Daily Report Card 05052020

My week­ly goal

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

Com­bined Score 40

Process Report Card (10 each)       

10 Pre-mar­ket routines

5 Ses­sion PECS

0 Trad­ing the process

10 Dai­ly review

0 Progress toward Week­ly goal

25 Total

Per­for­mance Report Card (10 each)

0 Hypos

5 Real-time analysis

0 Trade selection

10 Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.

0 Risk Adjust­ed Returns

15 Total

Hypos

1. BD Prev. Day Low / D1 Con­ter­mi­nous Line (short)
   1. Lon­don open below PVAL + Range, IB exten­sion to down­side (price action con­firm­ing) indi­cat­ing con­tin­u­a­tion and BD H4/M30 Demand ZOI
   2. Tar­gets 1.404, 1.4027
2. Range bound 1.404–1.408

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket context?

None of my hypos played out. Did poor­ly here. Also, going to switch over to a for­mat that is non-conjecture. 

How well did I fol­low my process?

I thought I was doing well to let mar­ket nar­ra­tive guide me and since no set­up aligned with it I decid­ed to not trade today. I was point­ed out by my men­tor I failed on sev­er­al crit­i­cal points:

• Chart­ing soft­ware H4 can­dle open not align­ing with Lon­don open (the ses­sion that I trade)
  • A 4‑hour can­dle that is com­prised out of one half Asians ses­sion, less liq­uid­i­ty price action and the oth­er half Euro­pean ses­sion high­er liq­uid­i­ty price action dis­plays a skewed per­spec­tive of the mar­ket. Today, I didn’t see a H4 Sup­ply ZOI, where if I had the right bro­ker I would have. 
  • This then caused me to not take a trade out of lack of con­fi­dence (among oth­er things) because there was no high­er time frame Sup­ply ZOI to help jus­ti­fy a poten­tial swing reversal. 
    • Oth­er fac­tors were:
      • Hav­ing had decid­ed to let M30 guide my trades and stay away from M5 for less­er but more qual­i­ty trades
      • Hav­ing missed the best entry loca­tion to take the trade. But then when it test­ed the M5 con­ter­mi­nous line again I could have entered again but with my mind being on ‘nope, not tak­ing this trade’ I decid­ed to let it go
  • Solu­tion: open a live account with a Lon­don-based bro­ker. Still research­ing LCG or JFD.
• Under­stand­ing that towards the sec­ond half of the ses­sion I can dig down to low­er time frames for price con­fir­ma­tion at high­er time frame trade loca­tions to con­firm an entry that is based on devel­op­ing mar­ket nar­ra­tive. The rea­son for this is that dur­ing the course of the ses­sion I am run­ning out of time to wait for a M30 can­dle to ‘show me the way’. I need to be flat at noon Lon­don time. 
• Because this is an uncer­tain envi­ron­ment I will focus on what is devel­op­ing in front of me to keep things simple. 
  • Write a clear non-con­jec­ture pre­mar­ket plan and focus on non-con­jec­ture devel­op­ment dur­ing the session. 
  • All that mat­ters in an uncer­tain envi­ron­ment is: once my lev­el is reached, what is hap­pen­ing NOW?

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

I did well phys­i­cal­ly, but when I was met with com­ments on tak­ing a trade late in the ses­sion, I felt I hes­i­tat­ed. Although my hes­i­ta­tion and con­se­quent deci­sion to not trade was valid with the infor­ma­tion that I had before me, I was point­ed to the points already addressed above. 

What’s one thing you learned today?

It’s okay to make mis­takes. As long as I learn from them and cre­ate a process to pre­vent them in the future. Or at least, lessen the prob­a­bil­i­ty of repeat­ing the mis­take. We’re human. 

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

Be a sponge and soak up all the expe­ri­ence and cre­ate a process for a sys­tem­at­ic approach to improve and make the expe­ri­ence my own.

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

Sev­er­al things already out­lined above but I’ll boil it down to one point: ‘Be a mup­pet’ 🙂 Get­ting there. Step by step. 

For my trade plan(s) on this par­tic­u­lar day, go here:

Pre­mar­ket Prep USDCAD 05052020

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