Changes

-8 pips

Today wasn't really a situation for me to trade but I didn't trade for a long time and I wanted to start even for experimenting purposes.


I want to limit myself in a effective way. Previous problem of averaging that was my number one problem is solved by using whole margin. So averaging went away. If for some reason I start again to have more money in account than it's necessary for position averaging would be back in no time.
So I made few changes to address current problems. Changes that I can follow and not deviate. First of all I wanted to cut my exposure to market when I'm heat up. So I decided to allow myself only five trades a day. Previously I had experiment with one trade a day that wasn't success. With five trades I can trade but I'm omitted in doing twenty or more trades when I have a bad day. For some reason I believe that I can follow that rule even I couldn't follow rule of having max loss of -25 pips which was basically designed to do the same.

Second thing I'm lowering my take profit level to maximum of +15 pips. I'm not allowed to earn more on any trade then that. Why I chose to do it? Firstly when I have theoretically unlimited potential on any trade I'm prone to fantasize about big profits, that leads to big emotions, greed and who knows what. I abandon efficient scalping and drift in some dream land, then I do it in losing trades also. So I move stops because I can afford to lose -20 pips because of big profits that are awaiting around the corner, off course just in my mind. If big profits are impossible it would be much harder in my mind to justify big losing trades when they are in the making.

Third thing that I changed is nice little feature that Oanda allows me. That is I changed position sizing from fix round number to 99% of margin available. With that I address an issue that I have with changing size, it allays affect me in negative way. Now on my every trade size is different, so I hope I will detach from number of units that I trade.


My idea of where I want to be with my trading is in doing few good scalps in a day when I trade and nothing more. I want it to be stable and uniform, without oscillations in my strategy and expectations. Taking five to ten pips in a trade and having similar stops day in and day out.
Wish me luck in sticking to my rules.