Category Archives: Trading Strategy

On reactive trading and why I don’t make market forecasts anymore

It seems to me that the popular trading blogs have one thing in common.  They all make some form of forecasts about the market, or even better, calling out to a particular stock or currency pair.  My guess is that there’s a lot more people looking for trading ideas for quick profits than actually interested [...]
Posted in Trading Strategy | Tagged market analysis, reactive trading | Leave a comment

Barred from Trading at Work: A curse or a gift?

Well, they’ve done it.  The IT guys at my day job have blocked access to streaming market data.  I can’t trade at lunch anymore or even doodle on charts!  Yet, this event merely pushes my agenda forward as I’ve never intended to trade actively at work (i.e. no intention of getting myself fired).  Although I [...]
Posted in Trading Strategy | Tagged paper trade | Leave a comment

How to stockpile a trade position one step at a time

Arguably the single most important skill a trader needs to master in trading any market is to cut your losses short and let your profits run.  This is simply another saying of managing risks and maximizing opportunities.  However, this is easier said than done.  Ever tried to cut your losses short but only to see [...]
Also posted in Risk Management | Tagged CHF, entry, EUR, FTC | 2 Comments

Why I shorted CAD/JPY @ 88.57 instead of long USD/CAD @ 1.0251

CAD/JPY failed a major resistance level at 90 and has edged out an obvious intermediate-term downtrend (Fig 1).  USD/CAD is also bouncing off a major support at 1.0200 (Fig. 2).  And crude oil is below $80 on a slippery slope.  As such, shorting loonie seems like a good move at the moment according to my [...]
Also posted in Aussie, Kiwi, Loonie | Tagged CAD, entry, FTC, JPY, paper trade, USD | Leave a comment

Early bird does not get the worm in forex trading

[This post was updated on January 13, see addendum below.] I have discussed my enthusiasm in shorting the Aussie a few times this week.  First trade was shorting AUD/JPY at 84.53.  After that got stopped out, I re-tried at the same level the next day.  My trade history in this currency pair is shown in Figure [...]
Also posted in Self Assessment, Trading Psychology | Tagged bad trade, entry, exit | Leave a comment

Some tricks scammers use to game their trading system with 488% gain

The rise in popularity of social sites for trading has paved the way for ever more unscrupulous trading system sellers to spread their high yield scams.  Just to be clear, I am not against websites such as Myfxbook and Covestor, nor against trading system sellers in general.  However, there are always bad apples in a [...]
Posted in Trading Strategy | Tagged scam alert | 2 Comments

AUDJPY Short 81.37/77.17: Anatomy of my first 400+ pips trade

420 pips in my demo account to be exact.  Still, I feel very lucky. In this post, I will review why I entered this position, why I added to it, and why I exited.  The goal is for myself to learn from what works and what can I do to improve on this trade given some [...]
Also posted in Aussie, Kiwi, Loonie, Self Assessment, Trading Signal | Tagged AUD, entry, exit, FTR, good trade, JPY, paper trade, short | Leave a comment

How to use FX futures to narrow down which forex pair to trade

A problem I have is that once a currency pair shows a viable trading setup, other related pairs often show the same setup too.   A reason for this phenomenon is that markets don’t operate in a vacuum.  When markets really move, everything move together.  So the highly correlated markets can scream for entry at the [...]
Posted in Trading Strategy | Tagged AUD, indicator, JPY, USD | Leave a comment