Crazy 4 day week, I was down almost 2 R on Tuesday, up 2 R on Wednesday, up a little over 1 R on Thursday, and a scratch day on Friday. Overall with fees I'm down just 1/2 risk unit. I had increased my risk unit last week which was causing me to use more shares then I needed, and I was getting the same type of profits but with higher fees, so I'm back down to a proper risk unit for my overall account size. More on this topic later! Even thou I'm basically had a scratch week, I'm up overall for January which is the first time in two years. I've been really squeezing the downside with my trading which has been an eye opener and has made me profitable. After 4 years of intense study of my method of trading, you're about as good of a trader as your going to be in the short term (in the next 12-24 months), so if you want faster results, it is much easier to stop the down side by taking quicker stops, managing trades better, etc. For example, now when I enter a trade, I will take a stop if I lose 55% of the prior bar even thou I have not technically stopped. Why should I take a full R loss on a trade that should be going in the right direction form the get go! If the trade continues, I just re-enter or go to the next setup. Another key concept is that I zoom down to the 1 or 2 minute charts looking for the next higher pivot to form, then I can move my stop to the next pivot area which hopefully is above my break even point, if it's not, I still move the stop up to this area, my thinking is that It's better again to take a smaller then a 1 risk unit stop if you can. This is what I call squeezing the downside which works but don't fall in to the trap of taking more trades and not waiting for your proper setups, which I think I did a little bit of this on my losing day on Monday.
Another area for improvement is to always play the strongest stock or weakest stock. I have a bad habit of not waiting for these stocks to setup for entry and moving on to some inferior play. These stronger moving, better trending stocks always will give you an entry, but you must be patient and wait. This will lead to greater profits, and a lot less frustration!
In Forex, just another profitable week and I almost have my account back to the levels before my disasters holiday trade. Learning Forex has been my serendipity with trading. Like all successful traders, I found a trading method that I love in Forex, I've been profitable for the last 6 months after only about a 1 1/2 years of practice and my Forex trading is better than my Equity trading even thou I spend all of my time attempting to master my equity trading... Go figure???