Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Thoughts: 11:10 A.M.

After finding resistance at its 2-month high of 1.3776, the Eur/Usd made a substantial move higher.  I got a clear signal using my aggressive strategy and entered a trade while the Eur/Usd was at 1.3765.  I think the next resistance level will be around 1.3820.  If the Eur/Usd brakes that level, I can see it going to 1.3973 before the month is over.  Just in case, I am running a trailing stop loss of 38 pips.

Now, I didn't get any clear signal in my conservative strategy.  There was a possible signal about 7 hours before the one I got in my aggressive strategy and which would have been incredibly profitable.  However, that was at 5:00 a.m. where I live and I was sleeping.  In any event, I think I can make the conservative strategy more profitable by increasing the trailing stop loss.  Currently, I am setting it pursuant to an ATR(10) on the hourly chart.  I will continue trading on the hourly chart but will now use the ATR(10) on the 4-hour chart to calculate my trailing stop.

Week 1: Both Strategies Up

Week 1 encompassed from January 24 through January 28.  Our conservative strategy started the week at $10,427.53 and closed the week at $11,418.41.  That's a profit of $990.88 or 9.50%.  I missed my target of 11.74% but I cannot complain about an almost 10% profit in a week.  If we could achieve $990.99 every week we could generate a nice income of $42,905.10 in a year, and that's taking two months off from trading. 

Our aggressive strategy did surprisingly better.  Of course, it is easy to be this aggressive when you are dealing with only $137.86.  We closed the week at $175.09.  That's a profit of $37.26 or 27.03%.  Would I try this strategy if I had $10,000?  I don't know, but I do hope I get the chance to find out.

As it stands, our strategies and the markets performed as follows:

DJIA:  Down 0.42%
NASDAQ:  Down 0.23%
SP500:  Down 0.53%

Conservative:  Up 9.50%
Aggressive:  Up 27.03%

Caveat: On Thursday we took long positions on the Eur/Usd, which closed down Friday some 134 pips.  Since these trades will close on Week 2, their profit/loss will be accounted therein.