Daily Report Card 06232020

23 Jun Daily Report Card 06232020

Every trad­ing day I recap my trades, includ­ing more than just entries and exits. Why did I take the trade, how did I man­age the trade as well as my emo­tions and cog­ni­tive func­tion? All the good stuff of being a trad­er as well as all the ugly. No secrets here. As always, feel free to reach out to me. 

My week­ly goal

Fol­low hard entry and exit rules.

Good Pre-mar­ket routines

Good Ses­sion PECS

Good Trade selection

Good Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.

Good Risk Adjust­ed Returns

Yes Dai­ly review

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

Sum­ma­ry: Val­ue Rejec­tion Failure

• GBPNZD opened with­in val­ue so will focus on XAUUSD
• How­ev­er XAUUSD has a very wide IB range like yes­ter­day so we might be in for anoth­er non-trend day
• Cur­rent­ly price is in the mid­dle of a swing so sub-opti­mal trade loca­tion and will sit back and observe
• C TPO extend­ed slight­ly up but then returned and closed with­in IB and M15 evening star formed and I was con­sid­er­ing a short. How­ev­er because we are not at an extreme I sec­ond-guessed myself and did not enter. Per­haps luck­i­ly so because the next M15 can­dle was a bull engulf and 15 min­utes lat­er we closed with a M30 RBR bull engulf.
• I am hes­i­tant to go long as well because of the sup­ply quite near over­head (com­bined with M30 in a range and sup­ply con­flu­ence with UKC). This would mean no 2R oppor­tu­ni­ty. So I will just sit and observe.
• An entry point could have been a 2nd chance entry on the M30 bull engulf so took note of that. 
• Slow/medium reac­tive activ­i­ty on Gold
• End­ed up not tak­ing any trades but just sit­ting and observ­ing. There was a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty on GBPNZD that I was point­ed to which I have out­lined into my play­book and record­ed in EW for review lat­er and hope­ful­ly can catch it next time.

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket context?

• I did fair­ly OK here. I did not see a clear entry and was ‘sec­ond-guess­ing’ any trade that I want­ed to put on. Now, regard­less of the under­ly­ing poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ty, this alone is enough rea­son to NOT TRADE on a giv­en day. How­ev­er, in my case I find that when I am in this mode I am try­ing to force a set­up and my sub­con­scious is try­ing to fight back. Hence a great sig­nal for me to know when NOT to take a trade since my sub­con­scious brain doesn’t like what it sees. This could just be my ego talk­ing try­ing to jus­ti­fy not tak­ing a trade but I have been more right on this then wrong so will con­tin­ue to lis­ten to it. Of course it didn’t just boil down to this ‘feel­ing’ but also hav­ing sup­ply in the way which would not have made a ‘clean’ break towards my 2R tar­get. This was enough for me to not take any trades on XAUUSD. The rea­son I didn’t trade on GBPNZD was because of an open inside val­ue and shift­ing focus to Gold instead. 

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

• No trades taken

How well did I fol­low my process?

• I think I did well here fol­low­ing my observations

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

• Did well here

What did I learn today?

• I learned that due to the ‘nature’ of a giv­en asset the under­ly­ing can react dif­fer­ent­ly to cer­tain sit­u­a­tions. For exam­ple thick vs. thin mar­kets behave dif­fer­ent­ly. Sce­nar­ios I can’t trade in a thick mar­ket like USDCAD (due to being a major FX Pair) I can in GBPNZD. I record­ed this ‘missed trade’ into EW and will review it again this week­end when I go over all of my trades of the week. 

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

• Trust my ‘instincts’ and be okay to be flat. Although this should not become a habit and turn­ing into an owl but don’t think that’s like­ly. I’m a grasshop­per at heart that I am try­ing to tame but will nev­er real­ly lose 🙂 I think I am grow­ing more con­fi­dent in my own abil­i­ty to spot a good (or at least bet­ter) trad­ing opportunity.

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

• I am more and more try­ing to nit­pick what I should do less which is a good sign. How­ev­er… for today I would say to not get too cocky about being on the right path. Sure­ly I am doing things bet­ter and learn­ing a lot. Doing more of the good and less of the bad but can’t get too high up think­ing I’ve made it. I still have a LONG way to go to real­ly put the dif­fer­ent mechan­ics of the mar­ket togeth­er and be ‘flu­ent in this lan­guage’ as I like to call it. You’ll nev­er mas­ter a mar­ket but you can mas­ter your­self as best as you can through know­ing and improv­ing your abil­i­ties as well as expectations. 

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold XAUUSD 06232020

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 06232020