Daily Report Card 11122020

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

Sum­ma­ry: Writ­ing a book 🙂

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. 

My week­ly goal: 

• Only trade off M30/M15 for entries. M30, time-based, or look for exits after 2 hours (4 TPOs). Unless the entry is real­ly late.

Good Pre-mar­ket routines

Good Ses­sion PECS

Bad 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): 3

Sum­ma­ry

• GBPNZD
  • M30 VWAP in DT CAS form­ing Morn­ing Star and B closed as Inside Bar
  • C: C closed as Evening star extend­ing down from IB
  • D: D extend­ed down 1 TPO fur­ther and I went short as per hypo 2 even though I didn’t like my SL place­ment and prof­it tar­get. With it being a momen­tum trade I thought I could over­look that. 
    • Short 1.91818, SL 1.92118, TP 1.91218
    • Stopped out ‑1R. Should have lis­tened to my gut but I think I was also ‘itch­ing’ to take a trade. I have noticed I usu­al­ly have some loss­es before I start ‘get­ting into the groove’ and pick up the slack 🙂
    • Closed mak­ing LLs
  • E: 2nd Attempt short
    • IB exten­sion down, H1 DBD (H1 VWAP in DT), pull­back to IB edge
    • Short 1.91883, SL 1.92208, TP 1.91235
    • Closed mak­ing LLs leav­ing a sell­ing wick behind and clos­ing near its low. Trade at 0.8R, look­ing at a low/medium ini­tia­tive day let­ting the trade run for a bit as we are poten­tial­ly form­ing a H4 Evening Star. Want to see what it does with a time-based stop. 
  • F: if F clos­es like this we could have a ledge at 1.91720. Sad­ly no ledge as we trad­ed slight­ly higher
    • Closed as a weak failed auc­tion at IB edge leav­ing a buy­ing tail behind. H1 Inside Bar (with slight­ly longer buy­ing wick) and both M30 and H1 are below VWAP. Pos­si­bil­i­ty for anoth­er DBD
  • G: Closed as Inside Bar retrac­ing more than 50% of F. Giv­ing it some longer. 
  • H: Made LLs tak­ing out M15 demand but there was anoth­er M15 demand right below so took my prof­its after being so long in the trade plus trad­ing win­dow closing. 
    • I thought I took it at 1R but effec­tive­ly that trans­lat­ed into 0.85R
    • Down 0.15R for the day. 
    • If I had let the trade on it would have hit 1.5R
  • I: Would have hit 2R

Hypos

• Which hypo played out and how did I hypoth­e­size it play­ing out? How did it actu­al­ly play out? What did the pro­file and price action show?
• GBPNZD
  • Hypo 2 – Return to val­ue (short)
    • Pre­ferred: Pop round num­ber below VAL with PA rever­sal con­fir­ma­tion. IB exten­sion down
    • 90%
      • There was no pop of a round num­ber. Instead C formed an Evening Star after extend­ing down with D tak­ing it fur­ther down. 

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket con­text? Was I aligned with mar­ket context?

• I did well here. Even though I fucked up on the first trade. 1 good thing: I wait­ed for D to get involved (I sta­tis­ti­cal­ly do worse in C) for extra con­fir­ma­tion. 2 bad things.
  • SL was slight­ly too tight
    • I got tak­en out exact­ly on the pip. I was more con­cerned with a momen­tum trade then get­ting the SL right. As a con­se­quence I got stopped out for a full ‑1R loss
  • SL was cut­ting through wicks of M30 formation
    • This should have been my cue to not take the trade. One could argue that a momen­tum trade could war­rant some lenien­cy but this has not been my expe­ri­ence. So I will make it my rule to not cut through formations. 
• 2nd trade I did well. Even though I didn’t wait for 2 TPOs to pass. I stayed cool. Reassessed the nar­ra­tive hadn’t changed. Stalked a bet­ter entry using the H1 DBD as my guide. And got back in. 
  • At the time of this writ­ing the trade would have reached 1.5R time-based clos­ing well with­in under­ly­ing demand indi­cat­ing a pos­si­ble con­tin­u­a­tion in over­lap noise time (which I will mon­i­tor the after­math of) clos­ing as H4 Evening Star (which is what I was assess­ing that we could be in the process of forming. 
  • When F cre­at­ed a counter move off of LTF demand I fell back on my expe­ri­ence that a bar like this is ‘weird’. I have seen this before and focused on mon­i­tor­ing M15 and H1 for fur­ther clues and assessed it was pos­si­ble for anoth­er H1 DBD if we stayed with­in bounds (VWAP and can­dle range)
  • When I closed the trade I did so less out of ratio­nal thought and more out of cap­i­tal preser­va­tion mind­set. Which is not good since I saw signs of a con­tin­u­a­tion of the move ie. pro­file LLs, LTF PA print­ing bearish… 

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

• I felt good through­out the 1st trade (didn’t last that long haha). Wasn’t both­ered by the stop get­ting hit either. 
• The 2nd trade… being in the trade for so long and after that counter move in F I got a bit jumpy. Went for a short walk. Combed my beard. Lift­ed some weights. And mon­i­tored (M5/M15) G clos­ing retrac­ing most of the move to keep me in the trade. The rest you know. 

How well did I fol­low my process?

• I messed up on the first trade as not­ed above. Took my notes. Built expe­ri­ence. Reaf­firmed I can be a dum­b­ass some­times 🙂 Then let it go. 
• The rest I did well I believe. Mon­i­tor­ing through OODA loops for strong signs FOR or AGAINST my trade. 

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

• I did well here apart from get­ting a lit­tle jumpy towards the end there. Although man­aged to stay composed. 

What did I learn today?

• I learned that even though I still make mis­takes, they are not rook­ie rook­ie mis­takes. They are mis­takes I need some fine-tun­ing on. Fur­ther­more, I learned that I can man­age to dig myself out of a hole if the mar­ket pro­vides me with such opportunity. 
• It feels so good to be in the thick of things again! After leav­ing the men­tor­ing group at the end of last month I was sooo ready to get start­ed ‘on my own’. Then the whole US elec­tions hap­pened and I had to sit on my hands the entire time pro­long­ing the time for me to prove to myself that I can do this. I was going a bit crazy to find some­thing to fill the gap to be hon­est. Good thing I already am crazy. Bet­ter than being nor­mal: can I get a hal­lelu­jah!! 🙂 We all have these voic­es in our heads doubt­ing and some­times cre­at­ing hav­oc but know­ing that you know what to do when the time calls for it is gold­en my friend…  Gold. That only comes with expe­ri­ence. Nev­er doubt your­self and your abil­i­ties even when oth­ers do. They don’t know what you know. They can’t. They don’t give a fuck. They don’t have to. Just you give a fuck. Now go on and give more fucks about yourself! 😛

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

• Use OODA loops to assess and reassess if need be to stay in tune with the mar­ket nar­ra­tive and act. 
  • I’m sor­ry I write long sen­tences. Kin­da 🙂 It always makes me think of the great philo­soph­i­cal books (like Baruch de Spinoza’s) where one sen­tence can take up half a page. I tru­ly believe it is the gen­er­al public’s inep­ti­tude to digest mul­ti-faceted pieces of infor­ma­tion with­in one nar­ra­tive. Kin­da like how trad­ing is 😉 

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

• Take trades when SL is not right. This will be my next week­ly goal/challenge since I am doing well on my cur­rent one. Over and over I prove to myself that these trades don’t work out. Reassess for a bet­ter entry and if there is none then you fuck­ing don’t take a trade. Lots of fucks in this DRC 🙂 I feel I was also kin­da eager to get trad­ing again…. I need my hit! Give me my drug! Sor­ry… men­tioned I am crazy?! 🙂

Under the cir­cum­stances, did I per­form at my best?

• I did well here

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 11122020

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