My word, a lot can happen in a month!

Since my June update, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Barry Burns, He Shuhan, Peter Davies and Sean Udall (and by the time this goes live you’ll have also heard from Leonardo Barata).

It’s hard to say where I’ll end up on this journey and I must say the interviews in July have enlightened me to the point where things are starting to come together and make a lot more sense.

It all started when I met He Shuhan who was kind enough to:

1. Give me the same system he trades (including his own indicators)
2. Point me (and you listeners out there) in the direction of Volume Spread Analysis

Trading He Shuhan’s System

He Shuhan was able to demonstrate to me over Skype how he managed to turn a $35 account into over $700 in just a few hours of trading Spot Forex using his system. In all my 7 years in the markets I’ve never seen results like this before and with his system in my hands I thought I had to give it a go.

Here’s what He Shuhan was able to produce in just a few short hours:

And after a few more hours, here’s where he ended up:

Now, before you check out my statement below, there was one thing that prevented me from having the same results as above and also stopped my experiment short almost immediately.

It was a simple case of my PC not being able to cope with his indicators. They were using so much processing power my computer almost came to a halt. In actual fact it did, so I moved to a newer computer and managed to get it to work, albeit very slowly. Too slow in fact that the market had moved on by the time my orders were being filled and the end result was … well… this… (click for full statement)

Not pretty eh!

In all fairness, the last two trades (at the end of the month) were not He Shuhan’s. So only trades 1-11 are the results of my slow PC trying to work with this sophisticated Renko based indicator.

It isn’t until now that I look back at my July goals and see that my goal was to “not trade”… Hmmm, somehow this slipped my mind. That said, I was able to stop myself from spiraling out of control. So I have to give myself some credit for that.

Which takes me onto the great insights my guests in July were able to provide.

Lessons from July’s Guest

1. Read up on Volume Spread Analysis (VSA) – He Shuhan
   • So I did just that and what I learned amazed me! It is what I’d consider essential reading for any newbie. I can’t believe it’s taken me seven years to hear about VSA and, now, reading about the fundamental thinking behind it has changed my perception of the markets forever. So much so that I jumped on a chart just after reading this VSA article and could see the accumulation and deccumulation in the markets immediately.
2. You can trade by looking just looking at Volume – Peter Davies
   • After my VSA revelation, my interview with Peter only confirmed this further. It also took me back to my interview with Thomas Barmann where he talked about the big institutions leaving trails in the charts (like elephants). I now understood what he was referring to: Volume (and its interaction with price).
3. Approach the market like you’re going into battle – Sean Udall
   • This really hit home for me personally. So often I had thought about the market being me versus a chart. But now I look at it as me versus a whole lot of people and organisations that want to take my money… All of a sudden you have to step back and ask yourself “Are you really ready to take that leap?”. It goes back to when I first read Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas and he talked about the difference between the physical process of placing a trade and the act of trading being very easy and how this is in conflict with what you are really doing. It’s a bit like sending an email. It’s easy to put an email address in and click send, but it’s the content of the email and who you’re sending it to which will produce a change or outcome on the other end.
4. Master yourself is the hardest and most important thing to do – Barry Burns
   • Back to my point above. The act of placing a trade is so easy; it’s the control one has to NOT place a trade that is hard. I’m only just starting to fully understand this. Peter Davies also mentioned this. He focuses on not placing a trade for the entire 5-6 hour session, that’s his goal.
5. Invest “significantly” in learning before placing your first trade – Leonardo Barata
   • As I saw in July, it was too easy for me to get a new system and start placing trades without fully understanding the ins and outs. Given my guests are just some of the people who will be looking to take my money, investing the time and energy in learning and practicing as much as I can is what my next step should be once I have decided on my final path.

Where to next with my trading?

I’m now ultra focused on Volume and Richard Wykcoff’s VSA work. That said, if it took Leonardo 18 months to learn, then I have my work cut out for me and by episode 52 I might not quite be there.

I have some VSA traders coming up on the show so this may cut my learning time down somewhat as the insights I can glean and potential help I can get might save me time sifting through the rubbish in the forums like Leonardo had to do.

Goals for July

• Read up on Volume Spread Analysis book recommendation from Leonardo
  (Note, a free link to the PDF version of “Master the Markets” can be found here)
• Find more VSA traders to interview
• Don’t place any live trades!

Volume Spread Analysis Shortcut…

Some of you may not have the patience to learn VSA from scratch and go through the trials and tribulations to become profitable. If that sounds like you then there is another way!

I’ve arranged with Leonardo a 52 Traders 10% discount for the month of August. Simply click the link below, use the special coupon and you’ll receive 10% off his proprietary indicators:

• Click here to grab Leonardo’s VSA System & Indicators
  (free indicators are also available on the site)
• 10% coupon code: 52traderscoupon
• Expires: 31st August 2015