[jk1]

Hi. Nice forum. I've learned a lot already. I was an FX trader at a bank and was consistently successful. I just used 1-minute charts of the currencies I followed, just to have an idea where things had been. Mostly I tried to play correlations. If AUD and CAD were decently correlated as commodity currencies, I'd look at one for clues to the other. If the AUD popped but the CAD didn't, I might buy the CAD and fade the AUD. At times oil was a driver, especially for the CAD, and since August 2007 equities have been a big driver of both at times. I would also always watch the EUR for a feeling on general USD sentiment.

It was all so quick that I never did the things you're supposed to, like know where your stop and profit levels are. See a move in the correlated market, and bang, buy or sell. Then manage the trade. For a long time, and recently again for new reasons, I wanted to be a different kind of trader, one who "cuts his losses and rides his winners." Finally a few years ago I decided it was OK to be the trader I was; it was OK to take small profits. It was an awakening. I traded a lot more, 200 to 300 trades a day (100 -150 positions), and I let fear close my positions for me. If it didn't go my way, I was out. If it went my way a little, and the correlated market paused, I was out. If the correlated market was surging, I would sit for some of the move, but once interest appeared on the other side, I was out. It was not what I would consider good, elegant trading, but my P/L soared.

Thanks to the forces of consolidation, I'm no longer a bank trader, and I've done some work on my own. There are some significant differences that have hampered my attempts at trading on my own.

First, I can't see the bids and offers (size, seeing whether bids were being hit or offers lifted) as I used to on the interbank dealing system. I was very much a "feel" trader, and apparently a lot of that feel came from those market details.

Second, my access to information isn't as good as it used to be; I've gotten caught a few times on tapebombs that I didn't find out about until later. (I don't trade tapebombs because I think the market just as often does the counterintuitive thing anyway, but I will use them to stay out for a bit until I figure out what it means.)

Third, and most important, because of high volume contracts, commissions were not an issue in my job, and as a high frequency trader at home, they are a killer.

Fourth, I'm not as nimble at getting prices in as I used to be with a dealing keypad. When you're trading correlations, being first is pretty big; if you miss it, it's away already, and to get in then is to get in when I used to be taking profit.

I guess fifth should be that I'm trading my own money, but it always felt that way to me anyway.

The obvious solution to the third and fourth items, commissions and speed, is to use a different approach that calls for much less trading and, back to basics here, riding winners and cutting losses. I don't know that I can do that without a well-defined system that requires me to not take profit until my level is hit. If I just wing it, which I really was quite good at, I end up with a lot of small profits, fewer small losses, and a net profit on the day that approximately equals my commissions.

I'm going to do a ton of reading here to see if I can get an edge. Oddly enough, I'm a newbie from the perspective of trying to do this on my own, but I know what every type of bad position feels like, and I've watched a market, trade-by-trade, for ten years. My focus near the end was pretty good.

There's my long-winded and somewhat cathartic introduction.

p.s. I've also had trouble cutting losses on my own. In the past, down days were infrequent, and big down days were rare. Now, if I miss a good cut, like it starts to go against me and I'm not nimble enough to get out, I feel the need to get out with some elegance, and then it turns to hope. For some reason, if I can keep it to 5 ticks or so, I have no problem taking that loss. But if it quickly moves to 10+, I don't want to take that so I feel the need to "manage" the exit. Sometimes I manage it into ugliness.

Thanks for reading.