Daily Report Card 08142020

14 Aug Daily Report Card 08142020

#dai­lyre­port­card #day­trad­ing #trad­inglifestyle #day­trader­life #grasshop­per­sanony­mous #trad­ing­forex #trad­ing­com­modi­ties #NEXT

Sum­ma­ry: Be the scientist

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. As always, feel free to reach out to me. 

Good Pre-mar­ket routines

Good Ses­sion PECS

Good Trade selec­tion

Good Trade siz­ing or SL placement

Fair Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.

Good Risk Adjust­ed Returns

Yes Dai­ly review

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

Sum­ma­ry: Be the scientist

• GBPNZD
  • LN open above val­ue with­in range. Inside bar could be the start of RBR since A closed as a pos­si­ble base but will need B to close. M30 RBR com­plet­ed at IB close. 
    • Had put in a buy stop order to catch a 2nd Chance ear­ly entry but did­n’t work. Lim­it nei­ther. Will check what went wrong. So went in on mar­ket. Long 1.99873 SL 1.99600 below for­ma­tion TP 2.00946
    • Rea­sons. LN open above val­ue with­in range. M30 RBR above H4-C‑D 1.99568. Cons: D1 sup­ply, ear­ly in the ses­sion on a Fri­day (actu­al move might come lat­er on) and no IB exten­sion yet.
    • Fudged the posi­tion siz­ing using FX syn­er­gy because I got the SL wrong (actu­al­ly the soft­ware resets every­thing after a change of entry ie. buy to lim­it order to mar­ket). Will watch that next time. Cut off 1/3 of posi­tion to main­tain 1R risk. 
  • C: Closed mak­ing a HH break­ing out from IB.
  • D: D made a slight HH
  • E: Opened above IB but no made a HH made
  • F: F made a HH tak­ing out M5 supply
  • G: Fuck… closed man­u­al­ly at 2.00140 after sit­ting on a very slow move up but it seems the move might be hap­pen­ing now… Pock­et­ed 1R prof­it. I would like to pre­tend that I had bet­ter rea­sons for clos­ing the trade oth­er than tak­ing some prof­its after being in a draw­down. Plus the very teas­ing­ly slow incline made me jumpy even though I went to the gym just a few hours ago. 
    • Signs I was see­ing: new HH, M5 sup­ply tak­en out, M15 con­sol­i­da­tion and bull engulf fin­ish­er. Pro­file made a ‘box’ and was test­ing the edges of that box and after it broke it to the top we took out the sell­ing tail and prob­a­bil­i­ty increased for an upwards move. Ledge was cre­at­ed dur­ing G but at the time I closed off I thought it was too close to the ledge to be con­sid­ered valid. Could have wait­ed for the ledge to get tak­en out at least.
    • Nonethe­less, I went against ratio­nal think­ing and closed the trade. Now I’ll sit back and see what the trade does. Write up my DRC.
    • Trade has gone to 1.9R at close
  • H: 2.5R 

Week­ly Goal Achieve­ment: Align with Mar­ket Narrative

• I did well here. I mon­i­tored all time frames using OODA for any rever­sal signs. When I saw M5 show­ing a rever­sal sign I switched to M15 and so forth to stay objec­tive on the valid­i­ty of the poten­tial rever­sal. Since M30 had print­ed a doji after a ral­ly it doesn’t mean the move is like­ly to reverse. Instead it can be a base and thus anoth­er ral­ly just as well. 
• I was accu­rate­ly aligned with the mar­ket nar­ra­tive and used obser­va­tion­al skills to mon­i­tor the valid­i­ty of my sentiment

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

• I felt good before the trade
• Got jumpy dur­ing the trade after I had been in it for a good 2 hours. I have been in a draw­down and was up some mon­ey. Got jumpy about los­ing it while still try­ing to stay objec­tive. Then I gave into my urge to take the trade off but only after wait­ing for a M15 can­dle close and see­ing what hap­pened a lit­tle after (so def­i­nite­ly less grasshop­pery). On the first downtick I closed the trade off. Noth­ing to cry about. Still pock­et­ed 1R. Also, I wasn’t even sure I was gonna take a trade or not since I want­ed to re-align myself with trad­ing after that hor­ri­ble month. But when I observed devel­op­ing price action align­ing with my trade idea I thought what’s the worst that can happen? 🙂
• After the trade I feel good about hav­ing tak­en the trade and hav­ing stuck (most­ly) to my trad­ing rules. Slight­ly annoyed that price went to 2.2R right now. 

How well did I fol­low my process?

• I did well here for the most part. But then towards the end even though I was see­ing signs of a con­tin­u­a­tion to the move I caved in to my inner grasshop­per and took the trade off. Damn you grasshop­per! DAMN YOU!
• On the oth­er hand I did well to not jump out of the trade on the first sign of rever­sal so that’s good. Tam­ing the grasshopper. 

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

• I did okay but then focused too much on mon­ey and enough on mar­ket nar­ra­tive. So even though I was aligned with mar­ket nar­ra­tive I failed to let it play out the way I should have. Enough neg­a­tive stuff. #NEXT

What did I learn today?

• After tak­ing some los­ing trades it is hard to con­vince your­self that it is just part of the sta­tis­tics. You win some, you lose some. Although there were oth­er fac­tors at play I have no one else to blame but myself. After hav­ing spent the week focus­ing on align­ing with mar­ket nar­ra­tive I final­ly took a trade after I felt con­fi­dent enough that I was aligned. Even though…. Mar­ket align­ment does not equal guar­an­teed prof­its. It just push­es me to be on the right side of the mar­ket with a sta­tis­ti­cal edge to play out. The mar­ket does what the mar­ket does. Some­times we are in sync with it. Some­times we are not. 

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

• Keep tak­ing a sci­en­tif­ic approach to trad­ing. The actu­al trad­ing. Review­ing the trad­ing. Mon­i­tor­ing devel­op­ing price at key lev­els. Mon­i­tor what the trade does with­in the giv­en para­me­ters of the instru­ment and see how and where I can improve on my ‘game’. 
• Cur­rent­ly I am in a draw­down and I need to claw myself out of it first and then I can focus on expand­ing my game and let risk para­me­ters take over. Draw­down = dif­fer­ent set of risk para­me­ters to when I am not in a drawdown. 

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

• Feel bad about a trade that was ini­ti­at­ed for the right rea­sons but then excit­ed for the wrong ones. Review. Learn. And keep going. 

Under the cir­cum­stances, did I per­form at my best?

• I did fair­ly well

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 08142020