How did I trade today? — 12042020

#order­flow #day­trad­ing #fin­twit

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. 

Sum­ma­ry: Under­stand­ing LTF dynam­ics form­ing a MTF price pattern

My week­ly goal: 

• Don’t take trades where SL place­ment is sub­op­ti­mal. Instead, reassess for a bet­ter entry if possible. 

Good Pre-mar­ket routines

Good Ses­sion PECS

Fair 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): 2

Sum­ma­ry

• GBPNZD
  • A: Bull Engulf. IB so far 0.5xASR
  • B: M15 Bear Engulf. Closed retrac­ing almost all of A. 
  • C: M30 Con­sol­i­da­tion, no IB extension.
  • D: News event dri­ven burst up which would have been a nice quick 3R oppor­tu­ni­ty if I hadn’t missed it. I was wait­ing for an exten­sion up first to get involved but then noticed price speed­ing up and thought per­haps we are pop­ping near­by round num­ber but alas… Closed mak­ing HHs
  • E: Inside bar retrac­ing more than 50% but no failed auction
  • F: Inside bar, pos­si­ble DBD. 
  • G: Trad­ed slight­ly low­er but no failed auc­tion just very very weak
  • H: Bull Engulf. H4 RBR as hypothesized. 

Sum­ma­ry

• GOLD
  • C: M30 consolidation 
  • D: Con­sol­i­da­tion continued
  • E: Bal­anc­ing mar­ket continued 

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 – Trend Continuation
  • Near VAH + H4 C‑dem
  • Pre­ferred strong bull­ish pat­tern and IB tak­ing out over­head sup­ply fol­lowed by IB exten­sion up (momen­tum). Sus­tained auction.
  • 100%
  • Played out well although it was based around a news event: ‘Brex­it deal immi­nent’ and BOE.

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?
• BALANCING MARKET

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

• I did well here. I gath­ered that it was a prob­a­bil­i­ty for the for­ma­tion of a H4 RBR after a H4 inside bar was formed pre­mar­ket. With an open with near prox­im­i­ty to VAH and IB form­ing a Bull Engulf fur­ther aligned with this thesis. 
• When TPO B retraced I still felt the over­all the­sis was valid but was look­ing for a con­fir­ma­tion based on an exten­sion up to go long (as this would have also tak­en out the over­head H4 sup­ply men­tioned in my pre­mar­ket prep and my reluc­tance to trade into it). 
• The exten­sion came but it hap­pened so fast I missed it (I had also tak­en my eye off the charts the moment it happened. 
• The trade would have net­ted a 3R in mat­ter of seconds/minutes tak­ing from a 2nd chance entry. From IB exten­sion up (which did hap­pen dur­ing D so momen­tum was on our side) would have net­ted about 2R but would have had bad SL place­ment although momen­tum would have negat­ed that to some extent. 

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

• No trades taken

How well did I fol­low my process?

• I did very well for the most part but failed to act on the burst com­ing into the mar­ket. I had the direc­tion right but should have been aligned already. When the move was hap­pen­ing I did well to stay out and not chase the mar­ket. I sim­ply took it as a les­son and start­ed work­ing on my play­book set­up. I have the screen record­ing which I will review as well. 

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

• I did well here. I am get­ting bet­ter at being okay with NOT trad­ing. It took me a long time but I feel I am mak­ing good progress on this. This in turn also helps to stay objec­tive. I try to think about the fact that I should be stalk­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty. Like a preda­tor stalks its prey. By also ‘in the moment’ deduc­ing the best prob­a­bilis­tic behav­iour of the mar­ket to then act on it (we are NOT PREDICTING here). When the mar­ket acts in the way I deduced I have no issue with enter­ing. When I have lost the oppor­tu­ni­ty due to an unfore­seen event or sim­ply mis­read­ing the mar­ket… It is sim­ply that. A lost oppor­tu­ni­ty. Learn from it. Move on to the next.

What did I learn today?

• I learned that with a devel­op­ing H4 price pat­tern to guide me, the low­er time frame price behav­iour becomes way more appar­ent. Espe­cial­ly when com­bined with mar­ket open sen­ti­ment and pro­file con­firm­ing the thesis. 
• The devel­op­ing price pat­tern was a H4 Ral­ly Base Ral­ly where the Ral­ly after the Base wasn’t formed yet. But due to the H4 hori­zon being well… 4 hours long.. You can see on the low­er time frames if indeed this ral­ly is form­ing after the base was cre­at­ed. If it had gone the oth­er way it would have been a THree Inside Down. Same prin­ci­ples of obser­va­tion and analytics. 

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

• Feel com­fort­able with ana­lyz­ing the mar­kets as if being a sci­en­tist try­ing to under­stand its intri­ca­cies. All the while per­fect­ly under­stand­ing there is no cer­tain­ty but that with each can­dle­stick formed there is more data to back or deny your the­sis. That is what it is about. Under­stand­ing what is going on with­out try­ing to force any­thing. Enjoy­ing the fac you can ‘read’ the mar­kets and not always act­ing on it. Just because you ‘know’ what the mar­ket is going to do doesn’t mean it is in a posi­tion to give you a favor­able risk to reward. 

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

• I feel I did well today and can’t think of much. I did miss the ‘burst’ and could have act­ed on it hence I gave myself a 2 on the Mup­pet meter (which is patent­ed and trade­marked by the way so don’t think of steal­ing my meter!!). In my defense I have only wit­nessed this a hand­ful of times and I am gain­ing expe­ri­ence. My rea­son­ing at the time was still valid. 

Under the cir­cum­stances, did I per­form at my best?

• I did well today

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 12042020

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Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold 12042020

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