Early Morning No Trade

So I got up at 4:40 this morning my time to be part of an announcement at 5:00 AM. It ended up being a no trade for me. The variance to expected results for the Canadian announcement was insignificant, and although there was a shift it was not great enough to matter.

Switching Brokers

Sorry I've been silent the last few days. I am switching brokers. I'll tell you more once I've switched and what I think of the new broker. Initially, I don't love it, but that is because I am used to the site layout of the old broker. I think within a few days/weeks I will like the new version better. My funds should be in the account today which is right on time as I am planning on trading the 5:00 a.m. my time CAD/USD announcement tomorrow. (April 19) Not too excited about getting up for it, but sometimes you have to make the hard choices.... Who is your broker? and why do you like them?

Starting Over

So I got out of all my trades and decided to start over. I'm down $500. I do however have something on my side. The reason I got into foreign exchange trading is because a friend of mine is developing software that will click you into trades based on news announcements. I got to preview the software yesterday for the NZD announcement. It was awesome. I went all in and I'm up $160 from $500. The greatest part about it is that the software will not get you into a bad trade. I'm excited to get my copy of the software. I'll keep ya'll posted on how it is going based on this software.

Great Site for Announcements

Through a friend I found a great site that lists the upcoming announcements. I didn't know this existed until today. Anyway, as it relates to the AUD I'm hoping that my current positions in shorts will be validated this evening when the announcements regarding the AUD come out.... I guess I can only hope. Here is the site: http://www.forexfactory.com/

Does anyone use a different site?

How can it possibly go higher?

What I've learned is that chasing a quick buck is not possible. A few days ago I looked at the charts and said the AUD/JPY cannot go any higher. Same thing with AUD/USD. I figured the economies are not that dissimilar and that these pairs should come back down a bit, so I shorted. Not only did I short, but I pretty much went all in. Unfortunately for me they can go higher. I bought the AUD/JPY at 97.055 its now at 98.580 or up 152 pips. Also unfortunately for me each pip is worth $1 US Dollar. So in my account I have an unrealized loss of $222 dollars. So I decided to short a bit more at 98.380 anyway I'm still down, but if the trend falls again is it did in early March I'll be so smart, if it continues this trend I will lose about $250.

I need to be patient and grow things slowly, the problem is I want it to happen fast. What works for you?

Definitions

If you are new to Forex Trading as I am some of the difficulty comes from not understanding the lingo, or what you read. Here is a glossary of tems that I have found useful.

http://www.forex-markets.com/forexterms.htm

My Initial Experience - Continued

So I'm up $200 off of $1,000 in the first 2 weeks. Then something happened. The bottom fell out of the JPY. All of my positions went negative. My broker margin called me. I ended up with $500 in my account. I lost $700 because of leverage in 3 days. That hurt.

How did that happen. What did I do wrong. Well first of all my picks are based on a one day chart. If it looks high based on the last few months I'll short the trade. If it is low, I'll buy. My problem is that I haven't been patient at all. I read on a post that you should trade around 5% of your account value on each trade. Initially I thought that is a great idea. Problem is that I was too impatient. Something that looks really high I would go in more like 20-30% of NAV. The other problem is that I don't like having money in the account that isn't in a trade.

What are your thoughts and how do you trade?

My Initial Experience

So I started in January with an fx game account on oanda.com. They give you $100,000 to start with, so I started playing. First thing I learned was that all forex trading is or can be leveraged. My initial settings were 20:1. I bought a couple thousand dollars worth of something like USD/AUD or JPY/AUD because I had read a post about how good they have been. I had good success initially. everything I bought was going up. So I sold some things and bought more. I would sell once soemthing went up 20-40 pips. (First I learned what a pip was).

Then I started figuring things out. I changed my leverage ratio to 50:1. So for every dollar I bought of something I was actually trading $50. assuming 10 pips equals 10 cents, I was earning 10 cents on one dollar. I realized, hey this is good stuff. If I could earn even 2% a day because my investments are leveraged I could end up with something like 40-45% return a month. At 1% a day I'm looking at returns of 20-25% a month. This is the greatest thing ever. So I opened a real account. I put in $1,000, leveraged it 50:1 and bought a few things. The first two weeks were great. I was up $200 in two weeks. Thoughts of quitting my day job entered my mind.

My Personal Theory for the future of Forex Trading

I have two theories: First, there are sophisiticated investors out there in the world. Years ago those investors were targeting stocks some got into short trading, others researched financial information and made calculated bets on long positions. These sophisticated investors also know when to sell. Enter the common investor, unfortunately this common investor usually gets the memo about what is working and what isn't working a few years too late. Once the common investor enters the sophisticated investor leaves. When you have a theory or methodology that works on a small scale in a large public market, chances are that once the larger public market figures it out and implements it as there own the returns become minimalized. The sophisticated investor moves on before any real damage is done.

The next place the sophistacted investor looked was real estate. At the time cap rates were high, and investments were good. Again, the common investor catches on too late. Today everyone fancies themself a real estate expert. Cap rates are at all time lows, and returns are not as great as they once were. Appreciation will continue, but based on today's press about bankruptcy and excess inventory the short-term looks marginal at best.

So where does the sophistated investor go next? Enter my second theory; Foreign Currency Trading. I'll Tell you why later.

Welcome!

The pupose of my blog is three fold: First to share my stories of success and failure in Foreign Currency Trading. Second, to provide insight and information for other traders. Finally, to hopefully get insight and information from other traders.
So if you are a foreign currency trader, or if you want to become one, please read along and check back often.
If you are not a foreign currency trader, then I suggested you stick around and read more because I have a theory that the next big investing thing is going to be Forex Trading, but I'll talk about my theories in a separate entry.