Time to Reflect

I've gone too far to give up on this.

Sure I'm smarting at my losses, at well over £10'000 who wouldn't be? A wealthy guy I guess which rules me out. It's still very early in my trading career and although I'm hurting I'm as resolute as ever to make a success of this.

When I was attending seminars I was told that one of the biggest reasons beginners fail is under capitalisation. From the many books I've read another reason for failing is when one goes against ones natural personality.

So here are some random thoughts:

I'm comfortable with very short term trades, on rare occasions I may let a position ride overnight but generally my ideal length of a trade is under 30 minutes. I'm also incapable of playing at a low value per point, I'm simply not interested.

Therefore I need to adequately fund my account before playing again. My ideal stake is a minimum £10 a point and I'm looking for small swings of 5-10 points. I have a tendency to trade too often so I'll need to restrict myself to a maximum number of trades per day and stick to it, I'm thinking somewhere between 5 and 10 depending on the success of the first 5.

I'll also need a target figure that once achieved means my trading is over for the day. Ultimately that's £500 but perhaps a more realistic figure would be £150 to begin with and build up gradually. Many days I've made that before giving it all back and more.

My biggest mistake has been to play with a pound per point that's too big for my account. When I'm playing EUR/$ it's not uncommon for a retrace or sudden swing of 50-60 points before going the way I predicted. I've lost count of the number of times this has happened and had I played within my account size I'd have been fine. At £10 a point I really need £3000 minimum to play.

I've also come a cropper by playing too tight a stop loss. I understand why they work and how they work but again I've had so many trades where my position has been closed before continuing in my direction. This means I have to use a smaller stake when playing FX and a much wider stop loss.

A couple of useful points:

Listen to Bloomberg before the days trading.

Be aware of news announcements i.e Non Farm Payroll, Bank officials etc.

Don't trade with work on my mind or answer phone calls.

Another few weeks, plenty more reading and self analysis and I'm absolutely going to make a success of this.