How did I trade today? 20210303

Sum­ma­ry: Often my best days are when I just sit and take notes

#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 trade the main fund

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: A closed as Bear Engulf, B as an Inside Bar with longer sell­ing wick right above H4-C-D1.91540 and LTF demand
  • C: Going long here would be slight­ly tricky as well due to new­ly formed sup­ply right above and price still trad­ing with­in val­ue although it would be in line with H4 price action.
    • Closed as M30 Three Inside Up. No exten­sion (yet).
  • D: Extend­ed above IB to then close as a Bear Engulf leav­ing a sell­ing tail behind but with under­neath H4 demand might not be the best to short here either. It looks like we are going to have some­what of a bor­ing With­in Val­ue day. 
  • E: closed as an Inside Bar and with longer sell­ing wick
  • F: Clos­es form­ing a M30 THree Out­side Up (big move) above IB still with­in value
  • G: Closed as an Inside Bar with long sell­ing wick after react­ing off H4-C‑S 1.91955 at VAH
  • H: Returned back to IB after LTF bear­ish rever­sal pattern
    • Closed with­in IB as a M30 Three Out­side Down leav­ing a sell­ing tail in G

• GOLD
  • IB: Trad­ed low­er in line with H4 VWAP in DT return­ing to H4 Base level
  • C: Extend­ed IB to the down­side, no con­tin­u­a­tion (yet), LTF demand right below. Still with­in IB. With price return­ing to the base lev­el we could see a con­tin­u­a­tion to the move. Although due to W1 demand right there this might prove dif­fi­cult unless we get more con­flu­ence ie. val­ue rejec­tion for example. 
    • Closed as an Inside Bar with longer buy­ing wick that extend­ed below IB (1 TPO only) and then closed with­in again, M15 Bull Engulf on the hour at H4 base level
  • D: Closed slight­ly high­er with­in IB with slight­ly longer sell­ing wick although I have seen this price action before and with the H4 nar­ra­tive still in play I believe we might see more downside. 
  • E: Closed as a Bear Engulf as visu­al­ized clos­ing above LTF demand. An entry off M15 Bear engulf would have yield­ed 1.5R so far. H4 looks to be test­ing H4 base lev­el pos­si­bly tak­ing it out. Next tar­get around 1716.800 if we break through. Big IF due to wide LTF demand. 
  • F: Closed as an Inside Bar with long buy­ing wick mak­ing a slight LL, M15 Bull Engulf on the hour — still below DPOC
  • G: Closed as a DBD mak­ing LLs — M15 entry would have yield­ed near­ly 2.5R, M30 entry only 0.8R
  • H: Made LLs tak­ing the trade up to 2.7R
    • Closed as an Inside Bar with longer buy­ing wick

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 2 — Bal­anc­ing Market
  • Hypo 2 — Bal­anc­ing Market
  • Nar­ra­tive: Open inside
  • Pre­ferred: play off near­by LTF and ADR levels
  • 100% cor­rect
  • Due to H4 bull­ish price action there was a push high­er with­in val­ue with the most promis­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty a M5 rever­sal at H4-C‑D 1.91540, fol­lowed by a M5 rever­sal at H4-C‑S 1.91955 at VAH for a short.

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 2 — Val­ue Rejec­tion Down
  • Nar­ra­tive: Price con­sol­i­dat­ing and trad­ed down at H4 VWAP in DT, larg­er time­frame bear­ish sentiment. 
  • Pre­ferred: Take out of H4 demand hit­ting base lev­el. Clos­ing below VAL con­fi­dent­ly coin­cid­ing with IB exten­sion fol­lowed by sus­tained auction. 
  • Con: D1 Inside Bar with long buy­ing wick, rid­dle with LTF con­ges­tion on the way down
  • 80% cor­rect
  • It was a bit too much to think we could reject val­ue down so ear­ly coin­cid­ing with IB exten­sion. Instead we had a M30 Price pat­tern in C and D that I wit­nessed before fol­lowed by a con­tin­u­a­tion down in line with H4 VWAP in DT nar­ra­tive as part of a pos­si­ble D1 con­sol­i­da­tion or pull­back at least. The down­ward pres­sure was in line with W1 Narrative. 

Process

How well did I fol­low my process?

• How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket con­text? Was I aligned with mar­ket narrative?
  • GBPNZD: I did well. I saw the inside val­ue oppor­tu­ni­ties but did not want to act on them as there were con­tra­dict­ing nar­ra­tives. Although due to the open inside val­ue I could have put more empha­sis on the LTF swings and tried cap­i­tal­ize on them. How­ev­er, by the time a M15 price action was formed I did not deem it giv­ing a prof­itable enough tar­get loca­tion and thus let it go. 
  • Gold: This is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Price opened with­in val­ue and right at the open (as com­modi­ties and equi­ties have in com­mon) there was a move right at the open in line with H4 nar­ra­tive. Due to the near prox­im­i­ty to LTF demand, as well as still being with­in val­ue, I decid­ed to take notes instead. When I saw a price pat­tern form­ing in C and D TPO I had an inkling to what was com­ing so I visu­al­ized a con­tin­u­a­tion to the move and doc­u­ment­ed it for my play­book. This move would have net­ted 2.7R on a M15 entry, only 1R on a M30 entry. 
• Was it a good trade (if any)
  • Did not take any trades but doc­u­ment­ed a val­ue rejec­tion fail­ure play for GBPNZD and Val­ue Rejec­tion (Down) play for Gold even though we just bare­ly closed below VAL and we seem to be revers­ing at the time of this writ­ing. All in all it was in line with my H4 nar­ra­tive as out­lined ear­li­er in my hypo 2 and doc­u­ment­ed above. This is a nice play­book play in the mak­ing for sure. 
• What could I have done better?
  • GBPNZD: I could have act­ed on the M5 rever­sals but com­ing off a win yes­ter­day as well as want­i­ng to take it easy in the first week I decid­ed to stay out. Noth­ing wrong with that. 
  • Gold: I could have act­ed on the premise I was visu­al­iz­ing after hav­ing out­lined my hypo 2 but due to price being with­in val­ue I opt­ed to not go for it. If this price action had hap­pened below val­ue I would have gone for it. 
• How did I feel before, dur­ing, and after the trade?
  • No trades taken.

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

• I felt a lit­tle joy see­ing how my visu­al­iza­tions came ‘true’ all in all think­ing on how I can take advan­tage of it next time around. I know I am doing things well so I don’t feel bad about not hav­ing tak­en a trade. 

What did I learn today?

• That I can sit here not take a trade and take notes for mar­ket con­di­tions that I am not too sure about even though I have wit­nessed some­thing sim­i­lar before. I need more objec­tive­ly wit­nessed occur­rences before act­ing on a cer­tain play. I did well to stay out today and observe. 
• Also, due to medi­um and larg­er time­frame nar­ra­tive we can see a lot of ‘fake out rever­sals’ on the LTF throw­ing some peo­ple off. By keep­ing your eye on the medi­um and high­er time frame you can stay with the trade (kin­da like I did yes­ter­day in gold). Due to these mar­ket con­di­tions we can see rever­sal pat­terns, close with­in IB but give less val­ue to them if the nar­ra­tive hasn’t changed.

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

• Be the sci­en­tist and take notes. I am a stu­dent of the mar­kets. Mak­ing mon­ey is a mere side-effect of my process. I do not care about mak­ing mon­ey as such even though we all know there is mon­ey to be made. I don’t focus on the mon­ey. I fol­low price action and where my edge allows me I take a cal­cu­lat­ed risk. All the rest I sim­ply observe and take notes.

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

• I think I did great today. No trades tak­en but one of my best days as I wit­nessed some­thing I had seen some time ago (remem­bered it with my brain now that’s impres­sive!) And visu­al­ized what could come next and mon­i­tored through OODA loops and took notes. 

Under the cir­cum­stances, did I per­form at my best?

• I did well. Haven’t you been read­ing above come on!!! 😛

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 20210303

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Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold 20210303

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