Daily Report Card 07022020

To trade or not to trade. That is the question. 

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

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

Bad Trade selection

Good Trade siz­ing

Good Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.

Good Risk Adjust­ed Returns

Yes Dai­ly review

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

Sum­ma­ry: Under­stand­ing the ‘range of my men­tal state’ con­ducive for trading

• GOLD: I know it’s NFP day so things are prob­a­bly gonna be slow if any­thing hap­pens at all. Still, based on M15 lad­der action and IB (nor­mal width) exten­sion up plus H4-C‑D 1770.548 I went long (through a buy stop I placed) at 1770.764 SL 1767.128 TP 1774.233 
• Expect­ing a slow incline if any also due to con­ges­tion from M30 sup­ply over­head (we just took one out but there is still one left). Will mon­i­tor TPOs for sus­tained or failed auction.
• For­got to place TP cor­rect­ly at VAL 1780.824 (2.7R)
• Not the best trade going long into D1 c‑sup. Scratched the trade and tak­ing the rest of the day off. Also because of NFP. I total­ly missed that con­ter­mi­nous and was just focused on low­er time frame price action. Too hopped up on caf­feine. Scratched at 1770.780.
• After­math
  • The posi­tion would have trad­ed high­er test­ing D1 con­ter­mi­nous and a time-based stop would have net­ted 1R. It doesn’t mat­ter though because I still believe it was the right deci­sion to scratch the trade due to feel­ing ‘jumpy’ in my head and lack of con­fi­dence. Nor­mal­ly when I am in a good trade (even when it gets stopped out) I have a clear under­stand­ing of what is going on and where it could go.

Week­ly Goal Achieve­ment: Have appro­pri­ate sizing

• At least I sized right! 🙂

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket context?

• I messed up not con­sid­er­ing the Dai­ly con­ter­mi­nous as addressed above. This tells me I am not in the best state of mind today so decid­ed to scratch and not trade the rest of the day. Instead I worked on doc­u­ment­ing past trades into my play­book. I already do this but decid­ed to change the for­mat a bit.

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

• I thought I felt well before but then quick­ly noticed I missed some­thing and was get­ting ‘jumpy’. Decid­ed to scratch and go do some­thing else. 
• I feel bet­ter know­ing that I was not in the right state of mind to be trad­ing today. Regard­less if it was a NFP day or not. 

How well did I fol­low my process?

• Messed up then cor­rect­ed myself. 

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

• I was tired today. Took a nap but still didn’t sleep well because of all the cof­fee I had to get me through my day. Then some more cof­fee made me get ‘jumpy’. Now that I have con­firmed this again for myself I know how to spot it bet­ter next time. 

What did I learn today?

• Under­stand what range of men­tal state allows you to be able to trade. We’ll nev­er be at our best every sin­gle day. Some­times you’ll hit that 100%. Oth­er times you’ll be at 90%. Any­thing over 85% is good in my mind (I just pulled that num­ber out of thin air btw, but you get my point) Can’t just wait for your head to be at that 100% to trade because there might not be any oppor­tu­ni­ties that day. So you need a range. I have that range bet­ter defined for myself. And with expe­ri­ence I’ll define it even bet­ter. I have what I call ‘red flags’ (I know, orig­i­nal right) that help me bet­ter iden­ti­fy when I am not in the right state of mind. An exam­ple for me is being too quick to snap at someone/something. This could indi­cate I might be tired and thus should con­sid­er not trad­ing today. And so I have more red flags iden­ti­fy­ing dif­fer­ent areas of my per­son­al life. 

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

• Trust myself to not allow myself to trade and be fine with it. The mar­kets aren’t going any­where. I’m not going any­where. Have patience. As Dee says: “Less haste, more speed!”

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

• Feel guilty about not trad­ing. It is okay to not trade. You have that freedom. 

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold XAUUSD 07022020

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Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 07022020

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