Daily Report Card 04212020

21 Apr Daily Report Card 04212020

My week­ly goal

Only take trades when there are at least 3 con­flu­ences. Trade loca­tion. Mar­ket Pro­file. Price action confirmation. 

Com­bined Score 85

Process Report Card (10 each)       

10 Pre-mar­ket routines 

10 Ses­sion PECS 

10 Trad­ing the process 

10 Dai­ly review 

10 Progress toward Week­ly goal 

50 Total

Per­for­mance Report Card (10 each)

7 Hypos

10 Real-time analysis

10 Trade selection

10 Trade selection

4 Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.

4 Risk Adjust­ed Returns

39 Total

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket context?

My ini­tial hypos that I made in my week­ly trad­ing plan on crude weren’t that great. Gold and SPX500 were bet­ter. Dur­ing the trad­ing ses­sion I did bet­ter. I kept focus on what is unfold­ing in terms of price action rather than try­ing to hold on to my bias. 

How well did I fol­low my process?

I did real­ly well today fol­low­ing my process. I kept focussing on if my hypos were unfold­ing but stay­ing open to changes like in the case of crude oil. We had a huge drop where I had hypoth­e­sized we would see a swing rever­sal. When there was no con­fir­ma­tion of a set­up I stayed out and changed my bias to: unclear to short-biased. How­ev­er, none of my plays set up so I stayed out of the mar­ket. I feel I did well here to only trade when my mar­ket approach aligns with my hypoth­e­sis even though my devel­op­ing hypoth­e­sis was correct. 

With Gold I did well to exe­cute based on my hypoth­e­sis but failed to cap­i­tal­ize on the take prof­it I set. I took my prof­it at only 1x where­as I could have had 7x or more. Real­is­ti­cal­ly my take prof­it was at 3x. I am hap­py I took the trade but unhap­py with how I man­aged it. 

My ini­tial hypo from my week­ly trad­ing plan played real­ly nice­ly although I did­n’t trade it. Rea­sons for this was 1) SPX500 small­est con­tract size is too big for my 2nd account to trade with 2) I am learn­ing and try­ing to make my own what I have learned from Dee’s cours­es 3) I was focused on trad­ing Gold and/or crude oil and for now I lack the con­fi­dence to trade more than one at a time.

How well did I man­age my phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and cog­ni­tive states?

I did real­ly well here. Even though, nor­mal­ly, I would have been shak­en out on gold I let the hypoth­e­sis run its course. Take my stop or take prof­it. One fac­tor that I feel was huge on this was not hav­ing the 5 minute chart open. Less stress­ful this way so I will con­tin­ue to make this a part of my routine. 

What’s one thing you learned today?

Fol­low your process and only if mar­ket nar­ra­tive aligns with your mar­ket approach.

What’s one thing I need to do more often?

After tak­ing a trade go and do some­thing else. It’s okay. You see that often­times it plays out bet­ter than you’ve thought.

What’s one thing I need to do less often?

Focus on one trade. One trade is mean­ing­less. It’s mere­ly one trade out of hun­dreds. Thou­sands even. Focus on exe­cut­ing your plan.