Daily Report Card 07012020

#dai­lyre­port­card #trad­ing­forex #forex #XAUUSD #GOLD #day­trad­ing #trad­inglifestyle #day­trader­life

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

My week­ly goal

My goal for this week is to get my siz­ing right. What­ev­er asset, I need to have the cor­rect con­tract size rep­re­sent­ing 1% of my account.

Good Pre-mar­ket routines

Good Ses­sion PECS

Good Trade selection

Fair Trade siz­ing

Good Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.

Good Risk Adjust­ed Returns

Yes Dai­ly review

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

Sum­ma­ry: Fol­low the process

• GBPNZD opened with­in val­ue so shift­ed my focus to Gold
• Gold opened above val­ue and has trad­ed high­er tak­ing out H4 supply
• M15 con­sol­i­da­tion that end­ed with a bear engulf with­in IB\
  • M30 con­sol­i­da­tion in process
• Still with­in IB. Looks like not much will hap­pen today.
• I watched paint dry. Noth­ing going on with­in my trad­ing win­dow so I’m done for today. Yes guys. Some­times it’s like this.
• Because of no trades today and want­i­ng to rack of stats I will be trad­ing the NY ses­sion as well.

New York

• Opened with­in val­ue after a H4 Bear Engulf dur­ing LN, right below VAL there is H4-C‑D 1772.997 and VWAP
• Price reject­ed val­ue and hit ADR plus PNYC rever­sal. When there was a M5 three inside up I went long. Entry Long: 1769.690 SL 1765.465 TP 1778.046
  • Got stopped out at 1763.917
  • Fig­ured out too late I didn’t cut my siz­ing when I widened my SL. This then turned into a ‑1.5R loss instead of ‑1R
  • Rea­son for get­ting stopped out
    • Too ear­ly into the ses­sion to be using M5 based price action
• 2nd attempt long
  • M15 bull engulf (weak) with same rea­sons as attempt 1
  • Entry 1765.110 SL 1761.390 TP 1771.059 (3R)
  • Got stopped out yet again at 1761.379 for ‑1R loss
  • Rea­son for get­ting stopped out
    • Price likes to pop into a round num­ber (col­lect­ing stops) and my SL was one of them. Live and learn.
• 3 times a charm right?! Decid­ed to take one more trade since I had a clear­er under­stand­ing of what is going on. Plus trad­ing some­thing still rel­a­tive­ly new like Gold I am bound to make mistakes.
  • M5 bull engulf after we popped the round num­ber of 60. Com­bined with buy­ing tail in F, con­fir­ma­tion of trade after entry > M15 morn­ing star. Even though we did­n’t close into the M15 sup­ply, we did now close with a M30 Bull engulf.
  • Cur­rent­ly test­ing new­ly formed demand
  • Closed off time-based at 1770.590 for 1.9R mak­ing up for my mis­takes ear­li­er. Now a total loss for the day of ‑0.6R.

Week­ly Goal Achieve­ment: Have appro­pri­ate sizing

• Did bad­ly on the 1st trade due to repo­si­tion­ing of my SL and for­get­ting to size down since I had put it wider. Did well on the 2 fol­low­ing trades. There is about 10% lee­way on SL. 

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket context?

• I did fair­ly well but jumped the gun a bit on the first trade. Easy solu­tion. Don’t trade off M5 for PNYC. Wait for M15/M30 con­fir­ma­tions. UNLESS there are more con­flu­ences like the pop, ADR exhaus­tion, tim­ing. Did bet­ter on the 2nd trade but did not take into account the round num­ber pop. Did very well on the last trade. 

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

• I felt good before and dur­ing the trade. Actu­al­ly I am more often than not very calm dur­ing a trade because I have my process to fall back on. 
• Same for after a trade. I know I have my process based on stats that gives me the calm­ness to stay with a trade and am less and less affect­ed by losses.

How well did I fol­low my process?

• Did well here

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

• Did well here even though I stayed and trad­ed the NY ses­sion as well. Well, the PNYC part at least which is now past 1am and still writ­ing this DRC. Got­ta do what you got­ta do.

What did I learn today?

• Algos LOVE round num­bers! Try and move around them. When in case of a rever­sal play, assess what round num­bers are around and wait for price action to con­firm your bias prefer­ably after a ‘pop’ to also kin­da val­i­date the lev­el. Oth­er­wise focus on M15/M20 to guide your deci­sions. If a pos­si­ble entry that I am look­ing at has a SL at a round num­ber and by mov­ing it skews my R/R then it means no trade and reassess. 

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

• Keep com­ing back and get more trades under my belt using this new method­ol­o­gy. I need to build expe­ri­ence and more valid stats. Hav­ing said that I am not in a hur­ry. I know it will come giv­en enough time. But if there is some­thing that I can do to have more expo­sure to the mar­ket (like for exam­ple trad­ing NY as well) then that is some­thing that I can control. 

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

• Obvi­ous­ly I should not have tak­en the 1st trade. How­ev­er, at the time my thought process was fair­ly right and I took a chance. Hav­ing not trad­ed Gold espe­cial­ly dur­ing NY makes it a fair­ly new beast for me. A beast that I need more expe­ri­ence in. So all in all I feel I did well. In hind­sight there were a cou­ple of things I could have done bet­ter. Hind­sight is 20/20 as they say. Just keep com­ing back. 

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold XAUUSD 07012020

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Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 07012020

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