I am past my monthly goals and there is still 6 more trading days to go. I am attempting to update my results on this blog every week. I only forecast a monthly target of $3600, but now, with my trading improving, I could see much more. I am excited to see these results because I wanted a minimum of $5000 per month before I move back to Seattle. I thought it would take me 2 more years to accomplish this. I am running at an average of 55% ROI per month with an average of 13% ROI per week. This is taking into account 2 weeks I was negative. I have had a 30% ROI week and even a 35%. Its nice hearing about me, but wouldn’t YOU like to do this too? Wouldn’t YOU like to be able to stay at home and make more money than university graduates? I hope I can help by explaining what is working for me and what mistakes I have improved upon. I would love to say that I am a good trader and that these results are sure to continue, but I can’t. Because I am not a good trader yet and thus these trades are not 100% sure to continue. But the only thing I can do is continue learning and improving. I have noticed improvements in my trading each week. Each week, I keep myself from repeating a habit, each week I build upon successful habits. Its a process of learning and focusing on improving. If you love to learn and figure things out, then trading is for you. If you expect people to tell you “secrets of trading” and you feel entitled to a big monthly profit because you spent $3000 on a Forex system, then I suggest you don’t pursue trading a source of primary income. I have been sacrificing my life studying only trading full time at least 6 days a week for 2 years straight. My only goal that I can actually work on is to keep improving. That is it. I cannot generate a profit everyday, nor I am not entitled to these profits. I would love to hear how your trading is going and help you improve if I can.

So far this month, the best thing I have done is stop chasing trades! This is taking a long when price has been moving up, or a short while price is moving down. When I enter a trade after price started moving it is for only one reason: I am scared to miss out on the move! Afraid to miss out on potential profits is more likely to cause anti-profits. Last month, I chased trades and took poor entries, these led to the typical long at the very top price on a huge price spike. See that spike on the hourly chart, yep that’s me with the long on the top… I didn’t discriminate against shorts, I took bad shorts too. In fact, most of the trades I had to hold overnight or 2-3 days, were these poor entries. So, I decided that my entries need to be planned. I take mostly reversal trades or simply a buy low, sell high in a range. Simple stuff. I will target a range to make entries in. I look for price to slow and start ranging or put in a bit wick. I try to get an entry on the second time it hits that lowest low, or highest high. I only trade on the EUR/USD and I don’t use stop losses. I am OK with the trade going into drawdown against me, I have a plan for the trades and if price decides to continue against me, 99% of the time, my entries are at a point where price will be visiting again and I can safely exit with at least a small profit. This trading style works for me.

I am also currently trying to keep my winning trades open longer when it looks like the move will continue. I typically take the profits on an intraday basis, but I have 3 winning trades open that I will hold til price tops out before Wednesday’s FOMC decision. I am looking to exit these trades at a top of the E/U and start taking shorts for a possible swing trade that could last 1 week or 1+ months. Price might not be back at these levels again in the near future, so I am not adding longs above the 5800 level, probably not even above the 5650 level, but we shall see as price action helps guide my entries.

My goal for the rest of the month is simply to maintain my daily profit average and improve my trading. So far, this has led to utterly ridiculous profits. This amount of profit might be small or really big to you, its all relative. For me, its huge since I use to have to work very hard to make this amount of money, but now I have a chance at making more and actually enjoying it. Email me at adam@za7.org with your questions or just leave a comment here. I would love to hear how your own trading is doing.

I have shown just the new trades after the last blog post. The total reflects all the trades starting June 1st. I calculate my ROI from the beginning balance of June.

I would like to say that I strongly believe everyone needs their own trading style! Why do I feel this way? It is because I have been working full time, all day, every single day for two years on other people trading systems with little luck. What works great for them is not going to work the same for me. I know many profitable systems that have yielded me very little because I did not feel comfortable trading them. I finally needed to learn the mechanics of price movement and the reasons behind it. I suggest you research why this market moves for yourself, this will give you great insight into the strengths and flaws of the many trading systems out there. I just couldn’t take a trade with any confidence because the indicator tells me so, no matter how many times it worked in the past. I didn’t like the blind decision making. So, learn all you can and do not stop, even after you start making some profit.

June 1-11, 8 trading days: $2687 profit, 22% ROI calculated from last months beginning balance. My nominal size is $2 per pip and when I see trade conditions line up, I will do a $5 per pip. But less often until the negative open trades get closed out and until the account equity reaches a higher and safer level.

These trades are largely due from Cisco and his live trade calls. From watching his trades and studying his trade calls, I have learned quite a lot about how to enter into trades for more profit and most importantly, stop chasing trades! When you see a great trader make zero trades from chasing, you start to modify your own trading. I use the ProFXI signal service as a kind of apprenticeship. I learn and mimic from a great trader. I don’t have all the tools to replicate this amount of ROI on my own just yet, but I hope to one day.

Main Goal: $50,000

Monthly Goal: $15,850 - currently $14,941

As long as I continue studying this market and improving my trading, there is no reason why I cannot continue these results.  Best of luck in your trading!

Adam

I also cut trades for a $1100 loss during the second week. This was a decision based on the market price action showing little interest to return up to the level where I had longs positioned for another run at 1.6000. I decided to take the loss and gain back the margin so I could make profitable trades again. It worked, I was free of these bothersome trades and gained quite a lot of profit and focus again. I plan on being much more careful taking longs, buying only at a low of the day and putting a +1 to protect it reversing on me.

I found that the E/U is following commodity prices closely, thanks to Moderator at FX Insights, and this helped my take profit on trades before they turned around, also staying in profitable trades for more money since an extended move was more than likely. I also picked trades based on 5-7 higher 30m closes, and 5-7 lower 3om closes. These gave great turning points for the E/U and I was able to spot them and profit accordingly.

Profits:

week 1: 2 days - $552 (17% ROI)

week 2: $580 (18% ROI)

week 3: -$670 (-11% ROI)

week 4: $825 (13% ROI)

week 5: $1879 (30% ROI)

These numbers are way above my expectations. I am very pleased. Even with a week three loss, the other profit helped buffer it down to a $670 loss for the week, not so bad. Week 5 was amazing, I closed out a bunch of trades I had taken the week prior plus some big wins on intraday trades. My best day so far is $737. I remember making $220 a day at my former career as a Mechanical Engineer, this is so much more fun too.

I added some additional funds to the account, $2000 on the 12th and $4000 more on the 29th. I averaged the balance for the monthly ROI at $5000.

Total profit for May: $2968

May balance: $12,253

Funds I added total $8000, so total profit so far is $4253.

Goals: $50,000 ; current balance $12,253

Monthly Goal: 20% ROI

Weekly: 5%

Daily: 1%

So far I am on track to meet my $50,000 goal in about 6 months. I don’t think I will make it that fast, but who knows. I have a bunch of negative trades which I am working on getting out of when they turn a small profit. I am taking much less trades this week and next to try and bring my open trades balance back to 0. The ROI of the account is great, but I need to reduce these negative trades if I am going to continue. I am taking only a couple trades a day, so this means that ROI might be less for the first couple weeks of June. We will see.

If you are reading this and are trading Forex too, please leave a comment on how you are doing. I would love to hear it. I am always in the FXI chat under Ackn1099 and in the ProFXI chat too. I know a lot of other members are doing excellent too, people are reporting 1%, 2%, and even 4 % ROI Daily! Great work you guys, keep it up !

ProFXI is currently in Beta testing as of 5/22/08, but is rumored to be fully operational before the end of May. Cisco gives us live trade calls now, but later we will also have a shared screen of his tradestation viewing his proprietary signal plus his open and closed trades. This gives us incredible profit making opportunity but allows us to trade our own account as we wish. Yeno will also be offering some GBP/JPY calls and so far his calls have been very profitable as well. 95% of the calls and signals are for EUR/USD only. The team is amazingly supportive and thoughtful of our needs as traders. Cisco offers a question and answer session daily and Yeno is always in chat unless he is sleeping. They go way above the expectations of most traders, including mine.

There is a cost for ProFXI, unlike FXInsights which is totally free and updated daily plus an active chatroom where you talk with the traders. ProFXI is offered at $200 a month, which in my opinion is dirt cheap, I made up that cost the first 2 days I used it, and that was with $1 per pip trades! The cost was labeled as site development and maintenance, but it wouldn’t matter since the value is immense if you know anything about trading.

First off, let me show you my trades. I have edited which were from Cisco’s calls. I only show the open trades from Cisco’s call as well since I have a bunch of negative ones that I took from my own trading. All of Cisco’s calls that I have taken have been profitable:

Now, here are some snapshots of what the beta service has provided. These are Cisco’s closed trades for the day. He has been making about $10,000 a day and recently over $20,000 per day. This is REAL MONEY and I did not edit these, he actually has very few losses so that is why he trading is so incredible:

This is the real deal.

I am signed on with the service to help me generate profits per day, but I am still doing my best on my own trade calls because I want to be able to trade without needing the help in the future. I am determined to be a successful trader on my own as well, but since there are profits to reap, why not take them. Check out FXInsights forum for more info on the ProFXI trading service until the ProFXI.com site is up and going.

Why am I living in Japan? I quit my career as a Mechanical Engineer after studying at the UW for 4 years and working a job for 5 years. I needed to learn how to make money more flexibly than spending all my time making other people money. I quit my job in August ‘06 after cashing out my 401(k), and selling one of my two houses. My plan was to live off the savings while learning how to generate income with Forex trading. I decided to reduce my expenditures by moving to Tokyo, where my wife’s parents were more than willing to let us live with them since they wanted to spend time with our 2 young kids. So we moved to downtown Tokyo in Sept ‘06. That’s the living situation.

Now onto trading. Trading has been difficult to learn. One needs to refine their personal method of trading in order to make it work. I have found this to be true with all successful traders. They all found their own way of trading. I started out learning other people’s methods, but in the end, I had to take the time to learn my own. And I think I have. I want to use my blog here to show you my progress. I have learned a lot of the past couple years and I hope you can learn something from my results and explanations.

My goal is to make at least $5000 per month before I move back to the US in two years. I am planning on making at least a 10% ROI, (return on investment) monthly. This means I need at least $50,000. I actually think I need between 50-75k for my trading account. I started out with $2000. I will track my progress here and give insights on what went right or wrong. I trade small sizes of 1% of equity for each trade on the EUR/USD only. I look for places where price action reveals that price is exhausted and ready to reverse. Price action tells me where to take trades based on times its tested and failed to break a level or amount of pips its traveled in a single trading day.

Initial capital : $2000

Goal: $50,000

Monthly goal: 20% ROI from beginning of month

Daily goal: 1% ROI from beginning of month

March Results: -$270 Balance = $1730

April Results: +$1495 Balance = $3225

Daily goal = $20 Daily average = $75

March started out rough. I decided to take losses on trades that I thought were in the wrong direction in addition to having too many trades open, overleveraged.

April was much better with a huge 86% return with a much higher daily average than expected. I know these results will vary but the technique and situation was repeatable. I was on the right side of the trades more often and able to let trades go farther intraday to bag more profits.

Goal $50,000

Currently $3225

I am currently working to close some outstanding trades that were buys because I thought price would retest the 1.6000 level and then make a big downward move. I was off on my timing so far. It didn’t retest the top as in the prior new all-time highs. But I am not closing them for a loss because the EUR/USD usually always comes back and retests the area again so I will have a chance to exit those in profit. I have a bunch of sells after the NFP report that were hedges since price had a high chance to continue testing lows starting Monday. I will hold those and close in profit as well, but I will have to be patient.

I have to credit the Team and FXI for helping me trade profitably.  Check them out and learn how to for yourself.

More to come soon.

460 PS ( 473 HP) @ 6400 RPM

430 ft-lb of torque between 3200- 5400 RPM ( total hotness, flat and predictable torque curve)

3.8 L Twin-Turbo 24 valve V6 (Sounds just like a V8 though)- I think this is the first time GTR used a V style engine, others have been a straight 6 for easier turbo application, twin turbos can be difficult to synchronize boost pressures.

Aluminum cylinder block with plasma sprayed bores!- Aluminum block with a turbo? Wow, turbos generate mass amounts of heat and aluminum blocks are more easy to warp under sustained high heat loads. Make sure the change the oil often, and don’t think about anything besides synthetic! Plasma sprayed bores, interesting. Must be a way to locally harden the material to withstand the extra heat and pressure.

Here is me with the ride of choice:

More info can be found here at the Nissan site.

Check out this YouTube Nissan GTR Review video.

I went to the University of Washington which was a big change from the small town I grew up in.  I took on way more work and challenges than the average student.  I also somehow was much more successful at my goals than I usually was.  I built a racecar, led a team of 15 building and racing it.  I became the best driver on the team and drove our car to victory in the Michigan race.  I was way out of my comfort zone constantly during this time.  I also helped design a passive cooling system for a 1mm x 1mm x 10mm high power diode laser.  Crazy stuff that no one had answers to yet.  I didn’t know what the crap I was doing, but I ended up learning a lot and helped develop a successful system.

I decided I wanted to be a Forex trader, trade foreign currencies on the international market.  I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I needed to get out of my comfort zone to start learning.  So I quit my career as an engineer in Seattle, packed up my family, sold one of my houses, put all my stuff in storage and moved us all to Tokyo, Japan.  I spend all day everyday learning and trading on the Forex market.  I am way out of my comfort in this big, crazy, loud, fast paced city that doesn’t slow down for anyone.  Imagine strange food, strange customs, interesting people, new perspectives and a break-neck pace that is downtown Tokyo.  My own two kids don’t even speak the same language as me!  I live in a house where English is something  strange the people from another continent speak.  The strange thing is that I am learning a lot and enjoying it.

I purposely choose to live like this in order to bring myself up to a higher level, to see what I can do under challenging conditions.  Have you ever raised the standards you place on yourself?  Tell me about it.  What was it that you wanted to accomplish by doing this?

Now that we have a sense of what balance is and how work plays a part in it, let’s discuss how to balance the rewards, or play. We all need a balance between the work we do and the rewards we gain from it. We sometimes hate to do work, but can’t seem to enjoy playing without it. So we are struggling to keep a balance where we work just hard enough to enjoy playing. But sometimes this leads to an imbalance as well. Sometimes we play too much, but sometimes we don’t play enough.

Playing too much

We all love to indulge in things that make us happy, who wouldn’t? We loved to play all day when we were kids and we love to do things similarly as adults. Is it possible that we can play too much? This doesn’t make any sense, how could something that feels good but keeping us out of balance? Well, the first obvious thing is money. If you spend too much, and essentially play too much, you have to go back and work for it again. This leads to stress and imbalance if you spend more than you can make. I think a lot of people have been in this situation. But there are more situations that are less obvious.

Have you ever felt guilty for not getting something finished? Did you go out with friends, eat a big dinner at the restaurant and see a movie instead of finishing a term paper for school? In this case, playing is out of balance with the work and we end up suffering. Why did we do that? We knew the term paper needed to be completed! Very simply, we didn’t think that thew work was worth the reward. We wanted the reward now and played too much. We were out of balance with our rewards. Why not go out and enjoy yourself a little before writing the paper, or just go out after it was complete? These seem like obvious questions but why then do we keep doing things like this? We are lacking balance in our lives.

Playing too little

This is quite a confusing one since people believe that everyone enjoys themselves enough, otherwise why would they keep working all the time? I mean, who in their right-mind would work all the time and never take time to enjoy their hard work? This is a little less common scenario, but it still happens. I am in the middle of it now. Let me explain what I mean. Recently, I started working extremely long hours and trying to balance everything. My workload is high, and my rewards are low. My balance is a little out of whack, but not in an obvious way. I really enjoy doing the work, I am starting a new directory, running a popular website business, teaching English to a VIP client, and being an active parent to my two kids. I really have my hands full learning new things and staying busy trying to juggle all my responsibilities. The funny thing is I really enjoy it, the work is great. But I am still out of balance because I don’t do enough to enjoy it. I rarely do anything for myself or even reward myself for accomplishing things. I need to balance my work amount with an equal amount of reward. This reward can be new hardware for my computer or catching a sumo tournament when it comes back to Tokyo. These things might not take much time, but they would be big rewards for me right now. I need something like this to bring my balance back.

How to find out if your rewards are out of balance:

1- Do you feel guilty enjoying your rewards? This is usually a result of playing too much.

2- Do you feel frustrated at not being able to enjoy rewards? This is usually a quick way to learn if you are not enjoying enough reward

3- Could you be successful and happy with this amount of reward?

So maybe you are a bit out of balance with rewards, but how to bring balance back in your life?

1- What would make the work feel worthwhile?

2- What work would you have to do to feel satified with your rewards?

3- What type of reward would make all your work seem totally worth it?

Rewards can be simple things like a pat on the back, or a public announcement of your hard work to your peers, a thank you, or just a smile. Rewards mean different things to us all. What do you feel satisfied with?

I hope this explanation of balance can help you in your daily life and bring a sense of achievement to you. I hope you are in balance now, or can find what you need to correct it before it becomes a problem. Leave a comment with your own situation, are you in balance?

The results for your favorite ways to gain backlinks:

Your #1 favorite turns out to be Forum Posting with many more votes than the rest.  Obviously, there are some great forums to gain links from and actually the links are pretty good if they are in a thread that discusses what your link is about.  I also think it is one of the easier ways to gain links, and so they are probably not very valuable.

Your #2 favorite way to build back links is directory submitting.  I have to wonder that since forum posting is #1, directory submissions might mainly include free directories.  Since more valuable directories charge a fee to review and edit the submission and build the directory’s value.  I have to agree that submitting to directories can be a great way to gain quality backlinks, but obviously, from reputable sources.

Your #3 favorite is writing and submitting articles.  This can be a great way to gain quality links if the article is written with enough insight to attract people’s links to it.  More people viewing your article means more traffic to your site as well. A hot way to build back links too.  Stay away from article submitter sites that spam your article everywhere.  There is etiquette necessary when submitting articles.

Your #4 favorites are a tie between social bookmarking and blog commenting.  Since these methods are fairly easy to do, they most likely carry less weight.  Social bookmarking is a good way to increase exposure and more traffic which results in more links and more attention which is the best reason to use it.  Blog commenting is an ancient way to build links since so many of the methods have had their link strength neutered.  I feel it is a great way to gain attention from the blogger and network with fellow bloggers in your niche.  However, for the sake of building links, its just not as popular as it used to be.

Link exchange and link trade is at the bottom and this seems reasonable given that two way links are devalued.  Three way linking has started to replace two way, but the results are going to be the same.

A big surprise to me was blogging to gain links.  It was at the bottom.  Was it blogging to simply gain a link that was so unpopular?  I think blogging is one of the best ways to gain links because it attracts, informs, and entertains people.  These are reasons why people will link to you and visit your site!  The better you blog, the better the result.\

I see some patterns with these responses and I can understand why.  It seems link building is some kind of necessary chore of building a site instead of an opportunity.  Why not an opportunity to build public relations?  Why not an opportunity to network and meet new people?  Why not an opportunity to blog about personal views, experiences, and information in a way that attracts links to you?  I am not saying that the Law of Attraction is at work here, but people generally know what is useful and will reward it when they see it.

What method do you prefer to gain backlinks to your site?

I will be tallying up the methods and reporting them in a later post. I think we all could learn something from sharing which method we like best.

Let me share the methods I prefer to use:

1- I write a detailed article about a topic related to my site’s theme and post it only once at a high traffic article site.

2- I like to blog about uncommon things that grab people’s attention and make them think.

3- I will put my link in pay directories that only list value-adding sites with no keywords in the titles.

4- I also contribute to fellow blogger’s discussions with the intent to help them. Helping others brings benefits.

Let me hear your top 3-4 favorite methods that YOU do to build links to your site.