01162019 Trade Plan — Sell off at 4H failed swing high

16 Jan 01162019 Trade Plan — Sell off at 4H failed swing high

01162019 Trade Plan — Sell off at 4H failed swing high

Ter­mi­nol­o­gy (par­tial­ly made up by yours truly)

• PA = Price Action
• BO = Break Out
• BD = Break Down
• CAR = Con­firm As Resistance
• CAS = Con­firm As Support
• UKC = Upper Kelt­ner Channel
• LKC = Low­er Kelt­ner Channel
• TV = Tick Volume
• WPP = Week­ly Piv­ot Point
• DPP = Dai­ly Piv­ot Point
• DR = Dai­ly Resis­tance (piv­ot)
• DS = Dai­ly Sup­port (piv­ot)
• WR = Week­ly Resis­tance (piv­ot)
• WS = Week­ly Sup­port (piv­ot)
• HL = High­er Low
• HH = High­er High
• LH = Low­er High
• LL = Low­er Low
• SD = Stan­dard Deviation
• VWAP = Vol­ume Weight­ed Aver­age Price
• AS = Asian Session
• LS = Lon­don Ses­sion (EU)
• NY = New York Ses­sion (US)
• R/R = Risk to Reward
• M2M = Move to Move
• T2H = Trade to Hold
• DT = DownTrend
• UT = UpTrend
• LTF = Low­er Time Frame
• HTF = High­er Time Frame
• Hypo = HYPOthetical

Per­son­al Checklist

5 pos­i­tive 1 negative	Sat	Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed
-	1/12	1/13	1/14	1/15	1/16
Beers night before	8	8	0	1 fin­ger whiskey	0
Time bed yesterday	late	late	22:53	22:01	22:20
woke up	-	-	8:21	6:11	7:14
Hours sleep	6	6	9:28	8:10	8:54
Awake	-	-	1:15	1:54	-
REM	-	-	1:28	0:30	-
Light	-	-	5:47	4:50	-
Deep	-	-	0:58	0:56	-
Sleep well?	1	1	3	3	3
Mela­tonin	0	1x	0	0	0
Neg­a­tive thoughts?	2	2	2	1	3
Exer­cise yester(to)day	1	1	3	3	3
Grat­i­tude	5	5	5	5	5
Joy	5	5	5	5	5
Anger	1	1	1	1	1
Fear	1	1	1	1	1
Focus	1	1	3	2	3
Cof­fees today	1 turk­ish cof­fee (1 scoop)	no	1 espres­so spread over 2 hours afternoon	1 Turk­ish cof­fee half scoop in morning	1 Turk­ish cof­fee half scoop in morning
Inter­mit­tent fasting	no	no	yes, 11/4	no	yes
Water L	2	2	3	4	3
Vit­a­mins	no	no	yes	yes	yes
Cig­a­rettes	10	10	0	0	0

Health review (for the past week)

• How would you describe your over­all health?
  • I am get­ting a bet­ter idea how my week­ends affect my body and there­fore my con­cen­tra­tion. Points to improve are sleep­ing rou­tine and lim­it social interactions.
  • Last night I slept lat­er but I also woke up lat­er so I could get some more sleep in. Sad­ly my Fit­bit didn’t track my sleep because I wasn’t wear­ing it right appar­ent­ly. I’ll be more mind­ful of that.
• How do you feel?
  • I feel bet­ter than yes­ter­day. How­ev­er still not a 100%. Tomor­row I’ll be even better. 
  • I can sense that I am not in a good state because I am too eas­i­ly both­ered by the peo­ple around me. I have neg­a­tive thoughts like aggres­sion and resent­ment towards them. This is not good but I under­stand that my psy­chi­cal state is inter­twined with my men­tal state and I will keep mon­i­tor­ing this. 
  • Anoth­er thing is that I keep get­ting dis­tract­ed by a per­son in my life that is prob­a­bly not worth being in my life as it is and I should stop wast­ing time think­ing about this. 
• How would you rate it (1–5)?
  • 2

The Big Pic­ture (dai­ly)

• What hap­pened yes­ter­day? Where are the tech­ni­cal levels?
  • Mar­ket was bal­anc­ing and there was no dis­cern­able main trend
  • We start­ed the AS by mov­ing high­er off the bounce we had the day before 50.80, 50.90 area which was also the val­ue area for the day
    • We moved high­er and moved towards the mid­dle of the pre­vi­ous days range which was the DPP/WPP area for the day as well
      • We then made a pull­back and start­ed rang­ing in the 51.20 to .50 range
  • Lon­don opened bring­ing us back to the val­ue area for buy­ers to come in and we reject­ed the 50.80/90 area and we saw an imbal­ance when prices moved up
    • A pull­back to mid point of the prev. Day again that showed strength on the buy­ers side and the imbal­ance continued
  • Lat­er on dur­ing NY we bounced off the same area and on stronger momen­tum test­ed the excess area and after a pull­back on  strong momen­tum still we broke through some­what effort­less­ly and the imbal­ance con­tin­ued a lit­tle longer in what looks like overex­tend­ed ter­ri­to­ry being so high over the excess area would mean the sell­ers more incen­tivized to come in
    • We end­ed up reject­ing the 52.40 some more in the rest of the session

Intra­day Fundamentals

• API report
  • Showed a draw of ‑0.560M which is fair­ly little
• EIA report
  • Fore­cast is a draw of ‑1.323M

Intra­day Tech­ni­cal Analysis

-	Thu	Fri	Week	Mon	Tue
-	1/10	1/11	1/7 — 1/11	1/14	1/15
High	53.014	53.556	53.556	52.349	52.53
Low	51.643	51.422	48.309	50.627	50.887
Close	52.641	51.937	51.937	51.003	52.235
Pip move	137.1	213.4	524.7	172.2	164.3
PP	52.433	52.305	51.267	51.326	51.884
dis­tance	79	88.3	295.8	69.9	99.7
R1	53.223	53.188	54.225	52.025	52.881
dis­tance	137.1	213.4	524.7	172.2	164.3
R2	53.804	54.439	56.514	53.048	53.527
dis­tance	-58.1	-125.1	-228.9	-102.3	-64.6
S1	51.852	51.054	48.978	50.303	51.238
dis­tance	-137.1	-213.4	-524.7	-172.2	-164.3
S2	51.062	50.171	46.02	49.604	50.241
TV	66,078	65,509	325,963	69,035	56,496
50MA	52.786	52.527	64.078	52.276	52.062
200MA	64.797	64.739	-	64.676	64.627
ATR	2.2566	2.2786	4.891	2.2847	2.2508

• What can we tell from the PP levels?
  • DR1 has expand­ed a lit­tle bit but the rest contracted
• ATR
  • Still around the same level
• Where were the overnight highs and lows?
  • High 52.53
  • Low 50.887
• Where are the areas of estab­lished “val­ue” and “excess”?
  • Val­ue I would say is around the 51.15 to .35 area
  • Excess is around the 52.20 to .40 area a bit more con­gest­ed than val­ue area so we might be see­ing more sell­ers com­ing in and bring­ing the mar­ket down or area of more smart play­ers com­ing in
• Is there a shift in value/excess migration?
  • There was a shift in val­ue migra­tion name­ly that the val­ue area has shift­ed high­er about 30 ticks, same for the excess area
• What is the cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tion? Are we trend­ing or balancing?
  • I believe that we are still bal­anc­ing on the main trend but if the excess area holds as sup­port we could see the con­tin­u­a­tion of the HTF uptrend
• What trade loca­tions among this struc­ture would l like to get involved in that will offer me the best R/R opportunities?
  • Areas I would like to get involved in are
    • A shot over the excess lev­el into overex­tend­ed areas and failed swing high on the HTF around the DR1 52.881 lev­el would be one good place to go short
    • Overex­tend­ed move into 4H 50MA which is right below the val­ue area and make a swing high
• How far away are we from tech­ni­cal levels?

Cur­rent	52.4
Price
Dai­ly	Price	Dis­tance
50MA	52.062	-34
200MA	64.627	1,223
Yes­ter­day’s high	52.53	13
Yes­ter­day’s low	50.887	-151

S/R	kind	lev­el	Dis­tance	Rate it 1–10	Why?
R6	WR1	54.225	182.5	8	prev. HTF swing high
R5	Week­ly	53.9	150	10	prev. HTF swing high
R4	DR2	53.527	112.7	10	prev. HTF swing high
R3	DR1	52.881	48.1	8	prev. HTF swing high
R2	Yes. High	52.53	13	10	Yes. high
R1	Excess	52.4	0	10	excess area
CURRENT	-	52.4	-	-	-
S1	Dai­ly	52.3	-10	9	Dai­ly lev­el mid excess area
S2	DPP	51.884	-51.6	6	prev. swing level
S3	Val­ue area	51.35	-105	10	yes. low, WPP/DS1 area
S4	Yes. Low	50.887	-151.3	9	yes­ter­day’s low
S5	DS2	50.241	-215.9	6	below 4h 50MA
S6	Dai­ly	49.8	-260	6	4H 50MA area

• What has the Asian Ses­sion printed?
  • The AS moved down to find sup­port around 52 lev­el and has since moved back into the excess area and is now test­ing the top of the area around 52.40

Trade Idea

• Hypo 1
  • We overex­tend over the excess area to come into more sell­ers poten­tial­ly around the DR1 level
    • This would be a good place to short after look­ing for con­fir­ma­tion on the tape
    • Prof­it tar­get would be 51.40 area but could cre­ate more momen­tum and blast through
• Hypo 2
  • We BD from excess area into sell­ers around the 52 area and overex­tend  into 51.80s before revers­ing and con­tin­u­ing the imbal­ance of the main trend up
    • Prof­it tar­get would be excess area around 52.30 area
      • We could then poten­tial­ly drop back down to break towards val­ue area
• Hypo 3
  • After break­ing down to 52 area we come back up into excess and BO from here to new HTF highs
    • Prof­it tar­get would be 53.90 a week­ly area
• Points to pos­si­ble get involved in are
  • Short above 52.50 area
  • Long or short around 52 area
  • Long around 51.30 area

My goals for the day (Dai­ly Report Card)

• Get con­sis­tent only tak­ing SR plays

Read­ing the Tape

• What is print­ing? Look for PA with high­er TV and S/R levels.
  • Lon­don opened trad­ing down and I feel that HYPO1 could be play­ing out but that I missed my point of entry since it looks like that might have hap­pened dur­ing AS
  • How­ev­er we have not cleared this area yet so I am still look­ing to start stalk­ing above the 52.40 area 
  • I was think­ing to go short here but the 5M is not show­ing my set­up so I won’t.
  • It looks like we are still stuck around this excess area and we haven’t been able to break to new highs yet. Smart mon­ey is def­i­nite­ly up to some­thing here let’s wait and see what they wan­na do.
  • 5M is show­ing UT and widen­ing KC which could mean a rever­sal might be upon us
    • 52.60 is push­ing back and there are still poten­tial­ly more sell­ers at this lev­el. How­ev­er this looks like there might not be enough of them
  • If I would take a trade here that would be a SRF and that has the least R/R so why risk that? I bet­ter wait for a pos­si­ble con­fir­ma­tion of a SRTT which might not come of course.
  • And we made a sharp move over into 52.60
  • This looks like it might be BO here. PA was mov­ing in small­er swings up into the 52.50 lev­el and now we went over it. 
    • Could also be a fake out
      • Or per­haps we had the fake out before dur­ing the AS at 08:20
  • We made the first bear­ish can­dle at the 52.70 lev­el but I am wait­ing for the 2nd con­fir­ma­tion before I get in short here
  • We dropped back to UKC and I was think­ing to go long here but that’s not part of my set­up (yet)
  • A lot of sell­ers com­ing in here but it could just be to buy up more for the smart guys
    • We are at a HTF lev­el so best to be extra cautious
  • We dropped back down to the 52.50 area and might CAS here and might be a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to go long here which I won’t since that’s not part of my plan
    • Let’s pre­tend I did 
      • Entry 52.57
      • SL 52.50
      • TP 52.70
      • Hypo­thet­i­cal stop got tak­en out
  • So HYPO1 does seem to be play­ing out. We shot up over the UKC close to DR1 52.881 (we got to .77) and we then got sell­ers in 
    • I didn’t trade this oppor­tu­ni­ty because KC and VWAP were widen­ing and then PA moved high­er over the UKC which then I am a bit reluc­tant to take a posi­tion and was look­ing for con­fir­ma­tion. And then came a big drop back into the KC and since I was think­ing that this could have just been a 30M SRF move I thought my R/R was not great at all to get in short at this level
      • We then dropped anoth­er 10–15 ticks but might be look­ing to continue
  • If 52.30 holds as val­ue area now I could pos­si­bly have an oppor­tu­ni­ty going in long here
  • Buy­ers com­ing in around 52.40
  • I’m stalk­ing a pos­si­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty at 52.25 which is also the 5M 200MA
    • This would be a 30M SRTC opportunity
  • T1 scratched 1.1 tick prof­it con­ser­v­a­tive sizing
  • It looks like we might be BD from 52.30 area and best would be to wait for a pull­back up to this lev­el to take a short
  • After such a big sell off I feel like being extra care­ful there
  • We saw a long low­er wicked doji can­dle and I thought about going long there but then I start­ed think­ing that this could be the stops of all those that went long around the 52.30 area get­ting tak­en out
    • Not sure entire­ly how that fits into the con­text here but what I do know is that I should be careful
  • Since we are around the 52 lev­el we might see HYPO2 play out. I will be look­ing for this lev­el to hold so I can take a long posi­tion here. 
    • That would be a 5M SRF oppor­tu­ni­ty since the 5M trend is down how­ev­er I see the sell off continue
  • I am not sharp at all today. Kin­da star­ing at the screen not pay­ing atten­tion. Got­ta snap out of it
  • A long low­er wicked doji formed on the 30M above the 52 lev­el indi­cat­ing shift in sen­ti­ment. I’ll wait for a bit more of a drop and go long
  • T2 win 3.3 ticks con­ser­v­a­tive sizing
  • I am done trad­ing for today. Def­i­nite­ly not focused on trad­ing and think I need a break
  • Went upstairs to do a quick workout
  • Now that I’m back I can see that price has dropped fur­ther and crossed 30M 50MA
    • I believe today is all part of a HTF pat­tern that I used to call the 4HUTL2BD attempt fun to see that hav­ing watched PA for quite a while has paid off under­stand­ing how this mar­ket moves
    • Then as I am say­ing this I see a cup and han­dle pat­tern form­ing on the 4H. Inter­est­ing to see how this will play out.
  • If we break the 51.80 we could be look­ing at a next prof­it tar­get of that 51.40 and then pos­si­ble 50.80
    • If we can hold here we could see a move up to 52.60 and then 53.30s
  • I’m done for today but I’ll keep mon­i­tor­ing the tape. 

Trade Man­age­ment

Explain what trade you put on (include price, SL, TP) and what your thoughts are dur­ing the trade

• T1
  • Why? What do I see?
    • 30M SRTC UT
      • What is the main trend?
        • up
      • Where are we in the move?
        • After reject­ing 52.70 lev­el we dropped to 52.30 lev­el which gave us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go long here
      • Is 5M confirming?
        • The 5M showed more buy­ers com­ing in at this lev­el and I went long
      • Entry: 52.316
  • SL
    • 52.226
  • TP
    • 52.519
  • Trade Man­age­ment
    • It looks like we will actu­al­ly BD from this lev­el and see more downside
    • I scratched the trade since I wasn’t too sure any­more about this trade idea and I real­ized that my HYPO1 was that it would drop fur­ther to about 51.40s so I should be look­ing for more down­side here

• T2
  • Why? What do I see?
    • 5M SRF
      • What is the main trend?
        • Up
        • 5M is down
      • Where are we in the move?
        • We just had a big sell off and then we hit the 52 lev­el and we had a long low­er wicked doji on the 30M
      • Is 5M confirming?
        • I wait­ed for the 5M move down a bit more before tak­ing my long position
      • Entry: 52.165
  • SL
    • 52.067
  • TP
    • 52.288
  • Trade Man­age­ment
    • I start­ed ask­ing myself why I had tak­en this posi­tion since we had such a big sell off and such lit­tle retrace­ment. Start­ed sec­ond-guess­ing my posi­tion and when it moved in my direc­tion I cov­ered at 52.198
    • Win 3.3 ticks

Trade Review

• Did you let your trade play out or did you cov­er or stop out soon­er? If so, why?
• P/L for the day

Open Time	Type	Size	Item	Price	S / L	T / P	Close Time	Price	P/L ticks
2019.01.16 12:38:25	buy	2	wti	52.165	52.067	52.288	2019.01.16 12:44:47	52.198	3.30
2019.01.16 11:43:14	buy	2	wti	52.316	52.226	52.519	2019.01.16 11:49:33	52.327	1.10
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	4.40

Dai­ly Report Card

• Week­ly goal: Get con­sis­tent only tak­ing SR plays
  • How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket context?
    • Turned out HYPO1 was yet again the one to play out
  • How well did I man­age my phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and cog­ni­tive states?
    • I did fair­ly OK. When I was in the trade I let my stops stand and would have tak­en them
    • I am not sharp today and real­ly think I should exer­cise and rest more (bet­ter)
      • Also some stress in the back of my mind could be weigh­ing me down a bit. I’ll be more mind­ful of this and write about it in my journal
  • What did I do well?
    • I did the assess­ment part real­ly well I think. I’m glad I am start­ing to mark out bet­ter where the high prob­a­bil­i­ty areas are
  • What do I need to improve?
    • My exe­cu­tion! OMG… my HYPO1 plays out in front of my eyes and I hes­i­tat­ed and then nev­er got it because price dropped rel­a­tive­ly fast with­out any pull­backs to hop back in on. Such a waste. 
      • I guess some­where it’s good that I didn’t hop on the trade lat­er since that would have been against my plan. Speak­ing of my plan I should real­ly incor­po­rate and focus more on points where I can add or re-enter
  • What’s one thing you learned today?
    • TAKE THE TRADE! If it’s your set­up and your hypo1 for fuck’s sake TAKE IT!
  • What’s one thing I need to do more often?
    • Under­stand that you are in a high­er prob­a­bil­i­ty posi­tion when you exe­cute a trade
  • What’s one thing I need to do less often?
    • Wait for more con­fir­ma­tion. I’ve missed a few trades like this. 
  • Grade your­self 1 to 5 (5 being the best)
    • 1
      • Because I failed to exe­cute my HYPO1
        • I was stalk­ing it and then hes­i­tat­ed until it was beyond the point of no return