My LIVE account went from about $101 to about $40 yesterday. I blindly placed trades based solely on another traders thoughts and ideas and I (we) failed. Serves me right. Note to self WAKE UP!.
Hedge Fund Update
I’ve decided it’s a bad idea to test PAID signals on a DEMO account…. waste of time really. I can check any MQL5 itself to see any traders progress… not as good as using MT4 but is more scalable and wiser money-wise.
So any PAID signal will be tested on a LIVE account. This will, unfortunately, rule out most good signal providers becasue their style will typicaly need more money than I’m prepared to put in the account. So I will need to find SIGNAL providers that can work with small capital… if there even are any. This will moist like push me towards FREE signal providers and/or using more 3rd part EA’s.
My Own EA
I’m still working with fxDreema which allows me to create very simple EA’s which I find ideal for testing trading ideas. This will continue as I don’t think it’s that hard to make some money with a simple EA under certain restrictions. Mainly that my EA DOES NOT have to be effective on any time frame, for now, I am often using variables that are quite specific to the timeframe that I am working with at the time. Workin on other currency pairs I am still committed to as I think that should work if the EA is reasonably robust.
Trading Style
I still like placing a grid of very small orders if possible. This is really just to set a few “nets” at desirable locations. If, for example, I believe we are in a pull-back from am UPTREND I may put in some LIMIT BUY orders at 10 pips below the current price, then 20 pips etc, etc.
I have been coding and testing along these lines but tonight I want to look at this a little differently. I watched my favourite trader today, SIMPLETON, on YouTube… I like his “out of the box” style… he has had a huge influence on me. We actually talked on Skype several months ago and he was very pleasant, generous with his time and his scripts. really good guy.
The video below gives the details but in short, he looks at the trade more from a betting position (risking $5), as I really do for the most part. So he puts a small GRID of trades in a script that has a maximum loss of $5. Then he places that script where he thinks a good position would be. The downside is $5 and the upside is… ? I like this because it focuses on the “cost of the bet”. To think of risking $5 on an idea or a strategy sounds good to me. and breaks me out of the usual “trading mindset”.
Also in this video SIMPLETON is looking at Smoothed Heiken Ashi which I was also very interested in at one time… even paid to have an EA coded up around it (it failed) but now I have renewed interest (the problem for me was always the EXITS).
The code I will write will probably have to risk a bit more than $5 from my initial analysis. This number depends on the number of trades in the Grid and the maximum SL placed.