EUR/USD hit my sell limit early this morning and then came back and hit my stop loss.  In retrospect, I believe that I made some critical errors in this trade.  1).  I was trading on emotion.  By this I mean that I was reacting to a wide-range body day that had just breached support and I was afraid to miss any of the action.  So I quickly entered an order before waiting for a better buying opportunity on a retracement.  2).  I was trying to be too precise with my stop.  I placed my stop too close to my entry, and didn't really have it in a logical place (like just beyond resistance, a recent high, fib retracement level, etc...).

So, while this was a loss, it wasn't a total loss.  I've learned a lesson with this loss that will hopefully protect me in the future.

Trade 7 Profit -

• Trade 7.1: -52.3 pips
• Trade 7.2: -52.3 pips

My long AUD/USD position moved a bit further in my direction before closing just above today's open.  I've moved my stop loss on this remaining third of my position up to just above yesterday's low.  At this point, since I've closed out two-thirds of my total position, I'll let the remainder of my position breathe a bit and let it run.

AUD/USD took off today and hit my profit target, causing me to exit two-thirds of my position.  The pair continued on well past my profit target, so this is a case where my old position sizing strategy would have resulted in a higher profit than my new strategy, but I'm happy with the profit that I was able to bank.  I've moved my stop up to below the low of today, which is a bit higher than my breakeven point.

USD/CAD is hanging around a rising trendline that has served as support for the pair in the past. The daily chart below shows the trend beginning in early November last year, with it testing the trend line in February and a couple of times in March, and now again for the second time in April. I'm going to put a buy limit order ten pips above today's high. I like these kind of setups because they're low-risk, since the logical place for my stop is just below the trendline. In this case, my stop will be ten pips below Thursday's low. Most times that I can catch a currency pair reversing at a point of support or resistance, I will look for a low-risk entry on a break the opposite way, with my stop just beyond the area of support or resistance. I prefer this to trying to catch a breakout, because I can use a stop that's closer to my entry.

I should probably clarify what I mean by "low-risk" in this case. I size my positions relative to how far my initial stop is from my entry point. So I'll risk the same amount of my account on a trade where my initial stop is 300 pips away from my entry versus a trade where my initial stop is only 100 pips away; I'll just use a smaller position on the trade with the 300 point stop. So, technically, all of my trades carry roughly the same amount of risk. This particular trade is a "low-risk" trade for me in the sense that since my profit targets are multiples of R (my initial risk), if my initial risk is a small amount of pips, then the currency pair doesn't have to travel as far in my direction for my profit targets to be hit as it would if my initial risk was larger.  So, with that said, we'll see what happens on this one.

• Order = Buy Limit
• Limit Price = 1.01048 (10 pips below today's low)
• Stop Loss = 0.99780 (10 pips above recent high)
• 1st Profit Target = 1.01682 (1/2R)
• 2nd Profit Target = 1.02316 (1R)
• 3rd Profit Target = Let it ride

Also, by the way, not much action today on the other pairs I watch, except for GBP/USD which dropped like a rock back to the trendline that it broke out of last Thursday.

My limit sell order was hit early this morning, and I'm now short GBP/USD.  In the image below, the red line represents my original stop loss and the green lines represent my first and second profit targets.  The trade went quite a bit in my favor today, and almost hit my first profit target before giving some back later in the day.  If my first profit target is hit, I'll be moving my stop closer to my entry.  We'll see what happens here - I hope my first "public" trade ends up being a winner.