Trading software

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Self praise

My wife always tells me that 'self praise is no praise' but I'm pretty pleased with myself with my latest two gold trades.

I've often beat myself up on these pages when things go bad so sometimes it's important to pat oneself on the back for a job well done.

Don't get me wrong, I only made just under €60 in total, not a big amount - but I stuck to my plans and stops and it worked out.

I was tracking the price of gold today and moving my stop upwards as the price moved up. Generally, I was keeping the stop about $7 behind the market. When it hit $1522, I put the stop at $1514.90 and left it be as I had stuff to do.

The price came down and my order was matched -  I briefly kicked myself as I had considered selling at $1522 - but you can never expect to catch the top of the market to be honest and as the price dropped down again to the $1500 mark, I realised that it was a very good trade after all.

When I first started trading, I'd be obsessed with catching the top or bottom of the market but this is folly of the highest order. Once you realise that there is money to be made in-between, you stop getting so worked up about it. You can't really expect to bet at the 'right' prices (the top and bottom) all the time - indeed, I remember reading a good quote from a trader who said he had made his fortune betting at the 'wrong' prices.

I'm no longer obsessed with catching the top and bottom and it's refreshing when you release yourself from it.

As I say, it's not a huge amount of money but it was one of those trades where I had a get out price, I had an opinion, I had a plan and I had a bit of bottle when the price went bad - so I'm quite pleased with it. 

Speaking of fortunes, I'm going to need a small one this weekend as I'm off to Oslo with herself. We'll be leaving on Saturday morning - it's meant to be a great city but apparently, it's the most expensive city in the world!  It's about ten euro for a pint so I'll definitely be stocking up in the duty free on the way over!



This week's closed trades:

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