Monday, July 28, 2008

Mirror week? Dog days of Summer? --IFCN Wk 34 -Mon- Equity: $668.51.

Sorry about the delay in getting the Infiniteyieldforex Challenge update for last week. My weekend was in many ways a reflection of the previous week, volatile and surprising at the same time. I had great moments and frustrating moments, the most frustrating moments involving a very unexpected hard drive failure on an important trading computer. Back to 95% restored but tired of Microsoft anything at this point.

Dog Day reference:

The "dog days of summer" comprise the 40 days beginning July 3 and ending August 11, coinciding with the ancient rising of the Dog Star, Sirius.

This time period has been attributed to be an evil time "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies" - Brady’s Clavis Calendarium- (circa 1813)

And now, when forex trades and computer hard drives turn on their owners.... I have absolutely no belief in such things but the reference is interesting. A few ships sink at this time of year a thousand years ago and everyone blames the stars. And probably a few new traders after the last few weeks.
____________________

We're experiencing a very similar week to last back to back.

We are in four FirstStrike trades that aren't doing handflips. But as I know all too well, we have a long week ahead of us. The news this week will also likely be conflicting too.

The following are this week's FirstStrike entries:

Eur/Usd: Long @ 1.5767, stop 1.5707. Trade in progress.
Gbp/Jpy: Short @ 213.75, stop 214.65. Trade in progress.
Gbp/Usd: Long @ 1.9946, stop 1.9886. Trade in progress.
Usd/Jpy: Short @ 107.31, stop 107.91. Trade in progress.

Note: Any FirstStrike trade not stopped out before Friday gets exited on Friday just before 15:00 CST.

Current equity is $668.51

Have a good morning.

Joel Rensink
www.infiniteyield.com

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Joel. Maybe I am doing something wrong but I like you am also using Oanda and my orders are identical to yours as stated in your email. But it has happened several times now, I know last week and now this week. My short gbp/usd gets triggered first and then stopped out but from your blog it looks like you did not get triggered on the short side and your long gets triggered.

This week, the low shortly after 1:00 cst was 1.9840 on Oanda, if the sell was at 1.9846, should we not all have been in the short trade this week?

Just wanted to clear this up because it could make a big difference over time if I am not inputting the trades correctly.

Thanks for the blog.

Anonymous said...

Hi Joel, I wish you good luck, you have my moral support!

Joel said...

To anonymous above-

There is nothing wrong with your order entry. There definitely was with mine on that trade.

Thanks for the notice!

Mistakes in order entry can be a serious problem if they are consistent ones.

Concerning the short Gbp/Usd trade-- I placed my sell order 60 pips below the open instead of 50, so it didn't get filled. My buy was filled right on and got stopped out this morning too.

I place over a hundred different orders on multiple platforms every day. Occasionally I make errors, but rarely the same one twice.

I can be sure that there is an order to buy higher and an order to sell lower on all the markets I follow. They may be off a few points here or there, but the spirit of the concept is what brings in the big money.

Joel