How did I trade today? 02052021

05 Feb How did I trade today? 02052021

Sum­ma­ry: Trust your gut (after build­ing experience)

Account (P&L): GBPNZD ‑1R Gold +1.9R

#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

Fair 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

• GBPNZD
  • IB: A closed as a Doji, B com­plet­ed an Evening Star, H1 clos­ing below H1 QHi with­in demand right above H1 VWAP in UT
    • Short 1.91020, SL 1.91284, TP 1.90493 (2R)
  • C: closed as an Inside Bar, no IB exten­sion down yet
  • D: M30 Three Inside Up. H1 con­sol­i­da­tion, M15 Grave­stone Doji (on the hour) clos­ing below M30 VWAP so I am hop­ing to see if there can be some push back as M5 is show­ing price fal­ter­ing. Plus bank­ing 1.9R I feel I can give it a lit­tle more time plus see­ing if E can bring a rever­sal to the ini­tial move of London. 
    • I think due to the W1 nar­ra­tive the pre­vail­ing trend would be up and negat­ing a H4 QHi ass D1 QHi is fair­ly far away as well. 
  • E: Extend­ed over IB and took out my trade ‑1R then pro­ceed­ed to close above IB.
  • F: Closed mak­ing HH, look­ing like a sus­tain auction. 

Sum­ma­ry

• GOLD
  • IB: Tra­versed high­er to VAL with­out accept­ing val­ue, B closed as an inside bar, M5 Evening star and con­se­quent push lower.
  • C: Entry on Pull­back what should have been the ini­tial entry, Short 1808.751 SL 1811.314, TP 1803.623 (2R)
    • Took trade off at 1.9R at 1804.58
    • Closed as an Evening Star
  • D: Closed as an Bull­ish Inside Bar
  • E: Closed as a consolidation
  • F: Closed as a consolidation

Hypos — GBPNZD

• 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 3 — Trend Continuation
  • Pre­ferred: Bull­ish Price action, IB exten­sion (momen­tum) tak­ing out over­head supply.
  • 80%
  • There was a pull­back to H1 VWAP in UT and return­ing to H4 base lev­el (although too high in the dis­tri­b­u­tion curve so should­n’t have giv­en it much weight) and con­se­quent rejec­tion and move high­er with an exten­sion in E. H1 lev­els usu­al­ly prove less reli­able but it worked out this time. 

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 1 — Return to Value
  • Pre­ferred: Price return­ing to VAL with price action con­fir­ma­tion of a rever­sal, IB exten­sion down (oth­er­wise a failed auc­tion) with sus­tained auction.
  • 90%
  • A tra­versed right to val­ue edge before fal­ter­ing and revers­ing. M5 proved a good entry. I ‘missed’ the first but got in on the pull­back after M30 closed as an Inside Bar, M15 Drop and Base. 

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

• I did well on Gold. Also this was my first time hav­ing simul­ta­ne­ous trades on. Luck­i­ly Gold went quick. Then I ago­niz­ing­ly watched GBPNZD go against me. Even though I saw it going against me and it wasn’t the best trade to begin with. I let the trade go as to not give in to my inner-grasshop­per. I did think I had valid rea­sons to let the trade on but at the M30 Three Inside Up I should have real­ly closed the trade for 0.7R loss. Then again with the 1.9R pock­et­ed on Gold I thought I had some buffer. Les­son learned. 

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

• I felt good. A lit­tle jumpy when GBPNZD went against me but noth­ing too crazy. Hav­ing the buffer also helped. 
• Feel­ing well after­wards. Feel­ing good that we seem to be going back to nor­mal as today was the first time trad­ing GBPNZD in almost 2 weeks. How I missed my FX pair 🙂

How well did I fol­low my process?

• Trade selec­tion
  • Gold: Great. Usu­al­ly when my trades are good they tend to work out quick­ly. Quick­ly it was. 
  • GBPNZD: I thought with trade loca­tion coin­cid­ing with a retrace­ment to H4 base lev­el was an extra con­flu­ence for a poten­tial move down. I was wrong and should have giv­en more weight to high­er time­frame narrative. 
• Entry Method
  • Gold: man­u­al short on LTF pullback
  • GBPNZD: I ini­tial­ly had put a sell lim­it order just below new­ly formed C‑sup and price was retrac­ing but not hit­ting my order. Then I start­ed doubt­ing the trade and took the lim­it order off and put it below as a sell stop order below in case of an exten­sion down as I felt the need for more con­fir­ma­tion of the trade. Then after pock­et­ing 1.9R on gold I think I got a bit cocky. I saw price retrac­ing again (even though I felt that it wasn’t good since a retrace­ment to 2nd chance entry shouldn’t be on mul­ti­ple tests) and can­celled the sell stop and just went short. Maybe I should have just been hap­py with the Gold trade and not trade both at the same time. Per­haps some ego got involved there.
• Trade Siz­ing & SL placement
  • Both were good
• Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt
  • I seem to have caught the bot­tom on Gold as I was eager to get the 1.9 and not be a dick for a tick.
  • GBPNZD got stopped out so. Good that I let it go with­out micro­manag­ing. Bad that I saw obvi­ous signs of price going against me. Although, I feel like I am going through the cycles of what Dee taught me all over. Where I need to focus on good entries and let the trade do what it will do with­out did­dling with it too much. Then get more com­fort­able with tak­ing a trade off. I also believe some hop­ing got into this trade as I was hop­ing it would go back in my favor. Ah well… live and learn. 

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

• I did well here for the most part. Got a lit­tle jumpy but noth­ing too crazy. I think the jumpi­ness was more about me know­ing the trade would go against me and maybe not hav­ing the balls to take the trade off and hop­ing for it to turn around…. 

What did I learn today?

• That I should learn to trust my gut. I ‘felt’ the GBPNZD trade was wrong. Hence the need for more con­fir­ma­tion in an exten­sion down. But I over­rode that when pock­et­ing prof­its on Gold. 

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

• Trust my gut. A trade should look obvi­ous. I shouldn’t need to ‘force’ any­thing. Or hope… even worse. 

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

• A trade is just that. One trade. Out of mil­lions (hope­ful­ly) I will have in my life­time. Not one trade can make or break me as a day trader. 

Under the cir­cum­stances, did I per­form at my best?

• I did okay today. 

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 02052021

Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold 02052021

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