$50 challenge

Just an experiment to see if I can recover an account left over from my early trading days that has only $50 in equity. It will likely fail as the account is one of those 'premium/pro' dealies with big commissions, and minimum 0.1 lots per trade except on crypto. As a result BTC will probably be my focus for the first doubling attempt.

First trade direction bias was good but got stopped out when I wasn't looking. This account will reach a margin call on a decline of less than 10 pips. Just another disadvantage of trading with this broker as they immediately close positions that reach 99.999% margin level.
Lesson: babysit every trade until the account is much bigger.

Trade two brings a miniscule 6 penny profit as I have to close the trade to get the family ready for dinner.

The second time a profit has been denied me, but will it elude me a third time?

Yeah, probably.

But actually no. There is finally a glimmer of light. This is either the beginning of a very big BTC comeback or it's the last gasp in a return to below the 8000s. 'Which one is it, smart guy?', you ask. Well, you may well ask, but I couldn't possibly comment. Besides nobody else knows either, at this point, thanks to The Edge of Chaos.

And sadly I won't get to find out tonight as I must now sleep.
I HATE trading like this so I've either got to code a bot to do my trading or think of some other way to 'scalp' this clawback.

It looks like BTC is giving up on its dreams of returning to 2017 heights and will instead whimper slowly down to its usual resting place around 3500. That sound you hear is a million millennial broken hearts.

Well, actually according to Pratchett&Jones there is still time -maybe tomorrow is the final countdown.

I have closed my short for a small loss and now remain long BTC. This is a do-or-die moment for BTC and this little account (there will be several of these, sadly, until it is much bigger). The last opportunities to go up the 13 day cycle expire today and tomorrow, and the 26week cycle peak push must start before the end of the month. If there is no big push I guess BTC will drift aimlessly for months back to an equilibrium and if my account still survives I'll have to make new plans.

I am definitely losing this war; the constraint restricting me to BTC is a serious challenge. It has opted to sit sluggishly around 10k, so I can die from the thousand cuts of swap fees even if I don't have the correct direction bias. I might be sitting better if I had simply kept faith with my system, but for me, faith is hard to come by.
Still, we must fight it out, there is no other option but to fight!

Swissy continues to reign supreme. Ahh, if only...

A Trader's Litany

"I must not fear.
Fear is the balance-killer.
Fear is the margin-call that brings account obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over my alert level and through my stop-loss.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path return to my original entry.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing except blind rage. Only I will remain."

Barely. There's a chance BTC will move into a new longer-term cycle up over the next few days. If that doesn't materialize I just have to cut bait and find something with positive swap.

Very touch and go, but the small account-holder's existence is one of limited choices. Only solid devotion to the model allows me to withstand the tension, even on so insignificant a sum as this. I'm a creature of pain-avoidance, by nature.

If you are gambling man or manly woman, this is not a terrible time to chance a countertrend long BTC trade. Just a fun money trade, what the kids call an edge band transaction.

You're welcome anyone who read this and benefited from this excellent call. Note, that this is not financial advice and I am not a financial advisor. I am however, a spiritual adviser and will exorcise demons, bad luck and common household curses for a very reasonable fee.

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. And now I'm a bit surprised by this lack of conviction in the bullish run. With the world besieged by hurricanes, Trade Wars (TM), snap elections, you'd think crypto would be the place to stash cash.

It seems to indicate more drifting for the foreseeable future. Unless there is a sudden snap back up to the longer-term trend which is unlikely to happen in the next day or two.

So BTC is likely to be dull dull dull before it really gets sandbagged in a couple of weeks.

I'll have to be nimble and maybe resort to scalping in the trenches to clear the books.

Yeah I dunno, something just doesn't seem right. We've seen the edge of the band - that unusually flat section from 08.29-09.01. That meant it could only go up, really, and it did but the model expected more and now there's no cyclical way for it to go much higher. However I suppose it could, diabolically, drift slowly upward. Still, disaster lurks later on if it ever manages to return to the 11700 level. I guess we'll just have to wait for the market to tip its hand.

Much like Al Pacino in 'Scent of a Woman' I am 'in the dark here'.



Is this a last-ditch effort to rejoin the higher degree cycle, (which are themselves in conflict) or an ergodic wander?

Well it seems clear it is making a last-ditch effort for a 11700+ so I'm going all in and if it doesn't work, it's because I was unlucky; and if it does work it's because I'm a genius trader.

The heroic trader chuckled grimly as he saw what price had done in the waning hours of Friday (his broker doesn't stay open for BTC weekend trading). It seemed as though the markets were mocking him, much like Nelson from the Simpsons.

Hah-hah. The markets seemed to say. Hah. Haah.

"Hah, Hah, indeed, but we shall see who has the last laugh..." (eyes narrowed, extreme close-up)

They say one thing that makes Magnus Carlsen so good at chess is his unflinching realism about his own mistakes. With that spirit in mind, I'll begin the unpleasant task of examining the many errors I made today, keeping in mind some of these were forced errors caused by trading such a miniscule account.

I attach a screenshot of my trading model, though I don't have space here to elaborate on every detail of its operation.

1. Trading without clear conviction
It's clear from reading my last few posts that I initially thought BTC might go up because it's 'a good place to stash cash'. I mistakenly thought the markets were risk-off, still, since I wasn't really watching other instruments or news very carefully. However as the week progressed and I became informed I didn't alter my thinking. Bad.

Then I thought it might go down as the last chance of a cyclic bull run expired, seemingly un-exercised, on Thursday. It seems I may have been right on the first count, there is another chance mid-week next week.

However then price left the cycle and began rising, and didn't stop, exceeding the previous high of the ergodic period, and so I was expecting something like the crazy last-minute drop, but in reverse -reaching back into the higher degree cycle.

The main mistake is trading without having a clear rock-solid conviction, because, had I been long or short I would have been better off than both as I am now. My only excuse is I can't really trade anything else with this broker, so my only other option was to wait, and what fun is that? This leads me to...

2. Overtrading. (impatience)
An account of this size should only have one trade opened, at most, and even then it's dangerously overleveraged. However I'm not used to glacially slow progress and so opened up too many positions and now the game is likely up.

3. Not waiting for the market to react (confirmation - also a result of impatience)
If I had done nothing else this week but enter long, initially, and wait for price to break below a daily low, then I'd have one long trade that was more profitable than my most profitable trade this week, and one losing trade, that I would have exited at yesterday's low - a manageable loss.

4. Holding on to losing trades.
This one hurts the most of all. What kind of a milquetoast newbie holds on to losers? In my defence, I can't really afford any losses for this account to survive, so that is messing with my psyche, but it's still embarrassing.

The overarching lesson though, is - don't trade a small account, except as a learning experience, possibly for training. Trade a cent account, much better. But there is not much to be done in a situation like this, except hold on and wait. If it pans out I'll continue the experiment, but if not, let this be the epilogue of a chapter of a fool's progress.

There are other considerations here though - like, maybe, something I've wrestled with for a while, forecasting is bullshit? Mechanical, myopic systems just seem to work. And when they don't, the damage is minimal, but when I forecast the damage seems to be tragic.

Also, maybe, for me, manual trading is bullshit. I have daddy issues. I need my Hulk anger. Other people can hang out 'in the zone'. I have better things to do with my time. I need a roboslave.

The bastards stopped me out while I still had 115% free margin! Waiting for a comment from the broker. I've never heard of anyone getting stopped out when margin was over 100%. Seems a lot like cheating to me.