How did I trade today? 02082021

Sum­ma­ry: Always focus on trad­ing rules. They are there for a reason. 

Account (P&L): GBPNZD ‑0.4R Gold +2R

#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

Good Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.

Good Risk Adjust­ed Returns

Yes Dai­ly review

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

Sum­ma­ry

• GBPNZD
  • IB: IB closed as an Evening Star
  • C: Closed as a Bull­ish Inside Bar after extend­ing down 2 TPOs retrac­ing most of the Evening star indi­cat­ing a pos­si­ble reversal
  • D: Made LL
    • Short 1.90500 SL 1.90791 TP 1.89919 (2R)
    • Nar­ra­tive: H4 QHi rejec­tion, open sen­ti­ment, M30 Evening Star pos­si­ble M30 DBD which is what I am mon­i­tor­ing for D clos­ing below IB com­plet­ing the DBD
      • Not hap­py about being right on a round number
    • Closed below IB com­plet­ing a M30 DBD, LTF and H4 demand still intact
  • E: Made a poor low but no LL (yet), took out H4 demand, closed as an Inside Bar with longer sell­ing wick although closed right at IB low. Also formed a buy­ing wick. Will re-eval­u­ate at TPO close whether to hold onto the trade or not. 
  • F: Closed down below IB as a weird con­sol­i­da­tion. H1 spin­ning top with longer sell­ing wick. M15 Bear Engulf (on the hour) No clear exit rule. 3 TPO tail left in E. Gonna stay with the trade a lit­tle while longer
  • G: Took out 1 TPO in E, 2 left, formed a M15 base with longer buy­ing wick
    • Closed as a doji below IB, no LLs. M15 Bear engulf with slight­ly longer sell­ing wick. Giv­ing it some more time as this looks like a low/medium ini­tia­tive activ­i­ty day. Although the con­sol­i­da­tion below IB is of con­cern. No exit rule is met though so will let the trade go a lit­tle longer. 
    • There’s a ledge formed at 1.90586 in F but it is not valid as such as it is with­in IB and there was no large move in extend­ing below IB. 
  • H: Closed as a bull engulf­ing with long sell­ing wick just below IB, M5 Bear Engulf, that invalid ledge was test­ed in H but still holds. If we take it out I will cut the trade. 
    • It got tak­en out so I cut the trade at ‑0.4R

Sum­ma­ry

• GOLD
  • IB: AB closed as a con­tin­u­a­tion on M30 BEar Engulf pre­mar­ket. No accep­tance even though price test­ed value. 
  • C: Closed as Bull Engulf after test­ing VAH
  • D: Sell lim­it order: Long 1811.500, SL 1807.435, 1820.979 as I want a bet­ter SL place­ment. As DPOC is right there I just went in man­u­al­ly at 1811.950.
    • Closed slight­ly high­er but no exten­sion (yet)
  • E: Closed as a con­sol­i­da­tion but no reversal
  • F: Closed as a M30 RBR, no exten­sion (yet)
  • G: Extend­ed above IB
  • H: Pop and hit 2R TP, 2.5R actu­al­ly but TP got tak­en out. 

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 1 — Return to Value
  • Pre­ferred: IB mov­ing high­er test­ing VAL before a price action con­firm­ing a rever­sal fol­lowed by IB exten­sion down. A failed auc­tion would be pos­si­ble as well. Alter­na­tive could be IB tak­ing out LTF demand and exten­sion down (momen­tum) with sus­tained auction.
  • 80%
  • There was no move high­er, instead there was a DBD extend­ing below IB tak­ing out H4 demand with no fol­low-through. There was a con­sol­i­da­tion and then an invalid ledge formed with­in IB. Which got tak­en out dur­ing TPO I. 

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: Bull­ish Price action con­firm­ing and reject­ing H4/D1 QLo with a momen­tum exten­sion up and of course a sus­tained auction.
  • 100%
  • There was a M30 bull engulf formed dur­ing C with con­se­quent fol­low-through and extend­ing over IB dur­ing G.

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

• I did real­ly well here. Based on the devel­op­ing infor­ma­tion I gave GBPNZD ampel time to make a move which sad­ly nev­er came. Gold luck­i­ly hit tar­get fair­ly quickly.

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

• I did fair­ly okay here but I did get jumpy a bit. I took a few walks and should have lift­ed some weights. Instead I kept telling myself to focus on my exit rules. Just sim­ple bina­ry thinking. 

How well did I fol­low my process?

• Trade selec­tion
  • GBPNZD: There was a Three Out­side Down formed dur­ing IB fol­lowed by a big inside bar after extend­ing 2 TPOs below. When D made a LL I went short and mon­i­tored for a close below IB. The trade was part of hypo 1.
  • Gold: When I noticed val­ue did not get accept­ed I wait­ed for a Bull Engulf at VAH as per hypo 1 and went long on a slight pull­back as I want­ed a bet­ter entry. I put in a sell lim­it order which didn’t get hit and since DPOC was right there at the time I just went in manually. 
• Entry Method
  • GBPNZD: Momen­tum entry even though in D it might not be the best for Lon­don as Lon­don can turn around after D.
  • Gold: 2nd chance entry on Bull Engulf at VAH. 
• Trade Siz­ing & SL placement
  • Both trades had good SL placement
• Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt
  • GBPNZD: It was real­ly hard to stay but due to price clos­ing below IB I though to stay with the trade as we had just tak­en out H4 demand and I was expect­ing a low/medium ini­tia­tive activ­i­ty day. I did well to stay with the trade and not grasshop­per out. When I saw a Bull­ish price action in H I got read to jump out. I had can­celed my time-based exit option as I want­ed to see if some over­lap noise jumpi­ness would jump in my favor. Then I decid­ed if the ‘ledge’ get tak­en out I will man­u­al­ly take the trade off which I did. 
  • Gold: after the entry I wait­ed for a rever­sal pat­tern against my trade as a cue to get out but luck­i­ly this did not hap­pen and the trade went to 2R. 

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

• I did okay here… I did get jumpy a bit but talk a few walks and then remind­ed myself that there is no need to be jumpy. 1) I only risk 1% which is okay. 2) I have clear-cut exit rules so if they don’t get met than I stay with the trade as I am not a grasshop­per (any­more). I did well on this part. 

What did I learn today?

• I learned that when trad­ing a big­ger account I can still remain focused on fol­low­ing my rules. Sad­ly, I did not take the gold trade on this account as I messed up using FX syn­er­gy. This then also makes me think I should just elim­i­nate all accounts except the fund­ing account. At least my set­up works so I got to test this out in real life. No just elim­i­nate the 3rd account and just keep my orig­i­nal with the fund­ed account. 

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

• Fol­low exit rules. They are there for a rea­son. I did well on this today. 

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

• Wor­ry about the out­come of a sin­gle trade as I will be mak­ing thou­sands more and this is but a drop in the bucket. 

Under the cir­cum­stances, did I per­form at my best?

• I did well today. Can’t always trade like a robot. When you feel jumpy just focus on the trad­ing rules and you will be fine. Win or lose. 

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 02082021

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Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold 02082021

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