Analyzing your Trading stats Month 9

#fin­twit #order­flow #day­trad­ing #trad­ing­forex #forex #trad­ingjour­nal #day­trad­ing #trad­inglifestyle #day­trader­life #track­y­ourstats #trad­ingstats

So you’ve been trad­ing for a while. How do you know what to look for? How do you know what you are doing right and wrong? Which set­up works best? What time of day works best? How long do I let win­ners and losers run? How much is my expectan­cy? What is my risk to reward ratio? In oth­er words: how much mon­ey am I putting on the line to make how much? Just by look­ing at these stats you will get real insight into your strengths and weak­ness­es. Do not over­look this. Do not be one of those peo­ple that just trade and trade and trade but nev­er review and won­der where they went wrong. You need to know what to improve upon. 

Thank you for fol­low­ing my progress

First off. For those of you that have been fol­low­ing my jour­ney I’d like to give a big thank you! Almost every­day I upload trad­ing plans and a Dai­ly Report Card. I sin­cere­ly hope my jour­ney some­how adds to your own. Keep in mind that this is my jour­ney and might not fit yours. It is up to you to decide what you’d like to take away from this and what to ignore. This is not advice what­so­ev­er. Hav­ing said that… Let’s get it on!

Process

The stats that I am about to share with you help me track what I deem to be impor­tant. These most­ly focus more on my process than actu­al­ly mak­ing mon­ey. Process is king. Mon­ey is just a result of per­form­ing well on your process. Let’s get to some stats.

DRC Tracking Stats

Here you can find the details of my DRC track­ing sheet. DRC stands for Dai­ly Report Cards. If you would like to take a look at some exam­ples you can do so here. Every trad­ing day I recap my notes, trades, and per­for­mance. I grade myself on how well I exe­cut­ed my plan as this is the most impor­tant. Liv­ing in a prob­a­bilis­tic world of trad­ing mak­ing mon­ey is a side-effect of trad­ing your plan. No one real trad­er in the world has a 100% win rate (if they are please run away quick­ly). If you like to know more on how I track my stats just hit me up. I freely share this information. 

Here you can down­load the raw data I track everyday.

Trades

Feb­ru­ary was def­i­nite­ly bet­ter than Jan­u­ary. Looks like things are pick­ing up again. The dust has set­tled and we might be in for some fun until the Sum­mer months come knock­ing. So I took 7 trades in total. I am still try­ing to decide what the bal­ance is in me actu­al­ly not hav­ing any oppor­tu­ni­ties or per­haps feel­ing less con­fi­dent tak­ing trades. More on that lat­er. But yeah… 5 win­ners and 2 losers. Since I rarely look at the win­ners (as they will take care of them­selves although I do review etc.) I will focus on the loss­es. Before we get to that I like to look at if I missed any oppor­tu­ni­ties and if so why?

Oppor­tu­ni­ties Presented

Please under­stand that a lot of these met­rics have a lev­el of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty about them. In terms of what I deter­mine to be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for exam­ple. Although I use a sys­tem­at­ic approach and thus have hard rules to trade. I am also improv­ing my entries and thus my rules are ever slight­ly chang­ing a bit. So one time I’ll take an oppor­tu­ni­ty where the next I might not based on these ‘new’ rules as I am gain­ing con­fi­dence on trad­ing the low­er time­frames. You have to fig­ure out the frame­work of which you your­self will grade your­self on a job well done or not. These are mine… With that out of the way. 

I first have to make the sep­a­ra­tion between GBPNZD and Gold. I pri­mar­i­ly focus on GBPNZD but when ranges are too tight (thus sta­tis­ti­cal­ly oblit­er­at­ing my edge) I focus on Gold. 

The first week of GBPNZD the ranges were too tight and could not trade it. For the whole month I sat down to observe the mar­ket (not trade, we don’t trade for trad­ing sake. We observe, take notes, if an oppor­tu­ni­ty comes to us we exe­cute) only 8 days. Not going to talk about the days that the range was too tight or I couldn’t, did not want to, what­ev­er rea­son, not trade that day. 

From the 9 days I observed there were 7 days that pre­sent­ed with an oppor­tu­ni­ty. 2 days I actu­al­ly took the oppor­tu­ni­ty. Then anoth­er day I took the wrong oppor­tu­ni­ty and got stopped out. We’ll talk about that in a bit. 3 trades tak­en. I lost ‑1R and ‑0.4R, then I made 0.30R.

With Gold I also sat down 13 days to observe. Of these days 5 pre­sent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties of which I cap­i­tal­ized 4 times. Wins: 0.80R, 1.9R, 2R, and 0.25R. Loss­es: none. That leaves us with one day that I didn’t act on the oppor­tu­ni­ty. That day I was very much focused on GBPNZD plus the entry would have been on a M5 which is not my nor­mal time­frame for entry. I need to earn the right to trade more off M5. For now, as I will explain lat­er more, I focus on M30/M15 com­bi­na­tions. Mean­ing a pat­tern might be form­ing on M30 so I look for M15 to con­firm that tran­si­tion to take an ear­li­er entry (if possible). 

Let’s talk loss­es. Noooooo I NEVER LOSE!!! Oh I do indeed….

• Fri­day 2/5 (-1R): It was my first day of trad­ing for the month as ranges were still too tight on Wednes­day and Thurs­day. Fri­day the range was slight­ly tighter than I like to have but still sta­tis­ti­cal­ly okay. There actu­al­ly might be a cor­re­la­tion between tighter ranges and price action adher­ing more to H1 price action than the nor­mal M30. This time we had, what I thought was a valid read­ing of con­text based off M30 price action, but turned to dis­re­gard that and ‘respect’ H1 price action more. Usu­al­ly I look at the H1 to ‘sup­ple­ment’ the M30 price action with­in a H4 nar­ra­tive (with­in a larg­er time­frame nar­ra­tive, I know com­plex shit but it’s not real­ly). But under cer­tain mar­ket con­di­tions I find the mar­ket dis­re­gards the ‘nor­mal’ mar­ket behav­iour and slight­ly skews it. This is one big point I need fur­ther research on as this is still a fair­ly new real­iza­tion. Sure­ly, more on that in the future. SO because of a ‘false’ read­ing of the nar­ra­tive I got stopped out quick­ly (this is when I know I shouldn’t have been in the trade to begin with) and lost ‑1R. 
• Mon­day 2/8 (-0.40R): 2nd day of trad­ing and anoth­er loss. I’ll dive into a pos­si­ble sce­nario lat­er on. I took a trade based on my trad­ing plan but it sim­ply didn’t work out. Noth­ing to see here folks. Mov­ing along.

Equi­ty curve

Start­ed the month with +7.18% and cur­rent­ly I am at +11.33%. Up by +4.15%. 

Feb­ru­ary

Over­all Evaluation

Monthly DRC Tracking Stats

I thought it was about time to dive a lit­tle deep­er into some stats. I don’t want to focus too much on these every month as I need a larg­er data sam­ple for these stats to have more val­ue. These stats I sim­ply look at out­liers. Stats that stick out rather than look at its entire­ty because they don’t mat­ter as much. The out­liers give me more insight in where I still need improve­ment or to tell me where my edge is slight­ly better.

Day of the week

For exam­ple here you can see I take more trades Wednes­day to Fri­day more than on Mon­day and Tues­day. Although, win rate on Mon­days and Tues­days are high­er. With Tues­day tak­ing the cake. This could be due to a cor­rec­tion on Mon­day to the pre­vi­ous week’s close as mar­kets like to move in swings. Like Fri­days we could see prof­it-tak­ing to the move ear­li­er in the week. 

Open Val­ue Sentiment

The sec­ond fac­tor I track is the open val­ue sen­ti­ment. With this I track the val­ue loca­tion of the Lon­don open ie. with­in val­ue, above/below, inside,outside range. All these have impli­ca­tions on the (im)balance in the mar­ket. For exam­ple an open with­in (can) indi­cate the mar­ket is balancing. 

From these stats we can see the out­liers I have a high­er win rate on Open Above/Below Val­ue, Out­side Range which indi­cates I like tak­ing mean rever­sion trades. Which makes sense as I do like going against the grain so most­ly I look for rever­sals or mean rever­sions. I find it less near to my per­son­al­i­ty to take a trend-fol­low­ing set­up even though I do take those. I am just slight­ly less com­fort­able with them. 

The rest are about the same to me with a slight out­lier in a high­er win rate on an open with­in value.

Entry TPO

Here I track dur­ing which TPO I take entries and thus get insight where my edge is bet­ter. Again we are look­ing for out­liers. I like tak­ing trades dur­ing C and D TPOs but what you can also see is that D has a much high­er win rate. Thus I could con­clude to either elim­i­nate tak­ing trades dur­ing C or find a bet­ter way to under­stand why they don’t work. Me being me I like to focus on the lat­ter. Thus for the last 2 months I have raised my win rate dur­ing C. 12% increase in Jan­u­ary, 8% in Feb­ru­ary. I reaf­firmed (although need a big­ger sam­ple size to have a more pos­i­tive expectan­cy) the Day Trad­ing Time Zones and under­stand­ing mar­ket con­di­tions con­ducive to a momen­tum trade as taught by Dee. On my low point I only had a 7% win rate dur­ing C so with now sit­ting on 38% I would con­sid­er that a sig­nif­i­cant increase. 

Hypos

Every trad­ing day I for­mu­late 1 to 3, some­times 4, hypothe­ses. These give me a frame­work to what I expect to see in the mar­ket on that day. Then dur­ing the ses­sion I wait for price action to con­firm or negate a hypoth­e­sis. If price action con­firms I exe­cute a trade. If the trade is based on a hypo it is more like­ly to be a good trade (no guar­an­tees of course, we are sim­ply look­ing for high­er prob­a­bil­i­ty out­comes). So win or loss it was a good trade. This is not always the case as I of course make mis­takes and exe­cute a trade on the wrong hypo. But by track­ing these stats I get bet­ter insights into 1) did I for­mu­late the right hypo 2) did I exe­cute based on the hypo and if not I gain insights into why I did not. Using these met­rics I keep myself in check but also gath­er data on if I am hes­i­tat­ing more than not or if I am not aligned with mar­ket conditions. 

Here you can see that most of the times I am cor­rect in my first hypoth­e­sis (hypo 1) of what the mar­ket is more like­ly to do. Then I also start­ed track­ing (this month) to what extend that hypo played out. If you look at my hypothe­ses here you can see that I also hypoth­e­size what price action or order­flow event I pre­fer to see. Then I grade myself on the cor­rect­ness of said assump­tion. So 1) was the hypoth­e­sis a valid one 2) to what extent was it valid? No real out­liers here as hypo 1 to 3 are 83% to 85% again there’s a good lev­el of sub­jec­tive­ness in track­ing these. Hence the stronger need to focus on out­liers as it is in the extremes that we can poten­tial­ly find valu­able information. 

Objectives

So, one thing I learned this month is that I feel I am putting unneed­ed pres­sure on myself by shar­ing prof­its etc. Trad­ing is already hard as it is and any extra pres­sure is def­i­nite­ly not need­ed. There­fore, for one, I decid­ed to take away my P&L posts in my dai­ly report cards that I post dai­ly. Also, I’ll be focus­ing on what I call my main fund. I trade a small­er account and then use FX syn­er­gy to copy my trades to a big­ger account. This kind of helps with not look­ing at a big­ger amount in terms of P&L. Although I feel it is not so much a big fac­tor I will only find out when test­ing in real time. Thus I just sim­ply have to do more of it to cre­ate a larg­er sam­ple size for me to base con­clu­sions on. 

One thing I noticed is that I take more trades using my small­er account than I actu­al­ly trade with my ‘main/bigger account’. Which you could argue which one is the main then… I need to focus on trad­ing my big­ger account (which I dubbed my main account from now on). This way I hope to: 1) feel com­fort­able trad­ing big­ger size, 2) don’t have con­vo­lut­ed sta­tis­tics on my trades. Hence, I expect next month to even take less trades as I am a bit more picky trad­ing this main account. 

I am try­ing to get into the flow and am not forc­ing myself to trade unless I feel com­fort­able tak­ing a trade. I know that I am not shy at all when it comes to tak­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty. So I don’t expect turn­ing into some owl wait­ing for a myr­i­ad of con­flu­ences before act­ing. I want the trades to come to me. BUT… by hav­ing these two accounts I eas­i­ly take trades I might not have tak­en on the main account even though they are good trades. It kin­da became a crutch. So because of this my main objec­tive for next month is to only trade the main account (in con­junc­tion with the small­er account as I copy trades over but always together). 

I will use both as I also use it to gath­er sta­tis­tics with. But if a trade is worth trad­ing I will trade it on both accounts oth­er­wise not trade. Because now I am up on my small­er account but broke even on my main fund. Which is obvi­ous­ly not the goal here. 

I am not going to share too much about my main account at the moment until I have a larg­er sam­ple size. For exam­ple, It is not doing any­one any good when I have tak­en one trade and it was a win­ner (yaaayy 100% win rate). So hang tight I will share in due time. 

Pre­vi­ous Month­ly Goals

• Con­tin­ue track­ing hypos
  • I love this exer­cise and it real­ly makes me focus more on the process than focus­ing on mak­ing mon­ey. Mon­ey is a mere side-effect of fol­low­ing your process (with sta­tis­ti­cal­ly viable edge) well. 
• Focus on my own progress and less on others
  • I have been doing well on this part BUT I am going to add some­thing to it. I find I look at Twit­ter too much and am some­times neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by see­ing oth­er people’s stat­ed prof­its. Real or not. I will still post my trad­ing plans and dai­ly report cards but refrain from check­ing oth­er people’s tweets too much. Kin­da going into hid­ing to focus om my own per­for­mance kin­da thing.
• Feel­ing okay with NOT trading 
  • I do well here but I will keep this for next month as well. One good met­ric I have is that trad­ing is my pas­sion. My love (don’t tell my gf). My pre­cious. So when I am even think­ing if I want to trade that day I basi­cal­ly already know I shouldn’t be trad­ing. I need a lit­tle break. Which is per­fect­ly fine. Although on cer­tain days I do still sit there and observe but I just do not make as much of an effort to look for oppor­tu­ni­ties as I nor­mal­ly do if that makes sense. I focus on tak­ing notes. Don’t always focus on the screens. Catch up on oth­er work etc. You get it.
• Don’t trade dur­ing TPO C, unless there is a momen­tum trade
  • I already addressed this above. My per­for­mance has been increas­ing 7% to 38%!
• Have ‘qui­eter’ weekends
  • Doing well here. I do go on trips more as my gf is an out­doorsy type and I am not so much. I can be behind my screens all day every day. I know I need time away from the screens. Chill. Hang out with friends. Be social. Re-cen­ter and get back fresh. This also remind­ed me of one ‘new’ thing: don’t talk to peo­ple about trad­ing. Most cas­es peo­ple don’t know what we go through. If they have been trad­ing they don’t know what they are doing and it kin­da gets frus­trat­ing. Frus­trat­ing to hear a per­son who just opened a trade to have more con­fi­dence than me who has been trad­ing now over 4 years. I will add it to top­ics I will refrain from. Along side pol­i­tics, reli­gion and cryp­tos…. Oh my god cryp­to traders… Please under­stand I have noth­ing against cryp­tos. I even hold some. It’s just in trad­ing the major­i­ty of peo­ple are sim­ply mup­pets (which I am still at times). With cryp­to attract­ing even more peo­ple means this major­i­ty of mup­pets has ampli­fied. It’s like your aver­age Joe telling a sur­geon: “you see Doc. You’re doing it all wrong! You cut here. You put this here. Then you stitch that fuck­er right up and you’re done”. Haha it’s amus­ing but also sad that the aver­age Joe has a big­ger than nor­mal poten­tial for huge loss­es in the markets.
• Min­i­mum of 3 days of work­ing out, aim for 5.
  • Have been neglect­ing this some­what due to hol­i­days and such but have made an effort again. 

If you have made it all the way through… Here is a FREE LAMBO!!! 

Sor­ry no Lam­bo. Nonethe­less, I great­ly appre­ci­ate your inter­est in my jour­ney. I’m sure it is not an easy read as I tend to get long-wind­ed. If you have any com­ments or sug­ges­tions feel free to let me know. Even though I do like writ­ing I don’t con­sid­er myself to be much of a writer. Get in touch if you have any com­ments or ques­tions or just come say Hi!

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