November 22, 2013 at 12:56 pm
Good morning! Yes, it’s good indeed. While I was sleeping both my long positions went up, so I adjusted the stops accordingly:
USDCAD
Moved trailing stop higher to 1.0528 (current unrealized profit for this position is 59 pips)
Although it looks like the USDCAD price is due for correction, I am willing to give this position more leeway as Statistics Canada will be releasing Core CPI and Core Retail Sales numbers this morning at 8:30am, which might thrust the price further up.
EURUSD
P1 and P2 were reached for a total profit of 44 pips. Just love it when the money is made while I sleep.
1 position is still open with SL @1.3507 (current unrealized profit is 29 pips)
November 22, 2013 at 12:15 am
In retail FOREX, PIP or Percentage in Point is the smallest normal unit of change (the smallest normal increment) for a currency pair. In other words it is normally the smallest change in price of the currency. Nowadays many FOREX brokers quote prices in tenths of a pip, so they would quote the price of the USDCAD pair as 1.04712,for example.The easiest way to calculate a pip is to ignore the decimal point and to count the fifth digit starting from the left. Therefore, for the majority of currency pairs one pip equals to 0.0001. The exception to this rule is Japanese yen under 100.00. In that case the pip is the fourth digit from the far left or 00.01
So, when I bought the USDCAD pair for 1.0471and the price went up to 1.0495, I made 1.0495 – 1.0471 = 0.0024 or 24 pips.
All currency pairs in retail forex are traded in lots. Each standard lot is worth $100,000 USD of whatever currency is being traded. Therefore, when trading the Canadian dollar, the Euro, or any other currency, you would be trading $100,000 USD worth of that currency. The actual amount of that currency will depend on its current price in USD.
To simplify calculations, one can assume that the standard lot size is 100,000 units. Therefore, for a standard lot, a 1 pip change in price represents a change in 10 units or roughly close to $10. When trading 0.1 lot size (mini lots), one pip would be roughly equal to $1.
For novice traders and people with relatively small starting capital it would make sense to start trading in 0.01 lot sizes (also called micro lots), where each pip would be roughly equal to $0.10
November 21, 2013 at 11:15 pm
USDCAD:
2 positions reached their profit targets for a total profit of 68 pips.
1 position is still open with trailing SL currently @ 1.0509 (in the money)
EURUSD
3 positions still open @1.3478, current SL @1.3458
November 21, 2013 at 4:45 pm
Each trade in each currency will be based on opening 3 positions (3 units) with 2 positions having profit targets (P1 and P2) and the third position exit will be based on a trailing stop (for those who don’t know what trailing stop is I will explain later).
Once the P1 target is filled, the stop loss (SL) orders for the remaining 2 positions will be adjusted. If there is a logic level close to the break even point, I prefer to move these SL orders to break even points but that’s not always the case.
Nov. 21, 2013
EURUSD
Buy 1.3478, Stop Loss (SL): 1.3443
P1: 1.3492
P2: 1.3508
November 21, 2013 at 4:28 pm
Nov. 21, 2013
USDCAD Buy 3 units @1.0471
Profit Target #1 (P1): 1.0495 (filled)
Profit Target #2 (P2): 1.0515 (filled)
Profit Target #3 (P3): trailing stop based on a 30′ chart
November 21, 2013 at 4:23 pm
To illustrate my point, I am going to post trades in real time before they happen as well as try to post some useful information related to trading FOREX profitably part time.
