145 pips from GBP/USD swing trades!

As mentioned last week, I got a couple of GBP/USD swing trades (since Jan-24 and Jan-25). I played these swing trades rather aggressive (and quite of the averaging mentality) and thus, I didn't place any stop losses.

But earlier, the NFP announcement brought the currency pair down more than 200 pips after 8.30am EST!



GBP/USD - Short @ 1.9775, Closed @ 1.9670 (5 pips in 8 days)
GBP/USD - Short @ 1.9777, Closed @ 1.9677 (No pips in 8 days)
GBP/USD - Short @ 1.9715, Closed @ 1.9683 (+32 pips in 8 days)
GBP/USD - Short @ 1.9777, Closed @ 1.9682 (+95 pips in 7 days)
GBP/USD - Short @ 1.9695, Closed @ 1.9683 (+12 pips in 8 days)
GBP/USD - Short @ 1.9683, Closed @ 1.9682 (+1 pips in 8 days)

Total Net Pips Gained: 145 pips (all standard lots x 5 each) - US$7K++

'Straddle' Forex Win - 55 pips

I was with my PDA at Raffles City Fountain and I was waiting for the signals to trade my favourite currency pair - GBP/USD.

As I was quite impatient to wait for the currency pair to give me the exact indication to enter the trade, I resorted to using Straddle* method and exited with a net win of 55 pips.


GBP/USD
Short @ 1.9570, stop loss 43 pips, Closed at predetermined profit take 1.9500 (+70 pips)
Long @ 1.9573, profit take 38 pips, Closed at predetermined stop loss 1.9558 (-15 pips)
55 pips win


* Straddle is basically an Options trading strategy to trade options when you don't know which way the stock will head but you know it will move big magnitude in one direction. And thus, you buy a call option and a put option at the same time. You may lose on one option, but you win more on the other option.

My confession: My mistakes!

I went into RIMM call options yesterday, making several mistakes in this trade.

1. The stock price should hit 91.50 (my trading criteria), and I entered the trade with 2 call options at 90.90 (first entry).
2. I entered again with my third call option at 90.71, thinking it will hit 91.50 soon.
3. It's the expiration Friday and yet, I bought into the current day expiring options.
4. Volatility was so high that Dow Jones rose more than 120 points and dropped more than 120 points (i.e. 240 points move within 2 hours) later.


I was purely speculating and I lost my own trading rules. And as an experienced trader, I was wrong to do something like this. As a result, I lost US$379 in 2 hours.

14.3% MER options profit within 45 minutes & 5 pips from EUR/USD

Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER) recorded its biggest quarterly loss since being founded 94 years ago after the world's largest brokerage took almost $15 billion worth of write-downs from bad subprime mortgage bets.

That caused Merrill Lynch to post a net loss after preferred dividends of $9.91 billion, or $12.01 per share, compared to a profit of $2.3 billion, or $2.41 per share, a year earlier. Analysts—who have had a hard time ascertaining just how steep losses would be for Wall Street banks—had been forecasting a $4.93 per share loss, according to Thomson Financial.

Imagine -$12.01 vs. -$4.93. It's a big earning disappointment! I went into MER put options when the stock price was 51.25 and got out at 50.85 within 45 minutes.

MER Jan'08 50 Put (MERMJ) - Enter @ 0.70, Exit @ 0.80 (14.3% profit)

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Within the next minute, I also closed another forex trade on EUR/USD.


EUR/USD - Short @ 1.4683, Close @ 1.4678 (5 pips)

Money Management

An short and GOOD article on Money Management from traders.com.

I have been trying to find an article that talks about the right money management mindset, in the hope to remind many many many of my trading friends (and those who are going to join some trading courses in hope to make big bucks).

In my many years of trading, I realised sometimes the trading strategies is not the core of profitable trading. In fact, there is no trading strategy that works 100% (except it wins more and loses less).

Personally, I used to have a strategy that works monthly (and I assume it's 100% in the 'infant' stage of trading). That strategy works so well consecutively for 3 months, and everytime it gave a returns of 30% to 70% per trade. And every month, I used all my capitals (that capital belongs to my family account) to compound all I had. We started with US$10K that time and truly went up after 3 months. But on the 4th month, i lost everything as the strategy failed. And the account was left with US$137. This was the result of poor money management. And I'm the living testimonial of such a disaster.

1. Always look for strategies that works more than 60% of the time (ya, there is no 100% working trading strategy thus far), so those trading gurus (or should I say training gurus) mentioned blah blah blah blah blah blah, please take note.


2. Always consider if there is a predetermined profit take (PT) and stop loss (SL). I've been trading options with no predetermined PT and SL all these way.

If there is, ask about the magnitude of PT and SL. If the PT is less than SL, that's means you lose more. On the other hand, this means you always look for a PT that is more than SL. A rule of thumb: Look for PT > 150% SL (this means that you even breakeven when you lose 3 times and win 2 times), e.g. PT = 30 ticks/pips and SL = 20 ticks/pips.


3. Use less than 15% of your capital. If possible, use as low as 5%. This ensures you will not be 'emotionally' hurt when you lose. And you will not lose that much when you have consecutive loses.


4. It's ok to have a losing month once in a while. Actually, most successful trading strategies or systems tend to have an average of 2 losing months (within 1 years), based on my research.


It's your money, do take care of them!

Another IB complaint!!!

My friend called me and complained about Interactive Brokers trading Forex!!!

Her stop loss 50 pips was not executed and the loss now is already 130 pips.

Please take note, forex traders!!!

Market Crash

Did anyone know what happened to the stock market? Based on briefing.com In Play, this is what this was reported at 14:38 ET:

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Floor Talk: This afternoon's abrupt sell-off

The markets rolled over about a half hour ago, with the decline notable for the sharp sell-off in big-cap technology stocks. While there was some initial confusion as to whether something specific sparked it, it appears the following things could account for it: 1) a tier-1 firm came out with cautious intraday comments on the tech sector; 2) a different tier-1 firm came out negative on BIDU, which took down a host of momentum tech stocks; and 3) ECB governor Weber stated that, although the ECB had temporarily paused its rate hikes, in his opinion the ECB may need to raise rates to a "restrictive" level... Dow lost over 100 points in a half hour, Nasdaq lost over 30 points.

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Baidu dived from 359 to 301, luckily I'm not in this. So did many technology stocks (like GOOG, RIMM, AAPL, ISRG, etc etc) and investment stocks (like GS etc). Look at the index chart below and focus at the 'dive' portion from 2pm ET onwards.

But, I'm into a spread yesterday for S&P 500 (SPX). S&P 500 dived from 1,576 to 1,546 and I'm into this with the weekly options 1,555/1,570 Bull Put Spread. My maximum loss was supposed to be $6,600 and I converted it to a Iron Condor by having another 1,555/1,570 Bear Call Spread to offset the loss towards the last minute. The Bear Call Spread gave me $1,750, making my SPX loss limited to $4,850 (which is still quite high for me!!).

Market Crash!