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Thirty Days of FOREX Trading: Trades, Tactics, and Techniques

by Raghee Horner (2006)

Quick summary -- an in-depth PhD-level extended summary (10-30 pages) for this book is coming soon.

Thirty Days of FOREX Trading: Trades, Tactics, and Techniques

by Raghee Horner

Quick Summary

A real-time trading diary documenting thirty consecutive days of forex trading by professional trader Raghee Horner, showing actual trades, decision-making processes, and daily market analysis. The book uses "The Wave" (a set of moving averages) as its primary analytical tool and provides an authentic look at the daily routine of a full-time currency trader.

Categories

  • Forex
  • Day Trading
  • Trading Strategies

Detailed Summary

"Thirty Days of FOREX Trading: Trades, Tactics, and Techniques" by Raghee Horner is structured as a real-time trading journal covering thirty consecutive trading days in the foreign exchange market. This format provides an unusually transparent look at the actual decision-making process, trade management, and daily routine of an active forex trader, including both winning and losing trades.

The book documents Horner's trading from late January through early March, with each chapter corresponding to a single trading day. The diary format captures not just the trades themselves but the analytical process that precedes them, the emotional states during execution, and the retrospective assessments that follow. This real-time documentation is more instructive than post-hoc trade analysis because it preserves the uncertainty and incomplete information that characterize actual trading.

Horner's primary analytical tool is "The Wave," a proprietary combination of exponential moving averages that she uses to identify trend direction, momentum, and potential entry points across multiple timeframes. The Wave's angle and position relative to price serve as the primary filters for trade selection: when it is "traveling at between twelve and two o'clock," the trend is bullish; when angled downward, bearish. Pullbacks to the Wave's upper line in an uptrend provide entry opportunities for long positions.

The daily entries cover the major currency pairs (EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD, USD/CHF) as well as commodity currencies and cross pairs. Horner demonstrates her process for scanning daily charts for potential opportunities, noting how she adapts her approach based on market conditions - for example, excluding certain charts when US markets are closed for holidays.

Practical trade management receives extensive coverage. Horner discusses opening range analysis, her rules for position sizing, stop-loss placement, and profit-taking. She emphasizes the importance of consistency in applying rules, noting "the only reason I can outline these rules with confidence and consistency is because I do this every day and on every trade."

The book also captures the lifestyle aspects of full-time forex trading, including trading from hotel rooms while traveling, managing trading around personal commitments, and maintaining physical health through activities like visiting the chiropractor. These details humanize the trading process and provide realistic expectations about the daily life of a forex trader.

Each daily entry includes chart illustrations showing the specific technical setups analyzed, the entry and exit points of trades taken, and the Wave's positioning at key decision points. The companion CD-ROM (referenced in the text) contains webinar recordings from Horner's Friday Morning Chat sessions where she discusses the week's trading in detail.

The thirty-day format exposes readers to a variety of market conditions including trending days, ranging days, news-driven volatile sessions, and quiet holiday trading. This variety demonstrates the need for adaptability and the reality that not every day presents quality trading opportunities, a lesson that many trading books fail to convey convincingly.