Back from my break

Little break


After my hard time losing a fairly high part of my capital, I decided to Analyse. But not the market really. Instead my serious failure. I also decided not to trade for 2 or 3 days. I wanted to see the effect of the famous US nonfarm and its impact on the related pairs. And if possible for free. No need to leave behind another bunch of teeth just to understand that.


The beast, FxSurfer sleeping in me is back and ready. I shall trade again tomorrow, although not sure to understand today’s EURxxx rise. I will find out why. Better understanding before placing any order, right?


This is why I did not trade today.


The Mr Glick survival rate review


I will apply a simple mathematical logic to it. I lost about a quarter of my capital, thus I will reduce it by a quarter of its actual value. And re-capitalizing should not raise the survival rate immediately.


One of the reason I survived, I owe it to the babypips forum community. They deserve a big thank you! Sometimes some actions are easier to perform when you are not alone.


I reduce the Survival rate to 3 .


Mr Glick
Forex Surfer - Apprentice

I am in trouble (already)

What should I do ?

Ok, I had a very smart idea. As I said last week, I only plan to open orders on micro Lots. You will know a micro Lot worth 1000 units. And a mini-lot 10000 units.

It was out of question for me to open any mini-Lot order. However I felt I could increase Profits by placing, still micro Lots, but slightly leveraged.

My idea was to spot a trend and place a 0.01 micro Lot, then a bit later a 0.03 and a last one at 0.05. This way once I would happily surf the wave, I could still make money even I do not reach the small 0.01.

Well. What works a way, works the other. I mean Losses. It is the Forex Hospital road I am taking right now and no more teeth in the mouth. All planted into the FxSurf.

What I did not realize is: how many pips today’s drop in JPY pairs could generate with my brilliant micro-Leveraged plan on… BUY !?

And because it would not be fun without the cherry on the cake: I left for work this morning without taking the time placing Stop-Losses.

All the ingredients for a mega Forex-Bomb were combined. Just needed the detonator from the market.

You wonder what happened when I came back home ? Indeed. Well I did not predict my micro-Leverages would pile up and totalise a £150 Loss. You read well, there is no comma after the “1” or the “5” …

So why am I asking what to do? I confess the orders are still opened. I think it is right now the time I truly feel losing away my money. The little voice on a shoulder tells me to close everything, recapitalize the account and try again. On the other shoulder, another voice tells me to leave it open and wait it goes a bit up to reduce the Loss.

I am still thinking.

Oh dear.

My survival rating will most likely drop. Indeed.

Mr Glick

Forex Surfer in trouble - Apprentice

Shy Profits

Shy Profits today, but Profits

After yesterday’s crash, it is pleasing to end the day with £1.30. I may have understood the importance of right timing, mastering it is another. I will let time and experience teaching me. Such a volatile day and ending in Profits. I am almost proud.

A word on time spent studying fundamental/technical

I am realizing that with a family and full time job, it is quite hard to organize the agenda and commit to all life responsibilities. I chose a day trading strategy and all my tactics turn around it. Mmmh. Difficult to say if I will need plastic surgery to add few arms, another leg and liver to cope with everything.

Anyway. I make a point staying aware of the general trends in economies and politics. I also want to continue analysing numbers. After the money management plan, the risk management plan, I must add a time management plan, I think.

How?

1 thing at a time. Primary target is a full use of RSS feeds. 2 weeks ago I barely knew what that stuff was. Last days I learned more about it and started using the Google reader. At the moment it is a bit messy in there. It’s cool. But messy. But cool… Ok, will sort out the issue and hope gaining time.

On the other hand I will continue developing some ideas of data recording and storage for analyses. The main tool should be Microsoft Excel, my beloved baby. I often see more through numbers than graphs. Weird !?

Once those both are in place, I hope to enter a routine. Because routines can be nice sometimes. Just need not lose too much money in the meantime. Surfing Forex can become an expensive activity it seems.

Forex Bots

I read on forums and websites about bots (automatic systems) capable of generating large amount of cash. I must admit I am quite sceptical about them. A very obvious reason is: if the automatic system can generate millions $$$, why selling it?

There is also out there not the sellers but some very shiny Forex knights, looking down at the poor envying investors we are, claiming making millions $$$ with their bot. My question to them is: how many still take the bus and negotiate another month of rent ?

One week thoughts

After a week on a live account, I got more questions than answers. In fact, no answers at all! I observe, learn and see.

Surfing the right waves on my FxSurf, white smile, hair in the wind, is quite exciting. And the reefs danger, well, add the spices making the whole thing actually exciting. So far I like this new activity. Will I speak the same after an account wiped away? Don’t know. But after one week, yes I like it!

Mr Glick

Forex Surfer - Apprentice

Monday Crash

Lost 1% capital overnight

Last night, here was my plan:

-          I was expecting EURxxx pairs opening at a higher value. Well. It was the case. Until there my week-end work hit right. And so I expected a drop at some point.

-          I opened SELL orders on EURxxx pairs (I can see some of you smiling while reading SELL + yesterday night) .

Basically, I Jumped on my FxSurf confidently, approached the waves... And got violently smacked out of the water, left teeth in the sea and few more in the sand!

Concretely, it cost me £5.11. I was not the happiest man in the world at that point. To avoid further disappointments I simply closed any remaining orders (3 more). Why? Because I felt it was all out of control. I needed to feel quiet again. To do so I needed all survivors closed.

Zen is back, can think. “Breathe slowly and blow the candle” said my imaginary friend Mr Reason

What mistake did I do ? I think.

Later today, I could see I was eventually right, the so waited fall in EURxxx I wished to slide on. I came to the sad conclusion that my main mistake was the time I chose to enter the market. I read many Forex advises against beginners trading Mondays. Specially at opening.

Oh Dear, with the right timing, I could get good money from it!

I do not know yet if I was right to simply close everything opened. But one thing sure, I felt good about it. Was needed to get my head back on its shoulders.

Tomorrow is another day.

The positive side

I managed, again, to limit Losses. At a cost, I learned. How to stop the learning curve price? I could go back practice on the demo account? Mmmh. Not so sure. I think I prefer to feel the reality. My minute of philosophy: I prefer to lose £5.11 today rather than £511 later. Today I felt the Loss, I did not on demo accounts.

I rather test other strategies on demo.

Mr Glick

Forex Surfer - Apprentice

Back to Profits

Friday – back to Profits

I closed my last order (out of 6) and totalized a net Profit of £3.23. In more details Winners hit £5.22 against £1.99 from Losers.

Key in this successful day, I believe, came from greed humility. Again I resisted firmly to try to make more. I took my profits and Losses per the plan.

Why do I believe greed would have burned me? Because the intensity of those violent changes in the charts were, to my humble experience, completely unpredictable. I felt at some point a strong force pushing me to take advantage of the high volatility, later. But I won’t. At Lunch I took my money. That’s all for today.

The EURUSD cost me £1.11. Looks like the trend is changing direction but I got no regret. I reduced the risk by taking my Loss and walking away like a Roman Emperor.

The gold cup winner today is the pair EURGBP. I made £2.19 with that order. After reading all that stuff on United Kingdom economic, political issues and technicals confirming the news... However my only uncertainty was: for how long? Anyway, I spotted a well-buttered toast waiting for me. I went right and surfed on the wave. White smile up, hair in the wind. Was a good one!

This week-end

Need some rest and wine my friends. A FxSurfer’s life can be very hard. Now it’s time to relax!

I am actually very excited about an idea: to write down the closing values of my favourite pairs made of USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, and analyze them versus Monday opening projections.

Mr Glick

Forex Surfer - Apprentice

Day 2 - first Losses

And the clouds covered my blue sky

Early morning. Panic on board! The alarms are screaming. The crew jumped off the boat and worse: my FxSurf is crashed against the reefs ! You guessed, today is a dark day. I opened 6 orders. Although I allowed a less tight Stop-Loss to about 10 pips… it did not prevent them to all close in less than half an hour. Also, it is with great shame I have to confess one of them was a Silly Click (see my message 2 days ago for a definition of a Silly Click).

The Silly Click: I had already a matured decision in mind and few seconds before creating the order, I changed my mind. My imaginary friend Mr Reason looked at me with sincere tears. It broke his heart.

Because it was a Silly Click. I took my Loss and created a new order, but according to the plan this time. That will become my only win for today. I could have made more of it but since I am in a full time job, I can only trade early mornings, lunch pause and late afternoon.

Losses review

Today I am in a net Loss of £4.56. A third of the Loss occurred in one go, one order. Look at today’s chart for EURGBP, early morning. Close your eyes and imagine someone BUY just before, really closely just before the huge drop. This someone was me. Fortunately my Stop-Loss, for once, stopped the Loss. Alleluia.

But what really happened ? Was I truly all wrong on all my orders? In fact not at all. I would have allowed more flexible Stop-Losses things could be a bit different. I still may not have generated Profits today, but for sure the balance would be less painful to look at.

The Silly click cost me £0.74 and the win behind rewarded me with £1.20. Changing nothing and just sticking to the plan would have given the following: £0.74 never Lost and £1.20 + the Loss difference, Let say around £0.50 added instead. The whole net Loss drop to around £2.50.

Translate these small amounts into standard Lots. Costly, indeed.

Emotions in front of losing money

Drank a coffee and realized all my orders were closed. Apart from spitting out the coffee in shock, instincts of survival took over reason. First question I asked was: what the hell should I do now?

1 – My first reaction was: shall I go back and open some more orders? Hoping to reverse the damage? That would represent a strong violation of one of my Golden rules: take your Loss and walk away proudly, like a Roman Emperor.

2 – Actually, my second action was very much related to the first one: I was still biting my hands to prevent them to click BUYs and SELLs. Dear, how hard it can be to resist. I felt so sure I could “fix it”. So sure? Not so sure.

Freedom, time to go to the office! Resisted to low level instincs.

The positive outcome

Oh boy, yes there is one!

I limited my Losses to less than 1% of my capital. Which means great news: I can fix at low cost my FxSurf! I sponged the sticky blood off my silky blond hair as well. They need to float again in the wind for coming waves.

Before I go

As strange as it may sound, I do not intend really to change anything to the way I operate. Why? Because I am trading for only 2 days and so far had one Win and one Lose. I need to see were I go. Adjustments can be made, but not changing the plan. Not now.

Mr Glick

Forex Surfer - Apprentice

First ever orders on live account

Live account

I planned to open the live account within the week. Well, done yesterday night. The process was quick and transferring funds was very fast (credit card), good. But not free, no good (£11 fee). I chose the broker Hantec Markets. On the side I keep demo accounts from them and Alpari.

I start small. I chose $1000, which magically transformed into £611. I live in the United Kingdom and therefore prefer to use the same currency as my living place.

The very first security perimeter around those precious £611 is a firm rule against myself: I must not trade other lots than micro-lots. A review will come in time later in the case of more successes than failures. Also, whatever the success rate, increasing the capital is the condition to trade mini-lots. My imaginary  friend Mr Reason will supervise the security perimeter and may bite if trying to get out of it!

First feelings? Definitely not the same as opening a demo account. If you were standing in front of me, you may think “Mr Glick looks so relaxed, it is scary how relaxed he looks actually”. Sometimes I am good at looking relaxed. Normal, I did not open any orders yet. In reality, I am all excited and spent all night dancing with the wolves around a camp fire to call fortune and sun.

Eventually placed orders with my own money !

4 orders in total [Early morning GMT London]. I closed already 2 of them [Early morning GMT London..]. No mercy. Why would I open and close so fast in a few hours? I force myself to stick to the plan: Take your losses early and walk away. That’s what I did. The 2 remaining, USDJPY and GBPJPY, so far, are performing well. Brings to my attention the question of ratio win/loss. I study the question.

How did I chose currency pairs I will trade?

When I first looked at the big Forex picture a few weeks ago, I almost fainted from my chair. So many things on the screen. Would it be reasonable to trade all and any pairs? Mr Reason shouts at me “Don’t do that silly boy!”. I decided to focus on pairs with USD, EUR, GBP and JPY. Some of these combinations are pretty classic and some slightly exotic. Perfect! ...Today.

Would I trade them all everyday at all cost? Yeah I know what Mr Reason, my imaginary friend will say.

Creating the orders were about how much I felt confident about them. I do not want to gamble or guess randomly. Rather educate my decisions. Said that way, it makes more sense why I quickly closed losers, right?

No?

Think about it, if I am so confident but realize I am probably wrong. There is no point to stubbornly watch my failure growing. I took my loss, head up, and walked away proudly like a Roman Emperor.

I must say something. I had a minute of doubt, in fact. The classic human reaction: “I know I am right, it will get better”. I resisted and rewarded myself with a kiss in the mirror.

My blond hair in the wind, large white innocent smile, I continue surfing on the 2 winning waves! How cool is that!?

Profit/Loss results : my  4 first live orders:

In the previous episode, you discovered anxiously an aggressive closure of 2 orders not behaving as expected. But Mr Glick jumped on his FxSurf and slid 2 other lovely waves.

I made a net £3.5 profit. Why did I take it and walked away? Maybe I could make more. Maybe.

It is my first day! You owe me that. No rush. I calculated I made 3.34 times more profits than my 2 losers losses. Ok, now I am thinking my few pounds means and worth nothing. But turned into a standard Lot. It would worth a net £350 (=$550 according to Xe converter). Let’s go back to the real world of micro-lots after the dream.

Although it is a positive first time. I would expect days with and days without. Also what matters most to me is not one win but more wins than loses over the time The best waves in the world often hide nasty reefs. I wonder where I will be standing in a month. For example.

What is interesting is my strong willingness to jump back and trade more. I torture myself that I must hold off to go back for today. Tonight is time for the daily fundamentals and technicals. I also want to dig out information on today’s trends.

Oh my dear, it is so hard to resist.... Last time I felt that was when I stopped smoking almost 10 years ago.

Mr Glick

Forex Surfer - Apprentice

Not one but two mistakes

Hi

Yesterday evening I opened a second demo account/platform with the broker Alpari. I will talk about it. Between then and today early morning I also placed 4 orders. One of them being a silly click and 3 more educated decisions, based on my trend findings for some currency pairs. Let start with my bright mistake idea.

What a beginner should probably not do with a Stop-Loss

The idea of a Stop-Loss, you will have understood, is to Stop a Loss. Are you following me? Did you know I managed to generate a Loss using it? Mr Glick spotted just for you a dangerous and useless game.

What I did is opening 3 orders for 3 different pairs. On my fingers, I counted a very few pips difference and added Stop-Losses on each of them. Against Mr Reason advice, I then thought “ Be smart, while surfing the right wave, the wind in the hair, replace your Stop-Loss always very close, very very close …”. I walked away a few minutes, came back and wondered where all my orders were gone, apart from one survivor. The 2 other orders were simply gone in the closed orders list because they hit the Stop-Loss.

You could tell me I did not lose anything since it sounds like the trend was not flowing in my favor. Yes, this is true for one pair and the other only true about 2-3 pips the wrong way. If my Stop-Loss was placed a bit further away from the price, right now I would be making money (on demo). Instead I collected Losses, highlighted in red for me, in case I did not see well.

Shall I really explain what mistake I made?

Action: I will place Stop-Losses a bit further away. According to my money management plan, 10 pips is a reasonable risk. Will see that. This mistake cost me about $10 plus the profit I will never make.

I leave to the experts tight Stop-Losses.

If I did not re-open new orders just after, it was because I got a rule: if I face a sudden unexpected Loss, I want to walk away and check what happened. And also decide with no pressure.

The “Silly Click” concept.

At the market (the one in the village selling salads and overcheap horrible sunglasses…), when you approach the fish stand, you can see all the ice and dead fishes aligned on it. You may have noticed many of them with large inexpressive eyes starring at nowhere. There is, I think,  a strong correlation between the way they watch the world and their brain activity.

Anytime someone open an order in the Forex with the same attitude as those fishes, that someone is granted the honor of having realized a “Silly Click”.

I open the bal and announce the world I am the proud father of an amazing Silly Click. Yesterday night, based on nothing, I candidly opened an order and watched (like the fishes) my luck… going away. It cost me $12 (demo). With a live account I better save myself such decisions.

Second Broker demo account and a discovery

I made yesterday night a breathe-taking discovery when I installed the broker’s Alpari platform. The platform is Called Metatrader 4 (called MT4). I already got MT4 from the broker Hantec Markets. Guess what: Both are exactly the same. Even the colors! Amazing!

What a surprise. I imagined this MT4 platform being re-vamped by brokers. The difference is not in the layout, colors or options. No. The difference is in the cost of opening a new order and the current price moves.

I was like a mad man abusing the “alt-tab” key combo on my keyboard to quickly switch between both screens in order to check differences at time t. Could sometimes be a few pips different? How is it possible?

My current hypotheses to explain the discrepancy are as follow:

1/ Maybe one of the 2 brokers got updates quicker than the other

2/ Maybe they refresh the data on screen at different intervals

3/ Maybe there is something I don’t know yet

I will come back on this when I find out more.

Before I go

I got a secret.

I am in the process of opening the live account. Might be as soon as a week, or less. I plan to use micro-Lots at the beginning.

Be warned, Silly Clicks can strike anyone anywhere.

Mr Glick

Forex Surfer - Apprentice

Everything starts here

Everything starts here:

My humble intention is simply to tell the story of someone starting in the Forex, and sharing what is happening. The bad and the good.

The Forex world from the very beginning! I do not even have a live account yet. Only demos and few weeks of daily studies. However I plan to open very soon a micro-account to feel the shivers when trading real money. At a lower risk. Let save a few biscuits at the beginning.

Basically if you wonder, like me… How to say it. Well… About everything in the Forex, you may be interested in this story just starting. I propose to discover it together. No more, but no less.

Will I survive ?

Feel free to analyze my survival and agree/disagree with my self-appraisal.

I am the proud inventor of the “Mr Glick Survival Rating” (Check the right of the blog screen). I set it to 5 at the moment because. The middle sounds reasonable. Too low is maybe a bit pessimistic and too high would not make sense. Also, the current rating is based on demo performances. I will pretty soon open the live micro-account. My first actions will target profit sustainability, not profits at all cost.

Which broker?

The truth? I still do not have a clue, or nearly. I spent evenings checking reviews. What I read is they are all scams stealing money to the honest people. Ok. Seriously. I tend to believe the word scam is overused. I would expect some unscrupulous brokers, but not all. Maybe a very few. And maybe few tricks they use I better know.

This is a promise I make here, if anything goes wrong along the line, I will say it. (just in case, please remind it to me later when I forgot and scream about scams all around the place, naked, jumping on the roof!).

So far I used a demo from a Broker called Hantec Markets. I plan tonight to try out Alpari demo account.

Fundamental and/or Technical?

When I discovered both type of Analyzes. I was thinking: “mmmh, if both exists, they must probably both add value”. My very first and most important action was then, to make myself a coffee. And my second action was to jump into understanding what that stuff means.

I would not want to start trading without knowing what both got to offer. Even if I would not use much of one of them. For example half of the graph patterns sincerely left a big question mark above my head. In fact all around it and I almost fainted some days. But I learned them (kind of) and now waiting to spot them live and see what they really “say” to me.

Do not get me wrong. The reality is, I love numbers.

On the technical analysis side, what I did lately:

I imported into a spreadsheet from my trading platform graphs all the numbers per 1 hour and per 1 day. From there I started playing with the numbers. What did I get out of this? Well I noticed high and low probabilities to occur. Is this useful? … …/Mr Glick scratching behind the head unsure.

Anyway. Today, I want to gather all information I can that I feel could be useful. I will choose what to keep later. As long as it does not compromise my strategy, but rather support it.

On the fundamental side. Eating lot of news. My favorites:

Number 1, “Le Monde”, a French Newspaper similar to the Times,

Number 2,”ReutersUK”.

A few number 3s.

I want to add to my reading list:

I used to read the FT, will check my account status in the coming days.

Trying to understand how to use efficiently News Feed. My RSS is starving.

I also created another spreadsheet where I color coded economic/political results and calculated a few things. Again checking some probabilities. The issue I got with it is the time wasted? consumed.

To do it I follow 2 Economic Calendars. One from a website FXstreet.com and the second from Tradingeconomics.com. They are the 2 first I googled. There is no other reason why I chose them. However before adopting them I checked how quickly they update and appreciate they link to the official links (government official websites etc…). But any recommendations welcome.

Before I go

I could spread words over pages, there is much to say!

But I decided to keep short the first message. Tonight I will look into the new demo platform from Alpari. I put my hands on it and will provide first impressions.

By the way, almost forgot to say. With Hantec Markets demo, I made $4000 profits in a week with $10000. But I believe it was not hard to guess the huge Eur drop. Mr Reason tells me I was surfing on the right wave (Tsunami ?) on this occasion. I assume it becomes harder when the wave is not obvious and when using your own surf.

Mr Glick

Forex Surfer - Apprentice