Once again I am purely a robot trader.Part of the reason is that my day job does not allow me to use company Internet or computing resources for the purpose of earning revenue. This is a sensible restriction even if my use would only have been to let me view charts and enter trades.Now I use the Internet at work purely to watch how my robot is doing. I don't enter trades, I can't access or

No, that's not a typo. It's a rip-off of a line from the Back To The Future movie. Anyway, this post is another in the series of theoretical considerations with respect to various robot building strategies.In this scenario let's consider fixing our maximum total position size across a specific price range. For example, perhaps we are willing to purchase 10000 units per 1000 pips (remember, I'm

Since the trading robot, BREAD, was predominantly sidelined for the last couple of weeks I felt the need to do more discretionary trading.While the capital used wasn't very large it felt great to pull in a 34% increase over the course of the week. If I could scalp like this all the time it would definitely spell the end of the day job. I have dreams of setting up a trading office with spacious

With the recent downward move in the AUDJPY my robot has been sidelined. No big deal really but it does point to a possible correlation as I'd noted earlier. After a very good robot week, perhaps with behavior characteristic of a local top and massive robot profit, the market takes a downturn. There are only two data points so far but I'm definitely staying on the lookout for this. Above

It's late Friday night, the markets are closed, and all through the house not a creature is stirring. Well, nobody but the scheming trader hatching up another robotic system.As someone who designs software systems for a living I can assure you that, in terms of making improvements, nothing is more helpful than watching a system in action. The key point here is the concept of "seeing" the results

I'm starting to get more than a little cautious about the stellar increase in the AUDJPY over the last several days.While it's true that markets can continue to move higher or lower for long periods of time it's important not to get too caught up in recent events. In fact, though we all react to these things at different rates, you can consider it a warning whenever there is something to get

I've had some success analyzing the AUDJPY over the last few days. In particular, whether by luck or otherwise I managed to spot some channels, one of them an apparent bull flag, a wedge leading to 82.00 and then predicting a breakthrough beyond that level.It's very rewarding to make an observation and then have results conform to your expectations.Anyway, I'm still letting my robot do my

Yes, for lack of a better name I am calling my robot BREAD. This is short for Basic Robot Earning All Day. It has been given minor tweaks from time to time but it still continues to follow the same system and strategy... taking advantage of constant price oscillations in the AUDJPY. While the results don't look all that spectacular I invite you to investigate how this ends up in a compound

Generally, I follow and prefer to trade the AUDJPY. It goes through unwinds from time to time as the bigger players suffer fits of risk aversion.For the last few weeks we've been bouncing back and forth between 77 and 80. On the way down, with all the gloom and doom blaring in the media, it feels like we must be about to fall off a cliff.It's difficult not to be scared. After all, anyone who

I am following CNBC regularly (via their web site) these days. I see many of the pundits advocating panic and doom. I suspect they all want to be able to claim they were right when we finally do experience some type of pullback.However, these braying naysayers of doom really don't have much of import to say. All they really do is act as large forces on the emotions of market players. Everyone

Thursday was a very slow day.The market was down. The yen crosses took a dive. Everyone is getting antsy about stocks, news reports, and the month of September. OMG, the risk! My robot snoozed for much of the day and had little chance to earn anything useful.However, amidst all the whining I have to realize that being up about 4.5% for the week isn't so bad.Regardless, I did tweak things a

Wednesday was a slow day.The AUDJPY was very quiet, which left little opportunity for my robot to extract revenue. In fact, with the DOW drop at the end of the trading day today we may be looking at a bit of a downward correction over the next little while.My robot is not very active during downward movements. So, I'll get bored, worry about long term profitability, and otherwise be motivated

Now that the weekend is here it's time to put on the thinking cap and figure out how to increase earnings, reduce risk or both.As mentioned in a reply to a comment on the previous post I've reallocated funds, put in a reserve amount and added a manual release amount.The reserve amount holds back capital from the lot size calculation and the total margin available calculation. This capital is

Since the recent yen cross meltdown started I've been trying to keep from getting caught on the wrong side of any massive downward moves.As I generally trade only the AUDJPY, mostly on the long side, things have been pretty quiet!However, we are now facing some resistance at 74.50 on the 1hr -- which should be illustrative. We have done what might be a triple bounce off of support in the

Well, it's been a while since I posted. Things have been hectic, but I did just take a short vacation. No running water. No cell phones. No internet. No trading. There were, however, lakes and fish.I think I'm ready to do some serious speculation at this point... as long as the market behaves.Hopefully I'll soon be posting and tweeting up a storm!We'll see.

As I often do, especially when the markets are excruciatingly slow in determining when to make the next significant move, I've been thinking about Forex.Take a mental walk with me...The DOW falls from 10,000 to 5,0000 and loses 50% of it's value. It returns from 5,000 to 10,000 and gains 100% of it's value.Wait, think about that for a minute. In the normal world having the ability to gain

Well, did anyone notice what happened based on the forex analysis I posted over the weekend.The EURUSD, posted here, indeed moved upwards a bit before resuming it's downtrend.The AUDJPY, posted here, with a followup here, broke it's support line and henceforth fell like a stone.Nice. While I obviously am not able to say which way it will go in advance, it seems I was able to pinpoint the action

A few days ago I was saying that perhaps the AUDJPY would pull back after it's very fast rise up into the 71.xx range.It continued rising to somewhere around 72.80 instead. However, early last night it was bumping down around the 70.00 mark. Was that my correction?My three hour (I trade with Oanda) shows leg room all the way to 68.xx if it's thinking about correcting.That's the trick with Forex

So, it looks like we've had several days of sideways motion on the charts. I don't mind at all.As long as you buy on the low end and sell on the high end these are good times to play in the market too.For periods of non-trending action I like to watch the stochastic and RSI indicators. The stochastic are reasonable but they do give a ton of false signals. The RSI can help corroborate their

I can hardly believe it myself, but last week my NAV gains totaled 97.5%, which is entirely incredible. Too bad I'm such a small participant.No, unfortunately, this had nothing to do with my recent forays into developing an expert advisor. It seems that I've stumbled across some charting factors that provide me some measure of insight into market movements.The market doesn't always behave, but