How did I trade today? 20210312

Sum­ma­ry: Tight­en­ing up the mar­gins of my knowledge

#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 account
  • No trades taken
• Focus on time-based exits
  • No trades taken
• Don’t look at M5 chart unless with­in the last hour of trad­ing window
  • Did well here

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

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Summary

• GBPNZD
  • IB: A trade down from con­sol­i­da­tion, B closed as a Bull Engulf tak­ing out LTF supply. 
  • C: Imme­di­ate exten­sion above IB 3 TPOs. Not sure if it is the best move to go long at this lev­el as we are near­ing Mean Rever­sion Cri­te­ria near H4 C‑sup (although old) . 
    • Closed as an Inside Bar with long buy­ing wick (which could have pro­vid­ed a 2nd chance entry) with­in IB. 
  • D: Retraced all the way back to IB edge low (M30 VWAP in UT), clos­ing a few pips above leav­ing a slight sell­ing tail in C as a Three Out­side Down. H1 Bear Engulf.
  • E: Closed as a Bull Engulf 
  • F: Closed mak­ing HHs, H1 Bull Engulf RBR.
  • G: Closed as a Bear Engulf
  • H: Extend­ed below form­ing a Neu­tral Day in line with D1 con­sol­i­da­tion. Closed with a long buy­ing wick with­in IB. H4 Spin­ning top with longer sell­ing wick. 

• GOLD
  • IB: Trad­ed and closed lower. 
  • C: Extend­ed below. Prob­a­bly nar­ra­tive D1 Three Out­side Down in Larg­er time­frame bear­ish sen­ti­ment pos­si­bly negat­ing the new­ly formed D1 C‑dem. 
    • Closed trad­ing low­er below IB. 
  • D: Made LLs clos­ing as a spin­ning top near to ADR exhaustion
  • E: Closed as a con­sol­i­da­tion. Might build up some struc­ture plus leav­ing a buy­ing tail in D price could pos­si­bly attempt a reversal. 
  • F: start­ed tak­ing out the sin­gle prints in C although due to the pro­file set­tings on Gold I didn’t clear­ly spot it. Plus I was wait­ing for struc­ture to build coin­cid­ing with a rever­sal pat­tern before con­sid­er­ing going long. There was a M15 Bull Engulf but M30 closed as a consolidation. 
    • Closed as a M30 Three Inside Up but weak due to sell­ing wick
  • G: Closed as a weak Bear Engulf
  • H: Closed as a bull engulf, prob­a­bly consolidation.

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 — Swing Reversal
  • Nar­ra­tive: Con­sol­i­da­tion below H4 C‑sup (although test­ed many times). Trend is down. 
  • Pre­ferred: Bear­ish Price action, IB exten­sion down with a sus­tained auc­tion. Pos­si­ble low/medium ini­tia­tive activity.
  • Con: Larg­er time­frame bull­ish sen­ti­ment. D1 con­sol­i­da­tion could be a speed­bump as price has not yet real­ly bro­ken out and tak­en out D1 supply. 
  • 70% cor­rect
  • Ini­tial exten­sion in C with a fail­ure to push price high­er. Instead a lot of con­tra­dict­ing price action with H4 final­ly clos­ing as a spin­ning top with longer sell­ing wick that could pos­si­ble end in an Evening Star in the next 4 hours. Will check in Next Day Analysis. 

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket con­text? Was I aligned with mar­ket nar­ra­tive through my hypos? What were the cir­cum­stances of the devel­op­ing nar­ra­tive? How did they devel­op accord­ing to DTTZ?

Ini­tial bull­ish fake out fol­lowed by lots of con­tra­dict­ing moves even­tu­al­ly turn­ing into a Neu­tral Day with poten­tial for more down­side. I did well to fol­low my trad­ing plan even though I decid­ed that going long wasn’t the best option due to mod­er­ate­ly large imbal­ance at the open. Short­ing I did not like due to the exten­sion up with no sell­ing tail.

What was the play of the day?

Well in total hon­est­ly this kin­da looked like respon­sive activ­i­ty and as such one could have played off  ADR and LTF SD lev­els. But if I’m even more hon­est due to loca­tion this would have been more of a guess then an actu­al play. Hind­sight is 20/20 as they say. 

Was I right on the out­come? Which Hypo played out and why was it not Hypo 1 (if any)?

Well both hypos kin­da played out so I think I did well in my for­mu­la­tion of both. I went with doc­u­ment­ing Hypo 2 as my main due to the poten­tial for more down­side (although prob­a­bly not much due to Neu­tral Day) after hav­ing formed a neu­tral day and H4 spin­ning top with long sell­ing wick. 

Was there an oppor­tu­ni­ty and did I take it?

There was no real oppor­tu­ni­ty. But I doc­u­ment­ed some poten­tial LTF plays that per­haps in the future I can trade if they prove con­sis­tent­ly enough for me to risk cap­i­tal on. 

What could I have done better?

I think I did well today. 

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

No trades tak­en but I feel good. 

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 — Trend Continuation
  • Nar­ra­tive: H4 Phase 4 in line with larg­er time­frame bear­ish sentiment.
  • Pre­ferred: Strong bear­ish price action, extend­ing IB below with a sus­tained auc­tion. No sup­plies below till D1‑C‑D 1693 and being mid H4/M30 swing might make for a strong play although unlike­ly due to the large imbalance. 
  • Con: Large imbal­ance. Trad­ing right into new D1 C‑dem.
  • 90% cor­rect
  • IB trad­ed down with an exten­sion in C and LLs in D fol­lowed by a con­sol­i­da­tion with poten­tial for Hypo 1 — mean rever­sion to play out. 

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket con­text? Was I aligned with mar­ket nar­ra­tive through my hypos? What were the cir­cum­stances of the devel­op­ing nar­ra­tive? How did they devel­op accord­ing to DTTZ?

I did well here. Based on H4 Phase 4 I sur­mised a pos­si­ble con­tin­u­a­tion although due to D1 C‑dem and open sen­ti­ment I thought it wasn’t that prob­a­ble. Prob­a­bly due to larg­er time­frame bear­ish sen­ti­ment I could have added a tad more con­vic­tion into the hypo. Although, still did well. I did not feel to enter on IB break down due to the open sen­ti­ment as I though momen­tum would dry up quick­ly which it kin­da did. All in all I did well. 

What was the play of the day?

A trend con­tin­u­a­tion down in line with H4 phase 4 with larg­er time­frame bear­ish sen­ti­ment negat­ing the strength of new­ly formed D1 C‑dem ever so slight­ly (at the moment of writ­ing as price is poten­tial­ly set­ting up for a mean reversion). 

Was I right on the out­come? Which Hypo played out and why was it not Hypo 1 (if any)?

I sur­mised that based on the open sen­ti­ment and D1 C‑dem near­by a mean rever­sion was more prob­a­ble and I still stand by that. What turned out was that Hypo 2 played out which is fine. 

Was there an oppor­tu­ni­ty and did I take it?

I did not want to take an entry off IB break due to afore­men­tioned reasons. 

What could I have done better?

I am com­ing more and more into the real­i­sa­tion I might be more of an order­flow trad­ing then any­thing else. Often times I see price action and order­flow tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry then what SD zones are telling and I find I could find a trade in focus­ing more on that. Although with­in the same real­iza­tion I can be hon­est enough to say that there is a big mar­gin of lack of under­stand­ing or incom­pe­tence in read­ing the SD zones as much. Which is per­fect­ly fine as I am gain­ing expe­ri­ence in both of these fields places togeth­er with­in the entire con­text of the mar­ket. Why do I always try to say things in a fan­cy way?… basi­cal­ly I am learn­ing more on how SD lev­els and order­flow events com­bined with price action relates to the mar­ket con­di­tions. Still fan­cy but less I think 🙂

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

No trades tak­en. Feel great. 

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

Did very well here to not force any trades. I feel good. Brain works great. Was focused. 

What did I learn today?

That I am tight­en­ing up the rela­tion between how price action relates to order­flow events with­in the con­text of sup­ply and demand zones. There will nev­er be a 100% under­stand­ing of all in one breath but I feel the mar­gins are def­i­nite­ly improv­ing. Hope that makes sense. Screen time is every­thing when it comes to trad­ing. There is no sub­sti­tute. You have to active­ly sit in front of the screens ana­lyz­ing and visu­al­iz­ing what could be next in the mar­ket. You’ll nev­er get it a 100% right but at least you’ll find more sta­tis­ti­cal­ly viable sce­nar­ios that you can call your edge (at some point after many mis­takes and review). 

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

I did very well today. On point. 

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

I keep men­tion­ing this because I feel I still have a lit­tle bit left maybe where I think I need to take trades. There is no need. Time will show my edge. Me over­trad­ing will NOT. Take your time. 

Under the cir­cum­stances, did I per­form at my best?

Very well. 

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 20210312

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Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold 20210312

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