Week in Review: 14th April 2014 to 20th April 2014

Heyho. It's been about a month since I last posted my weekly review. I'd decided to stop the weekly updates on my blog since I felt my ego was becoming too involved in my results. Reducing my time on the blog has helped this problem, but it also created a new one. Without the blog, I felt my narrative as a blossoming trading was fading. The blog also served a practical purpose by summarising my activities each week, which I recently found useful when I was searching for new ideas to test. The blog reminded me of a few leads that I had forgotten to pursue. Plus, I found myself looking for a new outlet for my thoughts and findings. Posting on Facebook or Babypips didn't really fulfill that need. 

So the real key here is to keep my ego in check and be humble in my results. 

TRADES

This month has been very quiet as far as signals are concerned. I've only entered one trade since the 1st of April. 

CADJPY - Daily

I spotted a low volatility candle on the CADJPY on the close of the 2nd April 2014 and went long, taking profit at 0.5R just before the market turned downward. 

SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

The last month hasn't seen much in system development. I tested a few ideas which went nowhere, but then checked my blog and remembered how I was testing "double-tops" and "double-bottoms". Somehow I became sidetracked and totally forgot about it until this week.

I've adjusted the parameter of the entry signal a little bit - so instead of both highs (or lows) being within 10 pips of each other, I've adjusted it so that both highs or lows are within 10% of the first candle's range. I felt this would be more robust and adaptable since using a hard value of 10 pips meant I was getting a glut of signals on a low volatility pair like the EURGBP, and missing alot of potential entries on high volatility pairs like the GBPJPY.

I've tested two pairs so far (USDJPY and AUDJPY), and did some rough optimisation. This is the equity curve after 385 trades, $10,000 starting equity, 2% risk per trade:

The good news is that the equity curve is positive, but you can see that the second half of the curve has a huge spurt in equity growth, so the curve isn't so smooth. This was mainly due to the AUDJPY, which saw some massive volatility after 2008. I've still got 10+ pairs to test so there's still alot to do. 

THOUGHTS

It's been about three weeks since the start of April, and I've only entered one trade during that time. It takes discipline to stick to your trading rules and stay out of the market when you don't see anything you like. There were a few moments when I saw a few potential signals that didn't quite fit my rules, and I tried to rationalise taking them. When you experience a moment like that, the best thing you can do is to just close your trading software and do something different to take it off your mind.