Trading Week Recap

I've been leery of letting BREAD (my primary trading robot) trade too much. I suspect prior tweaks have it taking too much risk. As such I kept it on a short leash and it only earned 0.9% for the week. Perhaps I'll have time to make some adjustments over the weekend.

On the discretionary front I was back down to a more reasonable 13% this week. Last week's 34% was probably some type of market movement vs trading style confluence. These thing happen.

In other news I have a new Bollinger Band based robot in the works. An early version of it was trading this week -- earning almost %1 as well. More trials and adjustments to look forward to!

UPDATE: No time to do anything Forex related this weekend.

Trading Week Recap

Since the trading robot, BREAD, was predominantly sidelined for the last couple of weeks I felt the need to do more discretionary trading.

While the capital used wasn't very large it felt great to pull in a 34% increase over the course of the week. If I could scalp like this all the time it would definitely spell the end of the day job. I have dreams of setting up a trading office with spacious rental cubes available for other traders. Rookie's trading pit.

Back to reality, BREAD on the other hand snailed along earning 2.4% and 1.7% over the last two weeks. Sometimes I think I live in Bizarro world when I have disdain for a 100% annualized rate of return...

In any case, I think the long tail of H1N1 recovery has finally come about. I should be able to concentrate both on my day job and on creating new robot strategies during evenings.

Thursday Robot Recap

Thursday was a very slow day.

The market was down. The yen crosses took a dive. Everyone is getting antsy about stocks, news reports, and the month of September. OMG, the risk! My robot snoozed for much of the day and had little chance to earn anything useful.

However, amidst all the whining I have to realize that being up about 4.5% for the week isn't so bad.

Regardless, I did tweak things a tiny amount. Basically, the idea is to keep the robot trading for a while longer during downturns. This can be done by shaving a little bit off of positions and forcing a little bit more space between trades.

It seems like a good trade-off. Earn a small fraction less during good days but enable more trading on poorer days. If things don't work out it will be very easy to reverse these minor tweaks.

I also created a new robot this evening. Of course, it's based on the current system, but somewhat simplified. It's running on it's own sub-account with a tiny amount of capital. So, rather than attempting major adjustments on something that is already proven, I'll once again get into an A/B situation and see if there is a clear winner between the two.

On another note, I'm wondering how simple a robot can be and still be effective. Something to ponder as I drift off this evening.

Wednesday Status

Wednesday was a slow day.

The AUDJPY was very quiet, which left little opportunity for my robot to extract revenue. In fact, with the DOW drop at the end of the trading day today we may be looking at a bit of a downward correction over the next little while.

My robot is not very active during downward movements. So, I'll get bored, worry about long term profitability, and otherwise be motivated to "do something" or "fix something" when I shouldn't. I must resist!

Anyway, while today was very slow, my currency trading robot did pull in 1.1% with over 4.3% for the week.

On a different note, I need to name my trading system. It would be nice to call it something other than "robot" every day. I could name it ARTFAB (A Rising Tide Floats All Boats) or something? Hmm, maybe FARTBAD or BADSINE?

Hey, BREAD might work... Basic Robot Earning All Day. Okay, tentatively, BREAD v1.0 is on the job. Unfortunately, bread is pretty passive, getting sliced, diced and toasted regularly. Zzzzz. I'll sleep on it.

Last Week's Results

I can hardly believe it myself, but last week my NAV gains totaled 97.5%, which is entirely incredible. Too bad I'm such a small participant.

No, unfortunately, this had nothing to do with my recent forays into developing an expert advisor. It seems that I've stumbled across some charting factors that provide me some measure of insight into market movements.

The market doesn't always behave, but when she does, it's great!

Edit: I forgot to mention that after the great results last week, I'm almost afraid to trade this week. How silly is that?

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.

Friday Forex Recap

This has by far been my best trading week...

I might have made more in the past but it was admittedly just hit and miss combined with patience. This last week I've been following technical indicators and doing more than just hope for the best at Bollinger boundaries.

Sunday PM through Monday PM -- NAV +3.05%
Tuesday AM through Tuesday PM -- NAV +2.93%
Wednesday AM through Wednesday PM -- NAV +8.2%
Thursday AM through Thursday PM -- NAV +3.9%
Friday AM through Friday PM -- NAV +1.1%

During the business day I've been able to take positions for hours at a time and generally end up ahead. In the evenings the market seems to slow down, but I am now generally able to scalp out dollars using the 1m and 5m in concert.

Additionally, when I am behind in a day trade or a scalping position I am often able to spot a good reversal point and take advantage of that with a second position. Doing this a few times can earn back the losses on the original trade -- assuming it still appears to be a good idea to hold onto it.

Some things I've realized this week:

• I now understand what people mean when they talk about not trading on Sunday or Friday. Now that I can begin to get a feel for the market I noticed that movement and opportunity were lacklustre during these periods.
  
  
• I can scalp! This is awesome. It's powerful to be able to scratch pips out of the markets whether they are rising or falling. It's nice to know I can do this if I have a position I want to hold but that is making me nervous as it accumulates a loss before the expected move.
  
  
• I don't know if these results will now be typical for me or not, but I do finally understand that it isn't impossible to work the markets and earn money.
  
  
• As well, I understand that I don't want to be trading around news events. If I'm carefully looking for technical setups, the last thing I want is some huge sudden movement due to news. Not only will this potentially catch me on the wrong side of a trade, but it may throw off my ability to analyze things for a while

I should note that my net asset value increases are not compounded. I do skim off most of the gains and push them into a much less risky sub-account. I have no idea whether or not I can trade with the same style when the numbers get bigger. The psychology of seeing larger losses mounting, or higher gains accrue, may throw off my style and keep me from making any money.