This is the first time that I am tracking all my monthly trades with results issue. The date that I began to do that wasn't a monthly rounded day, therefore my first tracked month started from 26 October and will be 5 days longer than calendar month. I suppose this is not the last shift from the strict methodologies that I'll be trying to pursue during my tading career. I was initially intended to trade GBP/USD but I fail to validate this happy marching of GBP relative to USD based on my understanding of fundamentals. GBP seems to me to be no less involved in all this credit crisis and housing meltdown mess than dollar. Nevertheless it marched from 2.05 five hundred pips in a couple of days so that I hardly managed to shift my grid. Finally I lost all the entry opportunities without any firm inclination on the happening. I excused this opportunity loss by that "if you are not sure, you for sure don't want to be in".
So I traded mainly 2 pairs: EUR/USD and GBP/JPY. There are still some other very rare adventures to not to say that my second pair of choice is by great degree essentially "adventurous" by itself. And to the matter of the fact:
<u>EUR/USD:</u>
My most traded pair. I am generally bullish on the Euro because of all the known reasons, which are periodically being discussed by many researchers. The first buy was Q4 at 1.4374. After that I promptly shifted my grid to that with bottom at my first trade and up at 1.4816. It was mostly one way trip with dollar failing battle with all the Chinese revaluation, bad industry and banks performance, housing fears, which let little hope for dollar. Two trades were my bread and butter trade with 30-40 pips profit , while 3 others were manually closed with 100-115 pips profit. All took no more than 3-4 days. It appeared that with 350 pips move in a week I was too fearful and should better use moving stop-loss. At 6 November I opened one Q3 and one Q4 trade with firm intention to squeeze the maximum from them but here came 3 days with about 6% loss at the Stock Exchange, which triggered carry trade unwind with consequitive appreciation of dollar thus partially compensating the bad news influence. Everybody say dollar is lined towards 1.5 in a couple of months. It looks so, but when all are bearish I become to worry. I need to watch dollar carefully. If come back begins it willl be a long way back. At 9 November during 3rd consequitive heavy stocks decline I heavily downgraded my stop losses on EUR/USD much further than my grid suggests- kind of thing, which might be blamed of by each disciplined trader with strategy, which I am pretending to be. But why should I loss my position during momentarily return to dollar safe haven if I am sure in the general up trend? I really don't know and allow to myself. Will I be punished? "You never know until you bet".
<u>GBP/JPY:</u>
This is my "adventurous" pair. I has a long history with it and very upset one, but from the other side I pretend to feel familiar with this wild beast, the only key word in which is "carry trade". When everything is smooth the pair steps up steadily, when something unusual (China decline, housing slump, stock deep underperformance, funding crisis fears, big banks or hedge fund losses) happens it may fall like guillotine. Even at plain times day moves of 3 hundred pips aren't uncommon. It need to be played extremely carefully. In fact I use something different from my flagman 4x1 strategy. 2 upside trades initiated in late October on the wave of US interest decrease and growing hope of global credit release gave me some decent (relative to the pair proportions) pips. The downside play at stocks fall at 7 October gave some 180 pips and the next day there was first loss during 10 trading days and some douzen trades. I was pretty right on that the carry trade unwind will follow the stock going down but I was mistaken in timing and placed a close stop loss which is simply childish in this pair. As a result I not only missed a wild plunge of 470 pips but also took a loss of 41 pips.
So I traded mainly 2 pairs: EUR/USD and GBP/JPY. There are still some other very rare adventures to not to say that my second pair of choice is by great degree essentially "adventurous" by itself. And to the matter of the fact:
<u>EUR/USD:</u>
My most traded pair. I am generally bullish on the Euro because of all the known reasons, which are periodically being discussed by many researchers. The first buy was Q4 at 1.4374. After that I promptly shifted my grid to that with bottom at my first trade and up at 1.4816. It was mostly one way trip with dollar failing battle with all the Chinese revaluation, bad industry and banks performance, housing fears, which let little hope for dollar. Two trades were my bread and butter trade with 30-40 pips profit , while 3 others were manually closed with 100-115 pips profit. All took no more than 3-4 days. It appeared that with 350 pips move in a week I was too fearful and should better use moving stop-loss. At 6 November I opened one Q3 and one Q4 trade with firm intention to squeeze the maximum from them but here came 3 days with about 6% loss at the Stock Exchange, which triggered carry trade unwind with consequitive appreciation of dollar thus partially compensating the bad news influence. Everybody say dollar is lined towards 1.5 in a couple of months. It looks so, but when all are bearish I become to worry. I need to watch dollar carefully. If come back begins it willl be a long way back. At 9 November during 3rd consequitive heavy stocks decline I heavily downgraded my stop losses on EUR/USD much further than my grid suggests- kind of thing, which might be blamed of by each disciplined trader with strategy, which I am pretending to be. But why should I loss my position during momentarily return to dollar safe haven if I am sure in the general up trend? I really don't know and allow to myself. Will I be punished? "You never know until you bet".
<u>GBP/JPY:</u>
This is my "adventurous" pair. I has a long history with it and very upset one, but from the other side I pretend to feel familiar with this wild beast, the only key word in which is "carry trade". When everything is smooth the pair steps up steadily, when something unusual (China decline, housing slump, stock deep underperformance, funding crisis fears, big banks or hedge fund losses) happens it may fall like guillotine. Even at plain times day moves of 3 hundred pips aren't uncommon. It need to be played extremely carefully. In fact I use something different from my flagman 4x1 strategy. 2 upside trades initiated in late October on the wave of US interest decrease and growing hope of global credit release gave me some decent (relative to the pair proportions) pips. The downside play at stocks fall at 7 October gave some 180 pips and the next day there was first loss during 10 trading days and some douzen trades. I was pretty right on that the carry trade unwind will follow the stock going down but I was mistaken in timing and placed a close stop loss which is simply childish in this pair. As a result I not only missed a wild plunge of 470 pips but also took a loss of 41 pips.