5th January

Dear Clive

John Bartlett sent me your email and I value your comments re the book. I do agree this would be a great idea but right now John has had so much on his plate getting the new scalping course out and organising the January live course that this is something that will take place in the future. We wanted to get the blog out ASAP. To answer some of your questions. I do keep a trading analyzer and it’s sent to John each week for comment. Also some of my emails in the subject line will say 18 pips yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay and that of course doesn’t reach the blog! This is something I will start to add to my emails.

John’s advice is like gold and when he tells me to do things I put them to practice and always do well. There is nothing like having a mentor like John. He is tough but I appreciate it as pussy footing doesn’t get the job done. I have only been trading live since the end of October and although I have made losses I have made more profits. My biggest stumbling block is trading with higher amounts. Let me trade on £1 a pip and I go sailing away. Put me onto £5 or more a pip and I turn to jelly and everything goes off kilter and I make serious losses.

Money management is the key and so I increased my bid it was because my bank account wasn’t at the stage where I can weather a 20 x £5 pip loss yet. So I have gone back to basics and I’m back to £1 a pip which is seriously boring but I’m making steady gains and recovering what I lost. That in itself is a lesson. Recovery of losses take foreeeeeeeever.

I had a spate of more losses than wins for a good two weeks and I can see where folk loose heart and leave trading. However I am seriously determined and have put aside several thousand pounds to learn. This is my college fund so to speak however it still hurts like heck to chuck £50 away on a stupid move. All my losses were seriously stupid moves on my part. I had platform problems and you shouldn’t blame a platform but it cost me £140 in trades due to no fault of my own. I’m on my 4th platform now.

I am the first to admit when I do something daft and when something like this goes beyond my own control that makes me loose confidence and I’d say my biggest loss of confidence was due to the platform problems and not so much my trading as it’s a horrible feeling when you are in profit and try to get out and you can’t. The market happens to be seriously volatile during that time and you get whipped about and can’t get out. I went from a profit of £45 to a loss of £60 trying to get out of a trade. A trade I should never have entered as it was done around an announcemenbt. That did not sit well with me and I turned away in disgust and left trading for the following day. I

don’t trade on Mondays. Fridays are iffy too but they are better than Mondays. I find that’s when I make my biggest losses. I have also gone over Johns courses several times and taken what I want to concentrate on and studied as much as I could on that particular subject (support and resistance) and practiced it on demo. This will be an email on the blog. Over Christmas I decided on a trading strategy and will stick to it. That has been my biggest downfall to date. I needed a strategy and to stick to it.

Hindsight I can see where I went wrong and now I will try not to let that get me down again. I found I need to work out a time frame that suits me and have finally found one. I thought scalping was for me but right now its not. I love the excitement of it but for now I have had to shelve it. I need the longer time frames to get me zoned in and work out the best entry and exit signals. I’ve put the 1m chart away completely and my smallest time frame chart now is the 5m. I concentrate on the 15 now and it doesn’t whip me about like the 1m did which is where I made my biggest losses.

Happy trading. This is going to be a good year for me. I’m determined to give up my day job and do this full time Kind regards Desiree