Keel Risk Group

2011...The Year of Action!

2010-12-23T15:30:00.013-07:00

A new year. A new dream. A new direction. A renewed hope for the future. Actually a bunch of crap because it is all the same, other than the new year. I have the same dreams, nothing has changed. The difference is 2011 is the year of action. I'm 40 years old and I must get things moving. Paralysis by analysis has been my mode of operation, I must change. I have a dream to have a successful currency trading firm. I have a dream to be a successful business guy, outside of trading. I will move forward with both those goals in 2011.

As alluded to in a previous post, 2011 is the year my success materializes in currency trading. Following I will outline the basics.

Starting Balance: $9500
Yearly Goal: 30% +
Trade Size: 4000
Avg Trade Length: 5 minutes to 2 years
Strategy: long-term trend trading using price action

The strategy can best be defined as a long-term trend trading strategy. The strategy will have the largest draw-down from starting balance in the first 1-2 months, while longer-term trades get initiated. The draw-down could be close to -10% before profit starts to kick-in. The first 1-2 months will be one of the most difficult times for this strategy.

The concept is to enter trades both short and long. Sometimes, I will have a long and short position on at the same time. Stops will range from 5 to 150 pips. Once the trade is 10 - 30 pips in profit the stop loss will be moved to break-even. Once the trade is securely set at breakeven then positions will be added, to 'build' a position. The majority of trades will be stopped out at breakeven. A small minority of trades will be closed after 1-8 weeks to keep the equity curve from having too sharp of drawdowns. A very small minority of trades will be kept for 2 months to 2 years. These longer term trades will be the majority of my profit. I will carry a very large unrealized profit from month to month. At least that is the plan.

Basically the idea is to enter low risk trades, set stop loss to breakeven as soon as possible, add more size to winners, close the losers quickly, close some profitable trades to keep the equity curve going the right direction and hold some very long-term trades for major profit.

Entries will be based on regular old price action using candlestick charts. About the only indicators on my charts will be some moving averages. Used only for a guilde and not specific decisions. Exits will be based on price action exhaustion.

2010 End of Year Catchup

2010-12-23T14:25:00.015-07:00

The later half of the year was somewhat of a disappointment on the trading front. That is if you go off pure profit/loss $. Which I think any business should use P/L as their primary benchmark for success or failure.

In review, May, June and July were good months. Not great but good. They aligned with goals and it was steady-as-you-go. In August, I changed things around and started off without thoroughly testing my hypothesis, what could possibly go wrong! Well about ($729) worth of wrong. Basically, I lost all my previous months gains.

I added in a short-term trading strategy that did not work out and was using full gearing which added to an already down month. It was a risk, I accepted the possibility and now I'm here. My P/L for the year 2010 will be around ($500).

Since the end of August beginning of September, I have been working on a new trading paradigm. Yes, more significant changes to how I trade. If you have read this blog for a while then you will probably not be surprised by another shift. Normally I would consider this a problem. However, at this point, I view this as an evolution in my trading expertise. A critical shift to one day make this a profitable endeavour. In essence, it is like another building block onto the structure to make it one day finished.

For the last couple months I have been working on a strategy based on this forum thread (http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=245149)

This strategy/concept will probably be my last. Last in the sense that my trading has run its course. I have spent so, so much time devoted to this effort. At some point, I have to either move it to the success column or failure column. Now with the 'failure' word mentioned, I don't think it will end that way!

The concepts presented in the forum thread mentioned above are quite different to anything I have studied. The author has seen amazing success. I have been testing this strategy and at the start, saw some promise but nothing amazing. So I went back re-read the forum and have adjusted areas that I was doing wrong. Since then I have been witness to some amazing findings. I have been trading with a real account, but very small amount, just to prove the concepts.

On December 26, 2010 I will start trading more than my little test account on this strategy. My next post will outline the strategy from a high-level and my basic trading plan.

All for now...

KeelRisk

June 2010 Review

2010-06-30T15:54:00.012-06:00

June was a struggle. A struggle in a couple ways. First I was sick over the month that encompassed almost 2 weeks. Secondly, I was on vacation for over week. Between both of those events it severely limited the amount of time I could spend on trading. Finally, the trades I did put on didn't do much and I remained flat for most of the month. Then the last couple days of the month, I was able to put on a good trade that could have been a whole lot better. That last trade put me into the profitable column for the month of June!

Through all the struggles this month, I was able to have a positive month. I profited +1.22%, $132.80.

The GOOD:

Risk control
Did not over-trade

The BAD:

Trade size not consistent

As I mentioned in last months' review I did not keep my trade size consistent and it cost me money. Well, I did the same thing this month! The one series of profitable trades were only traded at half the gearing I should have used. That will be the focus of July.

Overall I'm thrilled with the results. It furthers proof that my trading proficiency is at a level that can eventually be built into a sustainable business. July will be a very important month. Not to get too far ahead of myself; however, if July is a profitable month I would start plans to get more capital infused into my trading, to take it to the next level up the ladder.

May 2010 Review

2010-05-27T20:32:00.012-06:00

What a month! My goal for this first month of live trading was 2%. I crushed it and brought home 5.03% for a profit $519.42. I think the best part of this month was the ups and downs I encountered. In other words, I encountered some challenges and made errors and I still came out of the month with a great profit. I easily left >2% on the table making stupid errors. I left another 2% on the table due to using inconsistant trading size. With a couple of improvents there is no reason this month couldn't have been a +8% or +9% month.

Next is a review of the good and bad:

GOOD:

The end result >5% profit
The discipline on each and every trade (i.e. stops on all trades)
2 home run trades
I put myself in position for more home run trades. The more I'm up to bat the more runs I will get.
I had absolute control of my trading. I knew I would only lose about 1% per trade, period.

BAD:

A couple gut instinct rush trades that cost me > $200
Most trades I traded $20k lots. Some I traded 10k trades and ended up profiting which would have been double the profits if I traded $20k lots. I need to maintain lot size the whole month for better consistancy. This mistake cost me >$200

A look forward...

I need to keep my emotions in check. I had a great month and I'm hoping I can have another >2% month. I know in this business that if you get too confident it will bit you in the ass.

As I have written before, probably a couple times...I'm not elated because the money. I'm elated because, if I can find a consistent way to beat this game all I need to do is add zeros at the end of my trades to make real money. For example, I made over $500 dollars with a $10k account. If I can rinse and repeat each month consistently...all I need to do to is up my trading account to 100k and add a zero at the end of my trade size. That is all I need to do and now I'm making $5000 a month!! Then double it, triple it...then I'm making some serious money. The thing is, some elite traders are doing it. Some are doing $20k - 40k a day. I know eventually I can too! I will become elated with the money when I'm making $20k a month via trading as a side business.

Alright, let me come back to earth. OK, this month will be challenging because I will be going on vacation for 1 week. That leaves me 3 weeks of trading to make something happen. My goal 2% or better.

One thing I have to add after writing this post and reviewing all my monthly results. I have other months where I have increased in value +5%. I'm am here to tell you these results I have posted in the last couple months are different. I'm playing a different game than I ever have all these years trading and trying to figure it all out. I can't describe the feeling right now. It is the same feeling that I have felt since Dec. 13th 2009. The day that it all came together...10 years of trading, all came together. It is the same feeling for the last 6 months, through winners and losers. I AM ONTO SOMETHING BIG!

Week 1 Review

2010-05-07T20:03:00.016-06:00

Week one live trading completed. My end result was good with a 1.53% gain which translates to $157.74. Although satisfied with the end result, I have to say how I got to that result left a little to be desired.

The Good:

Decent risk
End result, aligns with goals
One very good bigger trade

The Bad:

Risk could have been better
Too many scalp trades
Not enough pre-planned longer-term trades
Trade size was all over the place. I need to trade closer to my 1% risk threshold on each trade.

Going forward, I will focus on more analysis based approach. In other words, review the charts this weekend and have more of my trades planned in advance. Such as identify the support and resistance and if price gets to those point have planned what trade(s) will be taken.

Continue some short-term scalps but I need to be more selective.

Live Currency Trading

2010-05-02T21:15:00.003-06:00

As I alluded to in my previous post, I have started trading live once again. Today, Sunday, May 2, 2010, I have kicked off my first trade with the new replenished account. The starting account balance is $10,333.74 USD.

Following are the high-level details of the trading plan:

No more than 1% risk per trade.
Hard stops will always be placed at the time of starting a trade.
No more than 2% risk at any one time.
Strategy is trend trading and following, off of 5, 15, 30 minute charts. I will also be looking at longer term charts to base decisions.
Trade decisions will be based on price action and support/resistance. The only technical indicators I use are 20 EMA and 50 SMA. They are only used for guidance, not trading decisions by themselves.
Goal for live trading is to average > 3% per month.
Plan is to implement a longer-term trend following strategy off the daily/weekly charts in the near future.

Back to realtime trading

2010-02-17T20:19:00.002-07:00

It looks like it is that time again...time to put real money at work. At this point, I will be starting with around $10,000. It looks like I will initiate the deposit in the next couple days.

It will be very interesting to see how it goes this time around. I certainly have more confidence than I have every had at my trading. I feel I have broken through to a new level.

Is it just words or a feeling or did I really break-through. Only time will tell. The next 6 months will be very telling.

Cool Trading Related Site

2010-01-24T22:21:00.002-07:00

I just came across a very cool free site. Checkout FreeStockCharts.com, I think you will like it. You can even bring up Forex data.

The Best Retail Forex Broker

2010-01-23T21:13:00.002-07:00

I think two brokers fit into this category. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish and your trading volume. For the smaller trader, my choice is to trade with Oanda. For smaller volumes you won't find smaller spreads along with good customer support. For me, I will probably always have an account with Oanda. Until I start trading over 500k lots on a regular basis will I even consider changing. With that said, once I get to that level, I will consider moving over to Interactive Brokers. If I was to trade futures I would definitely trade at Interactive Brokers.

Forex Success Principle #3, #4 and #5

2010-01-23T20:41:00.003-07:00

Continuation from previous post.

3) Never Average Down - At one point in my trading career, I wholeheartedly believed averaging down was the way to go. I WAS WRONG! I will never consider this option going forward.

4) Do Average Up - This principle I currently do not follow. However, I believe this is what ultimately separates the top trend-traders. Psychologically, this is extremely tough to do. I am currently working on gaining this knowledge. Precisely, the times to do it and the time not to do it and just take your profit. I think you can be profitable without this tool; however, I think you can go into a whole new level if can master this technique.

5) Know your Trading Costs - Trading often, results in a LOT of costs $$$. I was always aware of the costs but it never sunk into my brain until I started doing back-tests. At that point, I would test a year of trades and see what half or even one additional pip cost per trade and it is amazing what you have to overcome to be profitable. Let's run through an example...you trade 20 times a month. Your cost is 2 pips. You trade mini lots of $10,000. Your account balance is $3000. So 20 trades per month x 12 months = 240 trades a year. 240 trades a year x $2 per trade cost(2pips spread) = $480 cost. You have to make 16% per year just to break even!!! In essence, you need to make 36% per year just to hit 20% profit per year. That is only 20 trades a month. Heck ,a lot of Forex amateurs trade 20 times in one day. Seriously, in a previous life, I would occasionally trade 100 - 200 times in one month. Needless to say I have seen the light and I don't run against the wind. Instead I run with the wind at my back, it is a lot easier.

Forex Success Principle #2

2010-01-23T18:06:00.005-07:00

This post is an extension from the previous post.

2) Stops - you must have hard stops. Stops that will get you out of a trade quickly. Recently I had the great idea that I was tired of being stopped out continuously and that I would trade without stops. It works great for a while. However, let me tell you the cycle that occurs. First, you start trading taking profits every 10, 20, 50 pips, whatever. All is well. You make 5, 10 percent profit for a month and possibly another month or another. Life is great. You will be rich in no time. Well, then it happens, you have positions loaded up and the market has a major move and there goes 10, 20, 30, 40 percent of your account. Months of profit have disappeared. Of course, you don't close your trades. So days go by, then a week or two, thinking the market will come back and all will be good. All this time the market moves against you. Not only are you losing money. The more important thing is all this time went by with no profits and now you have a lot of opportunity costs, gone! A lot of traders don't think about that. That is probably the bigger issue. the opportunity costs. Those days or weeks that you had the market go against you, you were not able to make any more trades because you were paralyzed by your loses.

I realize that some trades will be stopped out by a pip or two. It happens all the time to me. Funny things is, I get some take profits by a pip or two too. Many traders forget about the later. They instead complain about the one hit by one pip. I will always use stops which will cause me to get out of trades quickly. I can then move onto a new trade with a clear mind.

To be continued....

MY Forex Success Principles

2010-01-23T16:46:00.006-07:00

I have studied, traded, calculated, forwarded tested, back tested, re-invented the wheel, stopped, started, traded passionately, traded mad, traded carefree and more, in the Forex market for a lot of years. All that hard work and effort has recently boiled down into some absolute truths for me. Truths that will be a foundation for the way I now trade. Following are some of those principles that will carry me to the next level and onto major success:

1) Discipline - I used to read many books and articles about discipline being important for a trader. When I read those sections in books, articles and blogs, this is what I heard in my own mind....blah, blah, blah, blah blah, 'all I need is a good system', blah, blah, 'I know what I need to be successful', blah, blah, 'some of this book is good', 'this part I don't need, it doesn't apply to me', blah, blah blah, 'oh good next chapter, this will be good'. Seriously, I never understood the discipline part of trading, it never clicked, until now. This is one major break-through I had starting 12/13/2009. I think the problem comes in because a lot of books don't explicitly explain what 'discipline' actually means. However, you get top traders that say this is the most important thing in trading. I now understand. Let me explain what it means to me and probably should mean to you if you are a trader. It simply means to follow a trading systems. Kind of vague description, let me continue...it means:

Choose a trading system - meaning choose a market to trade, timeframe(s), entry method, exit method, money management. This can be a totally discretionary system. For example, flip a coin at 4:00pm every day and go long on heads with the EUR/USD with a 50 pip stop and 60 pip take profit. Whatever the system, write it down and trade it exactly perfectly. No extra crap trades that don't follow the system.
Track Your System - Now that you have a 'system' you need to open up a spreadsheet and track every trade. I mean every trade for that system! The entire reason for this task is to prove to yourself that you have a statistically proven system. How do you know once you have a statistically proven system? The answer is you need to know about statistical probability, game theory to prove what success you had on those trades is luck or skill. In most cases you need 200+ trades to get an idea if your system is luck or skill. Just because you are on trade 20 and things don't look good, does not mean you need to throw out your strategy. That is where statistics comes in to help you figure out if you should start the entire process again or keep going with that strategy. Many times I have had problems with my strategy and I had to change a parameter. As a result, I started a new spreadsheet and started the calculations from the beginning. If you don't track your trades, it is my opinion that you need to get a new hobby. Unless losing money is considered just the cost of having fun, then at that point, have fun.
Focus - you must focus and trade your strategy perfectly. You cannot get emotionally wrapped up if you have losing trades. That is just valuable information about your system. If you have too many loser, as determined by statistics, then you need to move onto a new system. The sooner you figure this out the sooner you will get a profitable system. This is why a demo account or very small account will help you get past this period with minimal loses.

To be continued....

Forex a tough nut to crack

2010-01-20T22:53:00.003-07:00

So, why do I continue to beat my head against a wall? One reason, because I think this trading thing can yield one of the best business opportunities out there today. After all these years, probably thousands and thousands of hours of work I have spent, I still think thousands of dollars can be pulled out of this market everyday. In fact, individual traders are out there doing what I just described every day. Not many, but it can be done.

I have had somewhat of a breakthrough in my trading that started on 12/13/2009! And believe me when I tell you in 10 years I have had a few breakthroughs. Or so I thought. This one is different. It is some core fundamentals about trading. Will it prove to be the real deal. Only time will tell. I will go into detail on my next post.

Where does the time go!

2010-01-20T22:37:00.005-07:00

Dang, where does the time go! 2010, wow. This year I turn 40 friggin' years old! I still don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I certainly know what I want to do, the problem comes in to making it a reality.

I look at my Monthly Trading Summary and realize I have been at this trading game for a long time. The thing is that the Monthly Summary on this blog starts on Nov 2007. I have been at this for a LOT longer. If I remember correctly, I opened my first Forex account at Oanda in 2001.

In all those years I have been a net loser. Granted I have been very smart about things and have had very small accounts, so I have not lost much. In total I have probably lost about $800 - $1200, all in about 10 years. Not good when you are actually want to make money but until I have mastered my craft I will maintain small accounts.

So why do I beat my head against a hard wall year after year after year. Maybe my next post I will dig into that issue.

Forex Strategy Reset

2009-07-15T20:25:00.004-06:00

As with all my other 'resets', the strategy I have been using is getting a work over. To give you a quick background, the last couple months I have been reading the Trading Journal on ForexFactory of Strats (http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=155459).

The strategy has hit a cord with me and makes a lot of sense. It goes in line with a lot of other research I have done about going to a more long-term strategy. When I say long-term, it is probably in the 2 day to 2 week time frame for most trades. I'm guessing that most trades would last 3-5 days.

Next post will go into my trading plan.

The Big Reset

2009-07-15T20:12:00.004-06:00

The blog is getting another reset. The previous strategy started off well, don't they all seem to start of well, and ended not well. Nothing major because after 4 months I ended up at almost break-even. I expected 1 or 2 bigger losses and it turned out to be more, especially in a consolidating market. The strategy was not behaving the way that I would like to trade. So after 4 months I killed it and took off the rest of the time from trading.

Now I'm back, ready to trading the currency markets again!

February Review

2009-03-03T21:05:00.004-07:00

Another great month! February is the 3rd straight profitable month using my current strategy. So to review the last 3 months...

Dec 2008: 3.90%
Jan 2009: 4.15%
Feb 2009: 3.11%

Last month I was contemplating reducing my trading size. Although currently trading very very small, I ran some analysis with the smaller trading size and decided against changing anything. So it was business as usual and have not made any changes.

Here are some thoughts so far about the strategy that I'm using:

Very consistent results. Kind of surprising to see the 3 months of returns to be so close to each other.
In a consolidating market it is difficult to create profits. I can see in a consolidating market that I would be hard pressed to get over 2%+ in a month. In fact the end of Feb the EUR\USD was in a tight range and I have no trades after the 17th.
The ONE limitation that this strategy has is the occasional big loss. I think it is realistic to expect a one-time loss of 10%-15%. I don't think it will happen often. In fact I would be surprised to see this happen more than 1-2 times a year.

At this point my plan is to continue on with the same thing that I have been doing for the last 3 months. The key is to start adding more funds so this works out to be worth my time.

So far I'm 2 days into March and I'm already up 1.2% with more unrealized profit in the que. So it is a good start to month #4.

FXCM now has an ECN

2009-02-17T22:02:00.002-07:00

I just found out that FXCM now has an ECN dealing platform option. Here are some details:

$25,000 account balance or 10M per month volume
Market level depth
Commission from $3.5 - $5 per 100k lot. Commission depends on volume
Seems like very good spreads

I know a lot of people have had issues with FXCM; however, I think those issues have resulted from scalping. With this platform you could scalp away without issues. I would consider this option down the road.

The State of My Trading

2009-02-15T14:52:00.002-07:00

I have never felt more confident with my trading. I have been in the zone. I'm in the middle of my 3rd month since my fundamental shift in philosophy. I sit on a profit of around 2%. I'm hoping I get another 1-2% before the month is out. Although, I would be fine to finish the month with a 2% profit. The confidence comes because of my trading style. It is a style that I feel can traverse the test of time. It can be traded across different pairs. It is a style that limits risk.

Right now I feel I have created a successful business that can be duplicated. Like a regular production business that makes widgets, I have found a business that can create a widget for $1.00 and sell it for $1.25. Doesn't sound too significant until you scale it out. If you can produce 4 million widgets and then turn them around for a .25 cent profit you have just made yourself 1 million dollars.

The currency market is a unique business and can scale extremely well. You can scale small and gradually gain ground as your strategy is proven. With the goal to scale to the point of putting hundreds of thousands of dollars at work. In my case I have a measly $500 at risk. I am at a point where I am looking at how to safely manage my risk and scale up to where I can make some real money. At this point, I'm looking to different scenarios. For example...do I just start adding $1000 dollars a month. Do I jump in with $10,000 to start and add smaller amounts monthly.

At this point, I have been trading long enough to know that 3 months of success does not mean you will have absolute success. So, I will continue to assess and analyze what to do. I will kick-up the scale of my trading within the next 30-45 days.

Good times and I hope it keeps going.

Az Cards, soooo close

2009-02-12T20:58:00.002-07:00

Well they didn't win but they were in the money, ha!

Arizona Cardinals Superbowl Champs

2009-01-30T23:48:00.002-07:00

You all know that the Arizona Cardinals are going to win the Superbowl this year, right! Well they are and I think it would be a good bet. Right now the Cards are +6.5...I would take that bet + the extra .5 point. We will find out in 2 days.

January Review

2009-01-30T23:23:00.010-07:00

January was great month! The strategy is going very well. At this point it has nothing to do with the dollars and everything to do with the goal of getting a proven strategy that can make 2-3% per month, month after month after month. And I'm not talking a strategy that works when 5 or 10 technical indicators line up. A strategy that can stand the test of time.

If I can make 2-3% per month in a consistent basis I will become financially rich! I think a lot of traders think they need to make 20%, 30%, 50% or more a month to make it big. Well I'm here to tell you that you won't make 30% a month, consistently. You have to risk too much to make it work. Yes, I think it can be done for a 1-2 years but then it will collapse. Besides, you don't need to make those returns and have that level of risk to make it big.

Back to the monthly review...I finished up January with a profit of +4.15%. So, last month was +3.9% for this strategy, and this month at 4.15%. A good trend has been started. On January 5th I did sustain my biggest draw-down and loss to date. I closed all my trades on the 5th that resulted in a 6+ % loss. This is one reason that my trade size will be cut in half from the last two months. It will be interesting to see how that will effect the returns. My guess going into next month is that it will be closer to the 2-3% and might be difficult to see those 4,5,6% gains.

Strategy Update

2009-01-30T23:03:00.004-07:00

I have a couple minor changes to the strategy in the previous post. First of all the biggest issue with my current strategy is the size of my losses. They are few and far between but they can be very big. As a result of limiting my risk, after all my blog is named Keel Risk, I have eliminated the last position size in my geometric sizing. Now my sizing is 1 unit, 1 unit, and 2 units. Again, my unit size is 40% of my account balance. Although, I think my unit size for February will be reduced to 20% of my account size. Again, to reduce risk.

I just finished up trading for January. This wraps up the best 2 months I have had trading ever. I have a strategy that is performing phenomenally. It has held up against some big changes in the EUR/USD and taken some losses and still performed well.

The one concern in the strategy is how it performs when the pair is trading in an extended trading range. I tend to think it will do ok but only time will tell. At this point, the key to this strategy are as follows:

Trade with the daily trend
Trade against the 5 minute trend...in other words when it is going UP, sell
Trade with small gearing, and then go smaller, and then smaller again!
No Stops
Know when to get out of a trade
Average in your trades, yes average your losers

At this point, I'm thinking of the best approach to increase my account balance. Do I start adding a $1000 a month, or just drop in $10,000 and then add $1000 a month. Bottom line I need to get my balance up in order to make this effort worth the time. I realize it might take a couple years before that happens.

Forex Strategy

2009-01-10T22:52:00.010-07:00

Hi all...As I stated in my previous post, I will detail my latest strategy. At this point it is hard to detail it exactly because a lot of the strategy is discretionary. Besides this strategy goes against all trading rules that you will read in books. With that here are the details of the strategy so far:

Scale-in: I scale into my trades. I put on as many as 4 trades with the following geometric sizing...1, 1, 2, 4 units. One unit equals 40% of my trading account. For example, if I have a $10,000 trading account 1 unit equals $4000 trade size. I'm seriously thinking of reducing my unit size in half. I will probably finish this month out and then decide if I reduce my units. I mostly add units when the trade goes against me. Yes, I know it defies all logical thought.

No stops: Yes, it is true. Reckless, I don't think so. The reason it is not reckless is because I'm trading very small units, even when you add all units. Secondly, I do exit trades when it goes significantly against me, but not by placing a hard stop. I'm thinking of modifying this logic slightly by only placing a stop on my last and largest trade. Or when I'm loaded up with all lots then I might put in a stop on all units, I'm just not sure yet. I need more data to figure out what is best.

Trade with the trend: This means put on the daily candlestick bars and trade in that direction. I'm thinking of adding in the weakly chart for decision making.

Trade against the 5 minute trend, preferably at the top of the 5 minute bars

Profit taking: I have not figured out what is best. Sometimes I have taken quick profits and other times I have tried to let them run. Not sure what is best at this point.

Naked charts: I'm not trading with anything on my charts. I make my decisions based on pure price action.
Focus Trading: I'm am only trading the EUR/USD.

The one big issue with this strategy is the occasional big hit. Anytime you trade without stops and double down on your losses a time will come when you get nailed. I have a couple good sized loses so far and it seems to be performing well. So, I'm trying to work through some of the deficiencies of this strategy. Only time will tell how it all goes.

December Review

2009-01-01T16:11:00.002-07:00

It feels good to be in the trenches once again. I started off using one strategy and two weeks into the month I totally switched how I trade. In fact, I used a strategy that does not resemble many trading techniques I have ever used. The second strategy was used for a full 3 weeks, the last 3 weeks of December. The obvious reason I switched strategies is because I did not get the results I was expecting. Bottom line the first strategy made a mess of my first month back. The second strategy did very well, however I have a lot of questions that need answered about this strategy. Following are the results

Strategy #1: (-$36.5) / -7.31%

Strategy #2: +$18.09 / 3.90%

Total: (-$18.48) / -3.70%

So to review...Strategy #1 is gone!! I will not be trading it anymore. Strategy #2 had very good performance considering I only traded it 3 out of 5 weeks. 2 of the weeks were Christmas and New Years week. Since this is the first month back and I'm still trying to identify my trading techniques I consider this month a good month. It is nice to have a down month and have minimal at risk but yet trading real money.

All for now...the next post I will go into the new strategy.

Another day another strategy

2008-12-25T21:32:00.004-07:00

I'm throwing the baby out with the bath water. What I mean by that, is I'm throwing all reasonable thought of how the market should be traded out the window. I'm guessing we have all read the books, forum posts, blogs, etc...telling use how we should trade. Typically it goes like this, make sure you have defined your risk by putting in a hard stop-loss. Make sure you have a risk-reward of greater than 1:2. Another...never ever average down when trading. Well I have followed that advice for the better part of 6-7 years and it has not helped me accomplish consistent profitability. Now, I need to preface that I think this logic can be profitable; however, I think at this point in my trading I'm going to go down a fork in the road.

The reason I'm taking a fork in the road is because I have continued to struggle. At the same time, I came across a forum at ForexFactory by user FTI. It is a very long difficult read, of which I'm still not done reading, and at the same time it was very rewarding. FTI is a retired big-time trader for a bank. He talked about the way he trades that goes against just about anything you will read in a book. He trades without stops and he averages down. I do need to preface that he trades very much in control and knows his risks.

Something just clicked with me in the forum that FTI wrote. So as a result, I'm getting rid of my strict trading strategy and focusing on a looser more discretionary trading strategy. I'm very much in a testing mode at this point because I don't have the strategy specifically mapped out. I am not going to be trading exactly how FTI trades. I have my own flavor of that trading style that I am adopting.

For the last 2 weeks I have been studying and trying to perfect this new strategy. To review, the first two weeks of December I started going down the road using the strategy that Jacko(from FF) was trading successfully. It turns out that it was not working for me. When you start a new strategy and the first two weeks are both negative weeks it is not a good sign. So then I started my new strategy and right off the bat it was profitable for the first two weeks it was implemented. By no means a sure things because I have some major issues I need to resolve to make this a long-term profitable strategy.

I'll try and go into some details about the strategy in the near future.

Interesting Result

2008-12-06T21:21:00.008-07:00

My first week of trading has slipped by and I'm finding something interesting. First off, my week included some good trades and some bad trades. In the end, the week ended down by almost -2%. Regardless of my trading strategy whether good or bad; I'm finding if I had a better strategy to move my trades to break-even, after moving n-pips in profit, I would be up +3.9%. That is almost at 6% swing simply by implementing a better exit strategy.

My current strategy is to move a trade to break-even as soon as possible. Sometimes this is when a trade moved 10 pips to profit other times it will be around 30 pips. It all depends on what I'm trying to do on that trade. However, the problem comes in when I have a trade going when I'm sleeping. What usually happens is I set my 50, 70, 100 pip stop-loss and while I'm sleeping the trade goes into profit by a significant amount, not enough to trigger my profit target, then the trade quickly snaps back and hits my stop-loss and instead of breaking-even I lose money.

This same issue came up when I was trading a few months ago. It came up again and again and I did not do anything about it. I don't think a simple trailing stop will fix the problem. I am trading on Oanda which does not have any type of conditional orders, which is what I need. The other alternative is to have some type of alert system when a price level is reached to where I can correctly place my stop, after waking me up! I'm not thrilled about this option because I have a day job and I can't be tired all the time. When you are trading a $500 account it doesn't quite seem worth it, however; if I could have a break-through in my trading and was making $5000 a day I wouldn't have a problem waking up a couple times in the middle of the night.

Needless to say, my number one task is to figure out how I can better manage my stops at all hours of the day and night.

A New Chapter Opens

2008-11-29T16:13:00.025-07:00

I have funded my account at Oanda and I'm ready to start trading. I'll be starting with a very small account of $500. If I can trade 3 consecutive months in profit, then I will be adding to the account balance. There is no sense in starting with more capital if I can't first prove my strategy. Out of the gate my plan is as follows:

Starting Balance: $500.00
Broker: Oanda
Monthly Goal: 2 - 3% profit
Currency Pair: I will only be trading EUR\USD pair
Max Risk at any one time: 5%
Lot size: 1 lot = 1000 ($0.10 per pip). I will be trading multiple lots
Strategy: I'll be implementing trades based on whether the market is trending or range-bound. If you are familiar with ForexFactory forums you will notice a similarity to the trend-trading strategy writing up by Jacko. Following are the rules that I have right now for each of those scenarios.

Trending Market:

Determine technical and fundamental direction on daily and weekly charts and only trade that direction.
Buy/sell when there is a minor retracement. Use support/resistance, pivot points, round numbers and 50% Fibonacci retracement to identify entry points.
A hard stop will be used, it will be close to 40% of the daily ATR. The precise placement will be based on trend lines, pivot points, round numbers and 50% Fib lines.
If a stop is hit, use the Anti-hedging strategy created by Jacko from FF. Anti-hedging strategy is when a stop is hit and the price goes past your stop by 50+ pips, then re-enter your trade when it comes back to where you got stopped out. You enter in the same direction of your original trade.

Range-bound Market:

Identify if it is a range-bound market(I know easier said than done!)
Identify range by support/resistance trend lines, pivot points and round numbers
Buy/Sell at the high/low of the range if the risk ratio is 1:1.5 or better. If history proves that the win/loss ratio is greating than 55% then the risk ratio can be adjusted down.

The above strategy will be my focus for the next 12+ months and hopefully longer. If you want to take a look at the Jacko strategy here is the link http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=27286

As the clock turns

2008-11-13T22:30:00.003-07:00

Wow, it is amazing how fast time goes by. Now a month later from the previous post. We are in the new house. We have been here a couple weeks and still have a lot of moving and clean-up still to do. You know what that means, no time for trading.

I'm trying to fight the good battle and get back to trading. Right now, my guess is I will be back trading in the next 30 days. I'm figuring out my one trading plan that I will use when I start trading live again. Colin at http://www.forexspirit.com/ has an interesting scalping strategy that might be worth more investigation. I might also review all my old records and see what I can make out of past strategies.

All for now...

Blog Revival

2008-10-12T20:27:00.001-06:00

When I left off from my last post, my wife and I had put our house on the market. Well, a couple months later and I'm sitting in our apartments. Yes, our house sold and we closed on it in Sept. We didn't really expect to sell it so soon. Primarily because the housing market has been one of the toughest in recent times. We were prepared to wait it out for the long haul, even if it meant a year. No need for that now!

We have been searching high and low for a new house. We found a house a while ago, a short-sell, and it has been a long haul. If you know anything about short-sells, the difficult part is to get approval from the bank, the sellers bank for the short fall. In our case, that proved to be the easy part. We heard back from the bank in 3 days. The issue has been the sellers. To make a long story short, we have a closing date at the end of this month, October. So here we site...

On the trading front I have not made any trades in the last couple months. I'm looking to make a change and move forward with making some serious money on this trading venture. It might be a little difficult with the new house and all; however, I'm planning on making some time. One concern is that the 'new' house is not new and has plenty of fixing up to do. I'm sure it will occupy a good amount of my free time.

I'm alive

2008-07-08T21:06:00.005-06:00

Not much going on for the month of June. I made a couple very minor trades and I think when all is added up, it will be near break-even. I have been diligently working getting my house on the market. I'm tired of the drive and the expenses that go along with it. So, my wife and I decided the house is to go on the market.

So far we have had it on the market for a little over a week. We have had 3 showing and no bites or second showings. What a pain in the butt to have your house on the market! Your house has to perfectly clean and picked-up all the time. Not too bad if you don't have kids. We have 2 kids and it is tough to keep a house 'show' ready.

So right now that is my life. Trading is taking a back seat. Soon it will once again take a higher priority.

May Summary

2008-06-01T21:16:00.003-06:00

Month	Profit/Loss %	Profit/Loss $
Nov 2007	1.91%	$185.63
Dec 2007	2.37%	$229.39
Jan 2008	-7.76%	-$769.44
Feb 2008	6.12%	$548.98
Mar 2008	-4.76%	-$453.07
April 2008	-5.77%	-$520.83
May 2008	2.02%	$170.96

May was perfect month because I followed my plan. I focused on my one profitable strategy that has proven profitable month after month. In addition, I traded fairly small size which limited my risk. I ended May +2.02% to the good. When a month goes to plan it seems to be a very boring uneventful month of trading.

My plan for June is exactly the same thing I did for May. If I end June +2% it will be considered a win. My goal at this point is to have another positive month at which point I would start gradually increasing my trade size.

April Summary

2008-04-30T22:10:00.007-06:00

Month	Profit/Loss %	Profit/Loss $
Nov 2007	1.91%	$185.63
Dec 2007	2.37%	$229.39
Jan 2008	-7.76%	-$769.44
Feb 2008	6.12%	$548.98
Mar 2008	-4.76%	-$453.07
April 2008	-5.77%	-$520.83

April was a challenging month. Primarily, because I once again did not follow my original plan that I had laid out for the month. Secondly, because even if I did I would not have ended up in the black.

Let me explain...2.86% of my losses were because I did not follow my plan. These are trades I took that did not fit into any of my strategies. The thing is I have lost approx 10% of my account on these type of trades since I begin trading in Nov 2007. So you can either complain about it or do something about it! I will not take another one of these type of trades in May. NOT GOING TO DO IT!

Another item that I checked off that I won't be doing. I have a strategy called the Mixer that has been a consistent loser. I stuck with it for so long because I know someone using it successfully. I simply can't make it profitable. I lost 2.02% of my account this month to this strategy. 5.63% of my account on this strategy since beginning in November 2007. This strategy is gone. Not going to trade it again. Not even worth analyzing a different flavor of it. GONE!

And another item...if you have been reading this blog then you know about my 'perfect' strategy. Well it is not perfect. It cost me 3.33% this month. This strategy, I'm not throwing out because I think it might need some more analysis before I ditch it. Besides, I am overall profitable after many trades so it might just be a draw down. Just one that I'm a little surprised at this time. Anyways, this strategy has been taken off-line for analysis and if I trade it again the trades will be much small until proven successful.

So where does this leave me after a rough month. First of all I'm left with one strategy. This one strategy has been profitable 5 out 6 months. This strategy made 2.19% gain this month and since the November 2007 has made almost 8%. I have traded this very very small so the 8% could very easily be 16%. If I was up 16% I would be satisfied.

My plan going forward is to focus on this one strategy that I have been profitable with. The strategy is named BWILC. Some of you may know what that stands for. It stands for Bird Watching In Lion Country. It is a strategy, a somewhat discretionary system by Dirk du Toit. He has an ebook for sale that discusses his methodology. I have combined this strategy and another that is similar on the ForexFactory by Jacko. Another person that uses this methodology with some success is Colin McGinley at www.forexspirit.com.

I will write about the stategy and the basic concepts in my next post. Hopefully in the next couple days. Bottom line it is one strategy that has been working for me on a somewhat consistent basis. I think this month is make it or break it for me. Not that I'm giving up by any means; however, if I'm not seeing some encouraging results this month I'm taking most of my money out of my accounts. I will probably keep about $100 in my Oanda account. I will trade that $100 until I am consistently profitable. Simple as that, there is no sense is spending good money after bad if I cannot be profitable.

I did close out all my trades so I'm flat except for a very small carry trade account that is doing ok. So the slate has been wiped clean for hopefully a profitable month. My goal for May is 2% or more.

All for now, I've got to get to bed. I've got a crazy day at work tomorrow. We are trying to get a project out the door for production on Friday and we are still coding, not a good sign.

Las Vegas

2008-04-09T20:56:00.002-06:00

I just got back from Las Vegas. I went with the wife to get away from life and the kids :). We left on Sunday and came back today, Wed. We stayed at Treasure Island in one of their remodeled rooms. Actually, very nice room considering my wife was able to score our room for $99 dollars a night. In addition, to the $99 room, we got $25 in food vouchers, some match play coupons and some other minor bonuses.

We planned on spending up to $700-$800 in gambling but when all was said and done we spent less than $100. Yes, less than a $100 and we did a lot of gambling. I mostly played $3-6 limit poker and some blackjack. I ended up profitable on both blackjack and poker. It was very surprising that I was able to hold my own playing poker. That was only the 2nd time I have played live and in person. I have played online some and have read a couple books. I'm guessing if I really spent more time to learn the intricacies I would do even better.

Anyway a really great trip, I didn't want to leave. I'm already looking forward to another trip to play more poker.

March Summary

2008-03-31T21:30:00.003-06:00

March did not treat me to kindly. I can tell you I have no one to blame but myself. I ended the month down -4.76%. Ouch! So you ask, what went wrong and what went right. Bottom line I took a lot of discretionary trades. In other words I did not follow the tried and true path to profits. I tried to circumvent gravity and gravity won, as it normally does.

As discouraging as -4.76% sounds it doesn't feel that bad. My two standby strategies that have continually worked for me for months now has continued to hold up in a difficult trading environment. My focus for April is to not play catchup as we all know the outcome of that type of trading. I'm going to stick with my two main strategies, and trade very small.

As soon as I figure out an easy way to display some cool graphs of my trading stats I will get all the details of the month added.

Starting Fresh

2008-03-21T20:33:00.005-06:00

I was reading http://simonsupertrader.blogspot.com/ and read a really good post. Actually there are a lot of great thought provoking posts on the SimonSuperTrader blog. This post hit me because of the place I'm as a result of mediocre results

Currently I'm tracking my performance on a monthly basis. As a result, I get this refreshing sense of starting anew. It is like starting a new year. It is actually very therapeutic for a couple reasons. First, if you are having a great month you are excited of capping the month off with a positive result for the record books. Secondly, if you are having a bad month then you have that sense of a new start with better things on the horizon.

SimonSuperTrader talks about this resetting feeling and how important it is to his trading. He does this 'resetting' every week. I'm not sure why but I have never thought about doing anything different than once a month. To me once a week makes perfect sense. It causes someone to focus a little more intently. I need to think about it over the weekend but I think it may help my performance.

Why is profitable, consistant trading so dang difficult!

2008-03-19T20:38:00.004-06:00

Why is profitable, consistent trading so dang difficult! I have been asking myself this question lately. Of course I've been asking myself this question because I haven't been having the greatest month. Not a blow out or anything like that just can't get a decent trade going my way. Everything I put on I'm getting stopped out. I'm afraid to check but I might be down 5% right now. Very frustrating to say the least.

Last month was a total unemotional month. I just plodded along made a few trades and somehow ended up with a big 6%+ month. I think my biggest losing trade was under $40.00. This month I'm pissed off and I have made some bad trades because of it. I have a couple trades of -$100.00 plus.

The good thing is the strategy that I have been talking about as far as my perfect strategy. Well, it ticking along perfectly and actually having a really good month. All my other strategies have been in the tank and causing my month to look like shit. I'm thinking I need to dump all my other strategies and just focus on this money maker because it is so consistent and profitable.

I know for right now I'm going to step back for a couple days at least and trade my one profitable strategy. This way I can take a small break and hopefully make some profitable trades without having to really think about things. It seems every time I trade with emotion it kill my profits. Hope you having a better trading month than me.

The Perfect Forex Trading Strategy!

2008-03-13T20:32:00.005-06:00

I have found the perfect forex trading strategy! Well at least looks that way. However, I know all good thing must come to an end. And I know this strategy will not continue to churn away profits forever. I know better, really! However let's look at what I think is a perfect strategy.

There are a few things that must exist to be the perfect trading strategy, at least according to my little world. When I say perfect I am not talking about hitting 100% or 99%. The following is what I'm talking about:

1) The perfect strategy would be profitable. Obvious, not at all. My guess is that most amateurs have traded profitable strategies that would have made them a lot of money. However, most traders can not identify a profitable strategy if they were handed one on a silver platter. For example, if you offered a trader a strategy where he got paid $1.10 for every time a coin landed on heads and he had to give away $1.00 for every tails. My guess is that this exact scenario extracted to the Forex world would result in a losing strategy for the trader.

This is what would happen. The trader would trade along for a day, two, three or 30 and then come across a losing streak. The streak would be 4, 5, 6, 7 losing trades in a row and they they would quit. If you know anything about statistics, you know that 4, 5, 6, 7... losing trades in a row will happen. A long losing streak is a statistical fact if you do this game long enough. So you better know a losing streak is coming and be prepared to handle the draw down. However, if you know you have a profitable strategy, you learn to embrace those long draw downs because you know what is around the corner. Sadly this is one of the most important components that I have missed. I would venture to guess that 98% of all amateur traders miss this one too.

2) Strategy must have enough trades every month to have the results end up with statistical significance. What I mean, is if you have a strategy that trades only a few times a month you will not be able to tell if your strategy is worth trading until you have about a year of trading results. For me, I'm impatient and don't like to wait a year for anything. For me a perfect strategy would be to trade between 20 - 100 times a month.

3) The perfect strategy would enter trades on facts. For example, when certain criteria align, you would enter a trade. You simply would enter a trade, no fuss no muss. No emotion, none!

4) The perfect strategy would enter trades, exit trades at predefined limits. Yes, I mean limits and most importantly STOPS.

5) The perfect strategy would run while you are out on the golf course or climbing a mountain or whatever floats your boat.

Well I have a strategy with all the above criteria. Strategy is set once a day, has had over 150 trades since Jan 1, 2008. This equates to 2.5 months. It has a 52.67% win rate and it wins more than it loses. There is absolutely no emotion involved. 99.9% of the trades are done while I'm doing something else.

Since I have what I define as a perfect strategy, you ask why do my monthly results not show spectacular returns. Let me answer that for you. First and foremost, I'm trading this strategy with 1 mini lot. I'm trading with a mini lot because I need a little more time to confirm this is truly a positive expectation of a trading strategy. At which point I deem it to be worthy, I will slowly increase my trading size. Secondly, the reason my monthly trading results have not shown spectacular results is because I'm trying not to put all my eggs in one basket. I know sometimes things can seem too good to be true. As a result, I'm continuing to trade this strategy and develop other strategies. These other strategies have not been entirely smooth sailing.

I do have some of the most encouraging results I have ever seen trading. I'm not talking about my numeric hard monthly results, that will come with time. I'm talking about the fact that I know exactly why this one strategy is so successful and confirms everything I have learned. It is not pie in the sky thinking and hoping it continues to work. I know this exact strategy can be translated to other strategies. Only time will tell if it is the real deal. If it is the 'key', I can't believe how easy it is. This is what gives me scepticism.

The Infamous Re-Quote

2008-03-09T12:40:00.004-06:00

If you have been trading for a couple years you have probably come across a broker that does re-quotes. I have and I refuse to trade with a broker that does not accept my order. After all they are the one giving me the quote. It just gives me a feeling of the manipulation that is occuring and I need as much to go in my favor as possible. Re-quotes do not bode in a trader's favor in my opinion.

I have never had a re-quote from Oanda in the 7+ years I have traded through them. One of the reasons that Oanda is my favorite broker and I send 95% of all trades through them each month. I have an account with InterbankFx and although I do not trade through them very much I did received a re-quote the other day. I had been thinking of switching that fx account to someone else and now I am definitely closing the account and moving my funds elsewhere. I should also mention that FxSolutions(fxsol.com) gave me tons of re-quotes years ago so I bailed on them too. I do not know if they still participate in this practice but they did for me and that is why I will never use them again.

I'm in the process of switching all my fx accounts under the LLC I created so now is a good time to move things around. I've opened an account at Forex.com. One of the main reasons I chose Forex.com is because they have conditional orders. Specifically I have a strategy that when in profit by 25 or so pips I need to automatically change my stop loss to break-even. Foxex.com is the only broker that does this conditional type order on a server-side basis.

Moral of the story, be picky of who you choose to be your broker. After all it is your money and as traders we need to demand best practices. In addition, if the broker is not going to act in a manner that is suitable we need to let the world know. That is my opinion!

Rich Dad Poor Dad

2008-03-05T19:50:00.012-07:00

Many of you may realize where the title of my post comes from; many of you may not. If you do not, I highly recommend you get familiar with the concepts behind Rich Dad Poor Dad. Rich Dad Poor Dad is a financial education company co-founded by Robert Kiyosaki. A lot of their concepts go against the main stream logic of save, invest for the long-term using 401k, SEPs.

For the longest time I have conceptualized a lot of the thoughts behind Rich Dad Poor Dad; however, I have always thought I was the lone sheep and everyone else was correct. The old stand-by of invest long-term, save and pray did not seem very logical for me however everyone else was doing it so it must be right. Well the books I have been reading in the Rich Dad Poor Dad series have finally confirmed my suspicions and make perfect sense to me.

"Who Took My Money" by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter is one book in a long list of books they have published. "Who Took My Money" is the second book I have read in this series. First of all the title of the book does not fit concepts in the book, it just doesn't give the book justice. The idea of the book is to go against conventional wisdom and not plow all your money into a savings account and or 401k. Robert Kiyosaki states that the financial markets can and will crash in the future so as a result the average person has their money at risk. As a result, Robert Kiyosaki recommends becoming an expert in one or more key areas that can make you financially independent.

His focus is to get across the point that people need to concentrate on cash flow as opposed to capital gains. Figure out what your money can do for you today as opposed to saving, wishing and hoping that your money will increase and be there for you when you retire in 20, 30 40 years. In other words do not stash your money into a 401k and pray that it will be there when you are ready to retire because it just may not be there or at least 30, 40 or 50% might be gone is it was for a lot of people during the tech bust of 2000-2003.

His ideas for cash flow are to start a business, invest in real estate and invest in paper assets. By starting a full-time or part-time business you can gain cash flow, maintain legal protection and increase tax benefits. Then by selectively buying real estate you can rent the properties and gain additional tax benefits and increase cash flow. Lastly, to stay diversified you can invest in the financial markets.

A couple warnings...First Robert Kiyosaki warns and then re-warns about some of the concepts in the book that not all people can perform what he is recommending. I believe he does this because to be successful with this tactic you must be very passionate and educated about what you are doing. In addition, he does not give you a step by step outline of what you must do to be successful. As well as he should not, because it is impossible to do so and will set people up for failure. You must do your own research and due diligence. There are a lot of people that criticize Kiyosaki because they are looking for that hand holding and for someone to tell them exactly what to do and when to do it.

I give this book 5 stars out of 5 stars! I really like the concepts in this book and plan on applying a version of them to my life. I can't tell you how sick and tired I am of working for corporate America. I know there is more to life then going to a job that does not fulfill my hopes and dreams. This blog will keep track of my progress.

January and February Updates

2008-01-28T20:23:00.006-07:00

I finally have my January and February updates posted here! A quick review of both months...January, was the best of two extremes. I came into one of the best strategies I have ever worked on trading. January also brought a rare occurrence on one of my other strategies. The strategy that gave me all the problems was a volatility based strategy and I had approximately 7 positions on and precisely at that point the market moved very strongly away from those positions resulting in heavy losses. I have since modified my strategy that brought all the losses. My strategy that I discovered helped cover some of the losses although it was still a mess. So although disappointing, January really turned out to have a silver lining.

February was an incredible month. I was up over 6%, my best month to date. Ironically, February was a month that I plodded along with little to no emotion. What the market gave me is what it gave me and I didn't really care either way. I guess I was a little disgusted from January so I went through February using only strategies that have worked in the past and it paid off. On top of that I continued to trade very small, very low risk trades. Quite honestly I was surprised when I totalled February up to see I did over 6%! And the incing on the cake is the strategy that I discovered and traded successfully in January was very successful in February. I have discovered a slight modification that should make that strategy even better, without curve fitting I might add. Below are the results for the last two months.

Stats	Nov 2007	Dec 2007	Jan 2008	Feb 2008
Profit/Loss (%):	1.91%	2.37%	-7.76%	6.12%
Profit/Loss ($):	$185.63	229.39	-$769.44	$548.98
Number of Trades:	32	54	155	109
Winning Trades:	25	44	85	67
Losing Trades:	6	10	60	38
BreakEven Trades:	1	0	10	4
% Winning Trades	78.13%	81.48%	54.84%	61.47%
Avg Winning Trade($):	$27.02	$14.80	$17.86	$23.04
Avg Losing Trade($):	$84.49	$45.81	$38.56	$26.53
Largest Gain($):	$86.00	$83.00	$58.03	$52.15
Largest Loss($):	$228.97	$196.73	$229.55	$33.18
Avg Trade Size:	5596	3083	5753	7068

Broker Rankings

2008-01-27T21:11:00.002-07:00

The following is my opinion of the top Forex brokers:

1) Interactive Brokers (http://www.interactivebrokers.com/): True interbank, the best spreads probably the best broker for the true professional. The one downside is it is only beneficial to trade through them if you have a large account. This is the reason I am not trading through them(fx), however when I do get my account above 30-40k I will move over to Interactive Brokers. I am using Interactive Brokers for a self-directed Roth IRA and a regular brokerage account.

2) Oanda (http://www.oanda.com/): I currently use Oanda as my primary broker. First class organization, I have had a problem and they fixed it no questions asked. By the way that is the only way you know if a broker is good...that is to have an issue and their positive response.

3) EFX Group (http://www.efxgroup.com/): I do not have an account with nor have a ever had an account with them. I have heard some really good things from other people and they have a great setup. Their spread are some of the best and their commission is not bad. The one downside I heard is their swap rate has a little to be desired. I'm thinking of opening an account with EFX to check them out a little closer.

4, 5) http://www.forex.com/ and http://www.fxcm.com/ I think both of these brokers are good reputable brokers. Yes, some people don't like them but it is the minority.

6) http://www.interbankfx.com/ : I do have an account with InterbankFx. They are ok, to tell you the truth I don't trade through them very much. One of the main reasons I do trade with them is they have Meta Trader platform. I hope to get some automated strategies in the near future so that is why I currently use them.

Mid-January Update

2008-01-27T17:30:00.000-07:00

The not so mid-January report...Not a good way to start 2008. January has been a rough ride and I spent a lot of emotional brain cells on this months trading. I can tell you this month I'm not going to end up with more money than I started with. Right now I'm sitting on a loss for January of around 9%. This puts my account around negative 5% overall since the beginning. I'm not worried about a losing month because those will happen occasionally. The part that I'm disappointed with is I have almost 5% of losses due to not sticking to my plan. I have specific trading strategies and in order to make a trade it must match up to one of my strategies. If it doesn't match up then I should not take the trade. Well, I went against this plan and of course it came back to bite me. I will be very happy to get this month behind me and onto the next.

With all that doom and gloom all is not lost. I have come up with a strategy at the beginning of the month with very surprising results. And best of all there is no discretion involved at all. No emotion, no fuss no muss. I have been trading it since the very beginning of the month, so I now have what is beginning to be enough results to put some statistical significance behind the results. And the result are very good. Bottom line this strategy is hitting at 59% success rate with the wins greater than the losses. In addition, it is a medium frequency trading strategy with very little management needed. I'm looking forward to see how it continues for the next month. That strategy alone has upped my account by 3.3%. Considering the trading size I'm currently using there is no reason this strategy couldn't make 5-6% per month with low risk. Time will only tell.

Keel Risk 2008 Goals

2007-12-31T16:48:00.000-07:00

Alright let's see if I can get something done in 2008. I have high expectations for 2008 so let me list some key goals that I want to accomplish be the end of 2008:

Average minimum 3% per month account growth (approx $300 month/$3600year) total
Limit monthly draw-down to no more than 9%
Develop and implement 2 automated trading strategies that each return +1% month
Generate 3000 page views per month
Monetize blog to return $100 per month
4 new posts per week / 200 per year

Trading Statistics

2007-12-31T15:14:00.000-07:00

I finally got my account transactions automated so I can identify strengths and weaknesses. As many know Oanda does not have a very good reporting structure for you to see a summary of your trades. They do have a monthly summary report; however, you only have access to it after the month has occurred and even then you have to wait a week or two afterwords.

I created a program in c# that will take the .csv file from Oanda and load it into a Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 database. From that point I have an asp.net/c# website that will extract all the transaction from the database and presents all the stats. Below you will see the results of all that work! I plan on adding many more stats including some graphical charts representing trends.

The December results will change slightly because I have some carry trades going and will need to add these values into the final results. However this is pretty close to where I sit right now.

Stats	November 2007	December 2007	Cumulative
Profit/Loss (%):	1.91%	2.06%	3.98%
Profit/Loss ($):	$185.63	200.01	$385.64
Number of Trades:	32	50	82
Winning Trades:	25	40	65
Lossing Trades:	6	10	16
BreakEven Trades:	1	0	1
% Winning Trades	78.13%	80.00%	79.27%
Avg Winning Trade($):	$27.02	$15.60	$19.99
Avg Losing Trade($):	$84.49	$45.81	$60.31
Largest Gain($):	$86.00	$83.00	$86.00
Largest Loss($):	$228.97	$196.73	$228.97
Avg Trade Size:	5596	3050	4043

Welcome

2007-12-31T15:00:00.001-07:00

Welcome to my blog. This blog is a continuation of my http://millionpips.blogspot.com/ blog. Those of you who have followed me over from MillionPips know what I'm doing. For those who are new to the blog you can go back to the Millionpips blog to read the history. You might get a little background by reading the MillionPips blog. Just remember as time goes by thoughts and ideas evolve so some of what you read at MillionPips might not apply to what or how I'm doing things today.

To give you a quick background...I'm 37 years old, married with 2 kids. I'm a senior software developer and have been in the industry for almost 10 years. I live in the great state of Colorado.

I've been trading the financial markets on and off for most of 10 years. I think trading the currency market offers great opportunity with limited downside and unlimited upside. I'm hoping to capture the upside and make for a better future for me and my family. My previous trading history has been a guessing game with no historical statistics to backup strategies. Not to mention, I think I have maintained a break even record through the years but it is all a guess because I didn't keep detail records other than filing taxes.

This blog is a representation of how I'm going to do things differently. It all started about 7 months ago when I decided to take things more seriously. First and foremost this venture will be run like a business. And like my name 'Keel Risk Group', risk is my business. The better I manage and understand risk the more profits I will accumulate.

I hope you join me on this adventure and see how far I can take it!