Friday, April 13, 2012

Groundhog Day with EURUSD

Sometime in February this year, my account took a huge hammering. I thought I might have been living in Groundhog Day. It was worse than a the usual roller coaster ride of a trading day on the EURUSD.
Yes, that is the picture of my live trading account. I was getting these type of daily pips: +50pips, -25pips, -25pips, +30pips, +15pips, -40pips.

Jeepers! With results like these, I am not surprised why a lot of people give up trying to trade. Actually one wonders why I keep going.
I seem to get into these yucky equity curve. 2 weeks up, and 3 weeks down. Back to square one.

Here's my excuse this time: I was shuttling between houses. I have this arrangement where I vacate my lovely apartment to stay with my lovely BF, so that my ex can stay over and visit with the kid. (TMI, yeah, maybe). So I have these rule for trading, it says that when I am in the midst of a personal hullabaloo - I am supposed to take a trading break.

Well, this time, I just was half-hearted about taking the break. I traded in the midst of this to-and-fro hullabaloo. So guess, what  - my account went to and fro too!

And that wasn't the only thing. After the hullabaloo was over, I got back to my apartment on a Friday. Then later that night I traded the non-farm Friday.

Non-Farm Friday March-9-2012

4 trades for the day. 2 negatives, 2 positives. Nett for the day -20pips


The funny thing was that I opened a trade 15minutes before the announcement. (Trade 2 in chart above) Yes, I got stuck in all the noise just before the Report is available.

Post announcement, I quickly jumped onto the moving train (Trade 3) which I shouldn't have. Grabbed a couple of quick pips but was not of the frame of mind to hang on.


Well, the rest of the night, was like a Groundhog day deja-vu moment. (Trade 4) And that also added to the decimation of my trading account.

What happened to my Zen trader mind-set? It wasn't anywhere to be found.

The loss for that night wasn't that bad. What really bug me was that I didn't have a good handle on my entries and trade management.

The week following added to my Groundhog Day experience with most of my trading days going south. A lot of it due to over-trading - which I seem to have a hard time controlling.

With my account slowly dwindling - per the equity curve pic up-top. What could I do? The only thing and the best thing to do - I took a long, long break from trading to reset my brain.

If you have been following my Twitter feed you will know that I have come back to trade EURUSD on a new system.

So tune in to this space for my latest exploits.....

I will leave you with my favorite scene from GroundHog Day where Phil tries to get Rita to have dinner with him. It starts with getting the drink right and then starting the conversation. It takes him multiple tries to get him right. But when he does, it's magic!

It's just like trading - to get you what you want;  you've just got to keep on trying to get it right.

Happy Trading!