Hello everyone, and a warm welcome to my trading blog, in which I’ll be covering my quest to become a 6-figure funded forex trader.
A quick recap of the blog so far: I failed the FTMO Free Trial once and finished in profit on the second attempt. I moved on to a 100k My Forex Funds Evaluation and passed Phase 1, but failed Phase 2 and a 100k FTMO Challenge after that.
Trading Blog #12 – How to trade properly
My past results clearly show that it’s time to go back to the drawing board and get this done right. While there are certainly some successes, it’s rather hit-and-miss. I think what’s more important is being consistent because there’s no way you can call yourself a trader if your trading keeps grinding to a halt in failure. I’m not going to even think about paying for any more prop firm evaluations until I have proved this beyond any doubt. As far as I’m concerned, gaining a funded account with a prop firm means very little if you can’t actually keep it.
As a result, I decided to open another FTMO 200k Free Trial. I’m using a swing account because I think it fits in much better with my personality and my life commitments outside of trading. As much as I love the idea of scalping, I just don’t have the availability to focus on a screen for long periods of time.
As for my strategy, I will be taking a look at support and resistance levels with Heiken Ashi candles on most major and minor forex pairs. In terms of risk management, I will risk 1% of the account per trade. In almost all cases I will leave the profit point open, although I am aiming for a risk-to-reward ratio of at least 1:2.
02.10.22
On this day I placed four trades.
I went short on CAD/JPY and AUD/JPY, with stop losses set to the previous day’s high. Take profit is open.
I also went short on CHF/JPY and set my stop loss to the 20-day simple moving average. Take profit was also left open.
Finally, I went short on USD/JPY as I believe it has surely reached a high point. I have set a take profit of just above 140, so the RR is approximately 4.
03.10.22
Unfortunately, both CAD/JPY and AUD/JPY stopped out.
At the end of the day, CHF/JPY and USD/JPY were running in profit; CHF/JPY was about $1800, and USD/JPY was $435.
This evening I don’t really see any opportunities, so I don’t think I’ll place any trades.
I seriously regret not getting in on gold. The Heiken Ashi chart showed a classic bearish Doji candle followed by an enormous bullish engulfing one, which is often a promising sign of a new trend.
XAU/USD rose from around 1660 and finished this day at 1699 at the time of writing.
04.10.2022
There’s just over 4 hours left of trading for the day. CHF/JPY is running at an $800 loss but USD/JPY is running at over $1400 profit. Gold rose to over $1729 and is currently sitting at $1721. I never had any long-term success scalping it and I never even anticipated trading it as part of this free trial, but perhaps it’s worth keeping an eye on more seriously.
Account equity at the moment is just under 2%. Not an amazing start, but it’s early days and there’s still everything to play for.
I must not forget to look back at the previous trades which stopped out, to see how they unfolded. It could be that my stop losses were too tight, and they might’ve gone in my favor.
Trading blog wrap-up
It’s obviously frustrating when things don’t seem to be working, but it would be even more frustrating if I didn’t even try. I know this is possible. I mean, there are people out there whose business model is passing other people’s prop firm challenge for them. While that’s never something I would pay for, the point I’m making is that it’s possible to be so good at this, that other people will pay you to do it for them. That’s the level of confidence and consistency I’m aspiring to.