Cory2679

Potential GBP/USD long...

You lost $10,000?! Why would you blindly follow a salesperson's trading advice with real money?? Why didn't you demo-trade first until you discovered whether or not John was legit?? You won't win a lawsuit...you undoubtedly signed that you completely understood the risk and relieved JT of any responsibility. Just accept responsibility for your bad decision, deal with the consequences, and move on...

Indeed! A nimble trader should have been able to catch that long at the support...

Neither of those fund are actually directly ran by PTJ...they're ran by Steve Evans. While they might seem mediocre averaged out over time, they can be complimentary and work something like a hedge with other funds...for example, their Raptor global equities fund was down 20% in 2008 (no surprise), but the Tensor fund (quant) was up 35%. Tudor Corp.'s flagship fund is their BVI fund, which prior to the crisis, averaged something like 25%/year over about 20 years. Tudor is an interesting firm because today it's really more like a large trading firm than a big pool of money managed soley by PTJ (like Soros, Robertson, etc.). He's said that if he quit tomorrow, his firm could continue on without missing a beat. I have a special interest in PTJ because he once spoke to my class in college via video conference. He was a pretty cool guy. He told the class, if you were going to trade and be stranded on an island, and you could only take fundamental or technical analysis with you, which one would you take? Overwhelmingly the class said fundamental (of course...a college finance class), and he said, WRONG! lol He spoke to us around the time of the crisis...he was frustrated with some of the portfolio managers in his firm for holding onto holdings that were in major downtrends, etc. He showed 50-day and 200-day moving averages and called stocks that were under both something, I can't remember, but some of his portfolio managers will still holding onto stocks that had fallen under both and that made him mad. lol

Here's another look at a short on the GBP/USD (larger degree of swing). However, I wouldn't be opposed to a potential long in this area either...looking at the 4H chart, I can see where my "entry" could also serve as support in a resumption of the uptrend...

Contingent OCO orders (entry orders with a profit target and stop-loss attached) are back with FXCM! Yay!! Now if only they could also go back to the old micro spreads...

Can you expand on what you know about PTJ? I was under the (perhaps misguided) impression that PTJ has an excellent long-term track record...one of the best among high-profile traders/fund managers.

haha...when I first read the title, I thought this was going to be one of those ET-style threads where the OP proclaimed that making money trading was in fact impossible (because he or she couldn't do it, of course). Glad to see that's not the case!

Potential EUR/USD short... UPDATE: Walked away for a moment and came back to this...break-even effort...

This was done quickly, so no guarantees, but I get: First Place: TradeRunner Second Place: StevenSJC Third Place: thalestrader I've attached my spreadsheet if anyone wants to see it. I think I calculated the winners according to the rules of the competition, but I could have messed up... The names are in order from earliest entry-date to latest, so as you can see, whether you count the people who entered after the original deadline or not, it doesn't affect the winners. Cory TLComp.xls

The end-of-quarter close is in... I wonder who won! I know it wasn't me. I'm not sure if there were ever enough contestants for a prize, but it's still fun to see who won and how close people came. If I get time over the weekend, and no one has done it yet, I might try to figure it out...

You hadn't posted it? Then why did TheNegotiator have to edit your post?

If what you're asking is if that trade was taken with a live account with real money, no, it was not...that was on a demo account. haha...I wish I was trading live with that kind of size...someday...hopefully...

Hi todds, I much prefer currency futures to spot fx...I hope to get back to futures someday. But, for now, to trade the small size I prefer, I'm stuck with forex dealers. Make sure you know what is being plotted on the chart...the bid price, ask price, average of the two, etc. That's important when considering where to put your orders. If, for example, it's simply plotting the bid (which would be my guess), when you place orders above where price currently is, you'll need to take the bid price and add the spread +1 tick (or something along those lines). Make sure you're aware of how your broker handles news and spread spikes. Oanda, for example, will spike the spread insanely (10-20 pips on major pairs!) for several moments during relatively insignificant news reports throughout the day. If you genuinely believe that your broker is doing something fishy, you can always switch. I'm currently with FXCM Micro. They're not necessarily the best (they could be, who knows), but I made the decision a little while back to quit broker-hopping and just focus on trading...it was a distraction. FXCM Micro is okay...the spreads used to be good but now they're not that great. They used to offer contingent OCO orders, but now they don't. At any rate, relative to other brokers, I don't have any major complaints. I've never experienced anything fishy either live or demo...and the demo has become more realistic in recent months now that it allows slippage (that's another thing...live or demo, one used to get virtually no slippage with FXCM Micro...no longer the case). If you want a demo account, you have to get a standard FXCM demo...FXCM Micro no longer has a demo (it's the same thing though, just a bigger balance and lot size). Typing all this makes me really miss the old FXCM Micro. haha. You don't know what you have until it's gone! If I ever work up to a little size, I'd like to move to Interactive Brokers ECN forex... Thanks for the compliment, but you give me too much credit...really. I have some good streaks but I usually get derailed. haha. I'm lacking real consistency. I've got issues. That being the case, I really don't feel comfortable critiquing anyone else's trades...I fear I could do more harm than good. I'm hoping to increase my posting here over the next couple weeks...no guarantee, though. Cory

Looks like it went the other way. I actually managed to catch some of the move, albeit on the EUR/USD...I entered way late, but I jumped into the impulsive move (with a tight stop) and still managed to eke out about 1R...had I entered the trade at what should have been my entry, it would have resulted in about +2.3R... (EDIT: I hesitated to post an after-the-fact trade, but I decided to anyway since it was basically an extension of the potential trade from the previous post. )

Potential short on the EUR/JPY... UPDATE: Order canceled...

Stopped out for a loss. It's too bad I couldn't manage this in real-time, because worst case it would have been a break-even trade...especially after that double top...in hindsight, maybe I should have had one closer profit target...a profit target on half the position at the 161.8% fib extension would have (just barely) filled and the trade would have been a little better than break-even. Couldawouldashoulda...

Currently long the GBP/USD...leaving it overnight to either fill my loan profit target or fill my stop-loss... I'm trying to ease my way back into posting again...

Interesting...I picked my second profit target based on the prior swing high and the breakout, but that level is indeed also the weekly pivot! It's always interesting when something like pivot points, fib levels, etc., match up with prior swing high's and low's.

Order canceled......

Forgive my ignorance...what does "WP" mean?

Potential USD/JPY short...

I use NT and MT4, and I much prefer NT to MT4...just one person's perspective... Depends on your perspective, I suppose...for me, I've been immensely enjoying the action on the JPY since the quake...big swings, large range, etc. ---------- I decided to watch the recording of the webinar since I use NT myself...it's so funny...I've been really annoyed that you "can't" move the data up and down...sure you can move it side to side, compress/decompress it vertically and horizontally, but I didn't think you could move it up and down....I learned via this webinar that you simply hold down control and move the vertical scale up and down!! LOL It's always annoyed me that I couldn't do that but I guess not enough to try to find out how to do it...but now I know! Thanks!

emg claims you need $500,000 to trade the ES http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f3/what-standard-capital-requirement-trade-emini-9460.html#post114453 and essentially emg risks his entire account to make one point...one contract's worth (not considering a margin call, etc.) So that's risking $500,000 to make $50 (10,000 to make 1) 1 losing trade results in a loss of $500,000. It takes 10,000 winning trades to make $500,000 (which would take years and years and years) EDIT: Of course, you wouldn't even really break-even because losing your entire account is not breaking even...I guess as your account grows the risk:reward gets worse and worse...so anything short of a 100% winrate results in a wipeout...and with emg's $500,000 requirement, that's gonna hurt most people pretty bad. Although, perhaps (i haven't backtested) with $500,000, maybe never in the history of the ES would he be stopped out for a loss. In order for this method to work, it would indeed require a 100% winrate. Again, these numbers aren't 100% realistic because I didn't consider margin calls or commission, but it makes the point. Like I said, with such conservative leverage, this method could be viable, I don't know. What I wonder is how anyone would ever rack up $500,000 in the first place to be able to trade this method...certainly not from trading profits. I guess would emg suggest one must save $500,000 from other sources before starting to trade (and then risk it all over and over to make $50 a pop)? I just think this thread is pretty dangerous to newbies...and I've seen it praised...and I just don't get it...what is the point of this thread anyway? This method is a little like a ponzi scheme (although not unethical like a ponzi scheme)...you may make money with it, but enjoy it while it lasts because sooner or later it's gonna blow up...just hope you die before it does I guess. emg, correct me if i'm wrong

A general rule of thumb I have is the tick value multiplied by 1,000 for the minimum acccount size...so if I'm trading a one-lot in the ES, which is $12.50 per tick I think, I'd want a $12,500 account. Of course that's just a general rule of thumb and wouldn't apply to everyone's strategy or every instrument. In fact, trading the ES, personally I'd rather have more like at least $125,000 in my account so that I'd have some flexibility in position sizing (trading ten-lots on average). EDIT: Of course, if I was trading emg's strategy, I would probably indeed want $100,000 per contract (or more).