Trade.com journal. Is making a living with CFD trading a SCAM or a CHANCE?

[Thoris]

Hey everybody. My name is Thoris and I'm an alcoholic trader.
For years I've been interested in trading as a hobby.
I have a well-paying job, I have a big house, a family, friends, etc. Yet, as Chris Corner was singing.. something isn't sitting right, something wakes me up at night.. the background noise.
I tried to quit trading but I couldn't. Seems i'm a bit obsessed. No, I'm not a gambler. I keep solving this puzzle day after day, yet in general my approach is rather systematic. Not systematic enough to programm a trading bot, yet systematic enough to hand trade and don't be afraid of loosing all I've got in a blink of an eye.
This is obvious that my handtrading requires optimization. As long as I work distantly at the moment, I can keep an eye on th market while doing the main work. I decided this can be my chance to polish the system and decide whether CFD trading is a big SCAM and nobody can win here apart from the broker, or this can really be my chance to make money with something I really love doing.
My brokers is Trade.com so that we all know whom to blame for my failures where the quotes come from and so that you guys can compare your charts to mine just in case we have some suspicions.
I'm yet unsure about the final format of this journal but I will try to post all the trades here, both losers and winners. I hope this will discipline me. I won't probably trade on a daily basis, yet, we'll see how it goes.
I'd highly appreciate all the support you can give here. I need that a lot as I'm thrilled to the bones with this decision to share my trades here. So thank you so much in advance for support!

 

[Granigamand]

That's a nice obsession imo. I wish you all the good luck! Looking forward to see your progress and I hope this journal will help you develop the discipline and improve trading results.
Its possible that the trading journal will create extra pressure, but hopefully this will be the case when it will be more of a support rather than a challenge.

 

[sebking1986]

With a solid education, strategy and most impotantly, risk management plan, over time you should see an improvement. That's not to say it is easy at all as we are all just small fish compared to the banks but money can be made. Good luck and I look forward to following your progress.

 

[Thoris]

Thanks for all the support ! Let's start now.
Today I only had one trade on Brent. Here it is:

Crude oil keeps gaining it's positions. This month's trend is up, 1H trend is up, 5 min trend was up too. So I was looking for longs only for Brent.
IMHO the hit stop loss on this position indicated the intraday trend to be broken. Well, at that point it definitely was as the price renewed the day lows afterwards.
The screenshot has captured the trade in the most favorable moment of around $200 unrealized profit. I was considering moving the stop loss to break-even at that moment, but hesitated for some reason. Paid $120 for this hesitation.

 

[Granigamand]

Well, you never know with these trailed break-evens... don't worry, sometime the smae approach can save you the profit.
Thanks for sharing the thoughts on the market as well along with the trade results!

 

[Stevenrollins]

Good luck with your journey. Looking forward to see your updates. Keep a precise trading plan, focus on your strategies, take that much risk which is affordable for you and practice consistently. All the best

 

[Thoris]

Guys, I'm terribly sorry for leaving the thread for a while. Thanx everyone who gave me some support here.
I'm continuing my journey here with leaning whether trading can be a good source of a stable income.
I didn't trade on a live account since the very first trade unfrotunately. I must admit, after I staked some real money, then only I realized that there are too many things about my own trading style that I don't know and must yet explore.
With demo it all seemed to be very clear, but then the doubts came. I.e Trade.com's market executions seemed to be a good idea before, but now when I see these spreads that immmediately take effect on account, dang, market orders suck. I be you know what I mean.

 

[Granigamand]

Yeah, spreads suck. Your previous trade that you've posted here was OIL. Spreads are often bad for commodities. Can your system work with some liquid currency pairs?

 

[Thoris]

Yeah! That's exactly what I came up to. Trade.com spreads for gold, oil and stocks are dangerous. Maybe ok for overnigh, but not for daytrading. It's a pity, as I like how oil and gold move from tech analysis perspective.

 

[Thoris]

So far I redeveloped the strategy to trade most liquid currencies only. This is the limitation that I find necessary when trading with a CFD broker like Trade.com. because fo the relatively wide spreads for commodities and less liquid instruments.
The whole week I was strugling with the following situation. August 13th I've placed a buy limit order for EURUSD. On AUG 14th the price moves few pips near the order but not close enough for it to get filled. The whole week I was hoping the price will come back and take my limit order and finally, yesterday I've cancelled it. after I had a feeling the supposed profit target must have been hit already. That's a hard feeling. But I'm not desperate and lookign for new opportunities.