Tools for the Job

I always had a problem with trading on the go. Most trader trade from a laptop.. but they are so bulky to carry around. I would love to trade off the iPad but my indicators are not available there.. so how do I do it? I subscribe for TradingView.com, got myself a yearly subscription on a Pro account so that I can get the best of it. Look at the chart from a web browser.. and take the trade on my phone when it is right.  

That was how I have been doing it for 4 months. I finally got my hands on a new tool that would help me perform the trading wonders on the road. The Surface Pro 3, it is an awesome laptop replacement. It runs on Windows 8.1, is light and slip.. size up like a huge tablet but runs like a laptop. It is powerful enough to work like any desktop machine.. my MT4 works perfectly off it. Using dropbox to help keep documents in sync.. trading life haven't been so convenient for quite some time..

Check it out for those who are seeking for a good option to trade on the go.. look up the Microsoft Surface Pro 3.. 

I am still figuring out to fully utilize all its handy feature.. it is a great tool either way.

-DC 

My Trading Style and EA

There are many ways to trade, there are many indication of trade or counter-trend.. What do I trade?

I play a dangerous game and trade the counter trend. So far it have been pretty fruitful.. but it has it flaws. I blow up a small $1000 account this week. It was holding EURUSD and NZDUSD. As it was a small account it had no chance against the massive dip over and over again the strengthening of USD has made across all the currency.

Trading counter trend is very rewarding as you are able to gauge where it will retrace but it requires patience and a huge capability of drawdown. The emotional stress is pretty taxing on the trader. July and Aug have been a very massive trending for USD related pair which has cause me lots of pain..

Technicals on How I Trade:

To catch counter trend, I review the momentum divergence with price. I use RSI to gauge when it is overbought or oversold. With also the aid of Stochastic I will review when a pullback begins and happen. As unreliable as the stochastic is, I would exit a trade earlier if I believe there is a pullback. It does get me out of bad trades, but it also force me to exit good trades earlier. My profit target respectfully would usually be a weekly/monthly pivot. At times to estimate a retracement I would use a Fib Retracement Indicator to help me estimate my exit. 

Thats the technical.. but it does require some gut feeling when I look at price. I look for HL HH and LH LL for price action.. I utilised the 4hr time frame more than anything..respecting the 1hr time frame for earlier entry. Daily chart is use to evaluate overall possible direction of the pair..

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Because of how I trade and targets are constantly changing it is difficult to put this into an EA. The overall target may be fix pivot, but when Price Action indicate a change in behaviour; there will be a need to change target to a closer pivot or risk being caught in a whiplash  which happen to me on AUDNZD and many other trades. 

Trading is risky, I may love it but I have still yet master what I like doing. All I am hoping is to be better at it with each passing day. It is tough especially when so many other traders would love to scrutinised  you. When you are successful they ask for your recipes of success, but when you trip and scratch their account they are all over you. People forget that you are still human.. and as human there is no 100%, failures are literally part of growth. If I do have a holy grail I wouldn't be showing it off to the world and have additional undesired attention on myself.

-DC

Break Even Indicator

Every trader have the experience of entering multiple trades on the same pairs. The problem with doing this is that we always have no idea where is the Average Price or Brake Even price of our entries. It is so much a hassle to manually calculate the break even price especially if you have different trade size for each entry.

Here is a tool I downloaded long time back from Forex Factory.. I find it pretty nifty even if I have to hedge direction the indicator will be able to show you both break even price for Long and Short trades respectively.

To Download: @Dropbox https://db.tt/GXFQOWx3

*Sorry that I do not remember the web link to ForexFactory for reference, I do not take credit for creating this indicator as I am just sharing it from my bucket of tricks.

-DC

Swap in Forex Trading

What is swap? Everyone is aware that banks have interest rates but not every trader is aware that foreign currency trading have interest rates as well. When you buy a currency and sell another you will be impose with a specific swap rate. This swap rate varies from broker to broker and will be applied to your specific trade entry depending on your trade size.

Example when you buy AUDCAD you will be earning a specific interest/swap for the entry; but if you sell AUDCAD you would be paying a specific interest/swap to the position take.

Below is a screenshot of swap payment / benefit from some of my previous trade. Notice the swap column. If a trades is open over a day it would incur swap. You either earn money holding a position or lose money holding it.

Swap rate can really kill you, if you are trading against swap it would be best to exit the trade early. If you are trading with swap for you, this would allow you to hold a position much longer.

How to find out the swap rate and its direction for the trade.. below is some screenshot that will help you along the way.

1 - From the Market Watch section, right click and select Symbols.

2 - From the Symbol window, select the pair you wish to understand better. Click on 'Properties'. Another window will popup. Look for Swap Long/ Swap Short, that will show you the swap value if it is positive or negative. 

The swap value will change when the broker update it on their end. Some broker have these value update as frequent as daily others may do this month. Check with your broker to understand more.

-DC

Topics of Interest

Hi All..

I have been writing all about my own toughs.. is there anything anyone out there would like me to write about? A question that you would want to ask, a discussion that you would like to start..  Give me a shout out at the remarks column below.. I'll take it into consideration and start giving you my share of thoughts on the matter.

Happy Trading..

-DC

GBPUSD - 17 Aug 2014

I've been waiting for GBP to strengthen for weeks and weeks.. I know I am not alone on this. For those who are also waiting.. I believe it is time..

This week Fav GBP (Long/Strengthen). There are quite a number of News for GBP this week. More importantly my focus will be on Tue's CPI result. I believe GBP is ready this week to Jump, but before it goes up there will likely be another drop. This drop would clear out quite a bit of dangling position before it rush up. For those who wants to long might want to wait for the up draft to start. For me I might jump in early depending on how Euro Session behave tomorrow.

I like this trade because..

• Daily Chart made first Lower Low suggesting a change to down trend.
• Daily chart price action shows clear indecision for the first time in 5 weeks.
• Daily Chart price touching 200SMA
• Very steep dip from started from 5 weeks ago.
• Trend Line to break going up.

Remember.. consider that up side is trading against the trend. Do manage your risk well. it all depends on the coming CPI news release this week..

-DC

Investor Password

With MT4 there are 2 types of password, the 'Master Password' and the 'Investor Password.

Master Password: Master password provide the user access to review and make trades. Only with the master password can the user have full access to the full account activity.

Investor Password: Investor password will only allow the user a view access to the trading account. The users will not be able to enter or exit any trade with investor password.

Do ensure to change the password and make them different. The investor password should be different so that it is not confused and will be use accordingly. Use the investor password to provide read only data access to your account for 3rd party group like MyFxBook.

-DC

Cashing Out Your Profits

Everybody loves money, which means everybody loves big accounts. One thing some people do not realized is that an account size with a broker means nothing other than digits which allow you to trade larger digits(lot size). Trading is risky! If you do not know that already please know that you can lose more than your initial investment.

With risk comes the need for risk management. The best way of risk management is to cash out your deposit/capital. Once you have cash out on your capital, it is time to cash out on your profits.As soon as we learn to diligently cash out from our broker the trading risk is drastically reduce. As we risk our equity when trading, if our capital is withdrawn the trading becomes somewhat risk free.

Understand that we would all like to grow our account. Set a target, once the target is hit, start gradually cashing out. My personal target is to be able to cash out 30% of my profit every month. As I am growing my account my immediate need is different, so what I do is to cash out a comfortable amount every $5,000 materialized account growth. Be very careful when you cash out your profits, it does impact the available funds and change the trading size margin. I personally would try to close all position when cashing our profit to ensure that no extra risk is impose on open position in case a draw-down is faced. 

All new trade entry size is revised after a withdrawal. This is how mechanical I am trying to be when trading. One thing to note is, when your account grows priority change. Capital appreciation is now secondary to capital protection. Do try to revise your trade size and keep them small. Increase of trade size when an account have grown may not necessary benefit you if the trend has change. You must be able to ride out a bad month.Less profit is better than any lost on a bad month.

Remember.. cash out your profits..

-DC 

Exiting a Bad Trade

At some point everyone would make a bad trade.. what is important is that we know how to get out of a bad trade as quickly as possible. Below is an example of getting out of a bad trade. The good thing for this entry was that swap is on my side. This builds up confidence in holding the position and help ease my mind when stacking up trades that was against me.

Below is an example of trading out of a bad trade. I am not here to show you how to trade but the concept of trading out of a bad trade. Some people hedge others use stop to get out of a bad trade. I let it rollover, stack it up and get it going. 

As shown below my pending order was triggered in and the market went all the way against me. From the looks of it the position is really bad. I believe it was cause by a news release spike. What I did next was to top up on the position as it continue to go against me. Of cause when I stack up my position at this point of time it was with indication that price would change direction. It is common that news release spike often will have a retracement, the trick is to catch it.

What I would do is look for indication that price is ready to retrace from a smaller time scale and stack up your trade. As you do this do it with a slightly larger position Calculate the Average break even price and see if it is close to your comfortable exist point.

For this example my initial exit point was at the monthly pivot, but due to the fact that Stoch is showing over sold I decided to exit early. I took an average profit and exited a bad trade.

Important: This method can only be used if your initial position is small and you have the capability to hold your trade for a long period.

Account Size and Leverage

As I've been publishing my signals for people to follow [Click Here]. With that I been asked many times what is a proper account size and leverage do I use. This question is also common for many who wish to start trading. I am writing this out so that instead of replying post after post of the same question, putting this down in an entry here would allow others to get my answer to those question here.

• What 'Account Size' should we start with?

My personal preference is $1000, or for others is the amount that they are willing to lose. Pick an amount that you are comfortable in losing. Before we begin to make money, you have to understand that there are loses. So we always start off with what we can and able to lose. This usually is the bonus from work or a fraction of your savings. Never ever invest with your next month's rent. You would be digging your own grave if you do.

• What 'Leverage' capacity should we use?

I select broker with 1:400 or 1:500 leverage. Leverage trading is very risky, but like a sharp knife is safer than a blunt one when used properly; a huge leveraged account can be very beneficial to someone who use it well. 

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So why $1000 and 1:500 leverage. I do not trust brokers with my hard earn cash. There are a few reason why I started my $10,000 challenge with only $1000. 

1. I believe if you can trade, you can make $1000 to $10000. If you cant trade, even if you have $100,000 it would just get burnt up. I also have little trust with brokers or organization that is intangible. 
2. Offshore brokers are organization that all I have is address, contact number and reviews from strangers. How can I trust them with more money than I can part. It does feel like leaving your money with a stranger on the street to hold while you count your coins to pay a merchant, obnoxiously unsafe.
3. The emotional sanity of trading is the final reason why one should start trading with a small account. If you are not use to losing $100, you will never be able to accept losing $1000. 

I am going to touch more on emotional sanity of trading. It is very important to understand this before we trade our life savings away. When a draw-down happen it can last for weeks at time months. If you are not use to seeing your account in red and still smile at the next person that greet you, you will never be able to accept a materialized lost of investment you have took.

I knew if I did not get use to losing $100s I will never be able to accept lost in $1000s. There is no way I could start trading with a $10,000 account and accept a lost of 10% = $1000.. There will always be days you win and days you have to accept loses. My current largest materialized lost is $977. As I start my journey, the first thing I made myself learn is to accept losses. This is why I force myself to start trading with a small account to get use to the amount of wins and lost. 

Initially I took my loses badly, I would lose my temper and sulk for days when my account was having a draw-down. It wasn't  healthy nor was it fair for the people around me. With time and patience the emotions of trading start to subside. I was soon able to accept draw-dawn of up to $7000 and not panic and lose my temper. Although $7000 was about 30% of my account at that point of time, it was still a huge sum. If I have not started to experience small loses I wouldn't have been able to still be calm and  trade with discipline with such a huge draw-down.

There is a trick to it.. Here is my little secret to success.. When I trade I don't look at value of a position but its growth % or points(pips). This is why it was important to use leverage correctly. Over trading would cause one to burn their account faster in a draw-down. Being able to enter a large position doesn't mean you should. Leverage for me is like extra funds, a capability to hold back the draw-down faced on a bad entry.. I never enter an extra trade when my leverage % reaches 800%, even if the trade setup is a sure win. Self control is one trait you must have at trading. I would curse later that I miss it, but never will I enter a position when my leverage % is lower than 800%.

I also always trade based on points/pips. I exit a position based on the desired signs on the graph. I monitor my trade and smile based on the number of pips I get. I re-enter a position to average out the price only when the first entry are 80-100 pips apart or another signal is shown. I never get emotional and see $500 bucks profit and start closing the position. Only looking at your position in pips helps prevent me from closing my position before it mature. Monitoring a draw-down in pips also removes the emotional attachment to a potential lost. Pip trading and % have allow me to trade more like a robot. It help reduce the emotional stress of a current draw-down and the excitement of a current win.

With that I wish you all the best in your personal trading.. only when you can remove the emotions when trading, you will not be able to trade the way you want to.

-DC

Trust - Broker and its regulators?

Recently I been ask by someone which broker I trust and which regulator is better? It then strike me.. Yeah I never did thought about how much I trust a broker or its regulator. The answers to the question was None, I trust no one person or organization that I don't know or don't see. Most offshore broker are just company registered or regulated by another organization located in god know where. All we see is an address and contact number.

Unlike our local banks which we can walk in and talk to someone directly, offshore broker is something of the unknown. The reliability of a broker is only as much as the review of a stranger about their existing or past experience with that organization. Given the fact that we need to deposit money with these unknown organization, it is hard to blindly trust these brokers with your hard earn money. 

Many would argue, but they are regulated by so and so.. My answer would be, aren't bank regulated as well? Some Banks are even backed by a country's government, yet they can crash and burn. So how do we trade if we cant trust our broker. To me this is why there is this term, "Trade only money you are willing to part". 

A lot of people complain about broker cheating their $ or push the price just to hit their stop. I do agree that there are times these would happen, spread are increased price flux from broker to broker. These usually happen during news release. Not that this have happen to me, but this is all the more reason why we do not put all our eggs into one basket, nor do we put our live savings into it.

Having said that, most broker if they are illegitimate are not out to get you. Brokers only make money when you trade. It doesn't care if you lose money or make money. If the put your position into the market, they make their keep through your spread or trade commission. A broker's favorite customer is usually someone who makes little $ but take a lot of entries. This is because every entry you take they are making off your spread. If you crash and burn you stop trading or if your account is too rich you cash out. Hence.. if we trade trade sensibility.. put your stop correctly and be weary of any economy release which would fluctuate price/spread. Never over trade and blame the broker for closing your position. Even the banks comes after you if you default on your loan.. Trade sensibility or don't trade at all. 

Remember.."Trade only money you are willing to part with".. 

-DC

Signal Service - MQL5

- - = = Below Previous signal Terminated (no longer available) = = - -

As Planned.. below is my Signal Service through the MQL5 Community..

'TradeForTomorrow' is my main trading account that I use for trading.
Everything from this account is traded Manually.

 
'TradeForTomorrow Robot' is the account I trade using a couple of reliable robot.
This will only be trade by an EA not manually. 

Signal Service - TradeForTomorrow

When it comes to Signal Service, what comes to mind is... Signal Signal Signal.. Copy Copy Copy.. Money Money Money..

A lot of people look to Signal Service for many reason. Some people use Signal Service because they don't have the sufficient knowledge and experiences to get the desired result. Others use it because they do not have time to trade. Why do you want a signal service?

I myself too wish to find a reliable Signal Service.. until I find someone reliable that have the same amount of desirable result I am giving myself away as a Signal for others to use. As long as I have to trade that much, I might as well let others mirror what I comes about..

Do read the warnings before taking up any of my commentary, advice and Signal Service one find in this blog. [Click Here] 

-DC

Alpari UK - Broker Reviewed

I am going to dish out what I feel about Alpari UK as a broker based on my experience with them. Blogging is about how I personally feel so if I am wrong and anyone else have other thoughts about this do remember that this is written from my personal point of view.

Alpari UK as a broker I would give them about a 3.5 out of 5. 

Trading Respond Time:

I have trade with them through MT4 and my experience is pleasant. There was no lagging when placing order for me nor did I have any issue getting a request through any of my trading. Note I am a Price Action Swing trader not a Scalper hence the respond I require are not as critical as what others may required if they try to Scalp on trades.

Spread:

One of the few things I hate about my Alpari UK account was because of its Spread. True that it is not an ECN account nor do I pay any commission for the trades I took but the spread was Huge as Hell !! One of the reason why I dump the account was because it was too much effort to manually estimate the spread on my Target Profit. I got stuck in some position and Missed out on others a couple of time due to spread.

Customer Service:

Excellent customer Service, I was always able to reach someone. They even call me back on my mobile for any enquirer I had. Account Opening took a while as there were document requested and verification to be done, but it did complete smoothly. As far as I remember it was always a pleasant experience.

Deposit and Withdrawal:

Was easy through Credit Card, it is usually smooth sailing when we want to give money out. To my surprise, withdrawal was the same. No question asked, no delay, no sales pitch to keep your money with them. It was a hassle free wire transfer back to my Singapore DBS account within 2 working days. I event left a balance of USD0.05 in that account and they have yet to fuss about it til date (2 months now). With this said I would gladly give Alpari 2 thumbs up for withdrawal. 

Summary:

Alpari is a huge company that has been around for 10 years? Because of how establish they are till date I am still confused how I ended up with Alpari UK. They seem to have Alpari NZ, RU, UK and US ...(I think there are more but not going to drill into it). One thing I understood from discussion with customer service is that if you are a US citizen, you would fall under Aplari US where different limitation, restriction and leverage would be impose. I didn't bother to find out as it was totally not applicable to me.

Then again who am I to complain I exited the broker with over $2000 + change. Total Gain 205.35%

Note: There is a way to work around earning back the high spread paid to Alpari. Its call Cashback, take a look at my previous post (Click Here). You will see that I was paid a small sum of $ taken from what is paid to Aplari of the position traded. *Cheers

Happy Trading..

-DC

IMPORTANT: Alpari UK is no longer available, they got cripple when the central banks lost interest in watching over the CHF/EUR rate.

CADCHF - 3 Aug 2014

This week's favorite pair.. CADCHF (Long)

I like this trade because..

• Swap Positive (+ve)
• Steep dip from previous week
• Easy to draw Fib Retracement
• Plenty of Trend Line to break

I believe in the next 1-2 weeks price would go back up as high as 0.8344 before rushing down again. I am not a position trader so what ever I get in a week is good enough anything more than 2 weeks.. stay away from this pair as there are likely hood that this pair will fall.

Also start your trade with a small position, it is likely that it will drop lower before rising as Monday is a bank holiday for CAD. 

I'll leave you with that thought.. happy trading.

-DC

Favorite Symbol of the week

As I do trade and review 30 different symbol every week, I thought I would share some of what I feel and think with anyone who bothers to read my blog. Reviewing 30 pairs 8 hours before the market open is a tedious task, yet I have been doing this diligently every week since April 2014 when I decided to go full time as a trader.

I am not sure if I will have time to write out a short review on my favorite weekly pair but I sure would like to try and hope I'll make a difference to anyone who reads them. As this would benefit others but most of all this would definitely benefit myself. Taking time to write would mean I take time to read and ponder over my decision. The act of pondering helps make sure that I think through my decision before taking it up on my live account.

To those who will be following my suggestion, do note that you are doing this on your own risk. Manage your risk well as I do not and will not be held responsible for any profit/lost that my suggestion create. My pass performance is not an indication of future results as I do trade based on price action. Price action are truly traded based on market volatility during the week. I may not and be updating my thoughts if I decide to pull my idea posted. Lastly do not trade with money you can not lose. 

-DC