How did I trade today? 02042021

Sum­ma­ry: Focus on progress, not perfection. 

Account (P&L): +0.8R

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

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 take trades accord­ing to a hypo unless mul­ti­ple con­di­tions are met

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

• GOLD
  • IB: Hypo 4: A closed as an Evening Star (at M30 VWAP in DT) so I put a Sell Lim­it Order at 1824.201, SL 1827.701 TP 1817.201 (2R) and it just got trig­gered. Will mon­i­tor for bear­ish price action close in B and pos­si­ble exten­sion down in C. 
    • Grasshop­pered and closed the trade at 0.8R due to price hit­ting LTF demand, price still with­in IB, and want­ed to pock­et some mon­ey to start the month with as these are still a bit weird times. 
    • B closed as a Grave­stone Doji (longer sell­ing wick) pos­si­bil­i­ty for a Base, H1 Three Out­side Down
  • C: Momen­tum shot below IB and price arrived at D1/W1 QLo — trade would have hit 3R 
    • Missed 4R by a hair before clos­ing around 2.5R. Price test­ed bot­tom of D1 demand but did not take it out as it coin­cid­ed with W1/D1 QLo. M15 Inside Bar with long buy­ing wick. M30 DBD.
  • D: Closed slight­ly low­er not mak­ing LLs but leav­ing a sin­gle print in C behind.
  • E: Went to the gym
    • Closed down no LL
  • F: Closed as Spin­ning Top with longer sell­ing wick
  • G: Closed as con­sol­i­da­tion doji
  • H: Closed as a weak­ish bull engulf, good TPO struc­ture build up
  • I: A pos­si­ble Sin­gle Print Fade
  • J: Tadaaaa Sin­gle Print Fade…. Was wait­ing for this to hap­pen ear­li­er but then decid­ed before we have a good TPO struc­ture built up it would take some time so went to the gym. 

Hypos — GOLD

• 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?
• Hypo 4 — Trend Continuation
  • Pre­ferred: Strong Bear­ish Price action with IB exten­sion down on momen­tum + sus­tained auc­tion. Mon­i­tor for a sus­tained move tak­ing out demand.
  • 100%
  • M30 DBD tak­ing the trade to 4R through m,omentum exten­sion in C after which there was a TPO struc­ture built above H4 C‑dem (W1 lev­el as well) and con­se­quent rever­sal tak­ing out sin­gle prints in C (after trad­ing window)

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

• I did well here. Fun­ny thing. My hypo 4 start­ed out as hypo 1 but got pushed back due to me giv­ing weight to QLo. As I am going through Les­son 3 of the MS course I am encoun­ter­ing a lot of refresh­ers and kin­da gave weight to what would have been a bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ty (not nec­es­sar­i­ly most like­ly out­come) which is a rever­sal at these lev­els. Luck­i­ly read­ing price action I act­ed on my hypo 4 although I have to say I might not have entered on an IB exten­sion down. I fig­ured because we are still trad­ing with­in IB that price could still act errat­ic and if there was any chance of a good risk reward it would be on a 2nd chance entry. Which luck­i­ly worked out. 

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

• I felt good before the trade. Calm when putting in the sell lim­it order and let­ting it get triggered. 

How well did I fol­low my process?

• Trade selec­tion
  • The trade selec­tion was good. Espe­cial­ly when con­sid­er­ing the entry method through sell lim­it order a few pips below new­ly formed C‑line. 
• Trade Siz­ing & SL placement
  • SL and siz­ing were great as I used a tighter stop due to entry location. 
• Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt
  • I man­aged the trade poor­ly. I took prof­its too quick­ly only to see the trade miss 4R by a hair. I don’t feel bad about this though I know I will get more oppor­tu­ni­ties to prove my skills and I just kin­da feel rusty after hav­ing Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary being so ‘weird’. 
  • Due to no H4 or D1 demand below I could have let the trade go on as it was more prob­a­ble to hit D1 QLo. 

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

• I did well here. Although I did start think­ing I could ‘use a win’ due to want­i­ng to bank a prof­it, price hit­ting LTF demand and times being so ‘weird’. 

What did I learn today?

• I feel I have got­ten a bit com­pla­cent with my knowl­edge but going through the lec­tures as taught by Dee I am yet again exposed to new details and con­fir­ma­tion of con­cepts that might have been slight­ly lost in my mind. Don’t feel bad about it as the con­cepts are easy in its foun­da­tion but hard to observe and act upon in real life with mon­ey on the line. But oooooohh­h­h­hh so thrilling when you do…. I don’t give a fuck when peo­ple say emo­tions have no place in the mar­ket (which is true and trad­ing based on a sys­tem­at­ic approach negates most of the emo­tions that might inject them­selves). If peo­ple could see the things we do as day traders, how well we exe­cute based off of quick chang­ing infor­ma­tion with­out hav­ing a clear pic­ture of what is going to hap­pen next (as we base trad­ing off prob­a­bil­i­ties) with the con­tin­ued mon­i­tor­ing of said influx of new infor­ma­tion. Visu­al­iz­ing what we want and don’t want to see…  Man… it is an art. Like Lionel Mes­si drib­bling a ball across the field (don’t know why I brought him up as I don’t watch foot­ball AT ALL) Sad­ly, today… I kin­da failed in this regard 🙂 talk about anti-cli­mac­tic huh. I feel fine about the trade I took today. To be hon­est. It felt good to 1) have come up with a valid hypoth­e­sis 2) see price action devel­op­ing and lin­ing up with said hypo 3) had the calm­ness to place a sell lim­it order at my pre­ferred lev­el of entry (under­stand­ing the nar­ra­tive more con­ducive for a pos­si­ble pull­back) and watch my trade get trig­gered. Sure I took prof­its too soon which I will go over in my review when rewatch­ing my screen record­ing. Get your pop­corn ready! 🙂

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

• Be the sci­en­tist and calm­ly observe and act. 

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

• Even though I took prof­its too soon I feel I did fair­ly well today. Focus on progress, not perfection. 

Under the cir­cum­stances, did I per­form at my best?

• I did okay

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold 02042021

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