Sage1 - Introduction

Sage1

Active Member
Hello all,

My name is Dimitri and I'm 25 years old.

I currently am holding a Bachelors in Finance. I'm starting a 2nd degree in Computer Science in January.

I live in Montreal, Canada. I work in Capital Markets at an International Bank.

The first thing that got me into trading was the fact that I always wanted to trade. I kept opening Demo accounts to trade stocks but never followed through. I started to study charts for stocks but discovered I had an issue with that since I was in university at the time and couldn't monitor stocks LIVE. So I went on, I think it was FreeStockCharts.com or something like that and pulled up a quote on EUR/USD and then I realized that the market was still open!!!

That's when I knew that FX gave me that flexibility that I was looking for.

When it came to trading, the first mentor and method I would use was ICT.

ICT was my hero, my idol. Every video, every concept I would spend hours studying. I would wake up at 3am EST and stay up until 5am EST to trade London Open every day on a DEMO account. People thought I was mental!

I started to follow ICT in November 2011. I traded January and February on Demo with 24% and 39% return. Then I went live on March 1st 2012. The first month I made 5% return on a 5k account. Then, come April, I got cocky. I placed a short on EUR/USD and made 30 pips but then decided to short GBP/USD as well while tripling the risk (at market). At the exact moment, price pulled back 50 pips which was more than my initial stop loss of 30 (however since I went at market, I couldn't place my stop right away). Here I was down $500 with no SL... I prayed and trembled, eventually I was down $1250... on my $5250 account. Then price started to return, eventually I took a $600 loss...

I was now in the red and that's when stupidity took over. I neglected everything I had learned and (while not increasing risk) started to lose consecutively for 12 trades (2% losses each) - this was using my own "principles".

Then I stopped and decided I needed to do something else. I started to look for a new system. I discovered VSA - Volume Spread Analysis and programmed my own indicator. I performed a backtest and it was very profitable. I started trading it and brought my account up to $4500 using LC techniques. I was starting to see the light...

I decided to apply the tactics to LO and got hammered, I was risking 5%/trade (instead of 2%) and brought my account to $2000. That's when I discovered Tom DeMark's indicators. I used them and brought the account to $3200 but once again got mental and lost 5-6 trades consequtively - brought my account to $2300.

Then I came up with the following strategy: buy low, buy lower, sell high, sell higher.

Every day I would buy or sell (once a day) in the direction of the opposite move of the previous day. I split my account into pieces, I started with 0.03 lots or $0.30/pip and put no stop loss but took profits at 50+ pips (I won't get into the TP part).

Eventually I had accumulated a huge amount of open orders but I know FX ranges so I wanted to just wait out the reversal, well I ran out of liquidity and got margin stopped.

My account is now worth $500. I decided to go back to my roots, back into the only strategy that ever really brought me money. I looked to see if ICT was still around and he was.

I joined the forum, subscibed to his Youtube and Twitter.

I have never been really involved in any forums, I was more a lurker.

This time I will post ideas/charts and hopefully develop as a trader. I dunno at this point about what I will do with those final $500. I'm currently uncomfortable and reluctant to put in more money until I see some kind of consistent understanding and progress.

Thanks for having me.
 
Sage1 said:
Hello all,

My name is Dimitri and I'm 25 years old.

I currently am holding a Bachelors in Finance. I'm starting a 2nd degree in Computer Science in January.

I live in Montreal, Canada. I work in Capital Markets at an International Bank.

Another Canuck! :D Welcome!

I'm in Toronto, and another mod is in Montreal..

Sage1 said:
I have never been really involved in any forums, I was more a lurker.

This time I will post ideas/charts and hopefully develop as a trader. I dunno at this point about what I will do with those final $500. I'm currently uncomfortable and reluctant to put in more money until I see some kind of consistent understanding and progress.

Thanks for having me.

Glad to have you.

Making the choice to focus on consistency first before putting more capital at risk is very mature as far as trading goes... you've already experienced how easy it is to, well, "go mental" as you put it, so realizing this now and working on yourself and your trading plan before placing more money at risk is a great choice. (Most people blow a few accounts before reaching this point.)
 
Hi Dimitri!

and thanks for the fascinating story, lets make a happy ending for this :thumbsup:

I'm following ICT too and try to be patient before opening live account. I think you are in good company here.
 
Sage1 said:
... I'm currently uncomfortable and reluctant to put in more money until I see some kind of consistent understanding and progress.

...

Been there,done that.. It's a working progress.And you also chose a good mentor to follow. I think that's the most important thing to focus on to reach consistency.So you'll probably be all right!
Wish you best of luck with adapting to the markets! :)
 
Sage1 said:
Which mod is in Montreal? Maybe we can connect in person!
Yep,me. 8)

Will do, but, a bit overloaded for now.

Good luck with your trading in the meantime and welcome to the forum! :)

Cheers!
 
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