IHF (read: I Hate Forex) system went long of NZDUSD on Monday, and it was a crap. Stopped. And It went short on Tuesday. Another +130 pips trade. Nice short. Exited the trade at 0.52-ish level. Well, I maybe wrong, but who cares. Let’s wait for next signal.
Here is the chart to inspire you, my little trader.
I felt a little bit burnt out last week. I was trying to finish my automated trading programming, busy and troubled by my day job, a little sleeping problem and at the same time doing some trading. Hectic. So, I needed a break from my machine, from the market.
We went to Sherbrooke Forest, Mount Dandenong for a nature walk. I felt really good, and totally forgot about market and my day job. Breathed in fresh air, enjoy the 20 degree celsius weather, that’s just so wonderful.
Here are some shots taken during the walk. Click to enlarge the image.
I thought this chart is nice and probably inspiring. This is a short trade made by my ‘I-hate-forex’ system as I mentioned in my Weekly wrap up. Target was hit during opening hour of Friday London session.
Short EURGBP. +160 pips
This is a relatively quiet week for RDT (read: Really Dumb Trend) system. It does not generate any signal until closing hours of Thursday U.S session. Short signals acrossed the board. I am currently shorting EURCHF, AUDJPY, Long USDCHF. I shorted EURJPY , unfortunately, got stopped out. I did not take another EURJPY short trade after judging my exposure to Yen and EURO now. I feel YEN is going to create trouble for me again.
Another system (I haven’t named it, let’s call it ‘I-hate-forex’ system now 😆 ) is running in live account now. But, in micro account at the moment. I can see a lot of improvements to be made. Right now, it is long USDCAD, and short EURGBP. Looks good. It shorted USDJPY which was a crap. Yen just doesn’t synch up with me.
Anyway, crazy people are still Long USD, so I had to long USD in order to make profit from trading. Although, it is still stupid to hold USD, I reckon. 🙂
No doubt, I am a trend follower. Long term, or short term. I just can’t , just can’t , just can’t and again, just can’t do contrarian or counter trend trading. I don’t have the mentality to trade in this style. I can give you some fancy technical analysis rubbish to show you reversal is coming, but I will fail miserably when trading them. That’s just me.
Anyway, process is still slow. Trading is still not really taking off for year 2009. I have to work harder now.
Other side of my life. My day job is not stable (well, in fact, it has never been..:lol:). Rumours are nothing but budget tightening again. I am not sure if I will still have my job next month. In fact, nobody knows. Let’s see how it works out. This is out of my control.
By the way, did anybody open the dam of Twitter? I can see a spike in my twitter followers. Welcome to my world.
I read
“Dollar gains as recession slashes trade deficit”.
Fine. But, stronger dollar does not help export either.So,what does this trade deficit mean to you? Nothing much, I guess.
One of my regular trading related work is constantly researching and creating trading strategies for my trading tool box. It is an interesting job. The programming, testing, and debugging are painful and sometimes, mind wrecking :-). But, it is still considered as mechanical effort, since we have the strategy, rules, the work is just translating it into codes.
The most interesting and tricky part that I have found is the process of developing the strategy.
There are always similar questions like,
“Why did the strategy did not catch this sell off?”
“Is the criteria too strict and missing out opportunities?”
“What should I do to avoid this loss due to choppy condition?”
So on….
Seriously, there is no absolute answer for these questions. The end result of trying to answer them will be nothing but curve fitting.
If there is one thing we must learn before developing a trading strategy is to accept the non-perfectness of it. Face it, no strategy or system is perfect. One should never try to “fine tune” or expect his system/strategy to fit all market conditions. You will have losses. You will have draw down. You might not agree with me, but that’s true. I hope this statement is hard enough to make you quit trading or at least quit developing your own system. 😆
The key point is to first understand the nature of your strategy. Be it a trend following, a range bound top/bottom picking or contrarian strategies, whatever. Understand it, accept the fact that losses will be there. There will be situation that your strategy does not work. And , also, the strategy should be developed in line with your own personality, ok, I am not going into it, but you got the point.
A simple rule I am using when developing a strategy or a system is to have positive expectancy with acceptable accuracy (winning rate). OK, I hear some people shouting about accuracy is not important as long as we have good positive expectancy. Well, it depends. Weak hearted small traders, are you really able to take the 70% failure of your system though you know it is having a positive expectancy in long run? You might be killed mentally. For more about this topic, read about my old post here .
Alright, that’s all . Just another piece of my random rant. I am going back to fix my program bug now….
And , yeah, once you’ve done, start live trading with extremely small position. You will be surprised. 🙂
