Friday, August 28, 2009

The beginning...

Hi and welcome to my blog, Folding Paper. This blog will document my forex training account and chart its progress.

I plan to list my trades and also have an ongoing tab as to what my bankroll either hopefully grows to, or drops down too. (Frown) I hope this blog serves as a sortof newbie read along with BabyPips cowabungas blog, so you can also get the point of view of a complete newb as he tries to trade along with PipSurfer.

There’s a saying that ‘if you fail to plan, you can plan on failing, so let’s lay out some ground rules for the account so we have some direction on what we are doing.

We will be using the Kowabunga trading system (see babypips.com for more details on the system) The Kowabunga system is a very simple to setup and easy to implement system and will be perfect to start with. ( http://www.babypips.com/blogs/pip-my-system/ )

Our initial bankroll will be starting with will be $250.00. I feel that that is an amount that is well within the reach of most people if they get inspired. I was going to do $100.00 dollars, but I feel the 250 will allow us a little more flexibility with stops and drawdowns when they occur. And with all the screwups from the learning curve in the beginning. hopefully it will be enough to withstand those initial losses and then have enough left over to start building up.

I’ll be trading only the GBP/USD 15 minute chart in the beginning, and possible branching to other charts if we have success. The 4 hour chart will be checked to confirm the current direction of the trend and trades will only be entered that follow that trend. For example, if the 44 hour trend indicates an up trend, we will only look for long trades, if it is trending down, we will only look for short trades. Each trade will stay within the 3% risk of our total account. (This is one of the most important rules we will have to follow)

To start I will be trading a micro-account, 1 lot per trade. If the initial stake can grow I will increase lot sizes to stay within the 3% rule. No trades will be held for longer than 24 hours, in fact most will be under 1 hour. I usually will only be trading Tuesday thru Thursday and trades will only be entered from approximately Midnight EST to 12 PM EST. I’ll also try to keep an eye out for news events and either close the trade, or move stops extremely close to protect profits if they are there.

I’ll be looking at taking profits around the 00 and 50 markers, but this will change dynamically depending on how the market is moving.

And the final rule, all these rule can be broken as needed if I feel that the need arises! ;-) Hopefully there is enough interest in this blog and I'll continue it and keep posting on it everyday! Any questions of comments, please let me know!

Thanks for reading!