882

Over the past 2 wks, my account has dropped to $822.  Yeah, I’m down 180.  Still, I’ve learned a lot and I ended this week on a good trade. As I’ve been trading fundamentals, I have typically been entering an hour or so before news announcements, and holding them for around 2 or 3 hours before my stop loss is triggered.

I’ve traded EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, and AUDUSD.  The 1^st two were the most volatile, so I left them alone this week, and focused on the last two.  After insane movements, and having SLs and TPs that were too narrow, I learned to spread it out more, and I also have decided to stay away from trading when news is about to drop.  To stay from these SL triggers, I’m widening my bands. 

So the two changes going into next week, 1) Trading between announcements, going to back to openings and closings, and 2) widening my bands.  With that, we’ll see how it goes.  I recall now that this was my strategy to begin with when I was successfully papertrading.  Somehow, I forgot what worked for me.  Build strong habits that will last you in good and bad times.  I’m thankful for all the lessons I’ve learned, and I’m grateful for this time. Failures are but iterations toward success.  Remember what doesn’t work and stop it.

I’ve started looking at currency indices.  It’s interesting to see how and when they’re moving together and apart.  Also, noticing how these ultimately create the pairing charts I trade on.  Anyway, I expect my trades to probably hold a bit longer going forward.  Until next time.

$1005 in Oanda

1st week was a learning experience.  We're $5 up so far.  Oanda uses "units" instead of "lots" when creating your position size. I was caught off guard initially, forgetting what "units" meant.  Basically, it's a limiting of your position size based on margin, from what I gather.  It's easy to navigate though. Simply put in your SL and TP in pips, and put in your number of units. You can see the equivalent USD value on the right side of the screen.  Based on the risk calculated, the units can be adjusted.  In the case of lots, you do the whole calculation at once, so you put in SL, TP, and lot size based on one calculation: (balance * % risk) / (pips * 10) = lot size.  Here's an example from the app below, where the risk is about 3.5% based on my account.

I'm confident in my strategies going forward, and I start again this afternoon, with 3 trades planned for the week, formed from fundamental announcements.  It's simple, and it's helping me in many ways, from learning the platform, getting used to spreads, timing, and most importantly, building a routine.

AUD GDP win of $0.20

Today, I was caught up using the Oanda app, trying to set up my position for entrance into a AUDUSD trade. Well, it took me too long and I missed the bullish run I expected. I made $.20.  Go ahead and laugh, it's funny.  Anyway, here are my takeaways going forward.

On the Oanda App, you get a screen something like this. This screen shot is taken from my desktop version, but the mobile screen is basically identical.  In the rush of trying to put in my position around 1700 today, I settled on 200 units.  What are units?  Here's the formula, but the caveat is that I don't think it's necessary to understand it when setting up your position size.

Units = (Margin available * Margin Ratio)/ (Base/Home Exchange Rate) = (1000*50)/(.6921) = 80,000 units.  Now, that's with a leverage of 50:1. Interestingly, I see around 48,000 available units, but this was the formula I found online.

 

To set up my position going forward, here's how it's done:  1st, I set up my risk, 4% of my balance, $40.  From here, I put it in the Stop Loss pips (and Take Profit afterwards).  For instance, today I would have put 15 pips for the SL, 30 for the TP (and it would have worked!).  Then, I would basically play around with Units until the SL at the bottom of the window matches my risk.  In this case, it was around 25,000 units to get to -$37.50.  I would play around it get exactly -$40 for the heck of it.

AUD's GDP growth rate was -.3%.  Because it was down, with no other big US fundamental news coming out today, I expected the USD to be stronger compared to the kiwi immediately following the news. Actually, AUDUSD was bullish before the news even dropped (about 2 hours earlier).  Another note, Pacific Standard Time (PST) is 17 hours behind East Australia.  So I wanted to enter around 1600.  1600 + 17 hrs = 0900.

Finally, US GDP growth rate is determined from 4 main components according to thebalance.com : 

1. Personal Consumption including retail sales
2. Business Investment including construction and inventory levels
3. Government Spending, largest categories being Social Security benefits, defense spending, and Medicare benefits.
4. Net Trade

My next trades will be on the USD and the JPY later this week. Stay tuned.

ISM Manufacturing PMI

One of my potential trades was to be based off the Fundamental Announcement in the US of the ISM Manufacturing PMI.  If the number is greater than 50, it's a bullish indication. It is released monthly, and yesterday, the value was 43.1, up from 41.5 last month.  After looking at the USDJPY, EURUSD, and GBPUSD, it appears that this announcement didn't do much on its own. Quickly, I realized it's important to watch the pairing currency for events as well.

So what is ISM?  It's a survey given out by the Institute for Supply Management to more than 300 manufacturing firms.  The Chair of the Board of Directors is Camille Batiste, Certified Profession of Supply Management (CPSM). She's pretty awesome from what I'm read.

The ISM Manufacturing Index gives equal weight to:

1. New Orders
2. Production
3. Employment
4. Supplier Deliveries
5. Inventories

So what are some of these industries?  They're based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAIC) of the 17 biggest sectors that contribute to the GDP.  The first 2 digits in the NAICS code represent the sector.  For manufacturing, that's 31-33.

There's also a Non-Manufacturing Index that comes out in a few days, but I'm letting that one go. I'll at least look at it.  Today, the AUD GDP comes out. I think that'll make some noise, so I may trade around it.  More to come.

Le Fin et Le Commence

The time has arrived. Here's a pic of my last 2 paper trades. I got out of both a little early based on what appeared to be pull backs (EUR) and a continued loss (JPY). Indeed, they were just that. The balance after 6 months of trading is $144,900. That's 44.9% overall, 7.5% per month.  Moving forward, I am making more disciplined, purposeful trades each week, based on fundamentals primarily, lightly on technicals.  I have already mapped out this week's trades.

I have Oanda and IG live accounts, starting with $1000 per account.  It is a very fulfilling time to have reached this moment of intention.  I find excitement in my purposeful action, and in my completion of goals.  This will be my strength going forward. Aim high and persist, and subsequently you will be called successful.