I've Been Gone For A While, But Now I'm Back!

 Welcome to the first installation of this blog in a good couple of MONTHS! There has been such a long break as following my margin call a couple months ago I decided it would be better to take a step back from my trading, de-clutter my brain and wait before diving back in and potentially making the same mistakes again immediately. In anycase, I have stayed on Twitter and kept up my trading chatter with great anticipation towards getting back into it. I am glad to say I am finally back!
 As some of you may know and as I mentioned above, I tweeted a little while ago about a margin call that I suffered which set me back from 930 USD (more or less) ultimately to 16 USD - a catastrophic failure by all proportions and view points. For the benefit of newbies here I have included below, a breif overview of my trading history (which may in fact also be of interest to those who have followed this blog from the start too as I haven't really summed it up for any of you in one dose so here it is!).





 I began trading around two years ago with 160 USD, but because I was new and didn't know what I was doing as such I hit 200 USD balance, got too big for my boots and then lost all of it. I tried again with just 50 USD but such a small account was difficult while I was so inexperienced. Last September I began again with 200 USD. I regularly had "good days" of trading where I made 20-30 USD, but made only 9 losses on positions out of several hundred that were opened. My best trading day clocked up around (I believe) around 180-200 pips and over 250 USD profit.
 By Christmas trading close I had finished with a balance of 1978 USD, not quite hitting my target of 2000 USD but I didn't worry about it too much. In the start of the new year I took up a new strategy, looking to maximise positions by setting larger profit limits and trying to time them better than before, beginning again with ~500 USD. Within a month I had built it to around ~978 USD but my strategy had flaws and I didn't follow the rules I had set out for myself. I had a margin call which many of my twitter followers supported me through and helped me figure out where I went wrong. For that I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your assistance before my call, at the time of it and ever since!
 After a month and a half out of the market I have recently (so approx Monday 11th) jumped back in with a starting balance of 216 USD. In the first week I went down to 208 USD, but over the last two weeks I have reached a balance of 253 USD. I'm bringing it back how I did last year.

 I very much enjoy trading and would very much like to increase the size of the funds I trade. My errors have made it quite a learning curve but I am conifdent in my trading and my ability. I have discussed investors etc in the past but absolutely realise it is better to build myself up to a good trading position and let others follow as I gain momentum.

 At the moment I do not have a fully blown plan for what I expect from GBPUSD over the next few weeks though over the coming week, following Easter weekend, I expect to see it crash down from 1.52 towards 1.51 and further if this does happen. Alternatively if next week doesn't see a drop, it could be headed for 1.525 (to be honest I am not expecting it to head much further north than that). What I must itterate here is that I have learned over the past couple months not to identify myself needlessly as "bearish" or "bullish" on a more permanent basis. I am looking to take up the stance of several of my Twitter followers who, if the trend is bearish, they are bearish, and if the trend is bullish, they are bullish. There is no harm being "aimless" when that is what the market is. My new aim is simply to make 10 pips on my real account with every trade. If I can accomplish that with minimal losses then fantastic.
 Things that I am very interested in new-wise at the moment is of course Cyprus, though that is further to the back of my mind, the ongoing US cuts from the Sequester (the first of which was yesterday, right before the Easter holidays) and the state of the Pound Sterling... Which let's be honest, doesn't look great at the moment in my opinion.

 Fortunately I am also working full time now. I say "fortunately" as in, I am lucky to have found a job that pays in this economy! Unfortunately this takes a huge chunk out of the time I get to put towards trading. But again the upsides are that I can regularly increase the size of my fund, boosting me a little bit each month; it also means that I will not be immersed in the news to a point where trading-wise, it is unhealthy and I lose sight of what is going on which will actually have an effect on the market!

 I tweeted earlier about the possibility of posting the details of a demo account on Twitter so that any one who is interested can log in and see exactly what I am doing any time they like and more importantly track my progress (or decline) at their leisure. Please let me know if you think this is a good idea - I am cautious as I don't know what kind of liabilities that leaves me open to or what I can do, other than tweet the trades I actually make, to prevent others from placing random trades and messing up the account. I would hope if I went ahead with the idea, that other traders especially would have a kind of mutual respect when it comes to a demo account to simply leave it be other than to see what I am doing. I trust you, don't worry, just want to see if anyone is interested first!

 Okay, that's finally the end of my first update in quite a while! Now that I am trading again I will endeavour to update regularly and keep you all updated on my opinions and ideas etc. Please follow me on Twitter @fxamateurtrader - I always enjoy chatting about this stuff and will try to field any questions people have. Alternatively e-mail me at fxamateurtraderuk@hotmail.co.uk
Look forward to hearing your feedback, advice and opinions!! Thank you for reading, I hope it wasn't too long and that you enjoyed it.