As you can see I'm not trading live at the moment; I'm still on demo but the good news is that I've remained profitable after a dip in the equity curve, I'm back on track. The main reasons for this, I think, is that demo trading is quite easy as there is no FEAR. When you have live profit at risk you'll often find/look for any excuse to take profits rather than have the market come back and turn a winner into a loser. I have done this many times in the live environment but not so on demo.
I have been employing a new intra-trade style whereby I will trade from one SR level to the next and then on reaching that level, close out half of the position. It then locks in some profits and becomes a 'free' trade. The best way of dealing with that trade after this is to (and thanks Trader_dante) keep the stop above/below the last low or high that penetrates an SR level. This seems to be working well. I also have to thank Beachtrader for his excellent blog and opening my eyes to the horizontal plane of the markets and paying attention to the most recent levels. I do still believe in the power of trendlines (thanks to Al Brooks' excellent book) but I try and eliminate all those that are 'spent' only keeping the most relevant. The only downside to TLs is that expectation that is attached to them; it stifles initiative sometimes and makes you enter the market with an ill-conceived idea of what will happen.
My greatest downfall is looking at fundamentals and 'thinking' I know what will happen. I firmly believe that if you choose the path of becoming a Tech Trader (Chartist) you must solely read the chart and nothing else. If you trade on fundamentals then you must be patient and have very wide stops, almost become an investor, not a trader. There is no edge in the news/ data as most of the big boys already know this and wait for the minnows to react to a news event and come in and 'fade' that news mostly. although I don't trade the news there are dedicated teams out there that do with a better bid/offer spread than any retail guys can get - so I believe there is little point.
Anyway, in the next few weeks I will be going live and recording all the trades here. I have a new spreadsheet to monitor all my trades and hyperlinks to charts, ratios etc. by logging all the trades here I will become accountable to myself and those that I choose to give access too. Whilst forums are great for learning in the live environment they can become distracting as people will always offer a counter reason for a trade and I have often been swayed by bad advice.
There are NO shortcuts in this game, no holy grail - only a chart, the market and you. The true grail is the person you look at in the mirror in the morning. (Thanks Strat!)
Thanks to Nicola (Elitejets) for providing the inspiration and continued friendship and mentoring to get me this far and for the steer to Strat’s thread. The only 2 threads I would recommend are Trader_dante's thread 'Making Money Trading' on T2W and Strats 'Long term stress free trading' ForexFactory. Stop searching for the Holy Grail, learn Price Action and demo for 3 months profitably before you commit live funds to the markets!
