THE WEEKLY FX PREMIUM – APRIL 2019 PERFORMANCE By Scott Pickering

Another month of 2019 completed.

It was a hard month with adjusting back into Atlantic time and trying to get to grips with opportunities in a range bound market. I could gripe and bitch about the market here, but I will not. Any bitching will be done later in the monthly review area of this blog.

Moving on…

I want to spend a few paragraphs here talking about something that I paid lip service to when I first started Forex trading 10 years ago; that is TRADING PSYCHOLOGY.

For my first year or so I heard traders talk about it and thought it was total BS and basically a load of crap. How wrong can you be? In my case plenty!

I am only going to scratch the surface in the next few paragraphs, you can go much, much deeper.

Mindset is at the core of everything we do as individuals in life. Without a positive mindset in what you are doing you allow doubt to creep in and then it takes hold and finally it takes over. Before you know it, you are a prolific procrastinator and cannot do anything for FEAR.

We live and breathe FX in a market that is dominated by FEAR and GREED. Both of these are extreme positions and to succeed you need velocity, belief, gratitude, intuition, visualization and a huge dose of entrepreneurial skills to equip yourself for success. It’s ALL ABOUT MINDSET.

How do I relate this to my daily routine?

  1. Before I tweet, before I email, in fact as I drink my first water or coffee of the day, I research the charts relating to my lead indicators: -USD/CAD, USD/SEK, USD/AUD, USD (DXY), GOLD, COPPER, OIL, US10YR, AUD/JPY vs. S&P, USD/CHF vs. EUR/USD and EUR/GBP vs. GBP/CHF.

    I am looking at and checking direction, looking for trade patterns, looking for high probability trade set ups, inter-market relationships, inter-market correlations and currency inverse relationships.

  2. Then I check my current LIVE trades, admittedly I may have a quick glance first, but I do NOT go deeper until I have reviewed the market pieces that interest me.
  3. I always have a TRADE PLAN.In fact, at the moment I have two trade plans in operation.

    PLAN A: NON-BREXIT related trades which are governed by my full trade plan.

    PLAN B (Sub Plan): This only deals specifically with my BREXIT related trades.

    Anyway, I look to see do I need to set up an “opportunist” plan for the day or the next few sessions, which could turn a swing trade opportunity into a position style trade.

  4. I have my PLAN(S) – I TRADE MY PLAN(S)There is nothing complicated here, it is routine, it comes as second nature.

    When away from my home office it is painful, stressful and often very awkward to complete. Lots of wasted notes.

The most important line in the above is having and owning a PLAN and TRADING YOUR PLAN.

Once you “OWN IT” you have the correct mindset to move on.

There are plenty of elephant traps put in front of you to take you off course. In FX there are so many opinions. Two traders can look at the same chart and one can give you a bullish interpretation, the other a bearish view. It’s not easy if you let these thoughts influence you.

I have two Labradors (Ozzy and Aoife) brother and sister now 8 years old. They approach life in a routine, they love routine and I believe we can learn from dogs. They have a positive outlook and they believe everything they want is coming their way. They are also focused and single-minded in many aspects of their day to day routine.

If I could focus 50% of the power that they adopt each day, I would be a better trader. I “OWN MY TRADE PLAN”, I have a positive outlook and an intuitive positive mindset approach.

My trading has never looked back since 2014, when I pushed myself out of my comfort zone into offering a subscription service, initially THE PREMIUM SERVICE, re-branded in the fall last year to THE WEEKLY FX PREMIUM.

It’s all about mindset. Trading Psychology is a fascinating and wide-ranging subject that can be adapted to everything in life.

 

1. APRIL 2019:

MY OVERVIEW OF THE MONTH:

I think it would be fair to say that April represented the hardest month of all so far this year, for me and my style of trading anyway. The following factors immediately jump out: –

  1. I had the “fallout” from my trip to Phuket, Macau and Hong Kong to deal with.
  2. The market had been fairly stagnant whilst away and I expected without full screen access maybe I had been missing something. Alas not, that was not the case at all. The markets had really frozen almost into very tight ranges within ranges.
  3. The result was I struggled. I tried to get in front of the market vis-à-vis the AUD pairs ahead of the CHINA / U.S. trade deal… big mistake.The FX market is 100% efficient at extracting as much pain as possible, and although I was NOT alone being exposed to an AUD false move, having been around for almost 10 years now I took my pain on both sides of the market and recorded over 350 pips of losses around several AUD related pairs.

    All history now, but another trading lesson dealt. Regardless of how long you have been trading, one simply cannot take on the market, one must follow and ride along on the coat-tails.

  4. In Q1 I had been able to rely on some BREXIT related trades to balance my performance. In April BREXIT trades only came back into play towards the end of the month. The UK parliament Easter recess took away most of the BREXIT headlines that used to give FX a lift.

So, all in all a difficult month. At the end of the day to have a positive result of +509 pips was both a relief and at the same time quite pleasing given all of the struggles, although when one looks deeper behind the headline numbers there are issues that I need to deal with moving forward.

Firstly, my pips per trade given the trading conditions nose-dived to just 14.14 per completed trade. This dragged down my year to date average to 38.58. My target is 50.00.

At the same time covering so many loss-making trades hit my Profit / Loss trades ratio in the month to 64% / 36% and my year to date is now dead on my objective of 80% / 20%.

I know that I keep saying to subscribers that one can only deal with the market that is available. I am a swing trader looking to turn swing trades into longer-term position trades. I rely on sentiment, trend, direction, fundamentals and good RISK MANAGEMENT to get into trade set ups. I am more defensive than attack motivated but at the same time positive. That is one hell of a Molotov cocktail!

Looking forward….

I want to beat all of my targets, pips, $$$, pips per trade and trading ratios. It will be a tall order to get all 4 targets under my belt this year.

1.1: THE PERFORMANCE STATSISTICS – APRIL 2019:

MONTH NET PIPS                                        = 509
YTD                                                                = 6,212
ANNUAL TARGET                                         = 10,000
% ANNUALTARGET ACHIEVED                   = 62%

MONTH COMPLETED TRADES                  = 36
POSITIVE TRADES                                       = 23 (64%)
LOSS MAKING TRADES                              = 13 (36%)
MONTHLY TARGET P & L RATIO               = 80% – 20%

YTD COMPLETED TRADES                       = 161
POSITIVE TRADES                                      = 129 (80%)
LOSS MAKING TRADES                             = 32 (20%)
YTD TARGET P & L RATIO                         = 80% – 20%

AVERAGE PIPS PER TRADE GOAL           = 50 pips per trade
THIS MONTH ACHIEVED                          = 14.14 pips per trade
YTD ACHIEVED                                           = 38.38 pips per trade

 

1.2: MONTHLY PERFORMANCE SUMMARIES:

1.3: THE TRADES:

 

 

1.4: YEAR TO DATE PERFORMANCE SUMMARY


1.5: 2019 – TRADING PROJECTION:

 

 

1.6: THE WEEKLY FX PREMIUM – BENEFITS OF SUBSCRIBING:

 

1.7: WEEKLY FX PREMIUM – THE TRADING HISTORY:

1.8: SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS:

SILVER: 3 months (10 weeks) = CAD350.00

GOLD: 6 months (20 weeks) = CAD$600.00

PLATINUM: 12 months (40 weeks) = CAD$900.00
(Platinum renewal = CAD$750.00)

Go to my website www.weeklyfxdrivethru.comfor more details of all the subscription options under the “SUBSCRIBE TAB.

To subscribe to the WEEKLY FX PREMIUM, you will require a valid credit card.

 

1.9: WEEKLY FX DRIVE THRU BLOG DATES 2020:

I am going back to Phuket and Hong Kong again in March/ April next year. I have therefore adjusted the “DRIVE THRU” blog dates for 2020.

 

 

SECTIONS 2, 3 and 4 – WEEKLY FX PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS ONLY:

 

2. APRILTRADING REVIEW and OVERVIEW:

3. LOOKING AHEAD… WHAT TRADES ARE NEXT:

4. LONGER-TERM FUNDAMENTAL VIEWS:

 

 5. SUMMARY:

I am still extremely positive looking forward thru Q2 to the end of 2019.

As mentioned last month, assuming that BREXIT moves to the next stage and that TRUMP / XI get a trade deal agreed, these two geopolitical events being moved forward should be the catalyst to get the FX market free from its chains!

I am ready to increase my RISK TOLERANCES in the market, especially as once we clear the trade deal, I believe Central Bank policy will once again start to dominate the news flows. This is a more secure foundation for trading in my opinion and gives me a greater confidence in placing trades and achieving my trade objectives.

Whilst one still needs to have one’s wits about them, I still feel that there is huge trading abundance in both pips and $$$ available during the remainder of this year.

Scott Pickering
The Pip Accumulator
Twitter: @pipaccumulator

https://weeklyfxdrivethru.com/disclaimer/

BLOG VERSION: #320 FREE NEWSLETTER
DATE: 4thMay 2019

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