Forex Day Trading Forecast Weblog: Recent Comments

Comment on October 28 Forecast Comments

Darren — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:58:34 GMT

Cracking post Mark. I for one have been waiting for this information.

To have an insight into your picks and more importantly - why is absolutely invaluable information to us. (well at least it is to me :)).

I have a spreadsheet which monitors your trades. From 24-26 5 trades for plus at least 112 pips assuming an entry point at 0:00 GMT.

Top class Mark - please keep up the good work and please keep advising the picks. I for one, truly appreciate them.

Comment on October 17 Forecast Comments

Darren — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 04:51:50 GMT

Think I need to maybe go in the confession box!

After receiving Strong Buy Signal on 15 Oct (16th for me!), I went long on the Euro at 1.4208 for 41 pips to 1.4249. My T/P level was not hit, so waited for forecast 16 Oct (17th for me!).

To my surprise, forecast had changed from Strong Buy to Weak Sell.

What do you do?

I went with my gut and stayed in the trade, finally exited this morning at 01:26 GMT @ 1.4200 for -8 pips, which was again, against my instincts and more importantly against the forecast.

Again today, forecast is a weak sell, but Euro is presently at 1.4229 +29 pips on where I exited. This shows, my gut was right to go against the forecasts and i should have stayed in - or was it?

Have I done the right thing by holding onto this trade against the forecast prediction? The fact I was able to recover to -8 pips as opposed to -35 pips which is where the trade was when the forecast signal change was issued, would suggest so :)

I am in demo, it's not real money. The transition to live is going to be very, very difficult for me. Would I have done the same thing with real cash? Would I be happy with a -35 pip trade?

I am still learning and I think I should have learned something here. But I can't find it :) On another day, instead of -8 pips, the currency could really have gone south and my S/L of 1.4117 could have been hit for a 5% total capital loss. In reality, I can afford 19 more trades to go this way, but psychologically, the effect is much worse.

On a seperate note and a follow up to my post of last week, I am now trading a pick of the day pair (sorry Mark :)) strategy. This basically requires me to analyse chart setup and recent forecast performance before deciding on a pair to trade. So far so good I think:

Trade 1: 15/10 T/P @ 20 pips on loonie + 20 Pips Total
Trade 2: 16/10 Manual Exit @ -35 pips on euro - 15 pips Total
Trade 3: 17/10 T/P @ 22 pips on usd/jpy (don't know nickname!) + 7 Total
Trade 4: 18/10 short on usd/jpy @ 116.47 (currency going nowhere at present 116.46 at time of writing)

I will post periodically to advise how this strategy is going...

All the best,

Darren

Comment on October 11 Forecast Comments

Darren — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 04:57:01 GMT

A week or so ago, a blog post by Mark advised us to try this same experiment:

Trade the four majors, Risk 4% per trade and set S/L 10 pips over/under forecast.

My results from 2nd Oct - 11th Oct thus far are as so:

GBP/USD +94 Pips
EUR/USD +109 Pips
USD/CHF -110 Pips
USD/JPY +115 Pips

Total +208 Pips

Now guys, I don't want to sound like Mark's puppet here, but surely this is solid evidence that one could devise a successful strategy using the forecasts a solid fundamental base.

These results have been achieved using no chart checks and no forecast strength checks, which are tweo parameters I personally check before entering a trade. There are more, but I won't go into that here.

FYI: Here are my own strategy/system results thus far:

Pair: EUR/USD ( I only trade this pair, as I want to keep risk to a minimum!)

Date Range: 16 Aug - 11 Oct

Profit/Loss +396 Pips / +23% of starting bank of $5000.

These results have been achieved using Marks indicators and the forecasts - PERIOD.

They are also very conservative as I have used very specific T/P and S/L points. The results would have been heaps better ( I estimate as much as 100 Pips/ 10%) if I had access to MT4 whilst trading and could use trailing stops to ride trades further into profit. (Due to timezone, I set up my trades at work, as such I use Oanda, who don't support trailing stops!)

If anyone wants my strategy, they are welcome to it, I am happy to share :) I am absolutely stoked, over 20% in less than two months using a 5% risk per trade. Not sure what else could give me these potential LIFE CHANGING returns.

I am desperate to go live, but not until both Mark and I are happy that it is the right for me to do so. I want to make sure my strategy works over at least a six month period - got just over four months to go.

If anyone wants my strategy, just post on here (with email address) to let me know...

Cheers

Darren

Comment on October 3 Forecast Comments

Darren — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 04:37:08 GMT

I can relate to "you don't know, what you do not know"...

As a newbie, there is both fear and excitement in the forecasts.

Take yesterday's trade as an example: After checking charts and checking my personal rules, I went short on the EUR/USD @ 1.4152. As normal, as soon as I got into the trade it started to move against the forecast. As my pip targets are small (33), panic set in at -22 pips!

I have a very large S/L of 50 pips over/under forecasted high/low, so was confident I would not be stopped out.

I went to bed and the trade was -30 pips or so. I put a T/P at 1.4119 and it was hit whilst I was in bed. In hindsight, I would have been better putting a trailing S/L and rode the trade further into profit...

Anyway, my point is this (yeah, there is one!) if I had not had the info. presented to me in the forecast and knowing there was no major news announcement due, would I have had the confidence to go to bed with an open trade?

Also with regards to this morning's blog entry, I for one see Mark as a 'mentor'. As such, to aid my training, I would really like Mark (if possible) to advise which trade(s) he is taking on any given day. Why he took that trade. I think we can make our own decisions with regards to S/L, Trail S/L and/or T/P, but it would be invaluable information to us newbies (I feel), if we could understand why Mark makes the decisions he does...

Any thoughts?

Comment on October 1 Forecast Comments

Darren — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:55:10 GMT

Top entry Mark... Re-inforces what has gone before. I find it very difficult to believe that people would be willing to commit financially to something unless they truly believed it could potentially work...

I have developed my own tools (in a set of spreadsheets), which monitor each pair (show predicted High/low against actual high/low), strength changes, etc. This information is imperative to making good decisions.

As I have told Mark on many occasions, I do not have the capital (or mindset) to open myself up to large risk, as such, stick to the least volatile pairings of EUR/USD and USD/CHF.

Do I have a strategy that works? Possibly, who knows, but with Mark's help, I am confident I can put something in place that will make money. I was told by another Forex mentor, that "this is not a spring guys - it's a marathon" (it is unrealistic to think you can make thousands of pips a week/month and retire in three years). Sorry, but it ain't gonna happen.

There is loads of stuff all over the 'net, promising the Forex earth. Just look on Ebay, every system is a winner, there are even automated EA's which show huge returns every month. I can give you url's if you interested.

The bottom line is the forex stuff is hard work. I am a great believer one gets out what one puts in.

I have subscribed because I feel I get more from Mark than just the forecasts, he has helped me heaps and to be honest, without his help and advice i probably would have given up by now.

Observation is the key folks. Yesterday I did not trade although all my indicators (except one!) said trade on the Euro. The forecast was very strong, so why didn't I trade - one word guys - Blog.

The information on here is gold!

Sorry to bang on, I personally feel we are on a good thing here guys, I doubt there are many others out there as genuine as Mark...

I am desperately keen for others to use this blog, we can and should learn from each other. This is something I have discussed with Mark, here's hoping by consistently posting we can encourage others to do so - don't be shy, we are after all, here to learn and all in this for the same goal...

Comment on September 25 Forecast Comments

Darren — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:23:52 GMT

I was interested re. your post this morning about brokers. I was reading a few posts on various forums on the web and to say I am a little worried is an understatement. As a newbie, I of course would be interested to hear the view of someone who has been there and done it so to speak.

For example:

Do brokers treat demo accounts different to live accounts?
Do brokers trade against you?
Do feeds differ from broker to broker?
How do we avoid the 'dodgy' brokers?

This is obviously stuff for later down the track and not something for now, as I reckon we are probably all in Demo. However, it would be imperative to know this info pre going live...

Comment on Sept 19 Forecast Comments

Darren — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 04:23:23 GMT

Cracking entry Mark, will help me enormously.

I have been trying to trade full-time, whilst holding down a full-time job. Forex is in danger of taking over my life and my work is suffering!

I really need to adopt a strategy which will allow me to trade 3 or 4 hours in an evening, shut down and forget about trading until the next day.

Easier said than done I know - as you say, discipline will be key to this approach.

Comment on 30 days of Discipline Update...Mission Accomplished

Darren — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:53:20 GMT

I saw the bounce Mark, it taught me a valuable lesson: Don't go to be with trade still running when there is a major news announcement due.

As a newbie, I am learning all the time. The blog warned us to get out, I didn't heed that warning and paid a very heavy price.

Message is now embedded loud and clear. I will not make the same mistake again.

Harsh lesson, but lesson learned!

Comment on Sept 18 Forecast Comments

Darren — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:49:28 GMT

I learned a valuable lesson today - don't go to bed with an outstanding trade when there is a major announcement due.

Woke to find S/L hit at a massive -221.

I am definately leaving it alone today, going to lick my wounds :)

Comment on 30 Days of Discipline Update

Darren — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 04:47:26 GMT

I thought I would post my results thus far

Rules:
I do not trade if pip-potential for my chosen pairs (GBP/USD EUR/USD) is less than 40 (EURO)/50 (POUND) pips.
If there is a weakening in strength and direction is same, no trade.
Finally, I have set my stop loss as so it is 50 pips over/under forecast next day low/high. This means I will be trading less $ per pip. (However, at the moment I am really interested in Pct and Pips profit!).
I now watch the charts for a while, before entering trades. Through this observation, I am getting a better idea of when to enter trades i.e. not enter a buy trade if currency is falling like a stone (an obvious example, but i think you know where i am going with this)

Results:

Last week was my best week so far:

4 trades on EURO, all winners (1 no trade day), 2 trades on POUND, both winners (3 no trade days). Can't really ask for any more than this!

I have a very conservative business plan in place and plan to proof it for a while yet. I am not prepared to go live until I can prove that my Business Plan will make money and more importantly, I will not lose my capital.

For the past month (16/8 - 14/9) I am 13.7% and 278 pips up on the POUND and 17.13% and 288 pips up on the EURO.

FANTASTIC results, all thanks to Mark and the Forecast(s), i'm stoked!