Two years anniversary of this blog and a closing summary

Thank you

2 years, 47 posts, 22k page views...

I started this blog in December 2013 to share my story of becoming a consistently profitable forex trader, to help myself clarify my thoughts and plans, and to get some more motivation to follow my own trading plan.

Now in December 2015 I believe I can say that this blog has met the objective stated above :-) 
And I hope it offered some helpful perspective and materials to my readers.

At this point I am most likely to discontinue posting here, but the materials will remain available online.

I will continue to be active in the markets and I will now most likely focus on strategies that offer the highest return vs. time spent on trading... such as weekly momentum stocks strategy and a portfolio of ETFs that I will re-balance quarterly.

Trend following system on forex and commodities, using daily bars... I continue to think is a good strategy and yet I came to realize that its time requirements and capital requirements to make trading it really worthwhile... are somewhat higher than I estimated.

And so I felt like sharing this insight also here, in all honesty. But anyway most aspiring traders will need to experience this on their own vs. just reading about it.

Thank you and all the best in 2016 and beyond. 
Michal

Two great trading books

Two great trading books I'd like to recommend

1. Stocks on the Move (link)
2. Following the Trend (link)
   by Andreas F. Clenow

His website is here.

What is absolutely unique about these books:

• mechanical properly backtested system, fully disclosed, tested on a large sample of markets and long period of time, with great results, with results that can be verified
• a story how it would likely feel like to trade the strategy, year by year, very powerful, so true... and those who actually traded a strategy will understand this part very well
• hints on how to properly test the systems: right data, considering dividents, special events; portfolio re-balancing, right benchmark, etc. Plus a unique, and critical, view on Wall Street and S&P500. 

I very much recommend them (this is not affilate link, this is an unbiased reco). 

I actually am planning to implement the stratgies from the book, on another account dedicated for them. 

Again, I really recommend these two books.

New resources

New resources and tools I use

This is to share a couple of resources I am using now and I am finding them very helpful.

Trello.com 

I now use trello boards and lists as my trading journal. I have a trading "board", then I have a list for each strategy or technique or system that I trade, and then an "item" for each market or currency pair. As I open each item, I paste chart screenshots and record my comments. It is very visual, very easy to find things, easy to use. It also makes it easy to share charts with a get image URL function.

Portable MT4

I have my MetaTrader 4 installations on box.com. And I launch terminal.exe with a /portable option. As a result, it stores the data in its sub-folder only. And box synchronizes it automatically across different PCs I am using.  Very effective productivity help this is for me.  For example, when I add a new script or chart template... it automatically gets added on all my PCs.  And backed up.

End of day Trend Following system rules

This is to present an end-of-day trend following trading system rules

Here I will provide specific rules for a trend following system I backtested and I believe it can be profitable.

Great book and a real profitable trader who shares his learnings

I wanted to share two links today

One is a website of Oli Hille at http://www.tradingbook.org/
He is authentic, a real trader, consistently profitable one, and sharing his valuable lessons with others.

The other one is a book by Brent Penfold, "The Universal Principles of Successful Trading".
I found it very relevant, inspiring in spite of some pessimism there.
Very realistic, very authentic, I can certainly relate to many experiences the author shared and I am finding his solutions very practical and real.

In fact, while I continue to trade discretionary trend following system today, I am planing to re-open the project of qualifying an automated trading system, to backtest is mechanically, and then trade manually.

I hope you will enjoy the two resources I shared.

It is so simple!

It is so simple.

How to become a consistently profitable trader?

Here is the action plan to become a pro trader, in its simplest form:

1. find and learn to trade a profitable trading system
2. execute it flawlessly

That's it.  Simple yet hard. 

I am not there yet. Writing helps me clarify my approach. Those who traded for a while will understand what I mean.

If I had a chance to read this "action plan" a few years ago, I would probably think: "blah, blah, just share a profitable trading system and I can make money". Yeah, this is less simple, now I know. Read on.

Zen Habits

I recommend a Zen Habits blog by Leo Babauta at zenhabits.net

His guidance for simplicity, meditation, focus, ways to implement good habits... I am finding all of this very related to forx trading!

Think about this. Good habits, which Leo on his blog provides lots of ideas how to build, are something you need to become a consistently profitable trader: habit to journal the trades, to test new systems, to properly review the markets, to approach trading in a calm and controlled way, etc.

Another one is simplicity that he is calling for... simple trading systems are ususally the ones that work best. Often thing as simple as buying on the break of the candle that touched the EMA 20, if we a re in an uptrend is better than a very complex system with lots of indicators.

See it for yourself :-)
I am finding Zen Habits materials very helpful and I hope you will as well.

BTW, I am repeating myself, I shared a link to this back in my January 2014 post ;-)