So my updates are a little off since I'm not able to write during my trading day anymore, but that's a sacrifice I'm more than willing to make. Yesterday was my second day in the New Live Ratio Room, but it was the firs time that I actually had to trade and run the entire show by myself. Of course ten minutes into the day my computer crashed. I mean there were almost 700 people in the room so why wouldn't it crash lol. Luckily, Jason and Darren were in the room watching my back and were able to hold down the fort while I was waiting for my computer to reboot.  Anyway, once I got rolling (for the second time) everything went fine.  I was able to answer a lot of questions while the market was choppy and later on in the day we actually got to take three trades.  On those three trades we had one winner that hit targets 1 & 2, another trade that got stopped out for break even and the last was a target 1 only winner. In total we made about 69pips on day one which I'm really excited about. 

Today marked the day that I was preparing for, for the past two months. For those new to this site, this past November I was contacted by Expert Trader Jason Stapleton and asked to run a Live Ratio based trading room for his company.  I accepted this offer and the plan was to start off the year with a bang so we decided to offer the public a free two week trial in the room. Originally, we meant to close the room after the first 200 people signed up. Unfortunately (or fortunately I should say) we forgot to put that cap on the room and ended up with over 2,000 people signed up.  Therefore Jason decided to turn this into a bigger event then what is was originally suppose to be. Instead of just offering two free weeks, we added a "Trading As Your Business" presentation by Jason himself, along with a special guest speaker that will becoming in this and next Friday to talk about trading psychology.  Needless to say I was pretty excited.  When I entered the room today it was the biggest audience that I have ever spoken to. I usually don't get nervous about much, but I felt that way this morning. I think it may have been more of a combination of lack of sleep and too much coffee but that all ended within the first five minutes of speaking. We had a great group in the room and every one of them asked intelligent question which was great since I was expecting there to be at least one "smart guy." You know, that guy that attends something just to haggle the presenter.  Anyway, the opportunity was great and I received many positive comments during and after the presentation. I look forward to working with those other traders tomorrow and for the rest of the week and 

Hey guys welcome to my first trading rewind of the new year, I've been trading since Monday, but today was the first day that I actually received some valid signals. Actually, I lied, I did have two valid signals yesterday but I hesitated and missed out on about 70pips between the two. No biggie, I look at that as my adjustment period and as a message that I need to get refocused and pick up on where I left off last year,  unfortunately today didn't start off good. I put up my charts at about 7:55 and saw a triple top forming on USDCHF. I quickly looked left for some structure and entered the trade.  This trade ended up being a bad one. Not for the fact that it lost but for the fact that I didn't follow through with all of my rules. One of the things I need when looking at the market is ratio confluence and this trade had none. I was a little upset at myself but didn't want it to ruin my day so I took a line from the TV series which I've been watching on Netflix lost (yes I know I'm like 5yrs late) counted to five and forgot about it. 

Around this time last year my new years trading resolutions were a lot different then they are now. Last year I was in a bad place mentally and at the point where I really had to re-construct myself in order to get focused and keep with this career. My goals were a lot more specific and dealt with following my trading plan, and handling my money management better. Honestly it's a big relief that I didn't have to go through that same life or death (figuratively speaking of course) scenario and could make a goal of something that I actually wanted to do instead of something I had to go.  As you know I'm a firm believer in "Kaizen" philosophy of continuous improvement so this year I wanted to improve my knowledge of the fundamental side of trading.  Don't get me wrong, I will still trade using strictly technical analysis, but I would like to know more about economics and how everything works so I can have a greater respect for the market I guess, but also involve myself in some deeper conversations with my peers.  When I tell people that I'm a trader in the financial markets (and I proudly say that instead of backing away from that title like last year) the first thing they usually ask is a fundamental type of question like "so what do you think about the European Union?" And I usually answer "well I know it's bad". lol Seriously though, I usually explain to them that I strictly follow the charts and could care less about the news that comes out. Needless to say getting into a conversation on technical analysis with people that know are unfamiliar usually ends pretty quick. So I would like to have something better to talk about.  Mainly I would just like to know because I feel like I should be knowledgeable in the field that i do my work in whether it's specific to my techniques or not, but I would be lying if I told you the social involvement factor, especially with my peers in the field wasn't a factor. 

 I would love for anybody else to share there New Years Trading resolutions as well. Maybe you can spark an idea for a fellow trader.

P.S. Starting next Monday I will be working with Triple Threat Trading & T2 University running a live trading room. There will be a free 2 week trial so please check it out. https://t2trading.tv/ratio

Dealing with the pain of trading is probably the biggest factor that separates a profitable trader from a losing trader.  If you've been following my Forex journey then you'll remember that pain was what caused me to almost blow out an account last year and stop trading. One of the biggest questions young traders ask themselves is how do I get rid of the pain. Well the answer to that is that you don't. Like anything out your control in life you simply learn to deal with it. Now I've only been seriously trading for about a year and a half, so I would assume that the more experience you have in the markets, the easier it becomes to deal with the pain since you know it's coming, but I still don't think it ever  completely goes away.  To me at least there are two main types of pain. The first is the type of pain you have to deal with when the market makes that big candle in the opposite direction of your position then proceeds to trade right above your stop , teasing you and almost daring you to just close out your trade. The second type of pain occurs in the exact opposite direction.

So I already spoke on the type of pain you have to deal with when your trade is in the red and your praying, yelling and second guessing yourself about entering the trade.  The second type of pain is the pain that occurs when you're in that area where you're in positive territory but still have a ways to go before you hit your target.  This is the type of pain when you start to question your targets and get that horrible temptation that I'm sure have all been guilty of at some point in our trading career, and that is taking profits off too early.  I forget the exact details but I have a good friend that had a horrible month where he was guilty of this trading sin and it became contagious. It started off as a onetime thing, then before he knew it he was doing it on almost every trade and ended  up missing out on nearly 500 pips total because of it. 

So what's the solution to both types of pain you ask. NOTHING, just deal with it.  Just kidding, in all seriousness, the key is simply having confidence in your abilities.  It's when you start second guessing your decisions that you start giving into the pain and fear and end up doing something dumb, only to be mad about it later. My advice is turn off your charts. If you can't see it, then it won't bother you as much. 

Coming back to the market has been a little more difficult than I expected. I'm still not trading live (with the exception of a few good setups I took today on the longer term charts), but I wanted to get myself back into the trading zone. It doesn't seem like it but many of us traders go about 50 weeks straight analyzing the market the same way, watching the same pairs, on the same timeframes, during the same time each day.  Needless to say we develop a pretty good routine that gives us a unique comfort level as a trader which adds to our confidence, which in then leads us to seeing better results. Or at least that's how it should work.

Being away from live markets for the past two weeks had me very anxious to get back in and start adjusting my eyes so I'd be ready for the new trading year.  I immediately started trying to analyze every little move the market made and the result were trades with targets to small and stops being short which lead to me being me getting stopped out on the majority of those trades.  I then started over analyzing the market to the point where I wasn't able to get involved at all.  At this point I began to get a little frustrated at the fact that I just felt out of my trading groove as I like to call it. That's when I shut my charts off and decided to re-read my trading plan and get my mental situation under control.  After bringing myself back down to earth I realized two things. First, I realized that I was trying to do too much, and secondly I realized that I was trying to do too much at a time where the markets were not doing much either.  It was a bad combination, and if this were a year ago I probably would have blown half an account trying to make it work instead of realizing what my issues were.

The lesson I'm trying to relay, is that once you have a plan or system that works for you, trading is very easy.  Correction, trading CAN be very easy and your system or strategy is probably the easiest part to get mastered, because that is the one consistent factor. What changes is your day to day mental state and ability to deal with the wild ride the market will give you.  My advice would be don't try and do too much, or do too little. Stick to what brought you success in the past and don't try to get fancy. The markets will do what they want to do, when they want to do it. As my friend over at Triple Threat Trading often says "our job is to wait until the money is sitting on the table for us to pick up." 

Hey guys, if you read my last post then you're aware that my trading is done for 2011. (Sigh), finally an opportunity to get some good sleep. No more waking up early, no more wondering what's happening in the overnight session, no more rushing breakfast so can get back to the computers right?  Although I have been able to sleep with a clear mind knowing I don't have any trades on the table, and I have been able to relax and make some better tasting breakfasts, I have still been waking up at close to my normal time and I have still been in the market.  Just not as much. 

The first thing I did this week was to go back through the 8 pairs in my day-trading portfolio and see what the results would have been if I would have been able to trade last week.  I didn't do this because I was upset, or wanted to see how much profit I missed. Trust me I'm quite fine with not trading because that means I'm not losing money. Rather, as always, I wanted to continue to train my eyes in identifying patterns and different setups. Anyway here are the results. 

Mon: -30pips,  Tues: +66pips,  Wed: --48pips,  Thurs: +51pips,  Fri: +92pips,

Giving us a total of +131pips for the week.  I've only been trading on the 5min charts since the second week of November and I think that I've had only 1 negative week.  Honestly this is a little shocking, because as a swing trader are drawdowns are often longer.  Ending the year on a positive note (unlike last year) has me pretty pumped for 2012, add to that the fact that I'll be getting the chance to help train and work with others and that's a gift in itself.  I'm sure i'll be writing again before the season is over but if not I want to wish you a happy holidays and hopefully, like me, you can use this down time to work and try and improve some aspect of your trading.  

 Early Monday morning I left for an annual convention that was hosted in San Antonio Texas.  This was my 3rd consecutive year attending this convention so I had a pretty good idea of the event schedule and knew that I would have limited time to trade.  My goal was to wake up early and get a few hours of day trading in before the symposiums began and then whenever I had some free time take a look at some longer term charts. Unfortunately I did not get the chance to do either. Other than watching about half of Jason Stapleton's Forex Market Preview, I did not see another chart the entire week.  At first this was a little upsetting because I knew that this week was basically the last legit trading week of the year before the Holidays begin so I was hoping to get a little more action in, but as the week went on I thought to myself that this could in fact be a blessing in disguise since trading in this situation would have put me out of my routine which could have been a negative.  I've had times in the past where I tried to rush my trading and it never ended well, so I decided it would be best just  to take a week off and focus on what I was at the convention for.

With trading being shut down for the most part for the remainder of the year, I like to use this time to get some behind the scenes work done. This means going back through charts and working on sharpening my recognition skills as well as back testing on another system I would like to work into my portfolio called the "Big Mo" (you can check it out at http://www.triplethreattrading.com/) My goal is to have a 4 market portfolio using that system and cut down the pairs I swing trade from 22 to between 9-12 or 16 max. This way I can concentrate a little more on each individual pair as well as not have to worry about contrasting signals since I'm a Counter Trent Trader and the "Big Mo" is a trend following system.  So that's my homework assignment for the holiday break.

On another note, during my seminar I got a lot of work done on a 6 part series I'm releasing next week titled The House: Your Blueprint To Success. I'm pretty excited about this because I've never written this much before, but I think it will be pretty interesting. I may even post the Preface today or this weekend. Hopefully that will keep you guys entertained while the trading is slow.  Enjoy your weekend.

-Akil @IambusinessTR

Sorry for being a day late guys but yesterday was pretty busy for me outside of trading. As far as my day-trading well it was a very slow day again. Seems like most of the action was on Monday and Tuesday. Looking back at the charts the European session had some pretty good action but I don't start until New York opens so i couldn't take advantage. With that being said I had one loser on the GBPUSD for a total of -48pips.  With our previous total being at +193 that ends our week in the positive once again for a total of +145 which isn't to bad.  I don't have a numerical goal in mind when it comes to the day trading simply because I don't want to put myself in the position where I feel as if I have to chase trades in order to reach it. Especially if we get off to a slow start. But I'll be satisfied with 100pips a week any day. Keep in mind pips aren't dollars so what's 100pips trading 1 mini lot is $100 but when you start growing your account and are able to trade even 5mini lots, that same 100pip week is suddenly $500 dollars.  

I'll be in a convention all next week so I doubt I'll have any time to day-trade :-( I'll try but simply looking at the schedule of events I may only have 2 hrs a day unless I want to try and wake up for Europe. Who knows I may just take off.  That's neither here or there. Another positive week in the books! That makes 3 in a row which is a really good sign.  Especially for those who will be joining me in January.  If you haven't heard about what's happening in January then just be on the lookout. It's going to be BIG!  have a great weekend and stay warm for you Northeastern folks like myself. 

Today was another uneventful day for me day-trading but a very busy one in the swing trading department.  On the day trading side of things there was only 1 valid trading signal that ended up being stopped out for break even. Well technically -2pips because of the spread, but you get what I'm saying.  That same trade eventually rolled over to what would have been a winner, but rules are rules and I'd rather protect against a loss then shoot for a win. 

On that same note today's action (and there was a lot of it with all of the news that came out) caused me to close all 4 of my open swing trades.  I closed 2 of my swing trades on what I was taught to be called a "graceful exit".  I was involved in these trades on the 4hr chart from last week that went from  barely being stopped (which was over a 100pips away) to putting me back into the profit zone, to barely being stopped out again.  When analyzing the market I could see that the market clearly wasn't doing what I predicted, as my original structure level was broken and closed below. Therefore I decided to save some face and just close my orders for break even on one and -20 on another, which is basically break even when seeing where the stops and targets were at.  The one swing trade that did get me a little upset was one I had placed last week on the NZDUSD 4hr chart.  There had been a triple top that the market had refused to break for about a week. For those who like to play channels there was a great opportunity as the market continued to bounce back and fourth.  It then rallied this morning with the  new events only to be sucked back down and break the channel towards the down side. I'm not mad about the trade or where I had my stops at, i just hate when a market makes an impulse move off a news event only to reverse. To me this means that I was right but I didn't get a chance to profit.  Same as I were to identify a great trade setup but not take it. Anyway thats the end of my rant for the day. Underneath are some charts from the day trade (grey) and the look at the NZDUSD trade in white.