Ended At #70, Making Only 9.6% This Week

Hi, this time last week I was ecstatic because I ended the Instaforex weekly Sniper contest on #21. But this week, I am a little deflated because I ended a little lower.

I decided to share this with you because I don't want people thinking I only share the good results. Or that I can't repeat a good performance week in, week out. I trade live accounts and actually do much better with them because I am not competing with anyone, and also because it is a LIVE account.

But I promise you that this is the last time I will tell you of my contest exploits, unless I win of course, in which case I know you will be more than happy to rejoice with me as I share the news with you. lol




These are screenshots of my account history:

Last week, I was very busy and so I employed a lazy strategy. This week, I decided to aim for #1 but I got overzealous and impatient and lost -$340.44 at the beginning of the week (first 5 trades).

That put my balance at $9, 659.56, and of course I went down to #1410 out of 1430 traders.

However, I made $1,419 with my next 34 (positve) trades. This took me up to #21 with a balance of $11, 097 just before the release of US Non-Farm Payrolls, which was surprisingly very good -a total of 312,000 jobs was added in November, the most since 2008. This, giving the best NFP annual results since 1999 as over 200,000 jobs was added every month this year (the 2014 average stands at 224,000) though the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.8%.

But since I was aiming for #1 I became aggressive again and entered the market with the last 5 (losing) trades you can see in the account history. They ensured I ended the week at #70 (though I know EUR/GBP will still go lower next week but that info is for next week's contest). lol

Lesson I learnt this week: It is not about aggression, patience still counts more. I will still have been in the top 5 if only I exercised patience instead of aggression.

       1. My losses at the beginning of the week could still have closed positive, if I had been patient to wait till the next day.

       2. There were two trades that I exited prematuredly -GBP/JPY on wednesday, which moved 100 pips after I closed the trades. And EUR/USD on friday (just before NFP was released), which moved 80 pips after I exited it.

Thanks for listening to my contest exploits for the week.

Please don't forget to check out the article on Making money participating in online competitions, if you haven't, and do better than I by winning your own contests.

See you soon.