FT has been trading full time from home for two years, with nothing but four kids and a beach to distract him .
He fills his spare time with weight training and rugby, though more coaching than playing these days.
FT mostly trades the forex markets and although he plays FTSE on occasions his bread and butter market is £$.
He likes to think that his technique is evolving but still hasn’t the temperament or money to back the big calls. He prefers to trade between 1 and 3 times a day, aiming to take regular small gains, but feels part of the evolution is in not dealing if the conditions don’t feel right.
Premature Ejection
Welcome to March, I wonder if this will be the fourth consecutive month of equity losses.
Today I fancied the EURUSD trade again, but it didn’t quite work out as planned. I traded twice, losing on the first, then making it back at the second attempt until I was ambushed by my own stupidity.
It all started too early this morning, with a poor, rushed trade before taking my youngest up to school. I fancied the Euro to continue last week’s pummelling of the Dollar so when the EURUSD rate broke above resistance I jumped in with a £10 spread bet to buy at $1.5233. I set my stop just below the big figure at $1.5190 and, as I was going to be out for a short while, I set a limit order to sell £5 if the price reached $1.5243.
The trade didn’t work out; I’d been too keen and paid the price, the price being £430. I was pretty annoyed with myself for not waiting for the right entry point, but it happens to most of us from time to time.
A better opportunity cropped up later on when the same currency pair pushed upwards in a bullish ‘saucer’ pattern. I paid $1.5193 for a £10 spread bet, this time with a tighter stop at $1.5170. After a game of ‘will it, won’t it?’ the price broke $1.52 then burst into life. I put off taking my customary 10 pips on a fiver, settling for a more impressive 30 pips at $1.5223. I brought my stop loss up to break-even and settled back to enjoy watching my profits accumulate.
Then, blow me, the running P/L total shot back to zero. Dozy-nuts here had forgotten this morning’s limit order, which had led to me being prematurely ejected from my trade. OK, I’d made £400, but the price was still rising; if I’d cancelled by limit order I could have made up this morning’s loss with a good profit on top. When did the ‘Dumbest Trades’ competition finish?
And just for good measure my short FTSE position, which had been £200 up on the day, was now a measly £75 in profit. Still, at least Bath won at the weekend.
Happy Trading
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