day trading

A Profitable Week

I will start off by saying that I had a fairly profitable week overall in terms of day trading.

It was a shortened trading week because of the 4th July holiday and the half day on Monday, but there were still plenty of volatile price swings in the rest of the week to make up for this.

Here are the trades that I took:

US Oil (Monday): +32 points
Gold (Tuesday): +0.75 points
Nasdaq (Wednesday): -17.2 points
Nasdaq (Wednesday): -12 points
US Oil (Thursday): +29.5 points
US Oil (Friday): -17 points
US Oil (Friday): +17.9 points
US Oil (Friday): +28 points

As you can see, it was not a bad week, but the two trades that really frustrated me were the two Nasdaq trades because these could easily have been avoided.

Breaking My Rules

I’ve been trading for over 20 years now and so you would think that I would be ultra disciplined by now, but the reality is that I still place impulsive trades from time to time that are not part of my overall strategy.

These two Nasdaq trades were placed in the last two hours of trading, and I think the main reason that I took them was because I hadn’t found a decent set-up that was worth trading in the previous 11 hours from 8 AM to 7 PM UK time.

Normally I would just switch off my computer and come back the next day when this happens, but on this occasion I took two trades on the Nasdaq because I had convinced myself that it was highly likely to drop back down to the day’s lows, which it ultimately didn’t.

I think the quiet holiday period may also have been a factor because the previous day on 4 July, I only entered one trade on gold during the London session that came back and stopped me out close to break-even. So I was keen to get back into the markets and start making some money again, which is always potentially dangerous.

Trade Analysis

You can see my executions in the chart below (the red arrows show where I took my short positions and the blue arrows indicate where I was stopped out):

I don’t necessarily think there was anything wrong with the trades themselves. There were logical reasons why I entered where I did and my thesis could easily have played out on another day.

The problem was that although my potential profit would have been much more than my stop loss, in hindsight these were 50/50 trades and I generally like to enter trades where the odds of success are much more in my favour.

In addition, I shouldn’t really have been entering these trades at all because they were not based on my normal trading strategy and based on previous trades during the last few hours of trading, I know I don’t generally trade well during these hours. My win ratio is definitely no more than around 40-50% during this time.

Key Takeaways

The reason why I wanted to write this blog post was to encourage anyone else reading this to stick to their rules and not deviate from their trading strategy with stupid impulsive trades like this.

It will also help me to become more disciplined next time by writing down my thoughts and documenting them on this site.

Although I only traded these with smaller position sizes and I did at least use tight stop losses, it would have been a more profitable week if I hadn’t even considered taking them in the first place, and so this is a key lesson that I need to learn going forward.

Stick to your rules and your proven trading strategy, and don’t place impulsive trades when you haven’t found any set-ups in your usual trading windows and are looking to get back into the markets.

Popularity of Bitcoin

Bitcoin Image Cryptocurrencies such as Ripple, Litecoin, Ethereum and Dash are continually being mentioned on the various different financial news channels and websites , but it is fair to say that Bitcoin is still the most well-known of these cryptocurrencies, and the most talked about.

Many people have chosen to actively buy some Bitcoin coins in the last five years or so and hold on to them as a long-term investment, but others now prefer to trade the price movements of Bitcoin over the course of several days or weeks via CFDs because they can open long positions and short positions.

However while it is true that many brokers now offer CFDs for Bitcoin and many of the other popular cryptocurrencies, it is worth pointing out that these markets are still not really suitable for day trading.

Here are some of the reasons why:

Low Average Daily Trading Range

There was a time at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 when the price of Bitcoin used to fluctuate by around 1500-1900 points a day, but volatility has been steadily declining throughout 2018, and the average daily trading range is now just 208 points.

Therefore this makes it very difficult to make money from if you are just looking to hold on to a position for no more than a few hours, and don’t want to hold any overnight positions.

It is hard enough to predict where the price is heading in the next few weeks or months, but it is even harder trying to correctly predict the direction of the price on any given day.

Large Spreads

Following on from the last point, even if you were able to correctly predict the price direction of Bitcoin on a daily basis, the large spreads would massively eat into your profits.

As stated above, the average daily trading range is currently just over 200 points. So when you bear in mind that many of the leading CFD brokers have spreads of between 50 and 150 points, it is practically impossible to consistently make money from short-term day trades.

Easy Markets have spreads from 45 points on Bitcoin, which is very reasonable, but this still isn’t low enough to make Bitcoin a viable day trading instrument.

Large Margin Requirements

There is one other factor that restricts the ability for traders to day trade Bitcoin, and that’s the large margin requirements.

Many brokers require greater margin for cryptocurrencies than other markets because they are viewed as being a lot more risky, and this is particularly the case for Europe-based traders because the new ESMA rules require a margin of at least 50% when trading cryptos.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there are many reasons why Bitcoin is not really suitable for day traders at the present time.

The large spreads and the large margin requirements, combined with the low average trading range make this virtually impossible to make money from right now.

Therefore if you are someone who is looking to trade Bitcoin, you should take a longer term view and be prepared to hold on to your positions for days, weeks or months at a time because then these factors will be less of an issue, even if you have to pay a small daily financing charge for holding long positions overnight.

If you open a long position and the price of Bitcoin goes up by $500 or $1000 one week later, then a $50 spread won’t eat into your profits too much, and the daily financing charges will be relatively small.

Over time the spreads may start to come down, and there is a possibility that the ESMA may lower their margin requirements for European traders. However until that happens, it is probably better to look for breakouts or price reversals, for example, and wait for the big price moves to occur, which are obviously more likely to occur over the course of several days rather than a few hours.

Trading Analysis 3-7 July 2023 – Cutting Out Stupid Trades