was likely to be a support point and it turned out to be one -- several times.

Considering the bottom relatively safe I would buy other positions at local lows... making sure to leave enough room for a retest of the 58.xx lows. Obviously, this was quite risky, but at the time I did not have significant capital in the account so I didn't mind risking some calamity ripping the bottom out of the AUDJPY.

So, with that in place, I'd track where I'd bought and sold positions, slowly lowering my entry points and average position price. Then, later, as we all saw, the price spiked massively and pushed all of my positions into a sizable profit.

I don't know if this is something that I'll be able to repeat. Some reasons include increasing my NAV to the point that I'm not as willing to take risks, trying to execute a swing trading strategy which makes it difficult to accumulate positions, and the difficulty in developing confidence in a bottom point.

Finally, this was a challenging week. With the wild gyrations taking place every time the auto bailout shifted sentiment it was difficult to jump into the market. Who knows if a massive spike or drop would go against a current swing trade? While I am a fan of volatility, I've realized that it would be nice if it the market wasn't actively volatile all of the time.

Trade well.

Yen Cross Spike

Guess who was lucky enough to wake up at 4:00am this morning?

At around 4:20 there was a massive spike in my AUD/JPY holdings. I'd accumulated some positions on the way up from 58.xx and unloaded them as it made a 63.xx rocket launch. Checking out my news sources it seems that various stops were triggered. Given that market conditions were thin the price went nuts.

Anyway, though my open trades had been hampering the idea of swing trading, I've cleared my plate realizing a 36% one day NAV gain. Holy crap.

I have to say it was hard to unload my positions while the price was going through the roof... but now, as the price dips, it was obviously the right move.

Wednesday Forex Gains: NAV +8.2%

Like the title said, today was a great day!

A short morning session yielded two or three percent. The rest of the day went very slowly, but I was able to wrestle pips out of the market again and again.

Basically, I'm watching charts very closely, looking for setups. I've got some work to do to improve my timing, but in general I seem to have a good collection of indicators that keep me from getting into trouble very often.

When a setup happens, I drop in a position. Generally, I'll switch from currency to currency, on the 1h, looking for things I am fairly confident will move in a way I can predict. Once I have those, I may check the 5m, looking for the same indications, as a means of entry timing.

What seems to happen is that sometimes I'll be right, and sometimes I'll be wrong. The positions that go well end up hitting take profits. At that point, because they are reasonably well chosen, the market will often reverse and give me an opportunity to exit from the positions that weren't previously winners.

Anyway, the real key, at least for me, is having a series of indicators that give you a very high probability of being able to make a prediction. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to get very precise and tell you my setup. Though people often say that it makes no difference how many people know something, it does. If everyone knows the same thing -- then some people will anticipate that thing and in doing so change the price dynamics.

Trading Week Recap

It's been a great week.

I've been able to apply a new strategy dealing with negatively correlated pairs and I've also been able to put together a couple of reasonably successful days by working to curb my greed and waiting for appropriate entry times based on my signals.

How successful were these last couple of days?

Yesterday I increased the NAV on my high risk account by ~5.6 percent. Today I blasted out a very nice ~7.3 percent. Holy crap! This makes two days in a row that I've taken a good portion of my earnings and transferred them into a long term low-risk carry trading account.

You may be wondering why I do that. Well, it's very likely, perhaps probable, that I'll eventually blow up my high risk account. So, when it's profitable, I move my earnings to a safe place so I can continue to risk an amount I'm comfortable with. Obviously, I want to earn and protect more than the entire NAV of my account before eventually blowing it up. Then it will be time to learn from my mistakes, re-fund the account, and try again.

So, the method to my madness is that it's a lot more fun, or exciting, to participate in high risk big return speculation. As I get better at this I am able to generate a net overall positive return -- which I then put to work in long term carry positions at very low risk. This means I get to have fun every day, mixed with some hair loss on tough days, as well as building a slowly increasing carry trade income.

In the long term, this might work out well.