Losing trade on the GBP/USD this morning with the market reversing almost immediately on entry and hitting the maximum stop for the first time in the three months that I’ve been using this. So I took a hit of 29 pips. Looking at the charts its not unsurprising that it moved this way as the general trend has been down for over a week now and this entry signal came at a point of sideways movement. Still, a signal is a signal so I took it. There was a red signal set up within the hour but the pip difference between the 5 and 10 minute charts was over 15 pips so I didn’t take it, and the same on the EUR/USD, which was a shame as that would have been a good trade (189+ pips and still going!!!). There was also an excellent trade in the afternoon but again, the 10 minute signal came a bar too late and was too far away to get involved with so I’ve had my first losing week with tufxp of -38 pips, which is hardly devastating considering my weekly profits up to now. At times like these it’s easy to start doubting my particular settings when I miss really good trades like today, but it’s the long term that matters and these settings have saved me from loads of losing trades over the last three months so I’m not going to start complaining now.

Losing trade yesterday morning on the GBP/USD costing me 15 pips when the market dipped and just hit my trailing stop:

And another 3 pip loss later in the morning when the same thing happened. Looking at the daily chart the trend has been down for about a week now so it’s not surprising buy trades are turning sour I suppose:

Now, I had an e-mail from a reader yesterday regarding how I determine if the signal is in the same place on the 5 and 10 minute charts. I’ve been asked this a few times and so I would like to clarify this right now. If you have a look at the chart below you will see this is for a signal yesterday afternoon on the GBP/USD. It would have been a good trade but it’s not a qualifying signal according to the ’system’ I’m using:

As you can see, for every two bars on the 5 minute chart, there is one bar on the 10 minute chart. So I count along from the nearest hour and judge a signal to be positive if the dot over the 10 minute bar corresponds with a dot over either two of the corresponding 5 minute bars. So in the chart above you can see the dot is over the third bar on the ten minute chart but it is not over either two of the corrsponding bars on the 5 minute chart (bars 5 and 6), instead it is over the 8th bar which would correspond with the 4th bar on the 10 minute chart.

Now, obviously being trading there are no hard and fast rules, but I have been sticking to these rules because they are the rules that have been so very succesful for me for the last three months. This week has been a bit poor so far but I’ve not had a down week yet. Looking at the trade above I suppose you could argue that the signals on the 5 and 10 minute charts are very close together so perhaps that indicates a strong signal, and perhaps it does, but it’s not what I’ve been doing so I don’t really know if it works well doing that or not.

I was also asked yesterday what I do if I get a signal in the opposite direction while waiting for the initial signal to fill. This happens sometimes and up to now its always resolved itself by both signals disappearing before qualifying, or the later one becoming valid so there has been no need for me to make a choice. This is perhaps to be expected though if the market doesn’t know what it’s doing it’s going to drift sideways and the trade signal disappears after three bars anyway.

Thursdays Bets:

Folkestone 5:35 Split The Wind WON 2/1 +£100
Folkestone 6:05 Casual Garcia WON 5/6 +£42
Folkestone 7:10 Valento LOST -£50
Haydock    3:10 Bonne LOST -£50
Yarmouth   3:20 Our Dolly LOST -£50

Daily Profit:-£8
Total Profit:-£372

Thursdays bets:

Al Gillani Yarmouth 2:50 LOST -£50
The Magic of Rio Brighton 2:30 WON 5/1 +£250
Old Romney Yarmouth 4:50 Withdrawn -£50
Slip Sandown 8:25 LOST -£50

Daily Profit: +£100
Total Profit: -£258