It's one of my least favorite times of the year... the Labor Day Weekend holiday here in the U.S. Around my house the Labor Day parties are over, friends and family have gone home, and I finally have a few minutes to sit down and post the August results.
The Labor Day Weekend holiday means the unofficial end of summer. I'm a big fan of summer... I especially enjoy the warmer weather and my vacation time at the beach. There is one thing I won't miss about this summer... the doldrums in trading that added to the ranging of almost every currency pair that I trade. The past couple of summers saw some financial crises that caused huge moves in August, but not this year. This has probably been the slowest I've seen the 8 pairs I trade move in the 3 years I've been trading FPM. Is this the calm before the storm? I sure hope so! Not that I'm wishing for more financial problems that helped the slow times the past couple of summers, but I am glad to see us getting back to a "normal" schedule so that there will be less ranging due to vacation time.
Being a trend trader I don't take any time away from trading the 4 Hour charts, so even when I'm away on vacation I'm very diligent about getting to my charts on time to check for my entry and exit signals. I've been very disciplined about my trading in a time when it's been especially hard. During the past 3 months there's only been a couple of weeks where all of the profits have been made... and one of those weeks I was on vacation. I resisted the urge to take a break from my trading during my vacation and boy am I glad! If I had missed that week in July I would've really kicked myself... it was one of only a couple of weeks during a 3 month period where I made decent profits.
This is an important lesson for those of you who are learning to trade or who are struggling and trying to become successful. You can't pick and choose when you're going to trade when you trade a trend following method. You must trade a time frame where you can take every signal. Missing even a single trade can severely diminish your profitability (as evidenced this summer).
I know there have been some nice trends recently on the 1 Hour charts, and we're starting to see those trends move up to the 4 Hour time frame. While I closed the month of August out as a small losing month (-230 pips), in the first few days of September I've closed out a couple of trades that were opened in August on the GBP/JPY and USD/JPY for almost 500 pips combined to start out September.
Here are the results for August:
41 trades taken on the 4 Hour chart
14 wins - 1,838 pips won
27 losses - 2,068 pips lost
(-230 pips) total for the month
34% win rate
Avg win - 131 pips
Avg loss - 76 pips
Avg Risk/Reward - 1.72 to 1
Here's how the 8 pairs that I trade break down for August (in order of best performing pair to worst):
GBP/USD 3 wins, 1 loss - +478 pips
GBP/JPY 1 win, 1 loss - +175 pips
USD/JPY 2 wins, 1 loss - +103 pips
EUR/JPY 2 wins, 3 losses - +44 pips
USD/CAD 2 wins, 3 losses - (-115 pips)
USD/CHF 2 wins, 5 losses - (-238 pips)
AUD/USD 1 win, 6 losses - (-321 pips)
EUR/USD 1 win, 7 losses - (-356 pips)
This is only the second losing month I've personally had with Forex Profit Monster, the last one being September 2007 when I lost 173 pips; and at that time I wasn't being as consistent as I'm being now. I was also trading a lower time frame (1 Hour charts) and not trading all 8 pairs that I'm trading now to help spread my risk (for those wondering I made that switch in the beginning of 2008). So, will it be another 2 years before I see another losing month? Probably not... but let's hope so!
I'm off to a good start in September closing out the winning GBP/JPY trade for 335 pips and a winning USD/JPY trade for 142 pips. Bring on those trends!
Here's how FPM has been performing so far in 2009:
January - 3,795 pips
February - 890 pips
March - 779 pips
April - 151 pips
May - 2,494 pips
June - 253 pips
July - 775 pips
August - (-230 pips)
Total pips so far in 2009: +8,907 pips (an average of 1,113 pips per month).
For more information about the Forex Profit Monster trading system visit my website at http://www.forexprofitmonster.com/ or to purchase visit my eBay page at http://myworld.ebay.com/jimsgr8stuff4less
Thanks for stopping by the blog and best of luck in your trading!
Jim
http://www.forexprofitmonster.com/
http://myworld.ebay.com/jimsgr8stuff4less
Monday, September 7, 2009
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