Been a bit slack lately...

Err no this journal is not dead, just in hibernation haha...  I've been trading per usual, but haven't found the time to update this journal like a good boy...  Feeling a bit guilty yes, so err what's been happening in life lately? 

• Lots of research, planning and work around our trip to Brazil Carnaval 2012...Flights are locked in, accommodation in Rio de Janiero almost booked in;
• Lots of mid-week functions in June/July (dinners, functions, birthdays, going-aways, jazz festival, brazil planning, etc) which kinda broke the journal updating rhythm;
• Watching the Tour de France (Carn Cadel, go you good thing!); and
• Weekends have been ridiculously busy with brunches, catch-ups, wedding engagments, house-warmings... bla bla bla.

Its all nice, but honestly, I'd rather get back to a set routine.

What's happening with trading?  Around the time of my last update, I was languishing in the doldrums having blown up my account (for the nth time) earlier.  Fortunately, the taxman will recognise my prior losses as tax deductible which takes away some (some, not all) of the sting.

In the 2nd week of June I recapitalised the account with $2,300.  Since then, I've managed to triple this account with some very highly leveraged calls.  The technique is still (i think) the same, thinking about orderflow, keeping tabs on publicly available orderboard info, looking at price action around key support/resistance levels, with additional confirmation coming from technical analysis (simple things like moving averages, fibonacci time series and fibo arcs, and to a lesser extent, some usage of oscillators).

Certainly, this type of thinking would have been impossible for me to digest when I first started trading live in April 2009.  I think my first exposure to the world of trading was in mid-2007?  That's 2+ years of live trading, and 4 years of exposure.  It takes a bit of time to work out what is what in this environment. 

Yesterday, some poor sap on IRC chat recounted how he lost $20,000 down to $667 in a 200 pip move related to last week's European contagion volatility through some 400:1 leverage broker.  You are always going to get fucking dipshits doing that kind of thing, but not like that, come on...  These dopes are the same ones that those IG Markets TV ads are appealing to: "Get thinking, and take a position" <insert graphic of jetfighter flying to the moon>.  I'm tempted to say 'give me a break' but what the heck, the market always needs fresh blood.

And so to another day of trading...