Wow! I really stink at this blogging-post-update thing! I should have been posting something at the end of each week to show my progress with trading. Sorry if you keep coming here expecting something, I resolve to do better.
So here is a quick synopsis of the 7 weeks of trading. In May I did pretty well until the week of the 20th, then it all started going downhill for me. I didn't use some stops and made classic newbie blunders like "revenge trades" and "over trades" and over the course of two weeks I traded my account down to my starting capital plus about $45. At least I had a small profit at the end of May. Pretty depressing since I had traded up to around $5500 in my account and proceeded to decline after that.
So with the start of June I sat back and relaxed for a day or two and took a few deep breaths and reminded myself to follow the system, be patient, stick with it and "momma said there would be days like these."
June Week 1 (6/2 - 6/7):
I ended the week up $1000, so my account was at $3000.
June Week 2 (6/9 - 6/14):
I ended week 2 with another $1000 to the good in my account to close out the week at $4000.
June Week 3 (6/16 - 6/21):
Finished week 3 up $3000 for a total account balance of $7000. The stand-out trade here was exercising patience and waiting to fade the FOMC minutes announcement and Bernanke's press conference. I ended up cashing in on 145 pips by waiting about 10 minutes after the news came out, seeing what direction the herd was moving and then getting in, I manually trailed my stop about 20 pips behind the market and came out smelling like roses.
June Week 4 (6/23 - 6/28):
I ended up with only $700 to the good this week and finished out the week and the month at $7705.
I had a goal to make $4000 this week, and I was on my way to that goal, by Tuesday late afternoon I had already booked $1000. In keeping with my own trading cycles, every three weeks or so I lose money, I made some bone-headed mistakes. The primary one was getting in a trade and not setting a stop loss (SL) and then I fell asleep. Next thing I woke up a couple hours later around 2am to find that I was -95 pips!!!!
I do not recommend this, I rode this roller coaster all week, on Thursday I gave back $500 to avoid a margin call and finally on Friday I got most of it back and then a little more and closed out the week with $7700 in my account.
I have to say I dodged the bullet on that one and I am super lucky that I ended up in positive territory, it really was dumb luck, I should have been skinned on this one.
Next week is a short trading week with holiday and I'm going to take Thur and Fri off and enjoy some golf and fishing with my father-in-law up in the pines and get out of this heat for a couple of days. So if I make a few pips on Mon - Wed. it will all be good.
