The first is an expert advisor to help me calculate my lot size and enter two orders automatically.. one order that I close when it hits my target profit, the other I let it trail using a custom indicator that I wrote….

The second tool that I started using this week is a nice little program that shows the relative strength of 8 major currencies, programmed by Henry Liu… You can get it here http://www.currencystrengthmeter.com/

This program can work with any MT4 broker, and is a really neat way of telling at one glance which currency has a higher chance of rising (or falling) vs another currency…

I use it whenever my price action reading shortlists more than one possible pair for trading.. For instance, at 12:30pm (GMT) yesterday, I noticed that JPY is suddenly very strong… all three pairs (EURJPY, USDJPY, GBPJPY) formed a long bearish candle… I had to decide which pair, among the three, to trade… Using the currency strength meter, I can easily determine that EUR was strong, whereas USD was weak… Thus, trading USDJPY will be a much better choice than EURJPY… and indeed… USDJPY fell much more dramatically than EURJPY…

A really simple but useful application… and btw, did I mention that it’s free?  :-D

I’ve always wanted to trade with Oanda because of their narrow spreads… However, their trading platform is one of the most primitive I’ve seen… their mobile platform (browser based) is worse… it’s basically a joke… You cannot do anything (such as adjusting your stop loss) except entering new orders or closing existing positions….

Luckily, with the launch of fxTrade for Android, Oanda offers a lot more flexibility for trading on the go… You can enter new orders and adjust the Take Profit, Stop Loss and Trailing Stop of your existing positions… My only wish is that they’ll allow partial close of our existing positions… That way, I can close half of my positions once my Take Profit is reached… and trail the remaining half…

Nonetheless, the mobile fxTrade is still an excellent application… a dream come true for me… Nice job done, Oanda…

Oanda on Android

Anyway, I’ve been trading without indicators lately, using only price action… things are looking good… except that my work schedule clashes with my trading, causing me to miss some wonderful trades.. oh well… let’s hope I can trade full time next year…

Today, I’ve decided to strip my chart of it’s last indicator… the 20-Days EMA…. so, I’m really ‘trading naked’… ;p

Next week, I’m going to start practicing chart reading with Amibroker… just like how I used to practice Math as a student… I’m good at Math, because I practiced a lot when I was young, and more importantly, I analysed my mistakes and learnt from them… laid a solid foundation… Now, I’m going to do the same with my chart reading… Practice and drill, analyse my mistakes and learn from them…

I simply love Amibroker, because there’s this wonderful feature that allows me to playback the bars one by one… great for doing manual backtesting… Nowadays, I’m more of a discretionary trader, because I believe that the human brain is the only machine that can consistently beat the market…

I need to remind myself that

• it is impossible for me to catch all trends
• a single good trade a week is enough for me to meet my target
• a bad trade avoided is equivalent to a good trade made (negative * negative = positive)

He argued that everybody can be a successful trader, as long as they find the correct niche for themselves… Some traders are suitable for discretionary trading, others prefer a mechanical system… some need to day trade, others prefer to do lots of fundamental research and only trade once or twice a month…

This is not a new concept to me… It’s something that I always believed in… But he mentioned something else that struck me.. He said that if we have problems being disciplined in our trading, it may be because that trading style is not suitable for us… He gave an example of an army officer who had problems with spread trading, because deep down, he considers hedging to be a coward’s behavior…  Thus, he argued that if we find ourselves repeatedly breaking our rules when trading, working on our self-discipline may not be the solution… Instead, we should consider if the strategy is suitable for our personality…. He argued that there’s lots of trading strategies available… and any of them can be profitable as long as it suits you…

That was kind of an ‘aha’ moment for me… I realize I was wasting my time all along trying to figure out which trading strategy is more profitable… I wrote lots of EAs to compare trend trading, breakout strategies, candlesticks, arbitrage strategies etc… Maybe all of them are equally profitable… Come on, for every trading strategy out there, there are people who make a fortune from it, while others bust their accounts using the exact same strategy…

So, it is not about the strategy at all… It is about a match between the trader and the strategy… If the strategy is suitable for you… you’ll ‘resonate’ when trading it… You wouldn’t have problems following the rules.. because you are just being yourself… That’s when you know it’s the right one for you…

http://www.tharptradertest.com/default.aspx?question=1

My result: Independent Trader

You are an Independent Trader!

If the markets interest you, you’ll probably work to develop a logical explanation for how they work. This is because you love theoretical ideas and abstract concepts (in fact, much more so than people interactions). This can be great for trading success, if you don’t get too theoretical. This type of trader profile suggests that you value knowledge above all else. As a result, you’ll be constantly generating new ideas about the market or trying to disprove the ideas that you learn from others…

One of your Trading Strengths

You can quickly determine if a new style of trading or system will fit well with your personality.

One of your Trading Challenges
Your trading could dominate your time and you could become socially isolated, which in turn could upset others, particularly if you have a spouse.

Van Tharp identified three core qualities that are essential to being a great trader:

1. The ability to see the big picture, new possibilities and connections between things.
2. Make decisions based on logic and analysis
3. Decisive, orderly and do things sequentially

Independent traders posses the first two, so need to work on the third. This is really quite true for me… I definitely need to be more orderly.. I need to work on developing a business plan for trading… but how do I do that???

This simple robot moves forward until the bumper hits an obstacle. It then moves backwards and spins for a random amount of time before resuming its forward movement.

About Shinichi Akiyama (taken from Wikipedia)
Formerly a graduate student majoring in psychology, he is a “genius swindler” who took down a giant corporation MLM in a scam to avenge his mother. He chooses to help Nao in the Liar Game when he sees her honest nature, reminding him of his mother. Although he is not formally invited into the Liar Game, he enters by substituting for another player in Round II. By Round III he is respected (and feared) enough by the other Liar Game players to become the unofficial leader of the Southern Country, though he tries to keep things equal in the group and actually recognizes Nao as the group’s true leader. Yokoya, however, knows Akiyama had been manipulating his teammates and mocks him for it. Akiyama’s motivation for continuing in the Liar Game is to destroy the entire LGT organization.

If you like Japanese Manga, especially psychological thrillers, or if you liked Death Note… you should check out this manga… it’s as good as, if not better, than Death Note…

My back and shoulders are aching now… my head is splitting apart… my eyes are dry and eyelids heavy… I guess this is pretty much like cold turkey when trying to kick an addiction… sleep addiction in this case… I’ll probably take a short nap later… but I’ll persevere… I’m just worried my brain will refuse to sleep tonight from over-exhaustion…. Anyway, more articles to remind me that I can do it… If others have succeeded… I will too… Furthermore, my parents are early risers… so it should be in my genes….

http://www.badlanguage.net/how-i-trained-myself-to-get-up-earlier-in-the-morning

And I like this site, although the badge (displayed on the right) is a bit ugly:

http://www.joesgoals.com/