AVH Trading Journal

[avh101]

Hi everyone,

I have been reading all the excellent content on this forum and have decided to commence trading a modest live account on Monday. I have been trading on and off for nearly 3 years and haven't really found anything that has inspired me. I began trading on H4's then moved to H1's and latterly M15's, I certainly did not expect to start trading M1 charts as I had always been told they were too noisy. Having reviewed Imrans videos it really does make a lot of sense and the fast cycle rates can really help the expansion of an account.

Anyway, I will be keeping a record of my progress here on a daily basis, primarily for my benefit but would welcome any thoughts/suggestions as time goes by. I'm going to position size everything off a 15 pip stop and am going to be taking quite an aggressive risk% initially. From the limited back testing I have done it does appear that there will be a fairly high turnover in daily trades, probably 10-15, so the transaction costs will mount up. For that reason I have registered a new broker account with FXCC via cashbackforex and they will rebate a percentage of the fee on each trade. Even if you have an exisiting broker account you can often get 25% of your transaction fees rebated through them as well, so well worth investigating. I have not used FXCC before as all my accounts have been with Alpari, but there support seems good there FSA regulated and they have a full ECN bridge for MT4, so tight spreads and no possibility of a requote. Not expecting to have to place many market orders but certainly can't afford to be arsed around with any requotes on an M1 chart. I will update on my experiences with them in due course.

My plan is to trade from 7am -8.15am, then 9.30am to 11am. Then I better get my arse into work for a while, although I will also want to trade from 1pm to 3pm. Fortunately I have my own business so no annoying bosses to deal with, but I will probably have to work into the early evening to stay on top of everything. So I'm going to be a busy boy.

Primary goal is to follow system irrespective of outcome, with a view to hitting 50 pips on a daily basis.

Arthur

[immy]

Welcome to AIMS Community
Firstly, Well Done on deciding to start a journal. Its a great learning tool.
I pick 1 point. You might want to consider playing low risk first. See, the moment you say, I'm going to play high risk, there, you just woke that giant "Lefty" up. The lefty is at you now. Tell him, i'm a good bad and I play nice. I'd suggest Dont commit too much from saddle point. A Simple Rule. When the Trend is confirmed, Go high risk, as long as the trend is not confirmed play half of yoru normal lot size. So if you lose you lose less, if you win your win more....makes sense?

[avh101]

Hi Immy

Point taken. Can I assume that you would consider the trend confirmed when the price breaks through the 2nd AIMS level after the initial movement?

Arthur

[avh101]

1st full day at the coalface and only managed to get 3 trades in. 2L for -2 & 1W for +4.

My real issue today was with the trade manager and the placement of the pending orders. No matter what settings I seem to have it just doesn't want to play ball. As soon as I adjust the entry point and stop the trade manager then flips back and fro between the orignal setting and the new one. Even if I remove the trade manager and place a pending manually I seem to be getting similar issues. I wonder if anyone has had similar issues and can advise of a solution. I have checked all the left hand boxes on the trade manager options and unchecked all the indented options but still no joy. Are there other adjustments that need to be made on the trade server?

I was forced to take market orders and couldn't set up the bracketting technique properly so I ended up missing some decent trades.

[immy]

[googlevideo][/googlevideo]

1st full day at the coalface and only managed to get 3 trades in. 2L for -2 & 1W for +4.

My real issue today was with the trade manager and the placement of the pending orders. No matter what settings I seem to have it just doesn't want to play ball. As soon as I adjust the entry point and stop the trade manager then flips back and fro between the orignal setting and the new one. Even if I remove the trade manager and place a pending manually I seem to be getting similar issues. I wonder if anyone has had similar issues and can advise of a solution. I have checked all the left hand boxes on the trade manager options and unchecked all the indented options but still no joy. Are there other adjustments that need to be made on the trade server?

I was forced to take market orders and couldn't set up the bracketting technique properly so I ended up missing some decent trades.

My Guess: you're running two charts with EA on. EA attached to both charts are fighting for the settings they've got. If you have two charts on same account, even if you have different platforms EA should be attached to only one chart. otherwise they will keep changing. Reason being, e.g M5 chart SL is at 1.4800 and you move M1 SL to 1.4810 effectively you have ordered two EA's to keep SL at different level for one unique order. I hope you understand. cheers

[avh101]

[googlevideo][/googlevideo]

1st full day at the coalface and only managed to get 3 trades in. 2L for -2 & 1W for +4.

My real issue today was with the trade manager and the placement of the pending orders. No matter what settings I seem to have it just doesn't want to play ball. As soon as I adjust the entry point and stop the trade manager then flips back and fro between the orignal setting and the new one. Even if I remove the trade manager and place a pending manually I seem to be getting similar issues. I wonder if anyone has had similar issues and can advise of a solution. I have checked all the left hand boxes on the trade manager options and unchecked all the indented options but still no joy. Are there other adjustments that need to be made on the trade server?

I was forced to take market orders and couldn't set up the bracketting technique properly so I ended up missing some decent trades.

My Guess: you're running two charts with EA on. EA attached to both charts are fighting for the settings they've got. If you have two charts on same account, even if you have different platforms EA should be attached to only one chart. otherwise they will keep changing. Reason being, e.g M5 chart SL is at 1.4800 and you move M1 SL to 1.4810 effectively you have ordered two EA's to keep SL at different level for one unique order. I hope you understand. cheers

What an idiot!!! I was running an M5 chart as well, which was obviously fighting with the M1 chart. Many thanks Imran, I was starting to lose the plot on this one, I can now get down to some proper trading.

On a separate note, during todays trading there was a point where I was not sure whether to take a trade or not. The alligator had just begun to settle down and the setup looked good, but then the price spiked up and the alligator began to open. What followed was a sharp reversal, so at the point of the red dot the alligator was no longer in the right state but it was within the AIMS levels and the AO was close to crossing. Would you just view the spike as a rejection of a higher price and put to oneside that the alligator has not properly slept and take the trade anyway, or would you pass? I suppose it's easy in hindsight to say I should have taken but what is your view of these situations. I have attached a chart with red arrows indicating the point of concern.

Thanks again.

euro 05_09.gif

[immy]

There is a long answer and a short one, i like the short one

When the Trend is Confirmed, Find excuses to take trades and excuses to let it run

When the trend is not confirmed, find excuses to NOT take trade and excuses to exit quick!

[avh101]

An interesting day...
3 trades, 2W for +66 & 1L for -6, net +60.
I managed to successfully miss the motherload trade 100+ in the morning by 10 mins as I was on school run. However, I did pick up the 5th wave run after this move and grabbed +55. There were further excellent opportunities to add to the days tally but I never participated as I was pre-occupied with other business matters. All in all a very positive day and if I had been trading full on between the London & NY sessions there was definite scope to pull in 250+ pips today.

euro 06_09.gif

Immy, I would be interested in finding out your thoughts on the trade situation that occured later in the day. Euro was clearly trending down but the exits had been called twice during the run to the south. Did you:

• Exit position & then re-enter on the break of AIMS as a setup2
  Stay in trade as the upper AIMS had not been broken & then add to position on the break of the lower AIMS
  Neither of above

euro 06_09 2.gif

Thanks
Arthur

[immy]

Hi Arthur

Good trading ! Well Done (wd)

I did enter and exited on the dots. on the first circle i entered at teh break of aims and then the dot came. bad habit. then entered on the 2nd circle and exited. on blue dots. then again for the last spike down

cheers

immy

ps: ther could be days i would have stayed and added on each. it just depends how you feel on a certain day ...etc etc.

[avh101]

Hi Immy
Quick question, on the chart below I bracketed the market at the rectangle. The trade was triggered long and then exited for small loss. However, I decided to cancel my pending short after the long trade initally began to move in the right direction. Then a red dot triggered exit and I considered setting a pending just below purple line where I have circled yellow but didn't as the alligator a) Had not slept & b) was not within AIMS. What was your call on this?

Thanks Arthur

euro 07_09.gif