Week 4: Join me as we find out how quickly can I lose $1,040.73!

This week was another double digit week.  I needed this shot in the arm as last week's similar losses had me doubting my new investing system.  Still, this week's gains were not enough to put me back on target.  Had I achieved my goal of 10% weekly growth, with compounding I'd be up 46.41% right now.  As it is, I am up only 41.34%.  I am hoping that with the lessons learned from Week 3, I'll be able to limit my losses and get back on track.

Another thing that is getting kind of tricky is how much should I increase the size of my trades as my account keeps growing.  I obviously have to increase the trade size in order to keep the same percentage growth on a growing account.  However, if I increase it too much or too soon, I run the risk of sucking up all my margin and wiping my holdings.  This actually happened in Week 3.  So far, I have settled on increasing 1 mini lot on one of my strategies every time the account goes up $500.  Next mini lot increase is when the account reaches $2,000.  Hopefully, in 3 weeks.

Starting Capital:     $1,040.73
Current Balance:    $1,470.97

Performance:    41.34%

Week    Performance
  1                13.14%
  2                17.71%
  3              - 10.54%
  4                18.62%

CAS

Week 3: Join me as we find out how quickly can I lose $1,040.73!

Last week was our first losing week.  Even though we did recover a good part of the initial loss, we still closed the week down 10.54% from when the week started.  A lot of the people that post on the forex forums I read also had similar losses so I will chuck it down to the market and not my strategy.  I hope this week proves to be a bit more sane.  The whipsaws and fakeouts of last week were just crazy.  Funny enough, I run a second account that had about $680 when the week started.  I tried some short term conservative strategies in that one with no aggressive strats.  That account actually went up 5% for the week.  Maybe I should keep track of both accounts to see how the strategies compare.

Our current performance is not bad.  I certainly won't complain if after 12 months of trading I end up averaging 6% per week.  However, I am shooting for 10%.

Starting Capital:     $1,040.73
Current Balance:    $1,240.02

Performance:    19.15%

Week    Performance
  1                13.14%
  2                17.71%
  3              - 10.54%

CAS

Join me as we find out how quickly can I lose $1,040.73!

Ok, I funded my forex account this year with $3k.  Following the advise of "experts", it went down to $1,040.73 in one and a half week.  I decided to diversify currencies and mix long term with short term strategies from different books and online seminars, instead of following gurus.  I started this experiment on Oct. 1, 2012.  It is going so unbelievably well that I decided to share it publicly.  Of course, appearing too good to be true, I'm sure it'll blow up in my face sooner or later.  Until that time, I'll post weekly updates so you can join me in this train-wreck-about-to-happen.  Below are the results of my two weeks of trading.  I'll send you an update next week. 

Starting Capital:     $1,040.73
Current Balance:    $1,386.05

Performance:    33.18%

Week    Performance
  1                13.14%
  2                17.71%

Gotta luv the power of compounding!!

CAS

Why I Am Keeping The AudUsd Short

If you have been following my tweeter feed, you know that on April 23, I shorted the AudUsd at 1.02899, after it broke resistance at 1.02979.  It went as far down as 1.02461 on April 24, a profit of 46.8 pips  Since then, the position is down some 51 pips.

Since April 13, the AudUsd has been experiencing a series of lower highs, as you can see by looking at the red trendline in this 4-hour chart.  I am hoping this trend will continue, so I will keep open this losing position.

If you are an Elliot-wave theorist.  You will probably notice that the 5th wave closed on April 24.  Thus, I expect some sideways movement.  Maybe a breach of the trendline, not to exceed 1.03902 for a few days.  At that point, I'll reevaluate whether to close the trade or give it some more room to play out.

Creeping Back

Wow, it has been a long time...  since June, huh?  To make a long story short, I've been losing my shirt and more by relying on expert advisors and the like.  Changed strategies for the month of October and profited a bit over 19% on my FinFx account.  Went back to expert advisors in November and they blew up my account.  Something like $23 left on it. 

The big $10k account that was posting double digit profits at the end of 2010 was down to $1,873 Monday morning.  How do we turn $1.8k back to $10k in seven months?  Stay tuned to find out.

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.

May 23- 27: Giving It All Back, Again...

Wow, what a crappy Monday!  Woke up Monday morning to discover I had gotten stopped out of a bunch of trades and the technicals had changed in a bunch of other trades.  Thus, started the week giving back all my profit and incurring a slight loss.

All that changed Wednesday.  We went long on the AudUsd, EurUsd and the GbpUsd, and shorted the UsdJpy.  I guess my opinion on the US Dollar is pretty clear as I just bet against it almost every which way I could.  Following my strategy of taking profit every 100 pips and moving the stop loss, by Friday we had already recouped our loss and were in fact about 0.1% in profit not counting our open trades, which are right now up an additional 0.54%.  Small steps, lets see where they take us.

On Thursday evening I started trading a new account funded with $5k.  I opened it with FinFx in Finland.  Contrary to stateside brokers who limit the leverage in your account to 1:50 and do not allow hedging, FinFx gives 1:200 leverage and allows hedging.  Just like I did for Turbo Forex Morning Trade, I will open a new page in the log for this account that I will trade very aggressively.

Finally, I know I've been slacking on the tweets this week.  I'll try to be more diligent this week.