Track Your Goals

Last time I talked about how I got started and what I found to be useful.  I found that one of the key elements to successful Forex trading is to treat it as a business.  Throughout my training I heard this time and time again.  Even though I had run a successful pharmacy retail business for many years, I couldn’t quite understand what was meant by this. 

After thinking about it for a bit and occurred to me that any successful business tracks their expenses and their profitability.  Likewise with Forex.  I started tracking how much I was spending on training, Expert Advisors and various tools.  I looked at my accounts and realized there wasn’t much profit there (actually, there was a loss!).  So I became determined to slow down and take things one at a time.

While I developed my own methodologies, I would test the various EAs for a minimum of 2 months to determine if they were profitable.  Each month I would take a look at the profit/loss from each of the EAs.  I found two major EAs that seemed to be consistently profitable.  I placed these two EAs into my real account and started to track them.

 

I was determined to minimize losses and track the profitability (or lack thereof) as often as possible. When it comes to real money, I didn’t want to find out a week later that something was going wrong with the EAs. Every day at approximately the same time, I would enter the balance of my account into a spreadsheet.  Then I would have the spreadsheet calculate how I was doing.  I then added a more general, overall sheet so that I could project what effect the current return would have on my account long term.  Every month I could add the month’s ending balance to this sheet and determine if I was on track or not.  It also allowed me to project where I would be at the end of a few years.  I then added a few graphs since I tend to be more of a visual person. It has now become a habit and I can tell each day if the EAs are still performing or if the particular currency environment is incompatible and I should pull the plug. I call this Excel workbook GoalTracker.

 

The same could be done for methodologies. There are just as many methodologies out there as there are EAs.  It could be a full time job just exploring them all.  I found that out the hard way as well.  GoalTracker to the rescue here as well. I take a given methodology from someone I trust (see the blog on Ed Ponsi for example) and use it consistently for 30-60 days.  I start a new GoalTracker and evaluate the profitability. I then note any tweaks I might apply to make it my own and evaluate these as well. 

 

GoalTracker has helped me quite a bit.  It has kept me thinking and treating my trading as a business.  By using it at the same time each day, it has taught me patience and given me the flexibility to see trends in my trading that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

 

I would like to share that with anyone out there that might be interested. There is no charge for this version and it is the version that I am currently using. The only thing I ask is that you let others know about this blog and let me know if you have anything you would like to see added to GoalTracker.

If you’re interested, drop me a line directly to [email protected] 

 

Posted on December 30th, 2010