TraderGav.com

Gav's trading blog - Perseverance, Consistency, Confidence

Blog and Rants

An American Hedge Fund

by 7 Comments

Tim sent me a copy of his new book An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund last month. I finished reading it recently but just did not have time to write a review. As I am located in Australia, I have a little idea about Tim Syke who in fact is pretty ‘well known’ in CNBC and on the web. I did a quick search in Google, some good and bad comments are popping out about this young man.
So, how’s the book? Absolutely entertaining. To some new trader, it might be even inspirational to them. I like the way he wrote the book. Simple English, straight forward, telling you the who process of how he turn 12k to million and subsequently setting up his Cilantro Hedge Fund. In fact, most of time, you will find some of his experience are so similar to yours, to most of traders.

Cilantro Hedge Fund is closed now. I received an email from the fund itself last weekend.

Trading is a pretty boring business. You shall agree with me, otherwise, you are gambling. While waiting for your setup, I think it might be a good idea to get a copy of this book and enjoy.

Tuesday’s trading

by Leave a Comment

I made two trades today. Long EUR/JPY which was later stopped out with -1R.  It was pretty choppy throughout the Asian session. Second trade was made during U.K session, Long GBP/USD.  It was a very slow and choppy trade. I left my stop loss order on and went to bed. I closed the position with +0.38 R around lunch hour of U.S session (2 am in Melbourne, Australia).

End the day with -0.62 R.

We have Aussie Interest rate statement released today. Most likely they are going to hold on with 6.5% at the moment.  General Election is coming soon, I am wondering what would the current government do with the economic rates and figures now. Interesting. :-p

Forex Brokers Evolution

by Leave a Comment

I have been hearing some news about rising capital requirement for Forex brokers. Here we go. Well, how many small brokers will be eliminated by then? Well, in the non regulated market, this move is considered as an improvement to the retail Forex trading though.

From Fxstreet.com

NFA (National Futures Association) has received notice that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has approved changes to NFA Requirements Section 11 and the Interpretive Notice entitled “Forex Transactions.” The amendments increase the minimum net capital requirement for Forex Dealer Members (FDMs) to $5,000,000. They also eliminate the concentration charge and replace it with restrictions on the types of firms with which an FDM may maintain assets and cover its exposure for purposes of CFTC Regulation 1.17. These changes will become effective on December 21, 2007.

Full article from FXstreet.com here.

Monday’s trading

by Leave a Comment

I was not available to watch the market yesterday due to my busy day job. No trade was made. I missed the move of NZD/USD and EUR/JPY in the Asian afternoon. I do not incline to put on any day trade in Monday morning (Australian hours) as spreads are normally still in ‘holiday mood’, too wide to be stomached by day trader. Things will normally get back to normal when Japanese market is opened (that’s 10am in Melbourne, Australia).

Well, no trade, no R. Btw, my gut feeling tells me I will be living in the world where 1 AUD= 1 USD soon….uhm, time to plan for a vacation in Miami ? 😎

So you want to learn trading, part I?

by 9 Comments

I wrote this blog post back in September 2007. Sadly, today, most of the blogs I referred to had either removed or broken. I will try to update this post in the near future.

Meanwhile, if you are looking for resources to learn more about trading, please have a look at my Back to Basics of Trading series.

I have a couple of friends asking me how to start trading or do I have any tips for them to start trading. Well, I am not a pro, nor a trading coach. But, I can share some great resources that are available online, in the blogosphere.

First of all, my trades are based on technical analysis, which means I am reading charts and looking for trading opportunities and setups mostly from price charts. I am not a big fan of fundamental analysis, it is too tough for a slow man like me to understand.

So, here we go.

First, armed yourself with skills to involve in the market. Making phone calls to your broker, or getting ‘tips’ from your colleagues or uncles are not skill. Learn how to read a price chart, how to analyze the market technically or learn how to read financial reports and analyze the market fundamentally. Some nice blog posts are available on the web freely on this area.

  1. Toni Hansen’s Trading lessons
  2. Drawing Trend lines from Trader Mike
  3. More on Trend lines from Trader Mike

Once the price charts are no stranger to you, it is time to move on. So we read charts, but how are we going to deal with market? To start trading, we need to have a setup. A setup is a specific condition/situation that market presents to you and gives you the chance to enter the market. As you might know I am a big dummy fan, all my trades are based on dummy setups. Some people live and breath with indicators for trading setups, nothing wrong, as long as it works for him. Here are some good resources:

  1. How I trade, and analyzing charts from Trader-X . (The respected and mysterious trader’s site. He’d left blogsphere, but catch his blog before it is gone)
  2. Finding the right set-up(s) from Trader-X
  3. Chairman Maoxian’s trading for dummies (This is the best trading secret on the web, I really hate to share with anyone :-p)
  4. Trade setups ( a library of technical setups from Trading-naked.com)
  5. Strategies from Corey at Afraidtotrade.com
  6. OONR7’s trading setup

Alright, we have setups, looks like we are ready to make million now. Nah. The next big thing in trading is about risk and money management. You can’t trade without money. The bottom line is to protect yourself (your capital I mean!) when having bad days. Trading is a probability game, you only have high probability trade but not sure-fire trade. No setup will give you 100% success rate. Face the fact! So, how much can you afford to lose? how many contracts or shares should you trade? Money management is essential for trading.

  1. Accuracy Vs Risk/reward ratio from myself, Trader Gav 😉
  2. How to be consistently profitable in stock market from Movethmarkets.com
  3. Position sizing from Trader Mike
  4. Starting out with basic from Dr.Van K Tharp
  5. Expectancy is the next key from Dr. Van K Tharp
  6. Expectancy from Trader Mike

Enough? No. … Now you should have known that trading is a serious subject, serious business. Ok, I will continue in part II, this post is just too long.. 🙂

Chart of interest: AUD/USD 24-September-2007

by Leave a Comment

Another strong week for Aussie dollar (Stronger than I’d expected!). We are back to the 1989 high again. Lovely.  Well, are we looking at the high at 1984 around 0.97 soon? uhm..never underestimate currency market, nothing is impossible. Anyway, I will still day trade in Long position at the moment, but I will be a little bit stricter now. I am watching 0.8830-5 area.

Let’s see.

[photopress:audusd_daily28sep2007.gif,full,alignleft]

Here is another pair that I am watching closely recently. EUR/JPY. I am going for Long position.

[photopress:eurjpy_daily28sep2007.gif,full,alignleft]