May I suggest you cut the amount of trading pairs down whilst you are learning. I believe the whole essence of this is to become so familiar with the setups that when you see a good one you hammer it - you seem to have about 10 pairs on the go and if you are honest with yourself did all of them tick all the boxes for the way you want to naked trade?. That's not a criticism but when you see CJ and xrismaks results they tend only to be on a few pairs. That's the way I play it and it is much easier.pips400 wrote:Here's my beginners fox hunter statement for today.
The theory is one thing, but when you're in the driving seat actually trading it's easy to get lost. To be honest, I'm not sure I got this right at all, even though the results are good with a 7% return today, I got really tied up hedging positions then trying to get back out of. It's seems waiting for things like the good old confirmation candle just doesn't work, my first trade was a short on NZDUSD after a candle close, then of course it went back up to pin highs and kept me in DD for hours. Every other trade I tried to get right in the top (or bottom of pins) sometimes market order, sometimes a limit order. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to place a market order right at the edge? e.g. previous pin high, then later bullish candle and you have to play it short, just goes against my pre-conditioned mind but I know it works, because that's what I did today. So the strategy that seems to work for me so far is get it right at the top or bottom of the pins, then hope it doesn't keep going but returns back down (up) again. At the end of the day, you just don't know what price is going to do in each individual case, that's why it's not about one trade but the edge the technique will give you. So that was the easy bit, the difficult thing that really messed with my head today was what to do when price moves past the pin high/low and you get into drawdown. I tried a couple of things when this happened. One was a stop loss - didn't like that one much because I got taken out a couple of times, only for price to go back in my favour, I also tried keeping the first trade open, then adding a second same direction when the first was already is DD. e.g. first trade goes 20 pips DD, price seems to hang, so open another trade same direction - again this goes against my preconditioned mind, but seemed to work pretty good, some instances repeated the process three or even four times. The third option when initial trade goes into DD was to open a hedge trade, this worked okay also, but complicate things a whole lot. So I think this is a key part of the strategy, what to do when the first trade goes into DD, I know xrismak carried the USDCHF for weeks and eventually it came good. I guess I'll try all this again Monday and see what works best for me. It may still be easiest just to close the trade and open another at the new level - any ideas?
Have a great weekend everyone
Pips400
I would also strongly advise against your option two of adding to losing positions - it might work a few times but honestly it will be a fast road to a margin call or a serious fox bite. I occasionally stick a hedge in as a get out of jail card if I make a mistake and a trade goes AWOL but really if you cut losers early there should be no need for one.
Also by managing fewer trades whilst learning you will be more in touch with each chart. 'End the losers early', and 'scale in on winners', how many times have we all heard or read this but honestly it is the key. You WILL get wrong trades, take it on the chin knowing full well that when you get one right you will more than make up for many loses. The best move I made on my journey of naked trading was to reduce the amount I was trading - limiting myself initially to even just one trade a day - this forced me to wait for what I thought was the best setup. After a week of this I'd allow myself maybe three trades a day... and I built up from there. Since trying this my accuracy has increased massively. I'm still taking it slowly though and I'm not even scaling in yet - nevertheless I've still managed a steady 10% per week return throughout July. If I can keep this accuracy up, when I do start to scale in the potential profits excite the hell out of me!
Everything you described in your post sounds like a step/thought I had in the earlier days, all part of the learning I guess. Keep at it! CJ's teachings are SO good that once you've mastered the basics it will be your human instincts that hold you back from big wins... I'm trading the best I ever have under these methods and yet I have never felt like more of a novice - the setups and wins are continual and it puts the spot light firmly on your own personality as to whether you succeed or not!
Oh and one more thought that has helped me in my transition to naked trading, I can't remember where I got this from:
Most traders hang on to losing trades hoping that they will turn good, and they fear losing profits so end good trades early.
Succesful traders fear that a losing trade might get worse, and they hope that a winner will get better!
Hope my ramble helps in someway,
Fly
