Friday 17 February 2017

Demo trading still

Well I have traded a bit more on market replay with positive results. I traded live a little late last night. Up $200 in 30 trades last night. Market replay results get lost and forgot to log them. Was pretty tired last night and made a few mistakes just sluggish to exit some trades and didn't pounce when I told myself too and missed some moves. Talking 4 to 5 tick moves..

I tried putting the charts up and trading 6j, dollar yen. I much prefer 6e though. I found charts a really big distraction. I saw a small retrace of the low the other day and I was going to sell and it looked ridiculous on the chart.. I waited and down it came. So I closed the charts again.

We sent of for my sons passport so may not be long now. Maybe it's better to start in UK but I think I'm so finished with teaching it's causing me panic attacks pretty much. I have done this job too long and I work with really stupid people, crazy boss, weird parents. Anyway there's a big culture difference here, Hong Kong people work so much, life is about work and restaurants and whatsapp messages. They don't have time to think and explore and are very unobservant and it's time to go. Thank god.

So I taught so much recently saved a crazy amount exchanged to gbp on a good exchange rate maybe I'll start. I do have 900 pounds of rent and bills to cover each month though. Can maybe keep a few days of work. I feel like I need weeks to relax before trading though.

After losing so much money having a baby and moving back and forth unwilling to teach more after 5 years of it I put in 50+ hours of teaching, classroom time and doesn't include lunch breaks. Sometimes doing more than 60 hours of classes a week. I never get a balance always all or nothing. Now I want nothing and all trading as I got living expenses and trading money and good sim results. Actually when I was about 10 I told my mum I wanted to be a currency trader haha. But that changed to programming, which I did.. But I was open to all markets but currencies seem most interesting.

Tuesday 14 February 2017

Had a baby!

My son is now 6 months old. It's been a rollercoaster with going to UK then back to Hong Kong. He is half British and half Hong Kong. He is very cute and laughs alot.

It's been a busy time and I spent a lot of time out of work. Just no real desire to teach again but I moved us to a flat out in the greenery, near my old job and positioned myself to take work and went in strong. I got myself a good rate and worked 5 days a week and substituted one or both of the other days. Teaching 5 or 6 straight hours after lunch. I completely exhausted myself. The drive was my son and the fact I worked so hard 2014 to 2016, two full years and had given most of it back. With a good exchange rate and 50 hours a week teaching basic English and phonics I saved huge amount in 4 months. We're now getting ready to go back to UK.

Well, trading, to follow on I stopped trading the spread, I can't really remember now but I lost a few days of work basically overall and some time. The timing was bad, I was working and trading and my girlfriend wanted to know if I have finished trading. I felt it was so tough to sit there in the smallest flat ever with her literally next to me. Since then we're living in a village house. It's huge for Hong Kong and not really that expensive either as its pretty close to China.

So recently, I decided spreads are silly, why don't I at least try to trade. I have never properly sat down and tried to trade a market. So that's what I have been doing last couple months. I have been trading different markets but only 6e (eurusd) seems to work for me. I am kinda surprised I could do it. But I am still not happy enough to proceed. I have a couple hundred trades logged here and there on different Sims with realistic fills, FIFO of course.

Actually, before all this I spent my free time for some months making notes, thinking back to conversations at my old firm in London. Digging around for one useful thread, that was the toughest bit. Literally there's nothing that useful online. I know how successful people trade, I met them. Just I wanted to get more thought into it.

So I thought about the market and made notes, pages and pages on tape reading thoughts. Then after that I watched the market and then I purposely overtraded as I dont care about charts, overtrading, how I will change when it's real money and a this stuff, I trust myself and wanna improve.Everyone's so focussed on risk reward, which should be a loose framework around your trade, I believe. I just read all these posts and thought, ye so cut losers, run winners. It seems so ridiculous the stuff talked about online. If the market moves to this price then it will do this. So I think okay so you have no idea what it's doing but later and if it reaches this price you know it's likely to do this. What is this lol. I want to know why it makes fast moves and how to read the story and capture some ticks.

People say you can't read the noise, but I don't think so, in actual fact I wonder how you can read the bigger moves. Anybody can look at a chart and draw lines and says it's going up or whatever. But why because the price was here at these points so it will be there in a few hours.. Seems ridiculous to me. When I look at what's happening right now I feel there is something to read it's this so called noise that's constantly happening that's bringing a result. it's the noise I think that can give you a picture of what is happening and then you can try to second guess a little move based off that.

Anyway I kind of hate it when someone starts trading the next thing they do is then lecture about it.. But I just wanted to say I'm looking to trade small price movements. I don't want to leak all my notes about how price moves and what I'm looking at exactly, at least for now but just to say I'm sitting there on the sim, I have spreadsheets of percentage of being correct against ticks taken as an average after costs to see what kind of move I need to capture being correct this percent of the time and it seems due to cme's high exchange fees it's quite hard. Often I'm just taking what the market gives me and sometimes it's not all that much and if I think I should get out I will.. In the end I found a broker with very cheap fees and I have been averaging above the costs by a dollar or so and I can try to lease a seat later. For now I can't trade full time anyway but I cut my hours down at work, I needed too, already burntout. So relaxing and trading ready to start part time or maybe I'll wait until I'm in UK. Depends ify results keep up. I'll see.

Right now the goal is simply enjoy reading the market and improving. All this talk of I want 20 ticks a day or this percent per month. Who cares. Just can I beat this game. That's really interesting to me. I love watching the story unfold on the screen. Humans love to be more complicated. You know I played poker and every poker player who made good money over 200k hands knows new players love to play slow when there strong and quick or chase when there weak or drawing. But its actually the other way around, you have good cards, so extract value from it.. Then you can think about other stuff.. Just like in trading you want to follow the herd or take profit, book a win and become attached to the trade, just like pocket aces, new players have huge attachment. Ive really tried to look at it in as honestly as I can. I tried the same, I change my mind a lot actually. Don't hesitate and change your mind, new info comes and accept it. Beyond that I'm thinking deep about the tape and all that and I feel I have progressed from a few months ago. I'm getting burnt on other markets but I just love the 6e and will carry on logging sim trades.

Written in a rush but wanted to get a post up. Updates to come,  trading is tough so I hope I can really push hard this time. I got a better plan and well financed this time and not rushing anything, with back up plans in my mind also. Ha.