EUR.CAD Trade

Closed this trade with a decent profit.

Active Trade

Here's a trade that I am currently in. Let's see how she goes.

1 win, 1 lose, so a draw!

Closed nzd.cad trade for a profit.

Crash & Burn

Lost the eur.chf trade.

New Trade

Yet another new trade today!

New Trade

This trade was triggered while I was in the shower. Nice pullback to the 50% Fib area.

This Swiss Pair ain't Rollin'!

Exited this trade at slightly above BE. Price is going nowhere.

New Trade

Have not traded this pair for quite some time already. Let's see where she wants to take us.

Closed Euro Kiwi Trade

Closed this trade for a profit.

New Trade

Let's see if this Kiwi wants to rock!

News Day

Exited my fiber trade today, as price doesn't seem to have the legs to push higher. Also, there are lots of news today. Don't want to be caught in the cross-fire......there's always another day to trade!

New Trade

Let's see how high she wants to go, if at all.

Another BE Trade!

Held this trade over the weekend, moved stop to BE, came back on Monday - only to see price reversed and gave me a BE trade.

New Trade

Here's one more trade that I just knocked in, probably the last one before the end of the trading week.

Bitter Kiwi Fruit

Stopped out on my nzdusd trade.

Kiwi fruit

Took a short position on this pair, the NZD.USD

Jumping out of the shinkansen

Exited my gbpjpy trade with profits.

New Trade

Let's see where this Shinkansen wants to go!

Winning Trade

Closed my EUR.GBP trade for a decent profit. 2nd half was taken out at BE, before it resumed its south-bound direction. It happens.

Active Trade

Took some profits from my trade. Stop now at BE. This pair is moving very strong now.

New Trade

Now on-board the Euro express!

Making Decisions Based On "Gut Feel"

There was an article in today's Star paper that struck a chord with me. The title was "Trust your gut."

When I was working as an engineer before, making decisions based on "gut feel" was something that was frowned about by the company's management. The management would, understandably, prefer decisions to be taken after a long, drawn-out process that usually involve meetings, reports, back-and-forth emails, etc.

In my trades however, I sometimes I make trading decisions based on gut feel. When I see certain price pattern on a chart that simply jumps out screaming "trade me", I would just place my trade and walk away.

More often than not, these "beautiful setups", although do not happen quite often, had produce more winners than losers.

So, "gut feel" decision making certainly has its place (to me, at least), although we should not equate gut feel with reckless decisions!

Here's what Jack Welch, the legendary ex-GE boss, has to say about this type of decision-making process (again, I quote this from the same article that was published in the Star today):

"Sometimes making a decision is hard not because it is unpopular, but because it comes from your gut and defies a "technical" rationale. Much has been written about the mystery of gut, but it's really just pattern recognition, isn't it. You've seen something so many times you just know what's going on this time. The facts may be incomplete or the data limited, but the situation feels very, very familiar to you."

Surely the type of gut decisions that Jack talked about is not reckless decisions, but decisions made after having seen similar "patterns" in the past.

So how do we relate this to trading?

It means trading based on certain price patterns that have worked well more often than not, thus giving you confidence to pull the trigger whenever you see similar trade setups.

It also means that you need to spend some screen time to discover these patterns, unfortunately, in order to gain that priceless confidence.

This is something that no trading books or trading gurus can give you. This is something that each of us have to get it ourselves, after spending some time in the trenches.

NFP Aftermath

Well, the rest of my audusd trade was stopped out, making the overall trade a BE.

NFP Day!

As I said earlier in my post, I took profit early on this trade. I planned it such that if my remaining position is taken out at my stoploss point, I'll end up break-even with this trade.

Reason for adopting this strategy is due to the looming NFP news coming up this evening.

In any case, my trade is now pretty much risk-free, so let's just wait & see what happens once the news comes out.

New Trade

Took a short position today on the Aussie Dollar pair. I plan to take some profit off early, if it moves in my favor.

That's because we have NFP announcement during the later part of the day. I don't want to get caught during the crossfire.

Anyway, let's see how things develop from here.

Winning Trade

Stopped out at BE on the remainder. Closed this trade with a decent profit.

Losing Trade

Well, it HAD to happen......sooner or later. Scored a loss on my EUR.GBP trade, when it reversed (possibly due to News announcement).

I need to pay more attention on news, as I've already got nailed 3 times due to news.

Speaking of news, we're going to be getting a slew of them. So I'll need to be selective on my trades.

New Trade

Took some profit off the table on this pair, and moved my stop to BE for the rest of the open position.

Welcome, 2010!

This 1st week of the new year has been a pretty busy one for me, due to my daughter going for Year One schooling activities. Heck, I even had to be around during the school's break time, just to make sure that everything is A-OK!

Funnily, I never remember my parents doing that to me when I was in Year One myself.......am I pampering my daughter too much? Hmm....

Anyway, all this back-to-school stuff does take a toll on my trading activities. For this week at least, I won't be able to do much intraday stuff.

My game plan for now will be to focus on the longer timeframes, specifically Daily & 4-hourly.

Took a short position on the EUR.GBP pair.