Goodbye, 2021.

Stick a fork in 2021. It's done. Isn't it so great to be done with this year? Yes. Yes, it is. I'm ready for 2022. What could possibly go wrong in the world next year that's worse than Covid, super volcano? Don't answer that.

There's been some progress on the internet front. I've mentioned the broadband utility boxes for fiber that have been going up around me but not here. This week saw one of these appear:

The thing about this that concerns me is that this is the electric pole at the road. There's another one between the road and the house that has no green box. Is another one coming later? Are these wireless? We'll find out. I'd hate for them to skip me because I'm not close enough to the road, but I'm concerned.

How soon will broadband be available? I asked about that at one of the power company offices, since they're the ones who own these boxes. If you're not sitting down, this would be a good time. I was told that once the service is ready to use, I'll be sent a letter in the mail to sign up for it. After I sign up, it'll be 12 to 14 weeks before it's hooked up. What? Three to 3.5 months for somebody to flip a switch? Wow. The minimum speed is 200Mbps, though. I'm currently using my cell phone for internet at 5Mbps after dumping my old ISP that only offers DSL here at 1.5Mbps. There's no timetable on when the service will be ready where I am. The 3 to 3.5 months can't even begin until then.

There's some good news on the Forex trading front. As mentioned before, I've been doing a trial for that that will hopefully lead to a side gig, but after a glitch with a trade, it looked like I wouldn't meet the money goal. I didn't blow the account, but I didn't meet the goal in the allotted time either. I expected an email to let me know I'd failed. There wasn't one. Either it's lost in the holidays or they've given me an extension. We'll see what happens..

Have a great weekend.

Holiday Greetings

Merry Christmas!

Have a great weekend.

Trial Basis 3

Still no fiber internet, though more crews were working on the trees along the road this week where the power lines are. I assume, once they're done, that the fiber installation crews will be back and begin installing the rest of the infrastructure they didn't finish. I hope it's this year.

It was a down week on the Forex trading front. I never really recovered from the glitch I mentioned last week. I've been trading defensively. I've tried to make adjustments. It's not really working. I should have stuck more closely to my original strategy. I haven't blown the account, but I'm currently not on pace to pass the trial.

It turns out the glitch may not have been because of 4G LTE internet like I thought, though I certainly have enough of those. I was about to make a trade this week and noticed the ask price was way higher, about $200 higher, than the displayed price. The ask price is the actual sale price regardless of the displayed price. So, it's possible and likely probable that, instead of an LTE glitch, I may not have noticed a massive price discrepancy between the ask and the bid. Normally, they're quite close, within $10. If that's the case, then it was an inexperience mistake.

Next week will be the last week of the trial. If I don't pass, I can always redo it. Of course, I would take a break and do more paper trading between trials as well as studying more. My plan for next week is to stick to what works when I paper trade and try not to get distracted with doubts and nerves. Reaching the price goal might be difficult, but closing above break even would still be a consolation win. I'm concerned about the holidays. The market has felt sluggish this month compared to last month. What will it do right before Christmas? I've been thinking all month that this was the worst month to try this. If I end up having to redo it, I'm definitely waiting until after the holidays, including New Year's.

As for the demo account I opened with a broker, I set that up in TradingView this week. For some reason I'm not allowed to set a take profit price or a stop loss price when doing a market trade. With paper trading, setting those works like a dream. I can set it all up ahead of time and just click a button to make a trade the second I see a setup. I do it while paper trading "real" trades and also to do small trades when I get tired of waiting on a setup. I can snipe little $30ish to $50ish trades between setups. Four or five of those later and I can have $200 extra in my paper trading account. It's not easy to do, but it's super easy to set up and execute small trades.

I don't know if not being able to set a take profit and a stop loss is a broker rule or if it's because I'm using the free version of TradingView. That's something I need to look into more this weekend. I couldn't find it this week. If it's a broker rule, that might be a deal breaker. That would make it even harder to work with than Metatrader 4, which is a steaming pile to use.

Have a great weekend.

Trial Basis 2

There's still no fiber internet here, though work crews have been clearing all the brush and trees between power poles. It's gone like this. First, they cleared brush and small trees. Second, they cleared low tree limbs. Yesterday, they cut branches high up in the trees. Next to power poles in the area, I've seen some more of the green broadband utility boxes for fiber internet that I've mentioned before. There's still not one at my pole yet, but maybe now that the tree guys seem to be done, it'll happen. Hopefully soon, because I need a solid internet connection.

The sales job that I'm on a trial basis for is trading Forex. That's why it's taken so long to get going with it. It's a complicated field that requires a certain amount of study and preparation. I didn't jump into it. I had to study a lot first, and I still need to study a lot. Also, I've successfully dabbled at trading stocks in the past, so I was already familiar with the fundamentals. You can see why I haven't mentioned it before. It's one of those things that people fail hard at. If it didn't look like it was going to work, I was going to sweep it under the rug.

So, last week was a good week. This week was a bad week. I'm down from where I started. Remember how I have 4G LTE internet that is not "always on" the way DSL is? For ordinary internet, I usually can't tell the difference. However, when hundredths of a second count, I can. I placed this one trade, and somehow I was immediately $100 below where the price should have been. I didn't handle it the way I "should have" and ended up in a hole. I made nervous mistakes. That was near the start of the week. I've been slowly recovering ever since. Since that LTE glitch, like the first week, I'm on an upward trend. I've had other glitches, but fortunately, those were paper trades. I desperately need always on internet.

Whether I can reach the price target(details mentioned previously) I'm supposed to is now in doubt. Even though I'm recovering from the glitch, it's been slow going. Part of the problem is I'm being forced to use free Metatrader 4, which is user unfriendly because they make their money selling automated software tools for it. Before this, I was paper trading with the free version of TradingView, which is so streamlined and friendly compared to MT4.

With MT4 you have to input all the pricing numbers manually. With TradingView you can input dollar amounts(pips) and let the software input the pricing numbers for you. So, I have price signals that I wait for, and then I make a trade. The problem is that the signals don't always work. I wait to make sure the price is going the right direction then hit the buy or sell button. With TradingView, it's automatic. With MT4 I'm missing hundreds of dollars in trades because the price moves too fast for me to manually input more than one trade. While I'm dithering waiting to make sure the setup is right or finding the price numbers, trades are getting away from me. For example, I missed about $200 today on two trades when I got an "invalid parameter" error when I hit the buy button. By the time I fairly quickly diagnosed the problem and changed the numbers, the trades were gone. I think what happened was that, when I set the trade up ahead of time trying to be faster, the price moved too far from my original numbers too fast. In TradingView I can make 3 or more trades for every one in MT4. I'm hoping that I'll get faster over time after I've been using the software longer and get more experience.

Another problem this week has been psychological. After that glitch, I've had to be super cautious, and that's making me miss trades, too. I find myself afraid to commit to trades. I overthink trades and setups. As my balance has crept up, I've calmed down. Next week should be better.

The good news is that I'm getting better over time. Honestly, I should have paper traded a week or two longer for the practice. Nevertheless, I'm getting the experience now. I haven't blown the account or dropped low enough to fail the challenge. I've learned another trade setup, although it doesn't always work. I have until the last week of the month to hit my price target. Next week should be a pivotal week that will tell me how it's going to turn out.

If I hit the price target in this phase, I'll move on the phase 2, which is a lot easier. I've also started a demo account with a broker that works with TradingView. I haven't started trading on it yet, but I will next week. If I can be successful with that, I'll almost certainly open a real account. It would be small, but it would work with TradingView.

Have a great weekend.

Trial Basis

There was no blog last week because there was no internet. The 4G LTE data for my mobile hot spot stopped working, a problem I've blogged about before(Verizon).

Still no land-based broadband, though a company was out yesterday and the day before, trimming tree limbs around the power lines. I saw another green broadband utility box for fiber not far down the road. I'm now between green box installations. Hopefully, once the trees are trimmed enough, they'll install a box here and get the internet connection running. They don't seem to be in a big hurry.

I'm closer to starting the part-time job. I'm working on a trial basis for a company. In phase one, if I can make $800 in profit within 30 days, I'll move to phase 2 in which I'll only have to make $500. If I can pass both phases, I'll join the team. I'm just over 20% toward the $800 goal with three weeks to go. I should be at least up to 25%, so I'm behind. Nevertheless, I'm learning a lot. I'm running late today. I plan to have more detailed information next week.

Have a great weekend.