I need a rest!

Once again I realise that I've put off commenting here for a few months.  It doesn't seem that long, but as each day seems very long it is surprising that my perception of the total elapsed time is so far out of whack!

As you will have heard, the flooding in the last few months has been a disaster for Brisbane, and there has been a lot of stressful days - still not over yet - cleaning up and rebuilding homes.

As well as that, I've been sick, and the combination seems to to have been a bit much, as time has just disappeared.

I've still doing some trading, but nowhere near as much as in an average month last year. Now that I'm in a better position to 'up the tempo' again, once again I find that the markets are a bit jerky, and I'm getting stopped out so much that I'm rethinking everything.  I feel that I'm back to the same point I was about 3 years ago, when I was 'experimenting' rather than 'investing'.

I hope it's only a feeling, and that I can regain what I think of as the upper hand.

Meanwhile, here is a link to a small account I'm managing:
http://www.myfxbook.com/members/x/y/73376

Trading is difficult sometimes

I hadn't realised that it is nearly 2 months since I commented here, so an update is obviously overdue.

I've found trading over this time to be particularly difficult.  The markets are changing every day, and although I am a fan of Elliott Wave analysis I am having difficulty with establishing the direction that any pair is heading.  Communication with associates seems to support my view, but perhaps we all think that the market is ALWAYS getting harder to understand.

I'm still very bearish on the direction of my favourite pairs - GBPJPY, EURJPY, and AUDUSD - but the frequency of my trading has dropped off considerably.   Now I'm looking for more analysis and research on each decision, which is a double-whammy because I'm working harder and making less trades!

Of course I could look at this as an 'education' thing, as we all need to be learning at all times, but it's a bit frustrating when a lot of due diligence comes up with a worse result.

Meanwhile, the profits are still rolling in, albiet slowly.  I've tweaked my 'method' a few times and more minor adjustments are in the works, but meanwhile, slow and steady small advances is the answer.

It wasn't my fault

I don't like losing.  I've said this before, but a few losses lately have really upset me.

And now I've discovered that the 'errors' are not my direct fault.  Let me explain:  As clients come and go in my Managed accounts, I've done dozens of re-proportions to involve clients in trades at the risk levels they've indicated, and to share the returns accordingly.  The last two re-proportioning exercises have been very complex, with multiple trades open, some with unrealised losses, and some with unrealised profits, and where some clients are adding funds, and some are de-allocating from their balance.

I've discovered that the action of re-proportioning has a few flaws, and in these last two events, we ALL lost money un-necessarily.  Staff at OANDA are looking into the matter, but initially they say I changed a setting (which I didn't).

Anyway, from now on, I'm only going to re-proportion when all trades are closed.  Sometimes this may be weeks or months apart.  Expect this please, and don't add money that you will need in the short-term.

Due to human error, a transaction has occurred that resulted in a loss.

I am considerably upset at this as it represents the first substantial loss, for any of the accounts that I manage, in the last 6 months.

It was during a re-proportioning phase when I was incorporating new Client money into the Managed Pool, as well as de-merging money for 2 Clients, that I chose the wrong option to do this re-proportioning and inadvertantly closed all the open trades in one of my managed accounts.  These trades were in a drawdown situation whilst I was awaiting a pullback in the currencies, and I had no intention of closing them at that point in time as I was anticipating that those trades would have subsequently recovered to a profitable position.  The net effect, however, is that there has now been a substantial loss incurred in that account.

As you will be aware I have increased my Client's accounts steadily since we started, and I have proven that my trading methodology is relatively risk-free (except for the human errors!), and I believe it will continue to be a very profitable methodology in the future.

I intend to continue trading, and I am incorporating a few fail-safe features so the human-error component of my money management is effectively eliminated.

Once again, I apologise for this error.

Since that error, there have been developments on the money markets of the world that caught me by surprise.  I have always attempted to trade with a '5 year worst case loss' built into my trading methodology, but recent rumours in the press, panics amongst forex traders, and (imho) incorrect decisions by the Banks and Governments of the major financial pairs, have all combined to make the market the most unstable that I have ever seen it.

I am doing my best to stay sane (and profitable) whilst everyone else is losing their minds, but this is definitely the craziest market that I have ever seen.

Currency Pairs traded

I've been following a lot of different pairs since I started with FOREX, but the one I like most is GBP/JPY.

Every pair has it's moments when it seems 'predictable', but I find GBP/JPY to be very 'stable' as well, and also returns more-per-move than the others.  What I mean here is that when the market decides the price should go up or down, it usually goes up or down further with GBP/JPY than with any other pair I've followed.

Therefore most of my trades this last year have been in GBP/JPY, although I still use 2 other pairs.

Also, as you can see in this table, I'm also nearly always being pessimistic, in that I think the pair is going to fall in value, so nearly all the trades are SHORT, rather than LONG.

Bring on the collapse!

Update on Holding Times for trades

I've discovered errors in the formulae that I was using in my records spreadsheet, and fixing those errors means the published table of 'Length of TIME for each closed Individual Trade' is incorrect.

Here is the corrected table, as at the end of yesterdays trading.

Some of the trades are still a bit long!

Interest

It doesn't seem fair to be paying so much interest, as well as giving the brokers all those pips in the spreads, but there really isn't much choice.

This table shows the totals since I started the current collection of statistics, and the most surprising fact to me is that there are so many separate interest calculations.   I wouldn't want to be doing all the necessary paperwork by hand!

Luckily, OANDA's system works it all out.