Stressful, Pressurising, Frustrating March

Into the fifth month of trading full-time, without any other income stream. It hadn't been a smooth sailing journey at all and in actual fact full of emotional swing up and down, which had been torturous. There are times where you think that you could cross the finishing line with flying colours while there are times where you start to wonder what you are doing and why you are doing this and that, totally clueless and aimless.

Nevertheless, I find that this journey is so far fulfilling if not for the stresses of life. Stressful because of those bills that you need to pay every month, Pressurising because of the need and necessity requirement of every month, Frustrating because you lose too much when you shouldn't had and even worst when you turn a winning day to loses. All these emotion exist in a human mind and I have to face it, it's not something that can be eliminated. I just have to learn to control them and be more immune to them, be on top of them. But then there's always good side and bad side to it.... Press ON!!!

 

Yet another month of loses, and again those loses came from the lost of control of emotion and ego, turning winning to loses. Nevertheless, did a $1,000 withdrawal and now total deposit for this trading account is $2,000. I am still very much in exploration to find the optimum loses per day. Money and Risk Management is still very much the key to unlock success in trading not forgetting controlling your emotion and ego.

Made some adjustment to my trading plan to prevent big loses and also minimum trade size to 1 lot, hence I will have to maintain a balance of at least $1,500 at all times (that would be almost 80% leverage!). 

It's the Spring Festive a.k.a Lunar / Chinese New Year (CNY)

Started the month making some losses and had been chasing after the losses as well as feeling the pressure and stress of the need to realise some revenue. Especially so after having suffered a great lost at a game of mahjong (down $1,500). I will definitely remember that day clearly not because of anything but the P&L record shows. On the 6 Feb 2018, it show the huge losses I had and the previous night was the day I suffered the great lost in mahjong. 😓😓😅

After that horrifying lost, mainly due to fighting the market to try to regain the losses, I had to called it a day (Live to Fight Another Day) and refresh myself and my mind to continue the following day. I did came back pretty well over the next few days and in fact almost back to breakeven.

It's also the month of the Chinese New Year (CNY) where we celebrate the new spring and visiting relatives and friends, some even took this opportunity to go for a short getaway vacation. As for me, it had been the same routine for the past decade, staying home looking after the household pet dog while my mum and sister go for a vacation. Of course, I also visit my relatives at their home on the second day of CNY and attended gathering with friends.

Sometimes, I just cannot live a day without trading and that sometimes kills me. On the 16 Feb 2018, which was the first day of CNY, I told myself that I should take a break since it was a holiday, but nevertheless a trade was taken which lead to another and because of the losses, one trade followed by another which eventually lead to another huge lost, else that could have been a good week. I was taken in by my own greed and having a view of the market. Had to humbled myself (Manage Your Ego) again and accept the fact that this losses will stay till the end of the month.

Did some wakeup call searching myself and reminded myself on the purpose and objective of my trading and proceed again, back to square one. I also made a decision to trade on higher leverage (1:50-60) to allow for faster track to make a comeback, but with vigilant. Tumbled along the way trying to come back again and bring my trading account back to safe zone, and making mental note to keep my account in profit (>$3,000). No smooth sailing but moved on slowly and progressively in the month of March 2018.

A New Year (2018) with the Beginning of a New Chapter

I was preparing for my In-Camp-Training (ICT) for the new year celebration, though there wasn't any much celebration for me. Something special about this ICT was that we will be out on the first day instead of the usually second week. Nevertheless, I was prepare not to trade during my ICT as I won't be able to monitor the price action as well as intermittent data connection will most likely be experience.

Came back on the end of the first week and saw a interesting opportunity buildup and took the shot, before I knew it I fell asleep only to wake up much later in the evening to find my trade a winner, set my stop loss and take profit and held it over the weekend. This trade was such a runner/winner that my January targetted profit was met with that one trade.

After my ICT, I continue to trade in accordance to my trading plan/strategy and make some losses, however taking the mental note to not to loss back my profit made by the winner earlier in the month.

In general, January had been a great month but I also refresh myself not to take a view but to follow where the market goes. Remembering that profit is a by-product of trading, small consistent win is better than that occasional winner. 

Cautious Christmas 2017 Trading Season

Started December trading with much caution as it's the start of festive season for many. However, there were still much opportunities and with the limited liquidity, I was able to make some profit from the market.

I also manage to accumulated enough to make a withdrawal of $1,000 in mid of December without affecting the trading capital and continued to the end of the month and nett almost $1,000 including the $1,000 I had withdrew in mid month. 👍👍

As of December, I was trading between 100,000 to 150,000 and maintaining sanity is of utmost importance. Especially so when you gain for a few days and then suffer a lost that reduces your size. You will need to fight really hard to ensure that your size really reduced to the planned as most of the time you will want to continue at your last traded size so than regaining the capital is also much easier. Hence keeping you ego under control and having your greed under check are equally important.

Turning into full time Trading by chance

Even though with the perfect result in the month of October 2017, I knew I wasn't ready to make trading my full time job yet for a few reasons, firstly, not having the required capital amount to trade my desired lot size and also it's just one month and that could just be pure luck.

However, in early November 2017, I was laid off from my employment and looking at myself, I knew there wasn't anything else I could do but to fall back into trading full time. I graduated with Diploma in Mechatronics in 1997, but joined the Republic of Singapore Navy as a combat officer for almost 12 years before i left the service and joined this proprietary trading firm which grow and expand into a FinTech firm today for almost 8 years. Though I had learnt much in trading and gained valuable experience as well, there wasn't any black and white to certify that I have the necessary background in trading and training. I obviously can't use my diploma to apply for a engineering job for sure and also with my passion very much still in FX trading, I decided to trade full time and survive till such time that my capital grew to my objective.

And to get everything started, I deposited another $5,000 into my trading account so that I can grow my capital slightly faster. Make some profit in the first week of November and made a withdrawal of $800 to round up my total trading capital to $6,000 ($2,000-$200+$5,000-$800=$6,000).

Thereafter, I suffered much losses, seem like though I had been watched by the broker for withdrawing, of course that's not true. It's basically just your mind playing with you to find reason for your losses. Generally, looking at those days that I make losses were those days where I did not stop after I was stopped out and yet did not meet my daily target marginally or those were the days where I just got greedy and wanted to make more. There were just countless number of days where a good day (make and meet the daily profit target) become a bad day (continued to trade after meeting target and lose it all).

Nevertheless, I continued to push on on this journey that I had chosen as there is no turning back now.

Final Trading Plan & Strategy

After much trial and error, putting in all that I had learnt, I slowly developed my trade plan and make slight adjustment as I go along.

To me, a daily profit of 5-10 pips is very much doable and I built my plan based on that. A daily profit of 5 pips nett on brokerage fee would mean having a 100 pips nett profit in a month. Depending on the size of the trade, and that would determine the amount you earn per month. My objective was to be able to trade a size of 10 lots (1 million) every trade and that would mean $100 per pip, $500 a day and $10,000 a month!

To be able to trade the size of 10 lots using leverage of not more than 1:30, I would need to have a trading capital of at least $33,000, which is something I do not have at the moment and would have to build up slowly. I started off trading with varying size everyday as my capital grow, using a leverage of 1:30, one trade at a time.

Deposited $2,000 into my trading account in late August 2017 and started trading at 50,000 per trade, and on the first trading day I was lucky to have a runner and make quite a number of pips (~40 pips).

On the following day, again I got a runner and made quite a bit of profit as well (~40 pips) only to lose some back on the third day but I decided to make a withdrawal of $200 at the end of the month. Last day of the month, I did manage to make some profit too!

I was quite excited with the result and make a mental note to myself that I will have to continue to maintain my sanity and continue with my result, building the consistency that is very much required to survive.

Nevertheless, Hell came in September, making some but losing mostly throughout the month, netting a lost of $1,700+ 😓😓😓 It was also around this time, late in September 2017 that I came across this post in forex factory forum talking about a simple scalping strategy which I setup on my trading chart and started exploring and using it as my trade opportunity signal.

I also had this excel spreadsheet to help me calculate the size of trade at the start of each day and the targeted daily profit. Having lost $1,700+ the previous month, my trading size drop to 15,000 but I made a decision to continued trading on 50,000, that was a huge risk I am taking. Refining my mental model, I just waited for the signal to show up, take the trade and secure my profit (adjusting my stop loss) when I can, thereafter, see if it can run further and continue to adjust my stop loss. If it doesn't and even if I am below my daily profit target I stopped, taking only 1 trade a day. I was well rewards with a perfect month netting a total profit of $1,500+ for the month.

Readers, you should by now realised that in trading, no matter how much perfection you have in your trading skills, you will still eventually lose money if you do not have a strong and correct mindset. Set your objective and break it into smaller and more deliverable daily/weekly target then you will not feel stressed to be aggressive when you shouldn't be, at least this work for me to control my mind.

Exploring Trading Plan & Strategy

After spending 6 months in Shanghai, China, I continued to be involved heavily in training the FX dealers/trainee, especially after the company setup an office equipped with a dealing room in the financial district. Of course, most of the Chinese students I had spent 6 months training were also selected and employed to be our FX dealers. However, I was eventually pulled out of Shanghai, China after the company decided to expand more aggressively in India. Although the plan in India did not really worked out, I continued to lead the trading session daily in Singapore and training of FX dealers when they were deployed to Singapore for a month stay.

All this training and leading had nurtured me to be more confidence in my trading, but the only thing I lacked of was consistency in my result (P&L). Hence I started to explore more on how to get consistent result, via trading plan, trading strategy as well as money/risk management.

Firstly, I came up with a trading plan for myself, since I am more comfortable with scalping, I decided on small but consistent win. Taking into consideration of brokerage commission, I need to take at least 8-10 profitable trades daily if I were to get out with a profit target of 1-1.5 pip per trade. Tried out the trade plan but still did not get any outstanding result. I also soon came to realise that the downfall of a trader was over trading. Hence I need to cut down the numbers of trades taken.

Next, I also have to manage my money/risk management, so that I do not lose too much or risk too much. With the most simplicity method, I came up with a daily stop loss limit of 15 pips, however I soon realised that at most times, I may need to risk more than 15 pips on a single trade. Still, I need to study more into this money/risk management.

Last but not least, the strategy that I should use for my trading. Since I had been practising price action trading for the longest time, I should evolve my strategy around price action trading. Which I had been doing so but without consistency, there seem to be a missing piece to the puzzle.

~||~

The beauty of things was that I am now based in Singapore and much training activities had toned down drastically. Hence I had a lot of time on hand to explore and trial. I also started participating in forex factory forum more actively. Most of the previous forum I used to participate in had either shutdown or had changed so much that not many were active. Forex factory continued to be the one with the highest participation rate.

In the past, when I trade there was no objective or target, and that cause me to just keep trading resulting in over trading which eventually burn you out and take your profit away. So I came up with a daily target and work towards achieving this daily target which leads to my final objective in trading.

Also through the participation in forum, I came upon a trading strategy involving Bollinger Band (BB) and Smoothed Moving Average (SMMA). This strategy is for scalping and target 8-10 pips per trade, which suit my plan and trading plan. This strategy basically provided me with the signal of an opportunity and through my analysis and resistance & support, I decide whether I want to take the trade.