Wednesday 12 December 2012

The run up to the US Election on 08/11/12

 I was experiencing good success in trading up towards the US Election. I was expecting that Obama winning would weaken the $ due to the fact he was going to be pushing plans to implement "Obamacare" or Medicare. This of course WOULD have weakened the $ had it been a more immediate course of action for him.

 I had been building towards the election for a number of days opening long positions on the approach to 1.600 from 1.617 with varying position sizes (between 1 and 10 units each). As we all know Obama did win the election and it strengthened the $ very significantly, trading below 1.60 and 1.59 for the following weeks. This almost "account-rupt" me and I was very close to losing all of my progress. My error was obvious afterwards - I had built my positions up to respond well to only one situation.


 This huge mistake and error in risk management resulted in next to no profits over the next few weeks and infact a loss of 1/3 of my account balance. It was large set back but I was determined to make up my losses afterwards.

 I understand that many traders use stop losses - this is not a strategy that appeals to me as I feel that closing a trade before it has a chance to profit is a very bad idea. If the market goes in the wrong direction on what should have been a sensible trade, it will inevitably recover. For example, my positions that I opened before the US election ranged from 1.601 to 1.615. During the time of the results shockwave I would have closed all of those positions at a loss as the market went against what I hope it would. Instead the market recovered and as we have recently seen it is trading as high as 1.617. Meaning I have infact been able to recover my losses and close many of those positions at a profit - though this is not preferable trading and I avoid doing this as much as possible now, thinking my positions through muchmore carefully and being more open minded.

 Anyway, now I will explain my come back and what is happening at the moment.

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