Letters from Readers! - IFCN WK 71 -Thu - Equity: $2,635.76

We've had a lot of swinging in the markets, mostly negative to my equity since posting earlier today.

XAG took it on the chin again. The Gbp/Usd dropped as did the Eur/Usd. In general, the market is listless. I'm glad the weekend is coming.

I got a few emails recently from readers who've had some success following this site. I'm reprinting them below:

Subject: Re: Happy IFC follower

Hi Joel-

I had the good fortune of finding the infiniteyield forex challenge eight months ago and have been consistently placing the trades ever since
All I can say is WOW , after trading for 4 years with little to no success it feels great to finally be on the right track , not only have I earned money in the last eight months but I have also gained a great wealth of knowledge following your blog and the Infiniteyield newsletters. I sincerely thank you for helping me and other struggling traders , you truly are a kind soul for sharing . I "KNOW" I am on my way to becoming a professional trader.
All the best to you and in your trades

Mxxxxx Rxxx
British Columbia ,Canada

--And from earlier in the week---

3 of the 4 orders came in beautiful today.
Whether they will hold for the week though, I dunno, I think the Eur/USD is going to head down, whether it will get stopped at 1.3123 we shall see.
(I primarily trade Eur/Usd exclusively, I'm placeing these FS orders on a demo, to see how they work, your equity growth has been pretty impressive with this method so far)
I've read the rules, but haven't yet tried placeing any orders until last nite.
I must admit, I do like the set-it-and-forget nature of this style; it takes out alot of guess work out of trades. If they get hit fine, if not, fine too.
Probably the most difficult aspect of this, is it has to be executed continually, even with drawdowns.
My normal stop is 100 pips, placeing a 191 pip stop is quite different for me.
Thanks for the effort you put into this, I'm learning about 4 different Forex methods, and at times my brain feels like toast.
I really enjoyed the presentation you did on Larry Jacob's DVD.

Great job Joel!

Thanks,
Jxxx Mxxxxxx

--And some comments about Nassim Taleb's books, "required" reading for traders---

Hi Joel,

I finished my second re-read of "Fooled by Randomness" by Mr.Taleb and been half way through his "Black Swan" book.

Frankly, I am still digesting what I've read. It seems that luck and randomness plays a much bigger role in forex trading than most of us are willing to admit. We attribute most of our success to our skills but many times it is just pure luck... Well, it probably takes some time until one is truly ready to accept Mr.Taleb's point.

Being just a very small fish in a forex lake (and influenced by Mr.Taleb), I am able to see your FSP method in a different light now. As I understand it now, every now and then, black swan occurs (or at least a gray one) causing bigger than average moves in the markets. Those who follow simple, robust methods will hit new equity highs if they are patient enough.

Pxxxx

-----

Thanks to MR, JM & P for your comments. I'm sure they'll help others who are also trying to succeed in the markets.

Trading is a journey where everyone starts from a different location. It's great to have someone else mention a landmark that can shorten your trip.

Joel Rensink
www.infiniteyield.com

PS: To receive the FREE! trading rules for the Infiniteyield Forex Challenge ($499 value) and the semi-monthly newsletter about this challenge, send an email to: newsletter@infiniteyield.com and tell me to which address you would like it sent. Please do not use AOL, Hotmail or Yahoo addresses. They've been known to filter out more good mail than actual spam. Try a Gmail address. It's free, simple and perfect for traders!

Welcome Trend Week! -IFCN Wk 67 - Friday, March 20, 2009

This week was indeed a solid trend week.

Friday we finally got stopped out of the short Gbp/Jpy entered early in the week. I never liked that trade, and figured that it had 90% odds of getting stopped out when I took it. It was.

As a side note it was good for us this week that we are in the custom of taking just the first FSP trade per pair. After the long Gbp/Usd trade got elected at 1.4171 and subsequently got stopped out, the week's short trade at 1.3885 would have been triggered and then stopped out for a second loss. But if you had taken the buy at 1.4171 again for a third trade, by Friday's close you'd be up about 265 pips on the final trade, off-setting a lot of the losses previously incurred.

As you can imagine, the important thing is remaining consistent, trade YOUR plan and deviate only when some incredibly obvious bus is about to run you over. Which doesn't happen that often.

But, that all being said – great results have been had with our remaining three forex pairs and, of course, our enhanced silver position.

There were no OneNightStand trades on Friday, not that it didn't get pretty close on the Eur/Usd and Usd/Chf.

This kind of week makes you glad that you execute as you know you should, despite the multiple losses that can take place over weeks in between the large profits. Another reason why “many are called, few are chosen”, for this business.

I got a couple of very interesting emails recently which may be very useful for others of you who are trying to improve your trading acumen.

-----
Hey Joel,

I have now been following your blog for a full year now and I have learned a lot about trading from you. Since following your blog, I am up 213% on my account. It has been hard to learn the discipline required, but I have taken every trade the systems required. I really appreaciate what you have done for me!

Thanks, Bxxxx Pxxxxx

*********************

Hi Joel!

It is unbelievable, many thanks for your help!
Your knowledge and your help is the best I ever had since I trade Forex.
I trade FSP every week, sometimes with a bigger risk, sometimes with a smaller risk, it depends of the market situation.
I've traded around 8 years, and since around 2 years I haven't lost money; ok, I earned a little bit from my trading. But I can forget everything I did before. I thank you sooooooo much for helping me to have success in Forex trading.
I also bought 300 units silver at around 9.0000,-- , BUT the panic came :-) and I sold around 150 units.............. I know, that was not so good!
But I bought again at the Dips an have now again 490 units, and I don't give it back!!!!!!!!
My account is too small to trade full time now, but with your help I hope to become a full time trader as soon as possible, and I am very thankful for every help I get from your newsletter.
I wish you a nice weekend.
Greetings from ice cold Austria (30 cm snow today)!

Exxxxx

-----

Thanks for the kind emails. I'm glad you are taking the trades consistently. Even if you trade very small size at the beginning, (which is one of the great things about Oanda) the regimen of correct trading does great benefit for your future success. Even if the method you were trading was just break-even on results, accurate execution would provide you tremendous benefits to carry over to a time when you obtain a superior method. Execute, execute, execute is the same foundation of truth for trading that “location, location, location” is to real estate investing.

It is only difficult at the beginning. It definitely gets easier when you've done it every day for at least a year. Like most things of value, it needs to become a habit.

Joel Rensink
-----
Loss trades this week:

• gbp/usd: Long @ 1.4171, stopped at 1.3980 for 191 pip loss.
• gbp/jpy: Short @ 135.48, stopped at 138.52 for 304 pip loss.

The week's remaining FirstStrikePlus trades:

• eur/usd: Long @ 1.3020, stop 1.2859. Trade in progress.
• usd/chf: Short @ 1.1713, stop 1.1928. Trade in progress.
• usd/jpy: Short @ 97.16, stop 98.57. Trade in progress.

FirstStrikePlus trades will be exited on Mondays at 00:00 CST if profitable. (First-Profitable-Open Exit)

Week's recap on Monday morning.

Joel Rensink
www.infiniteyield.com

PS: To receive the FREE! trading rules for the Infiniteyield Forex Challenge ($499 value) and the semi-monthly newsletter about this challenge, send an email to: newsletter@infiniteyield.com and tell me to which address you would like it sent. Please do not use AOL, Hotmail or Yahoo addresses. They've been known to filter out more good mail than actual spam. Try a Gmail address. It's free, simple and perfect for traders!

Traders Respond #1-- IFCN Wk 52 –Thu- Equity: $1,600.25

I got a plethora of emails from intelligent and brave traders who were willing to share their experiences.

I will share a few in this post and share some more later. These responses are incredibly valuable to others as they delineate the process successful traders must traverse.

_______

---- +182.36% ----

Hi Joel,

In your Blog, you asked about other people's results.

I started following your methods (FS and ONS)on 26th May
2008, but I diverged because I started trailing my stops
from 1st September.

Then I did only the first week of FSPlus (really I should
not have done it, because the minimum risk I could have
with my Broker was far too high (>20% for the 5 trades
combined since I can't risk less than 1GBP per pip).
After that, I reverted to your later version of FS with 100
(G/J 150) for the break and 120 (180 for G/J and E/J) for
the initial StopLoss. Yes, I changed the currencies a
little at this point, dropping U/CHF and adding E/J and
U/CAD still using (bigger) trailing stops after the initial
StopLoss. I suppose that I have developed my own trading
method based upon FS. Anyhow, the results are pretty good
(though I recognise that we are in unusual times and so I
don't expect them to carry on like this):-

26th May to 1st December 2008 + 9,118 pips (including some
doubled positions) which I calculate as + 182.36% (I have
used a single account for all my trading and allocated an
initial 5,000GBP to trade FS and ONS).

Feel free to put this on your blog if you want to.

Thanks for all the pips,
Ixxxx

__________

----My account is currently up 134%!-----

I am fine for anyone to say I am lucky. Luck prevails with those who are persistent. I have followed the rules with some minor discretionary adjustments to trades and some additional ones that have helped improve (and hurt) my trading on the margin. I am lucky that I found this blog and have had a chance to meet and discuss ideas with you and some other traders. Trading has profoundly changed my life and i don't mean financially but philosophically. I am better for it.

When I started trading I was quickly up 30% in a few months and thought I was the next Soros. Visions of grandeur danced in my head. I picked out the G5 I was going to buy. The following several months thereafter I suffered a 60% drawdown from original equity and seriously questioned the wisdom of my decision to trade. The visions of grandeur changed to scenes of Oliver Twist living in a rooming house with ragged clothes. It was quite painful for a while as I am not trading a small account and the dollars were very real. I manually backtested the original FS system and ONS to my satisfaction. This was the source of my confidence to keep trading. Frankly, I am very grateful to have suffered a significant drawdown early on. The first one was hopefully the hardest. Right?

I doggedly stuck with it and kept hammering away on the trades week after week. My account is currently up 134% (on original equity). "Wow" doesn't begin to describe it. I have no expectations of being able to reproduce that record anytime in the near future for all the reasons you state in your blog. I would actually be up higher but I took a risk on some trades to see if i could get them to run longer then the system dictates. I also added a few other system trades along the way (Turtle, DiBS, SY). I will continue to do that from time to time if I feel the market may continue to trend in the right direction. I religiously enter all trades but follow the other parameters about 95% of the time. I might add more size to a trade because I erroneously believe I can pick the direction of the market or I may exit a trade sooner than the system states and watch it promptly reverse profitably right on the pippette I closed the trade. Amazing.

My currency trading career started on May 19th, 2008. I have made some really dumb mistakes along the way. Stupid ones that you would laugh at the idiocy of the decisions (hell you received some of the early morning questions created by a sleep deprived deranged mind). Most of the time the actoins weren't fatal. Go to any book where they discuss the fallacy of new traders and I can place a big fat check mark next to most of them. Dumb mistakes!!! Through it all, I have kept plugging away and working on increasing my knoweldge and determining how i can take it to the next level. And i will.

Jxxx Bxxxxx

-----
Thanks for the kind words and useful material for the readers of this site. The help you've shared is immense.
JR

-----
I got a new trade today. I bought the eur/usd as seen below. Earlier in the week we were stopped out of our long eur/usd from last week. 99% of the time that would mean that a short for that pair would have been executed. It wasn't.

This week's eur/usd FirstStrike Plus long entry (not specified in the FirstStrike Plus email from Monday morning- sorry about that..., didn't imagine we'd need it) is 1.2848.

We are still short the usd/chf, which is working nicely. The week's other profitable trades are backing off somewhat because of softening of the dollar. Will it continue? We just take the trades at this point.

There is so much news, for and against stability that the best thing to do is stick with our methods which do have an edge in these times. At least our risk is defined.

The week's current FirstStrikePlus trades:

• eur/usd: Long @ 1.2848, stop 1.2644. Trade in progress.
• gbp/usd: Short @ 1.5149, stop 1.5420. Trade in progress.
• gbp/jpy: Short @144.02, stop 146.90.Trade in progress.
• usd/chf: Short @ 1.2062, stop 1.2225. Trade in progress.
• usd/jpy: Short @ 94.38, stop 95.51. Trade in progress.

FirstStrikePlus trades will be exited on Mondays at 00:00 CST if profitable. (First-Profitable-Open Exit)

Trading account equity: $1,560.25

Silver position equity: $40.00
(Current XAG price: $9.60 – 200 unit position average: $9.40)
TOTAL Current Equity: $1,600.25.

I'll include some more of your emails soon. Thanks again for all of the responses.

Joel Rensink
www.infiniteyield.com

PS: To receive the FREE! trading rules for the Infiniteyield Forex Challenge ($499 value) and the semi-monthly newsletter about this challenge, send an email to: newsletter@infiniteyield.com and tell me to which address you would like it sent. Please do not use AOL, Hotmail or Yahoo addresses. They've been known to filter out more good mail than actual spam. Try a Gmail address. It's free, simple and perfect for traders!

Recent Reader Responses!---- Sept. 15, 2008

Here are a small illustrative group of emails I've received since the middle of last week.

Hi Joel,

The last 2 weeks have been pretty interesting for
First Strike, with big swings and substantial
retraces.

I have not been able to resist the temptation to
lock in some profit. After having had so many
losses until recently, I decided I wanted to
avoid some and lock in a profit (even if only 1
pip). Thus I have been trailing from being in
profit of around 2 x stoploss, which is a lot
earlier than you suggest.

My results over the 2 weeks combined have not
been too bad though:

my profit................. 'official' profit
w/c 1st + 30............. +758
w/c 8th +1064......... +418

I must admit, that I didn't feel so good about it
a week ago.

I may go back to letting the trades run, or
perhaps with your -50% trail now that the net
balance is looking better.

All of this really goes to prove that trading
success is much more down to one's emotions than
one's method.

Regards,

Xxxxx

-----

Hi Joel,

I really enjoyed your Silver entry on your blog, thanks for that.

I have a small savings account for my daughter and I told my wife a while back I'd like to periodically exchange cash for silver coins for her account. I was initally put off by the large difference between the value of the commodity and the actual prices that silver coins go for.

So basically you are saying that's the way it will always be so that when silver goes back up the real value of the coins will continue to out pace at that same disparity? Then it makes total sense to buy some silver coins, the Eagles look really nice too.

Best Regards,

Xxxxx in XXX

-----

Hi Joel,

Thanks for all of your help. I have learned more in the three months that I have been reading your blog than in the past year of reading all types of books and websites on trading. I have had good success with FirstStrike and OneNightStand. With your hints, I have been able to devise a money management system that helps increase the profitability of FirstStrike. I have decided to take your silver hint after doing some reading on silver. I put a limit order long at $11.00 and a sl of $8.00. Using the .01 per pip on OANDA. After reading about silver, I really see how it is underpriced right now.

..., Also, trading FS and ONS for the last 3 months has increased my account 59% and gaining!

Thanks again,

Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx

----

Hey Joel

Thanks for the tip on silver. I've been studying a little about silver since I met with you and the general consensus seems to be that when silver rises, it does so in greater multiples than gold. Of course I know that you know that. I've read a little about the reasoning behind it--industrial uses etc.. I'm buying a little whack of silver.

My infinite yield account is up 78% since Sunday--still holding and nothing on the charts has me second guessing. The big gain came from adding onto Geppy without increasing the risk by much. Chalk one up for the good guys!

Happy Trading--

Xxxx

Thanks, everyone, for all your comments and interest in the site.

If I can answer a question you have, I will. I am usually pressed for time, so my answers may not be big.

Yes or No questions are definitely a plus!

Joel Rensink
www.infiniteyield.com