How did I trade today? 20210409

Sum­ma­ry: God, I love trading 

#fin­twit #order­flow #day­trad­ing #dai­lyre­port­card #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: 

• Min. 3 times hit­ting the gym + manda­to­ry cardio
  • Did a dou­ble work­out yes­ter­day and had a reg­u­lar work­out the day before. Going again tomorrow. 
• Only trade the main account
  • No trades taken
• Be mind­ful of DTTZs
  • Check
• Only price-action based exit rules (or if hit time stop comes earlier)
  • No trades taken
• M15/M30 entries and exits at 1st DTTZ, M5 entries and exits at 2nd DTTZ
  • No trades taken

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: Slight M30 DBD but price still above M30 VWAP and lots of sell­ing wicks around
  • C: Closed as a Bull Engulf, M15 did not close with­in supply
  • D: Price retraced all of C and test­ed IB low
    • Even an exten­sion below IB is a bit prob­lem­at­ic with new­ly formed H4 c‑dem. Although this is part of my research on how a high­er time­frame sen­ti­ment forces a low­er time frame to cre­ate an ‘invalid’ rever­sal pat­tern. Will take notes and observe. 
    • Closed as a Bear­ish Inside Bar, no IB extension
  • E: Extend­ed below IB (just noticed D had extend­ed 1 TPO below as well weird that the indi­ca­tor didn’t show it). 
    • Closed as a hammer
  • F: Closed as a DBD tak­ing out LTF demand
  • G: Formed a poor low right above H4-C‑D 1.94690 and returned to IB low, will prob­a­bly take out the poor low but no idea to what extend
    • Closed mak­ing LLs with a sell­ing wick that test­ed IB low
  • H: Made LLs near­ly tak­ing out H4 demand before pop­ping back up
  • I: made a poor low on the pro­file but price action show­ing a slight LL almost tak­ing out LTF/H4 demand clos­ing almost on its low
  • J: Price took out LTF and H4 demand and price would have reached 2R. Expect­ing more down­side. W1-C‑D 1.93978 is at 3.7R although H4 200MA in UT still in the way which price is test­ing right now. I will review this tomorrow. 

• GOLD
  • IB: M30 DBD
  • C: Closed as a DBD
  • D: Closed as an Inside Bar at ADR 0.5 low with­in M30 QLo above D1 Base demand level
  • E: Three Out­side Up
  • F: Closed as an Inside Bar, still no extension
  • G: Respon­sive activ­i­ty test­ing IB low, no extension
  • H: Closed as a Drag­on­fly doji, H4 Evening Star clos­ing slight­ly with­in H4 demand with buy­ing wick almost hav­ing tak­en out said demand. 
  • I: made a huge move up to IB high but no exten­sion (yet) looks like Hypo 2 could be play­ing out later.

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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
  • Hypo 1 — Return to Value
  • Nar­ra­tive: Pos­si­ble D1 phase 4 (bear­ish marubozu), H4 Evening Star, price not test­ed QLo
  • Pre­ferred: Strong Bear­ish Price action, IB exten­sion down with sus­tained auc­tion tak­ing out LTF demand clos­ing with­in H4 demand. 
  • Con: New­ly formed H4 demand
  • 100% cor­rect

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket con­text? What were the cir­cum­stances of the devel­op­ing nar­ra­tive? How did they devel­op accord­ing to DTTZ?

I did great here. Due to the D1 Bear­ish Marubozu phase 4 nar­ra­tive the H4 demand proved less of an hin­drance to short right into it. Although it did react towards the end of the session.

What was the play of the day?

Return to Val­ue based off a D1 Bear­ish Marubozu phase 4 nar­ra­tive. Open below val­ue and range with mod­er­ate to large imbal­ance 0.5xASR. Moved slight­ly high­er (fak­ing a Bull Engulf rever­sal) towards VAL and con­se­quent exten­sion below after bear­ish Inside Bar. 

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

Hypo 1 perfectly 

Was there an oppor­tu­ni­ty and did I take it?

There was an oppor­tu­ni­ty but I did not take it due to want­i­ng to test my under­stand­ing of the nar­ra­tive objec­tive­ly before act­ing on it. I have observed these con­di­tions objec­tive­ly mul­ti­ple times now and I believe next time I will exe­cute a trade.

DTTZ: 1st DTTZ

Entry: C closed as a Bull Engulf to which D com­plete­ly retraced and final­ly closed as a Bear­ish Inside Bar (with slight buy­ing wick test­ing IB low). E then extend­ed below IB before clos­ing as a ham­mer (high fail­ure rate) and turned into a DBD in F. 

Prof­it Mar­gin (ADR or con­ges­tion): Due to near­by H4 demand I did not think this would have had a good prof­it tar­get. Although if exe­cut­ed per­fect­ly on close of D this could have net­ted 1.8R at yesterday’s low 1.94453.

What would a price action exit rule have done?

This is one of those trades where I might have grasshop­pered out due to M15 rever­sal pat­terns. There was none on a M30 time­frame so a near hit of 2R would have net­ted 1.8R. I am rarely a dick for a tick 🙂

How was SL place­ment and Sizing?

SL place­ment would have been right on top of IB high although I could have placed it slight­ly high­er. Entry 1.94909 around x.xx50 and SL above x.xx85 in this case 1.95160 was actu­al­ly close to perfect. 

What would time-based have done?

1R

What could I have done better?

I think I did every­thing well. I hypoth­e­sized a nar­ra­tive but was uncom­fort­able to trade right into a new­ly devel­oped H4 demand. Thus I decid­ed to let the trade go and just sit and observe. God I love trad­ing. And God do I love improv­ing my under­stand­ing of the mar­kets. Why stop there? I love tak­ing notes. Research­ing. Gath­er­ing my stats. Hell, I even love typ­ing on my nice mechan­i­cal key­board sit­ting at my nice office in front of my mul­ti-mon­i­tor set­up. But I digress… 🙂 I love every­thing about trad­ing Lol. If you are read­ing this I sooo hope that this is how you feel too… It might not feel like this when you start out but I sure as hell hope you have that sparkle of research and sta­tis­tics in you that will help you bust through the awful stages of pur­ga­to­ry before being accept­ed into heav­en. Haha… I am not reli­gious in this way so I hope I got that right. Although with all the God and talk about pur­ga­to­ry and heav­en you might think I am 🙂 Sor­ry, had to get that out…. I wish you all the best my friend. Wher­ev­er you are, at what­ev­er stage of your trad­ing devel­op­ment you are. 

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

One word. Great. 

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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 — Val­ue Acceptance
  • Nar­ra­tive: near prox­im­i­ty to val­ue edge
  • Pre­ferred: Ear­ly accep­tance with quick follow-through
  • Con: D1 base demand at VAL
  • 90% cor­rect

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket con­text? What were the cir­cum­stances of the devel­op­ing nar­ra­tive? How did they devel­op accord­ing to DTTZ?

There was no real fol­low-through to VAL after accep­tance and in fact I believe Hypo 2 is actu­al­ly the one that is play­ing out. Due to hypo 1 play­ing out with­in my trad­ing win­dow I am stick­ing with that. Price basi­cal­ly showed respon­sive activ­i­ty and there was noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant to report until TPO I made a big move to IB High although no exten­sion (yet).

What was the play of the day?

Val­ue Accep­tance and respon­sive activity. 

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

Yes. Hypo 1 and I believe Hypo 2 could play out in over­lap noise. Will review tomorrow. 

Was there an oppor­tu­ni­ty and did I take it?

There was none so no. 

What would a price action exit rule have done?

N.A.

How was SL place­ment and Sizing?

N.A.

What would time-based have done?

N.A.

What could I have done better?

N.A.

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

N.A.

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

I did great here. Not much to report besides get­ting a lit­tle tired. Prob­a­bly because I didn’t have my usu­al cof­fee in the after­noon. Noth­ing big though. 

What did I learn today?

That I know how to read price action and order­flow (well duh­hh). I mean with­in the con­text of what con­di­tions supercede what con­di­tions if that makes sense. We all know (hope you do know) that larg­er time­frame nar­ra­tives supercede the low­er ones but it takes time and expe­ri­ence to see how the low­er time­frames react to that nar­ra­tive when there are seem­ing­ly con­tra­dict­ing price action pat­terns devel­op­ing. Hope that makes sense oth­er­wise hit me up with a message. 

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

Trust myself in that I:

1. More than not am aligned with the mar­ket nar­ra­tive as shown through the sta­tis­tics in my hypos
2. I can read price action and order­flow events in align­ment with that mar­ket narrative
3. I am con­fi­dent to exe­cute when I am good and ready to exe­cute on a premise I have back- and for­ward tested.
4. I can lis­ten to my inner-voice to guide me

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

I exe­cut­ed per­fect­ly today with­out tak­ing any trades. Trad­ing is not about trad­ing. It is about align­ing your­self with the mar­ket with­in your “EDGE”. This myth­i­cal or mys­ti­cal word traders through around which you can’t tru­ly grasp until you do. Sor­ry to say that but there is a lot that goes on ‘behind the cur­tains’ that nobody can teach you. You have to expe­ri­ence and devel­op it for your­self. Wish you all the best on your path and have a great weekend! 

Under the cir­cum­stances, did I per­form at my best?

Fuck yeah!

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 20210409

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Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold 20210409

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