May 30 - June 3: What Goes Around Comes Around

We got nailed last week and then this week we did the nailing.  By taking profits every 100 pips and moving our stop loss we were able to pull a profit of 9.19% this week.   Right now our account stands at $3,576.73, which is 10.57% lower than it was in April.  Let's see if we can make up that difference before June is over.

I want to spend more time talking about the account I discussed in my last post.  The $5k account opened with FinFx at 1:200 leverage and allowing hedging.  Trading this account this week was the roller coaster of my life.  At one point early in the week, my open trades were losing so much money that my equity eventually was about 35% of my original investment.  Going from $5k to less than $2k in a matter of hours will clear your arteries...  and your bowels, too. 

To prevent a margin call and the resulting total meltdown, I closed my biggest loser and tailored down the positions opened throughout the rest of the week to not incur so much margin.  The trade I closed lost me a bit over $1k.  That's 20% of my account lost in three days.  I let the remaining trades ride out to see what happened.  Some of them went as far down as an additional $1k and others remained between $300 to $800 down.  At the same time, I made a few profitable trades that increased my breathing room a bit.

I know it sounds irresponsible, letting the accumulating losses ride out and increase the loss.  However, I thought back to last week.  Monday the market turned against us big time, we closed out our trades with big losses and the market turned back around. After looking at upcoming news, I concluded that, like last week, the market would again turn around.  I decided to put my money where my mouth is and so kept the losing trades open in the expectation that the market would turn around and either put those trades back in the green or at least let me close them for a smaller loss.

The market did turn around although not with the intensity I desired.  At market close today, I still have eight open trades.  Five of those trades are in the red although only two of those are of the original trades that brought my equity down to 35%.  The rest recovered and closed for a profit.  At market close, the equity in my account was at $6,219.53.  Not only did we recover that $1k loss from early in the week, we still managed to make a profit of 24.39%.

Returns of 24.39% in a week are incredible.  However, if trading this account next week will be as harrowing as it was this week, I will need to readjust the seatbelt in my wheelchair and get a prescription for Valium.  I don't know that I can otherwise handle the excitement.