No trading yesterday as I’d been in London on Tuesday and didn’t get home till midnight so I decided to have a day off trading and focus on other tasks.
So back into it this morning and a quiet overnight period meant there were a few nice set-ups appearing when I sat down at 0530 to start my day. I placed orders on GBPUSD / GBPJPY / EURJPY & EURUSD.
After waiting for an hour or so (where my next evolution of trading set-ups was discovered) all of those orders triggered in that order over a period of about 15 mins after the European opening at 7am. There then followed a period of hard focus as my 4 positions moved towards their B/E point either swiftly (in the case of GBPJPY) or at a slow trundle (EURUSD).
Within 30 mins of positions opening they were all at their B/E point and I allowed myself a slight smile as I now had now risk on the table and was looking to see if any would go onto greater profits. Well I may have been a little hasty in my desire for profits. No sooner had my positions hit their B/E points ( approx +20 / +25 depending on which currency) they all turned tail and headed back to my entry point which was now my stop. Withing 45 minutes of opening my positions 3 of them (GBPJPY / EURJPY / EURUSD) had opened, hit their Break-even point, returned to entry and been stopped out for scratch. Oh well C’est La Vie, that’s trading life.
I was now left with only Cable open.
On the chart:
Point 1 – Is my entry point
Point 2 – Is my Break-even point
Point 3 – Is my Closing level at 1.5583
So I closed my trade at 1.5583 for +60 points which worked out as a 4:1 Reward to Risk or +8% for the day. I could have re-entered my other positions or added to this one but I shall leave that for another time. Overall I’m happy with the results of my day.
February 19, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Hi Paul
Nice trade on 18th on cable.
I rejected that trade as on breakout at position 1 the potential reward to Pivot Line R1 (1.5621) with a stop at 1.5690 would have been less than 1:1. So my question was do you not use pivots or was there something that led you to ignore r1 on this occasion ?
Second question, you mention 8% on the trade – do you trade 2% per trade generally ?
regards
James
February 22, 2010 at 7:10 am
Hi James,
Thanks for your comments and feedback. In answers to your questions:
1. Pivots Points – I do watch pivot points and take note of them when I’m in a discretionary trading mode. I like them as targets for trades or as areas to take some profit from an intra-day trade. In this particular case I was just trading a breakout system that does not take pivot points into account.
2. R:R – You are correct that on this trade I risked 2%. Normally on my own discretionary trading I will risk 1% max (usually between 0.2 and 0.5%) but this strategy has a good expectancy and rarely triggers so I am happy with my Risk Managment.
Thanks again for the feedback. Keep it coming!
FXTrader Paul