In Missouri - Taking 10 days for R&R

I know - i'm a pansy. There are a couple reasons for the laziness. 1 - It really helps to have an additional monitor for order entry and management and right now i'm just on a laptop. 2 - I've been hitting it HARD for the past two months working long hours and 7 days a week refining methods, throwing them out all together, and getting back to the basics. 3 - its the holidays, i'm with my family, and i'd like to spend it with them rather than in front of a computer.

So I wish you all the best of luck in the pre-thanksgiving markets!

Weekly Update

Well first week back and I finally started coming into my own. I decided to trade only the first two hours (and Fridays till the first winning trade i.e. its 9:07 right now!). Frankly, its got more than enough opportunity for myself, it doesn't get me burnt out, and frees up time for me to do other things. I recently finished reading 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris and it kind of put things into perspective for me. All work and no play makes Matt a dull boy.

I've mentioned this before here but i'm finally starting to do something about it. No more pooring over charts endlessly at night, during the day, trading for 18 hours at a time. It makes me a crabby bastard that no one wants to be around (including myself). Two hours, get in, get out, live life. If you are interested in reading the 4 Hour blog (its my favorite blog out there) check it out here: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/.

In other news I really started pulling the trigger effectively and making some progress. I didn't knock it out of the park this week. That's due to 1)letting the bigger risk trades (that alone were worth +600.00/per this week) go and 2) being a pussy earlier in the week. But when it was all said in done I made more money this week than I have in 6 months? Maybe all year? Best thing yet? The stats.


18 Trades, 98.10 in commissions (YIKES!), 8 wins, 8 pars, 2 losses, -31.25 in negative slippage, an 88.89% win rate, and 12.26% account growth.

Next week i'm out of town in Missouri but i'm going to be trading from there (i think) or I may just take the week off for the holidays. Either way i'll update you.

New Equity Highs

Traded real poorly today, missed out on an easy +300 this morning AT LEAST. Took a couple other trades for some profit and called it a day at 11AM. The more and more I trade the more and more I feel like I just want to get in, make some money and get out with that profit and call it a day. Two hour work days? I don't know, but i'm certainly working towards that. This is a intense occupation and it requires a lot of focus. Trading for 6 hours a day is doable but it isn't pleasant. So trading less is something I am considering. Not to mention I think 80% of the moves in the FX markets happen by 11AM CST and the 20% that remains into the afternoon is hit or miss most of the times. I like efficiency and if I can be more efficient by working less (and making more) then its a move for the better.

But what I wanted to talk about was that a lot of my poor performance this week hasn't been from bad trades - its been from not pulling the trigger. And a lot of that comes from being back live for the first time in a long time. Confidence isn't at its peak yet and so some of those entries just seem SCARY. The only way you get rid of that fear is by getting in on those trades and building confidence. So slowly but surely that's happening.

Even with my craptastic performance this week - here is the equity curve thus far. Pretty good direction I think! Up +9.6% so far this week.

Hai Guise!

Allright, we all know by now that i'm a shitty blogger. My trading career has been all over and back again in the past few months but i'm back at it after some huge changes in my trading.

However, rather than start back up here with the same old same old, i'm going to be creating a new blog on a new website to discuss not only my trading outcomes, but my progression, ideas, and branch out into a lot more non-trading topics. I like cars, travel, cool things to waste discretionary income on and random useful info. While that content will take the backseat to the trading posts this new creation is not going to focus purely on trading, but more on the trading lifestyle.

Hopefully it will show progression in my career and life and the interaction between the two.

I'll invite you all over to a temporary holding domain until I decide on something to call it all. But I can't do that until its built, and so that's what i'm doing as we speak.

I hope to have more for you soon!