My Strategy With Stocks

My FOREX trading strategy has not translated well to stock purchases. I purchased CIGX and JMBA last week, strongly believing they met all my criteria for going long.

But that was with the old EMA 100 strategy.

I've yet to try one stock with the Two-Touch Bollinger Band approach.

I'm having a bit of mental block with finding the pip value equivalent to stock prices. Pips don't necessarily equate to cents. One option in my exit strategy for this approach is to take a profit at 20 pips. How can I possibly apply that to a stock like JMBA? Should I be thinking in terms of percentage gains?

My gut tells me I should aim for a 3% gain with each of these trades. The problem is I don't want to miss out on a potentially lucrative stock run. Taking a profit at 3% when a stock has a 10% run will feel like a failure.

I need to devise a way to lock in a 3% gain but still leave myself available for more profits, should the opportunity present itself.

A trailing stop loss percentage seems to be my only option.

Perhaps tomorrow I'll make my first purchase under this new strategy!

The Optimum FOREX Trading Windows

I'm not a morning person. It's embarrassing to admit, given my age, but I slept until 10 this morning.

This presents a certain dilemna given my interest in stock market and FOREX trading.

Trading tends to slow down around 1 p.m. PST, coinciding with the close of the U.S. stock market. That gives me only a few hours to get a few trades in before the afternoon lull, when the price movement seems to bury itself into a tight Bollinger Band tunnel, only to emerge around 6 p.m. PST, when the European markets open.

I can't help but feel like I'm sleeping through some optimum trading. My only solution seems to be to adjust my sleeping routine for an earlier wake-up time. Perhaps I don't need to get up as early as 6:30 a.m., but getting up just one or two hours earlier may provide me with more opportunities to increase my account balance.

Grow, Baby, Grow

Account balance: $103,012.58.

I scored some lucrative trades last night--all going short. The "sell mode" continues.

This morning the charts are looking too promising though. The 5-min chart shows a frustrating horizontal side movement in the price action. I suspect the EUR/USD is in for a pull back, and I don't want to risk placing a long order when the price is below the 100 EMA. That would go against my strategy.

I'm also not confident enough to place trades while the price ping pongs back and forth in the horizontal Bollinger Band channel.

I want to "grow, baby, grow," but there isn't much in the charts that leads me to believe that's a viable option at this point.

So I'll wait and try to be patient.

I still plan on keeping my eye on the 5 min chart. If the price crosses the lower Bollinger Band, I might consider putting in a short trade. Worried that the price won't hug the lower Bollinger Band, I'll probably put a Take Profit order after 5 or 10 pips.

Now It's Time to Make Some Money!

The account balance reads $100,655.18!

I did it. I finally got my account balance back in the positive. All it took was two trades this morning.

I'm still in "sell mode" on the EUR/USD, and sticking with the Bollinger Band two-touch strategy has worked well.

Not every trade is successful though. I lost sight of the RSI divergence, and I actually put in a sell trade yesterday evening when I should have opted out of trading at all. At that point, I was so close to reaching $100,000, I was devastated at taking a step back again.

I learned my lesson though and have since avoided that mistake.

Now I'm looking forward to earning some money!!

Approaching $100,000

No doubt I need to refine my exits and entries for this new strategy.

But even still, my account balance reads $99,736.76!

Will I make it to back to the start sometime today?

Let's see if I can avoid screwing this up ...

Building Wealth From Very Little

I hope to one day be wealthy. I'm not inclined to the lifestyles of the rich and famous. I can't imagine dropping more than $100 on a dress. I don't dream of buying nice cars. Just can't see myself driving something luxurious through an In-N-Out.

But I do aspire to wealth because of the relative security of it. Figuring out how to get there from where I am has been frustrating.

So much of the information on finances is geared either toward guiding those out of debt and helping those will massive sums of money create more massive sums of money.

Don't get me wrong. Getting out of debt is crucial. I avoid debt like it's the plague. I legitimately fear my parents would disown me if I accrued anything more than $100 in debt. (They're big saving and "live beneath your means" kind of people.)

But at the moment, I'm in no serious danger of going into debt and I'm nowhere close to having massive amounts of money that can be invested in real estate, business ventures, etc.

So how do I begin building wealth with only $4,000 or so to my name? Many web users have posed this question on Bing, Yahoo Ask, etc. The only viable option put forth is to save money until you reach "the massive amounts of money" phase.

For someone like me, in the writing and editing business, it will take me until retirement to get there.

In my subtitle to the "Samantha Learns ... Forex" blog, I state that my objective is to supplement my (meager) income.

I'm beginning to rethink that objective.

Building wealth is important to me. I'm single, don't want to rely on a man or my parents for support, and I have dreams and goals (to be discussed later) that might require some steady cash flow.

It is with all that in mind that I pursue FOREX trading. Clearly, I will need to save some money (real money!) to get things going. But I hope and aspire to become comfortable enough with my trading strategy that I will be able to grow my meager savings into something substantial.

I once heard J.K. Rowling tell a group of college graduates that rock bottom is a great foundation on which to build your life. I'm nowhere near rock bottom, but I hope whatever foundation I'm laying now is good enough for the life I want.

A New Strategy--Bollinger Band Two Touch

Forget what I said about sticking to a strategy until it works. I'm into something new ... and I'm excited about it.

I'm still using the same indicators: RSI, Bollinger Bands, and the EMA 100.

Here's what I'm doing. On the 1-hour chart, if the price action is below the EMA 100, I prepare to go into what I call "sell mode." Then, I switch over to the 5-minute chart. When the price touches the lower Bollinger Band for the second time and the price and RSI are lower than when it crossed the first time, I place a sell order.

I pull out of the trade when there is an RSI divergence. If I anticipate being away from my computer, I place a "take profit" order at 15 pips below my entry price. My stop loss ("parachute") is 20 pips above my entry price.

We'll see how it goes ...