Hi everyone, and a very warm welcome to the third post in my trading blog. If you’ve just joined us, this blog covers my quest to become a 6-figure forex trader. Right now I’m at the very start of my journey, using the 14-day FTMO free trial. I want to test myself against their rules before shelling out cash for a prop firm challenge with them.
Here’s the llink to my first post, which covers my strategy and how I plan to get there. And here’s a link to my second post, in which I discuss my thoughts on leverage and how useful it can be once you’ve found the right amount. Plus, I also cover my first day of trading.
Trading blog #3 – the second day of trading
Unfortunately, today’s window of opportunity was rather narrow, as I wasn’t even able to start trading until a couple of hours after the start of the New York session. Plus, I don’t feel my freshest, as my sleep was not particularly great. Gold made a couple of huge moves, falling down to $1802 before flying up to $1825. This climb occurred all within a 15-minute candle. Obviously, it would have been great to have captured a part of this volatility, but of course, hindsight is always 20-20, so who knows what would’ve happened.
The first trades
With $1810 as what I felt was my support zone, I entered a couple of positions targeting $1815.
With each trade running a minimum of $2 in my favor in terms of the price, I set my stop losses to the entry points.
The price reached a high of $1814.6, bringing a gain of nearly $2,000. I seriously thought about closing the trades manually. However, the momentum of the price action seemed so strong, I thought I may as well just wait for it to clip the take profit.
Unfortunately it didn’t, and the price fell all the way back to the entry point, closing the trades.
In hindsight, I am really annoyed with myself for not closing them manually. My target for the day is 0.5 – 1% of the original account balance per day, which is obviously $1,000 – $2,000, so to have had that amount sitting right there and yet not take it was kind of dumb.
This experience was the definition of the phrase “a bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush.” I think that in forex trading, actual profit is ALWAYS worth more than hypothetical profit. I guess I will chalk this up to my less than optimum night’s sleep. However, setting the stop loss to the entry point was definitely a smart move.
Subsequent trades
I re-entered at a slightly lower price but backed out (with a tiny profit) as I felt too tired to carry on.
However, a clear opportunity presented itself, and I re-entered, before closing my positions a few minutes later with $650.
In conclusion
My overall gain for the day was just under $700. A bit less than yesterday’s gain and slightly under my daily target. No problem – I’ll take a gain over a loss any day of the week.
Day 2 of trading ends with the account in $2,007.72 of profit. This averages out at almost exactly the target gain of 0.5%, so I can’t really complain too much. My goal for the next trading day is to be more decisive when securing profit. No need to wait for the take profit to be clipped when you’re 99% of the way there anyway.
I should add that I have plenty of screenshots of my trades and I do hope to add them in due course. However, trading itself, plus this blog, not to mention other real-life commitments such as my day job, are all chipping away at my time. Hopefully, I can upload them on my next day off at the weekend.