Daily Report Card 06082020

My week­ly goal

Only take trades when there are at least 4 con­flu­ences. Trade loca­tion. Mar­ket Pro­file. Price action con­fir­ma­tion. Fol­low hard entry and exit rules.

Good Pre-mar­ket routines

Good Ses­sion PECS

Good Trade selection

Fair Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.

Good Risk Adjust­ed Returns

Yes Dai­ly review

Mup­pet meter (1 being best — 5 being worst): 2

Sum­ma­ry: Mean Reversion

• Lon­don opened slight­ly above VA but trad­ed down into VA clos­ing halfway through (dur­ing A) tak­ing out M30 Sup­ply. Will need to see a rejec­tion of VA before con­sid­er­ing a trade since Val­ue accep­tance has crossed halfway there is not much room for prof­it mar­gin to PVAL for val­ue rota­tion. For now just sit back and observe
• Price closed below PVAL with­in M30/H1 Demand. I am mon­i­tor­ing a con­sol­i­da­tion on the low­er time frames to see if we will see a con­tin­u­a­tion or reversal
  • In case of a con­tin­u­a­tion we have 50 pips left in the session
• Price is a lit­tle jumpy
• First M5 Bull Engulf indi­cat­ing a pos­si­ble rever­sal, but need more con­fir­ma­tion then the weak M15 inside bar
• Buy­ing tail tak­en out form­ing a poor low for now, wait­ing for 4th TPO close and price action con­fir­ma­tion to poten­tial­ly go long
• M30 DBD wait­ing for retest new con­ter­mi­nous for entry short after miss­ing the M15 con­sol­i­da­tion with bear engulf entry
• M30 retest of new­ly formed con­ter­mi­nous (M30 DBD) at PVAL after H4 Demand being tak­en out, TPOs mak­ing LLs and 33 pips left in session
  • Entry 1.94247 SL 1.94447 TP 1.93847
  • Cons M15 Bull Engulf, late in the ses­sion but still with­in trad­ing window
• G made a LL
• H opened in low­er exten­sion and con­tin­ued mak­ing a LL
• TP at 1.93914 
  • Price would have hit my TP but got eager to take the trade off and took prof­it at 1.93914 (1.7R) instead of my TP lev­el off 1.93849 leav­ing 6.5 pips on the table. I total­ly did­n’t think of the M15 can­dle close rule and when it hov­ered above my TP (btw the spread means I still would have need­ed the price to go fur­ther to actu­al­ly hit my TP which it in the end did). I was star­ing at the sin­gle print H TPOs and near­ing H4 demand (plus ses­sion being exhaust­ed) I con­sid­ered a pos­si­ble rever­sal and took the trade off.
  • I should have been more patient because of 1) M15 can­dle close rule not hit 2) No demand on the low­er time­frames in the way, just the H4 3) time-based stop had­n’t hit.
• After­math
  • As point­ed out above the trade would have con­tin­ued in my favor but is show­ing first signs of a pos­si­ble rever­sal. H has cre­at­ed a buy­ing tail for now. 

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket context?

• I well going through the charts and look­ing for clues based on OODA. I was actu­al­ly wait­ing for a long oppor­tu­ni­ty with the M15 con­sol­i­da­tion at H1-C‑D 1.94318 but when demand got tak­en out and the con­sol­i­da­tion end­ed with a bear engulf I shift­ed to a slight­ly bear­ish bias. 
• When price retraced to M15 con­ter­mi­nous I was con­sid­er­ing to go short but missed my oppor­tu­ni­ty because I was con­sid­er­ing a M30 con­sol­i­da­tion as well. When I saw that the M30 inside bar turned to be a DBD for­ma­tion I wait­ed for a retrace­ment back to M30 con­ter­mi­nous before going short. The rest is detailed above.

How did I feel before, dur­ing, and after the trade?

• I felt good before the trade going through all the charts look­ing for clues to val­i­date or inval­i­date my ini­tial ‘bias’. When this got inval­i­dat­ed I decid­ed to look for an entry in the oth­er direction.
• Dur­ing the trade I mon­i­tored TPO struc­ture and we were mak­ing LLs and M5 was stay­ing nice­ly below VWAP giv­ing me more con­fi­dence. WHen price almost hit my TP I lost my ‘cool’ for a sec­ond and took prof­its too early.
• After the trade I feel good on one side hav­ing spot­ted the oppor­tu­ni­ty based on good fol­low­ing of my process. On the oth­er hand I know I could have done bet­ter by fin­ish­ing to fol­low my process till the end. I will keep rehears­ing this grow more con­fi­dent in my abil­i­ty to read TPO struc­ture com­bined with the knowl­edge that price DOES NOT reverse so quick­ly after a big­ger move down so I have the time to reassess and come up with a bet­ter exit if need be.

How well did I fol­low my process?

• Well in the begin­ning, not too good towards the end as detailed above. Anoth­er thing to note is that I did fair­ly well on siz­ing my posi­tion based on SL size. 

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

• I did fair­ly well here but towards the end I got too eager to take profits. 

What did I learn today?

• Fol­low your plan. After hav­ing spent time to come up with a plan and exe­cut­ing it nice­ly I should let my exit rules take care of the rest. I will put up a post‑t note on my screen to respect the M15 can­dle close rule. Just like I have a process for trad­ing I need to let the process of myself play out to many new neur­al con­nec­tions on learn­ing a new habit. I will get there.

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

• Fol­low the process

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

• Take prof­its too soon!

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 06082020

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