Trading Recap/On My Radar April 21st

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Despite it being my “non-active trading” day, yesterday yielded some pretty good results as I was able to bring in 137pips before the New York open…Keeping the losses smaller than the wins is key in this industry, that is unless you have an insane win percentage

Not an awful lot on my radar today as far as my swing trading portfolio goes, but I never know what the lower timeframes have in store for me as I transform into day trading mode. Despite it being my “non-active trading” day, yesterday yielded some pretty good results as I was able to bring in 137pips before the New York open on two overnight winners. Jason and I did end up giving some back as the day progressed with a couple small losses on the Yen pairs, but certainly not enough to put any type of dent into our week. Keeping the losses smaller than the wins is key in this industry, that is unless you have an insane win percentage.

Last night I ended up hitting on the single trade that I took, a bearish Gartley on the EURAUD. The Aussie Monetary Minutes didn’t have much effect on the pair last night but it looked like a poor Euro number this morning was able to beat this pair down to profit targets. That former bearish Gartley is now turning into a bullish cypher down at the 1.3758 level. You can check out the chart on here.

Aside from that, I’ll be keeping a close eye on AUDCAD and USDCAD looking for structure based trades. I’m still looking for a reason to short the USDCAD and AUDCAD is at a very good structural level with a potential 2618 on the horizon. We have a Wholesales number out at 8:30am so we’ll see what the market does. If I get the opportunity I’ll take it, if I don’t I’ll wait for the next one. With so many quality trading opportunities available there is never a need to force anything.

Good luck to day traders, I’ll see you in the Live Room and/or in the Syndicate.

Akil Stokes

Chief Currency Analyst

www.TradeEmpowered.com

On My Radar: April 20th

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Typically Monday’s are a non-trading day for me for a few reasons. One, I like to give the markets time to wake up and see if the weekend’s moves were impulsive or the real deal once the American traders have a chance to analyze things. Secondly, I’ve dedicated this day to doing a private training session with the members of my trading course. Today was a little bit different as I found myself doing a full round of top down analysis and even putting on a few orders.

Last night I entered a few positions after the markets opened. One trade was a re-entry on the EURJPY and the other was on the AUDCAD. Both trades were based off of advanced patterns and both allowed me to get a much better fill because of the gaps that arrived over the weekends. Both also hit targets this morning which allows me to form a nice little triple digit pip cushion to start the week.

After Jason shot in a sell idea on the GBPJPY through the Syndicate TradeFloor, I figured that the London session was pretty active and it would be beneficial to see what else was out there so that I don’t miss any great opportunities.

Well while going through my trading portfolio I was able to find a few. A potential bearish cypher on the USDJPY, a small potential bull gartley on the AUDUSD, and a few potentials both bullish and bearish on the EURAUD. With these all being pattern trades, I don’t have to worry about entry techniques and following price action. I can simply set orders, set stops and let the market work out the rest.

Best of luck this week traders! And remember “Plan Your trade, Trade Your Plan.”

Akil

www.tradeempowered.com

Trading Recap: Week 16 2015

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We’re on the verge of something really big here and it’s only going to get better as our software progresses from in development to beta to the real thing. But I can’t really talk about that yet.   

Although my Weekend Review videos hit the web on Thursday’s, I don’t actually sit back and reflect on my trading week until the markets have officially closed on Friday. This week was a perfect example of why it can be a very bad idea to make assumptions about your results before the week has finished.

Friday was a very interesting day for me as I woke up and saw that the London session had absolutely kicked my hind parts.  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that bad but I did take two big losses and with only a few hours of trading left I didn’t expect to make up for them. Friday’s are typically breakeven type of days for me so I usually have one foot out of the door by the time they get here. In fact if I didn’t have clients that relied on my support, I probably wouldn’t even trade on Friday’s. With that being said, this week I’m glad I did. Instead of crying over my London losses, I bit down, put on my professional traders hat and…well followed my plan. Sorry if you were expecting something different but despite how I feel emotionally, it all comes back to either following the plan or not following it, those are really the only two options I have. Following it this Friday allowed me to turn around 125pips of drawdown with 145 pips of profit in the Live Trading Room. Hence the picture I shared on my Facebook & Twitter pages.

In our second most active trading week of the year Jason and I fired off 21 trading ideas and were able to bring home 246pips of profit once the dust settled. If it weren’t for week 13 ending in a -1% drawdown, this would have given us six consecutive profitable weeks of trading.  Adding another 4% to our return on investment puts us just shy of a +40% change for the year (no money management). This is the first year that Jason and I have traded together and the results are astonishing. It’s amazing how the slight differences in our trading styles allow us to hedge each other and avoid big drawdowns in equity. To date we have only 5 weeks where we have not turned a profit and 3 of those weeks were essentially breakeven weeks. Not too bad if I do say so myself.

As I continue to mold my Live Trading room into a virtual prop trading firm I can only imagine the results that some of my current and former clients will achieve once they are able to share ideas and assist each other (including myself) with their trading. We’re on the verge of something really big here and it’s only going to get better as our software progresses from in development to beta to the real thing. But I can’t really talk about that yet.

Good luck in the markets this week, and be careful with those gaps out there. I took a few positions that gapped over the weekend, but not ever gap is a tradable one so be cautious.