Last year, out of around 260 trading days I posted an entry for 212 of those. My busiest blogging year to date. It showed, views increased daily, weekly and monthly and I started getting a lot more comments (as well as spam!) Comments are always appreciated and I enjoy conversing with other traders around Blogger and Wordpress. But i've recently come to realise something, whilst it may increase my views, it doesn't increase my account size.

So, as you may have noticed, i'm far less active on here at the moment. From now on I think i'm going to just do a weekly round up on Friday or Saturday of each week and go from there. I feel I have a good thing going with the Point and Figure and Volume combination at the moment. I feel confident when i'm taking trades and i'm having very little if any emotional reaction to losing positions. It's a fantastic feeling. Now i'm going to build on this.

I'm not much of a Redditor but I came across an AMA with Chris Hadfield on board the ISS and there was one question and in particular the answer that he gave that really struck a chord with me. I feel the answer can easily be applied to any field. Including trading.

It's very early days but i've started sharing what i'm doing with another trader. Teaching, if you will. Now, some of you might think that i'm in no position to teach anyone. You might be right. But I firmly believe in the idea of learning through teaching. He might spot something that hadn't occurred to me before. He's completely free to question anything that i'm doing. He's able to put me on the spot and defend / explain what i'm doing. Which he has done a couple of times already! So far it has been very beneficial for me.

I am going to put as much time into making my methodology work between now and what is a new and exciting date in my calendar on the 24th June this year.

So what's happening on the 24th of June?

I've made murmurings on here about it in the past but i've finally gone and booked it. A six month trip to South East Asia! Leaving Dublin on the 24th of June this year and back on the 7th January 2014. It's something i've thought about a lot recently and i'm really excited to have it booked. Even if I wanted to, there's no going back now!

So between now and when I leave I have a target in mind for my account as well as developing, making any necessary tweaks and finalising a solid strategy that is working consistently. I feel that i'm very close if not at this point already but i'm giving myself this time before leaving to make sure it is.

I may use my phone to do a bit of trading whilst i'm away but with no functional Android app for Point and Figure, I can't see this becoming a reality. Honestly, i'm looking forward to the break, doing a lot of exploring and getting away from sitting in front of screens.

So that's where I am and that is the state of Kinsale Forex Trading for the foreseeable future.

As the title suggests, I took four trades during the course of this week. End was result was two losses, one break even and a slight win. So the second down week out of eight so far. The break even trade came first and was a lesson that I didn't learn from. I paid the price on one of the losses then. Both of the losses were avoidable to be honest. The slight win just didn't have the legs to push up and was an area trapped between two high volume zones.

1st Trade - Long and Break Even on EUR/USD

First things first, there was a down side target (blue shaded area) that was getting closer and closer. Taking a long position was counter trend whilst this target hadn't been hit. Still, there was good room up to the zone above. My target should have been the low of the zone and to walk away with that. I didn't do that. We bounced off the low and I got stopped at BE.

EUR/USD 1hr PnF

2nd Trade - Short and Loss on NZD/USD

3rd Trade - Long and Win on NZD/USD

The short trade was the first trade. The EU trade was Tuesday and this trade was on Thursday night. I thought with the downside target still on the cards that I'd take the short trade. I didn't pay attention to the high volume zone below as well as the two previous support areas here. Got taken in and stopped out pretty quickly.

The stop price was also a buy for a triple top so I set an order to open a long trade at this point too. This came up to the upper zone and bounced off that low. So we ranged between the two zones for most of Friday and I eventually closed it for a small win towards the end of the day.

 NZD/USD 1hr PnF

4th Trade - Long and Loss on GBP/USD

Same as the EU trade in a lot of ways, triple top during a down trend (much larger down trend). Took the long and it stopped right at the low of the zone above. Again, this should have been my target or at the very least somewhere to pull my stop up. It's not really an excuse but the first attempt at the low happened over night while I was asleep. The second attempt during the day was when I should've got out. High volume on the 1hr chart as we approached the low and I just watched it. I closed out manually so it wasn't a full stop.

GBP/USD 1hr PnF

Not a great week but plenty to learn from and carry in to next week.

Have a great weekend,

Cheers,

Liam

Pretty slow week this week, took one trade on Swissy. A long position with an entry at 0.9200. Seeing as it was a slow week this didn't gain a lot of momentum, the trade topped out at around 45 pips or so before retracing and then attempting to break 9240 again. It did this several times if you look at lower time frames but it's only evident twice on the 1hr PnF chart. There seems to be a lot of resistance to the upside around this area.

On the chart below you can see another triple top formation just to the left of the one I entered on. I didn't take this trade due to the zone that it was in. Once we had bounced along the high of the lower shaded zone I decided there was enough support there and took the second entry. As usual I didn't want to hold over the weekend so I closed out on another retrace from 9240 towards the end of the day around 20 pips profit. Of the seven weeks this year, six have been profitable. Very happy with that average!

USD/CHF 1hr PnF

Right, i'll get straight to it as i've six charts spanning three pairs to post and talk about. The first two pairs are trades I took so far this week. The third pair is an opportunity today that I decided not to take and an analysis of why I should have taken it.

The first and probably most complicated (at least the way i'm internalising it) trade was a position that I originally set on Tuesday and which triggered early on Wednesday morning.

USD/CHF 1hr PnF 

USD/CHF 1hr Zones

A. At this period in time we had a series of columns, three up, three down and so on. The market could print a triple top buy or a triple bottom sell. I set a long order based on the triple top formation and the fact that we were above the highest volume zone and I didn't want to sell into this.

C. I've not labelled these in order and can't be bothered changing now. What happened here is I wasn't taken into the trade at A and the sell signal actually completed first. We pushed down slightly and stopped on the high of the volume zone, exactly why I didn't want to sell at this point.

B. We pushed up again and with my order still in place I got taken in on a quadruple top buy. It makes little difference to me really, it could be a nonuple top for all I care.

Happy days I hear you say, the low at C wasn't broken and we pushed up over 100 pips today. You'd be absolutely right in saying that, but here's the issue. When I originally set the buy order I had my stop at what would have been the next sell price. Which was activated at C. So I was taken into the buy, with my stop in the old position, I should have moved it below the low at C but decided not to as I was risking too much. We came back down and I got stopped out - to the box!

Never mind, I had a NZD/USD sell going at the same time so I could turn my attention to this.

NZD/USD 1hr PnF

 NZD/USD 1hr Zones

Not as much to talk about on this one, like the Swissy charts above i've posted a PnF and a 1hr HLC chart to show the zones that I carried across. Interestingly, when I opened the position I only had the upper zone on the chart. It wasn't until afterwards that I added in the other two zones to look for areas that could act as support.

Had I had the middle zone on the chart, I'm not sure I would have entered the trade, seeing as it was selling right into the high. As you can see, we did get a reaction to this high but the up column of X immediately after the sell column is largely exaggerated by some NZD news that came out at the time. This trap up move type bar can be seen on the HLC chart, I should've marked it, but it's hard to miss. Up until this point we hadn't even broken the low of the upper zone so I wasn't worried the trade would go against me. 

Once the target area was hit I started trailing the stop down as the day went. Eventually the market couldn't break the low of the lowest zone and we bounced back up and hit my stop which was placed right at the initial target area. Win win! This covered the Swissy loss, over night charges and a little extra. So i'm finishing the week positive.

Now, onto EUR/USD. It wouldn't be a blog update if I didn't at least mention it!

Ok, well, a little more than a mention. 

This time around, the HLC chart comes first. Highlighting the zones in question. I've also annotated some other bits and pieces on the chart with regards to where showed support and so on.

EUR/USD 1hr Zones 

EUR/USD 1hr PnF

Volume zone C isn't the reason that I didn't take this short. As I pointed out on the HLC chart, this was a lower volume zone than the ones above it. So I didn't feel this was a problem. It was zone A, the bounce off the high and the quadruple top at the congestion zone that stopped me taking it. Sure, I could have perhaps taken the trade and got out at this high but then I would have had an 80 pip stop for a 30 pip gain, which I wasn't too keen on doing. 

It's also worth mentioning that the volume on the upper zones far outweighed that of the lower zones, not to mention the huge daily volume we had at the high.

I can't remember if I blogged about it or whether i've just spoken to forum members about it but I was considering a small change to my strategy considering entries at, in and around the 50% mark. There are a couple i've decided not to take that have now come good. It's something I need to consider with a bit of back testing I think.

Phew, that was a long one, hope you managed to keep up!

Cheers,

Liam

Finally got around to updating the Strategy section of the blog. I felt I had to get it updated as I strive for honesty whilst posting on here. The strategy I had there wasn't really representative of what i'm doing at the moment, with no mention of Point and Figure. Naturally, I've taken some of the ideas that were there previously and used them for this new, updated strategy.

I quite like the simplicity of it and so far it has done well through December and January live trading. I'm open to questions, recommendations and criticisms as always!