Cycle Trading

It's 3:35 AM and I'm still wired from playing hockey tonight. I've got a lot on my mind lately, so I'm making a journal type journal entry.

Earlier today, I closed out some pips and figured out some numbers on my account since I started trading actively a little over a month ago. There wasn't much in it from when I got burned out last year, took out most of the money and basically took a year off. I wanted to get my "game" back before I put some decent money into it so I set a number and a time frame and would evaluate things which ever came first.

I haven't hit the number yet, but I'm close and way ahead of schedule. Hitting the number wasn't a big surprise and most people probably wouldn't believe it if I said what it is anyway. I've done 2x the number in a shorter amount of time. What is a surprise is that I'm not looking for that day when I trade for a living. I've even decided not to fund the account with the amount I was planning. Maybe 1/2 that at best.

The reason is simple. Not caring has made trading so much more enjoyable. I mean, I enjoy trading my style and it's been a long hard journey to be able to do what I do. And believe me, I love making money. See... I'm a balls to the wall kinda guy. I don't do things as "hobbies". When I set out to do something, I do it all the way. That doesn't mean I'm thrill seeker.. not that I don't seek thrills.. trading just doesn't really thrill me like charging down a mountain on a snowboard or playing hockey does. But if I go back to trading with the same intensity as I usually do, the result will probably be the same... getting burned out and walking away for 6 months or a year like I have in the past and then having to relearn it all. Heck, who knows... maybe I'd walk away for good.

This time around trading is a hobby. A hobby with a financial reward, but that's not the focus anymore. Just trading well and researching my hair brain ideas when the come. The money will just do it's thing and if it ends up becoming an amount I can't ignore anymore I think I'll drain it back to an amount I can ignore.

One last thing before I sign off for the night... anything is possible in this world. There are definitely improbabilities.. but even a snow ball chance in hell is still a chance. Define your realities and then go about making them realities.

JR-

That was a great read. Thanks for sharing it. It sounds like you've really gotten to enjoy your 'presence', and it is yielding a frictionless existence, in spite of the improbabilities we face. There are many seekers, but few finders.

Thanks, SPro. It's funny when the philosophical stuff comes up. I get asked a lot about what books or resources people can go to learn a lot of the stuff I use. But to be honest, I've never really learned much from any of the ones I have other than just opening up my mind to a different approach to market analysis. The vast majority of the stuff I use.. much of which I don't show here.. is influence by philosophy and different schools of thought. Maybe I'll start referring to people to that sort of stuff instead.

I love your sig btw. I've been saying that for years. I used to butt heads with one of my employees until I finally sat her down and told her that our job wasn't about being book smart. It's about thinking. Not regurgitating.

I also say something similar to a lot of traders. Being book smart on the markets, techniques, or whatever doesn't mean squadoosh. But I go a little further in that the markets are like a musical instrument. You can read up and know everything about a guitar, music theory, etc but you'll still sound like @ss unless you practice and actually learn to play the thing.

Anybody play over at www.umoo.com? Fun stuff. I just won $60 on a couple of bets playing this stupid UP/DOWN game. All you have to do is bet whether price will be up or down when time expires from whatever price is at when you place your bet. Being a "time" trader this is a cake walk. I'm going to shoot for $100 today. Now that I'm up on the house I'll lower my bets but have a few more of them and spread them out a bit. This is easier than counting cards.

damn. I was off by 1 freaking minute for cashing in on $45 to hit my $100 on the day. Ended up in the black still, but for only $3 or so. lol

Looks like I need to drop to the 1 min charts now with my crystal ball. Man... it was probably even less than a minute. Maybe 10-15 seconds, but it was definitely in the last minute.

Attached is a chart to show where/when I shorted. You only need to be up 1 pip for the bet to be considered a win. The magenta line is the line I needed to be below and the x is the expiration bar. You can see that the square nailed it, but my first entry was off by 1-2 pips to cash it in. The bet on my second entry was larger and thus covered the losing bet and then stuff enabling me to end up overall in the black for the "match".

Last year I played the S&P tourny games and did ok. I've got a system for nailing the S&P index to the minute but the tournies are a pain for the payout.
Payout is largely dependent on the number of entrants. Tournies can run all day or be as short as an hour.

30 min. chart. I had a lot of triggers yesterday as price dropped. When I'm juggling knives I go very small on the lot size. The square below wasn't adjusted when I set the orders or else I would have waited. The x shows where I closed all of that out. I probably could have let some of it run, but I wanted to book it all since a lot of it had been in the red for a while and I just wanted to start fresh and close the win.

Now that I've found the proper square and price has turned, I can either increase the lot size on the dips, or just increase the number of buys.

This umoo stuff is pretty addicting. I should stop. lol The up/down game I've been playing is basically binary options. You put up an amount and the payout is fixed. Currently, the eurusd pays out bet + 69% on a win and 15% of bet on a loss. Options are for 60 min. and you can get it anytime up to 10 min. from expiration. I think the closer you get to expiration the higher price, though. Anywho, I've finally got a little system down and it's paying off.

Attached are my last plays. I had a couple of home runs on a home run setup, but I've dialed my bet amount back because I need to exercise discipline. but hey.. hanging curve ball and I swung for the fence. the $80 payouts were on the same setup.

I've got a good system down now. I should write an ebook on this and hoc it on ebay for 99.99. lol

Hello JR,

I've followed along with a few of your posts in AK's euro redux thread. I hope you don't mind but I'm going to subscribe here, follow along and post anything that may be pertinent.

Take care and thank you for posting,

Donnie

No prob. In fact I encourage that people post here.

I spent a good portion today going through about 5 years of screen shots I've taken over the years. It's pretty interesting to see how a lot of my techniques and ideas evolved. I was going to post some examples, but the laptop with all of that on there died about 15 min. ago. If I can salvage the hd, I'll post some stuff later on.

But I do have a point to make. It was interesting to see my progression from serious skeptism and doubt about esoteric type trading to doing nothing but esoteric stuff. It was also amazing to see how the trading results took a hit when I first got into the style and then how quickly the results kept getting better and better. The weakness of course being money management and trade management.

Anywho, the point.... my evolution in the style was more about removing limitations on my beliefs and assumptions. The more I removed the limiting thinking the more possibilities opened up about what is possible when looking at a naked price chart. Granted, a lot of the ideas I came up with independently had already been thought up and written about elsewhere, but I can almost guarantee had I read about those concepts prior to my paradigm shift, they would have been just words in one eye and out the other.

So having realized that, it's back to the books to find out how much I've missed out on because I was blind to the message at the time.

Update up this post: http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...&postcount=108


Cycle turn was pretty much spot on to the forecasted turn although inverted. I'm long again since Thursday on the time line hit and price to oscillator divergence. This daily square is huge, but the time line hits have been to the bar spot on. Just gotta be patient and wait for them if I'm not already in.

I was going over a bunch of the old posts in my blogspot blog. I found this little nugget that I said:


I've got the worst memory and it makes me laugh when I come across stuff I've said that I have no idea where it came from.

A few MWW MTF Dates from the E/U 4/27/2010 Low:

5/14 - also corresponds with ma forecast turn
5/19 - also corresponds with Gann sq intersection*
6/9 - Lots of natural confluence.

*MT4 chart scaling may change this, but the date still stands regardless of how the square scaling works out as time advances.

**Not the 2010 MWW forecasts, but from the method.

15m Euro and pivots.

Hello JR,

Hope all is well. Is there any type of reading material for this price symmetry trading?

I'm going to go through this whole thread start to finish starting this evening but this stuff seems to be quite a bit over my head. lol

The "squares" and "time lines" have me so interested though man, it's not even funny. I really haven't seen many take your approach to trading and maybe that's why.

Take care and thank you again for posting,

Donnie

Update of 15m chart. A cool 30+ pips.

Hi Donnie,
There's a ton of info on Gann, sq9, etc. out there just by googling. However, I'm pretty far removed from the "industry standards" when it comes to this kinda stuff. My old blog has quite a few of the techniques I use. The link is in my signature.

I personally prefer that there aren't too many using my approach. I mean.. .if over 90% of retail forex traders I don't want to be anywhere near what they're doing.

Just found out I calculated those wrong and I don't wtf I'm talking about. lol
I'll re-calibrate the brain and make another stab at those cycle dates later tonight.

80 pips and out. giddyup.