01172019 Trade Plan — Stop hunting?

17 Jan 01172019 Trade Plan — Stop hunting?

01172019 Trade Plan — Stop hunting?

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	Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu
-	1/13	1/14	1/15	1/16	1/17
Beers night before	8	0	1 fin­ger whiskey	0	0
Time bed yesterday	late	22:53	22:01	22:20	22:08
woke up	-	8:21	6:11	7:14	6:05
Hours sleep	6	9:28	8:10	8:54	7:57
Awake	-	1:15	1:54	-	-
REM	-	1:28	0:30	-	-
Light	-	5:47	4:50	-	-
Deep	-	0:58	0:56	-	-
Sleep well?	1	3	3	3	1
Mela­tonin	1x	0	0	0	0
Neg­a­tive thoughts?	2	2	1	3	2
Exer­cise yester(to)day	1	3	3	3	5
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	3	2	3	3
Cof­fees today	no	1 espres­so spread over 2 hours afternoon	1 Turk­ish cof­fee half scoop in morning	1 Turk­ish cof­fee half scoop in morning	1 turk­ish cof­fee (1 scoop morn­ing) 1 espres­so (half cup, afternoon)
Inter­mit­tent fasting	no	yes, 11/4	no	yes	yes
Water L	2	3	4	3	3
Vit­a­mins	no	yes	yes	yes	yes
Cig­a­rettes	10	0	0	0	0

Health review (for the past week)

• How would you describe your over­all health?
  • I worked out yes­ter­day by doing some spar­ring and jump­ing rope
  • I woke up in the mid­dle of the night and actu­al­ly got up and since I got up I went to start the con­ver­sion of my overnight screen record­ing of the London/NY ses­sion. Went to the bath­room and back to bed. I twist­ed and turned a lot in my sleep. This is prob­a­bly also the rea­son why my Fit­bit didn’t track any of it. I made sure the Fit­bit was locat­ed below the wrist as instruct­ed but didn’t work. Per­haps the twist­ing and turn­ing made me sleep in a posi­tion it couldn’t track. Be care­ful today since you I might not be the sharpest today.
• How do you feel?
  • Sur­pris­ing­ly not bad. I did get that espres­so in the after­noon but have only drank a few sips and will def­i­nite­ly take it slow and easy today. Not sure what’s going on in my head when I’m asleep. Hope it clears up soon. I’ll write some more in my journal.
• How would you rate it (1–5)?
  • 2

The Big Pic­ture (dai­ly)

• What hap­pened yes­ter­day? Where are the tech­ni­cal levels?
  • Dur­ing the AS we saw that we had buy­ers com­ing in around the 52 level
    • And then again at 52.20 con­tin­u­ing the imbal­ance up
  • We did have some sell­ers around the 52.30 lev­el but those got tak­en out with fair ease and we con­tin­ued to 52.40 lev­el with a spike into 52.60 and that’s where a lot of sell­ers came in and start­ed shift­ing the imbalance
  • Then when Lon­don opened we trad­ed a bit high­er and my HYPO1 was in play; if we would overex­tend over this excess area I would look for a short. This I failed to do and I know why and have moved on since. New day. New oppor­tu­ni­ties. One good trade at a time.
    • I com­mit­ted the missed oppor­tu­ni­ty into my play­book and will be bet­ter next time, also I review the screen record­ing and visu­al­ize tak­ing the trade over and over again. Visu­al­iza­tion is key. In the mind or on the screen. The brain doesn’t care.
  • So after the sell off around 52.70 lev­el we sold off till 51.80 with some hic­cups around 52.30 and the con­se­quent PB to CAR this same lev­el and con­tin­ue the imbal­ance down to 51.80
  • It is here at 51.80 buy­ers became inter­est­ed and pushed back to the 52.30 lev­el and even over til 52.40s before drop­ping hard into the pre­vi­ous 51.80 lev­el with a spike down into 51.55s
    • I con­sid­er this to be the same level
  • Buy­ers stepped up again and start­ed the prop­er imbal­ance that brought PA back up to 52.30 lev­el and then anoth­er push after the PB at 51.95 clear­ing 51.80 as a good val­ue area and rea­son for support
  • The rest of the ses­sion we moved high­er over the 52.30 into the 52.70s our ini­tial big start of the day

Intra­day Fundamentals

• API report
  • 2 days ago we had the API
    • Draw of ‑0.560M
• EIA report
  • Yes­ter­day
    • Fore­cast ‑1.323M
    • ‘Actu­al’ num­ber draw of ‑2.683M

Intra­day Tech­ni­cal Analysis

• Where were the overnight highs and lows?
  • High 52.777
  • Low 51.538
• Where are the areas of estab­lished “val­ue” and “excess”?
  • 52.05 area is a a good val­ue area
  • 52.40 area seems to be a good excess area
• Is there a shift in value/excess migration?
  • There has been a con­tin­u­a­tion of the migra­tion up in regards with the val­ue and excess levels
• What is the cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tion? Are we trend­ing or balancing?
  • Even though we had a bit of an imbal­ance mov­ing prices high­er we are still try­ing to bal­ance out the mar­ket and haven’t start­ed a new trend leg yet
• What trade loca­tions among this struc­ture would l like to get involved in that will offer me the best R/R opportunities?
  • Between 52.40 and 52.70 would a good short­ing area in accor­dance with my trad­ing rules
  • Going long would be between 52.05 and 51.60 areas
• How far away are we from tech­ni­cal levels?
  • We start the day off between the val­ue and excess areas close to both
• What has the Asian Ses­sion printed?
  • The AS shows a bounce off the 52.05 level

Trade Idea

• Hypo 1
  • PA overex­tend the excess area (not nec­es­sar­i­ly into prev. Day high 52.777) and rolls over into the val­ue area.
  • If we then break the val­ue and hold below 52 area we could see a poten­tial huge drop to 50.50 lev­el, then 50 lev­el. Prob­a­bly not dur­ing Lon­don, more like­ly dur­ing NY.
  • Areas I’d like to get involved
    • Short over 52.50 area
      • Add to posi­tion or re-enter if we can hold under 52.30
  • Prof­it tar­gets would be 
    • 52 area
    • 51.50 area
    • 50.50 and 50 if we can drop that far dur­ing London
• Hypo 2
  • Overex­tend into val­ue area and hold and make swing high into excess area and fail to hold cre­at­ing anoth­er imbal­ance down in accor­dance with Hypo1
  • Areas I’d like to get involved
    • Long oppor­tu­ni­ty around 52.05 val­ue area (if trad­ing rules are met)
      • Prof­it tar­get excess area 52.40 area
    • Short in accor­dance with Hypo1
• Hypo 3
  • Overex­tend into val­ue area and hold and make swing high into excess area and hold this area to see a con­tin­u­a­tion up
  • Areas I’d like to get involved
    • Long oppor­tu­ni­ty like Hypo2
    • Look to add or re-enter on hold of excess area to catch the continuation
      • Prof­it tar­get would be prev. High of day 52.70 area
        • Either look to add or re-enter based on read­ing of tape around this area to see if we will break to new highs

My goals for the day (Dai­ly Report Card)

• Define win­ning
  • Per­form well by stick­ing to play­book setups and be hap­py by doing what I love and under­stand­ing that I give myself over to the ran­dom­ness of the market

Read­ing the Tape

• What is print­ing? Look for PA with high­er TV and S/R levels.
  • After Lon­don opened we start­ed near­ing the 52.05 lev­el again so let’s see how this interacts
  • Spread is wider than ‘nor­mal’ at 39 instead of 28/29
  • Stalk­ing hypo2
  • T1 loss 10.7 ticks
  • T2 win 9.1 ticks
  • Look­ing for hypo2 to con­tin­ue into excess area and then poten­tial­ly roll over for the big move
    • PA is still very slug­gish which makes me want to be a bit care­ful. But care­ful does not mean not tak­ing the trade when I should based on my rules.
  • We are at the 5M 200MA (which is also the 30M 50MA and VWAP area  52.30 lev­el the rea­son why I took half off the table and then the oth­er half since PA wasn’t build­ing momen­tum to blast through and it looks like PA is indeed revers­ing at this level
  • We dropped back to 52.13 lev­el and then quick­ly reversed back up test­ing the same 52.30 lev­el as before. Something’s going on around these lev­els. I am going to stay out and fol­low my plan.
  • Wow we dropped almost 30 ticks in a few sec­onds below the val­ue area around 51.90 area
    • Stop hunt­ing?
  • T3 scratched up 1 tick
  • I am look­ing for the val­ue area to clear and then a PB to this lev­el so I can get in long
  • 6pm feel like I’m los­ing some focus and need to work to keep look­ing at the screen
  • Even though we had dropped to val­ue area and tried to move up we failed and dropped back hard into the val­ue area again. Hypo2 is still in play though since buy­ers com­ing in around this lev­el might cre­ate the short term imbal­ance to bring PA up again. Let’s see if this can be the start of a new short term trend
  • Could this be that I need to switch from momen­tum mode to trade2hold mode? I read about this again today and I think I under­stand the point the author was try­ing to make with this example
  • I was think­ing to go long on the PB but a lot of ‘weird’ behav­iour around the 52.054 lev­el so I’m not too con­fi­dent to do this. Also, it doesn’t fit my trade rules exact­ly. I will take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to review this lat­er and see if this is worth putting in my playbook
  • Imbal­ance might be shift­ing in the favor of the sell­ers and we might break the val­ue area
  • We test­ed the high of the val­ue area and moved fur­ther down indi­cat­ing sell­ing imbalance
    • Based on my defined edge I can’t take trades in this direction
  • My set­up aris­es at the 51.80 lev­el but since we are below val­ue lev­el a short would be war­rant­ed and not a long posi­tion for a rever­sal. Also the 30M shows that there is still about 20 ticks to go before we hit the next price lev­el; LKC
    • And we are near­ing the prev. Day low
  • I went out for a quick walk and cig­a­rette and don’t feel as tired as I was feel­ing before. I think the lack of sleep last night still got to me.

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?
    • 5M SRTT
      • What is the main trend?
        • Short term down­trend on the 30M
      • Where are we in the move?
        • Near val­ue area pos­si­bly look­ing to reverse for swing high
      • Is 5M confirming?
        • 5M showed a rejec­tion can­dle of this lev­el so that was my signal
      • What risk am I going to put on?
        • I can risk 2% on the whole day
          • 30% of that is reserved for A plus setups
          • I am risk­ing 8.5% of the dai­ly risk on this trade mean­ing 0.17% of the whole account
          • I know this is small but I want to get con­sis­tent in tak­ing the trades and build con­fi­dence in this fair­ly new approach of mine before I think about adding size
      • Entry: 52.183
  • SL
    • Just below the low­er wick
    • 52.081
  • TP
    • 52.40
  • Trade Man­age­ment
    • It looks like it might go against me and I might have entered too soon but I feel calm know­ing that I can always get back in. 
    • I should­n’t say that I got in too soon. I saw the first sig­nal and I got in. Peri­od. The rest is about man­ag­ing expectations. 
    • Got stopped out at 52.076
      • Loss 10.7 ticks

• T2
  • Why? What do I see?
    • Same as T1
      • Entry: 52.214
      • What risk am I going to put on?
        • Same as T1 but I put my hard stop wider so tech­ni­cal­ly my expo­sure dou­bled. I’m look­ing to stop myself out if it drops below 52.10 though
        • This is sil­ly what I’m say­ing so I put my hard stop at 52.114 10ticks from entry
      • Entry was slop­py. I feel like I got in too high. 
        • 52.214
  • SL
    • 52.114
  • TP
    • 52.40
      • Into the excess area
  • Trade Man­age­ment
    • R/R isn’t as good as I would like to see
    • I feel calm and col­lect­ed dur­ing the trade. If it hits my stop so be it. I feel good. 
    • It jumped over in my direc­tion but then moments lat­er reversed a bit 
    • I took half off at the 5M 200MA at 52.305
      • Win 9.1 ticks
    • The oth­er half I took off when PA didn’t make any moves from this lev­el and had reversed a lit­tle bit and closed at 52.305 as well
      • Win 9.1 ticks

• T3
  • Why? What do I see?
    • 5M SRF DT
    • Was think­ing that if this is stop hunt­ing then the mar­ket might be want­i­ng to go up since we are in the val­ue area
      • Entry on small­est pos­si­ble size because it felt a bit experimental
        • 52.013
  • SL
    • 51.947
    • Tight stop below pre­vi­ous can­dle body
  • TP
    • 52.107
  • Trade Man­age­ment
    • Scratched the trade quick­ly think­ing this is not what I have back­test­ed before at 52.023 up 1 tick but I think should have have just tak­en my stop.

• T4
  • Why? What do I see?
    • 5M SRTT DT
      • What is the main trend?
        • Down
      • Where are we in the move?
        • We area near the 30M LKC and 20 ticks or so away from prev day low
        • Plus we are well below val­ue lev­el so might be extra buy­ers com­ing in
      • Is 5M confirming?
        • 2 rejec­tion can­dles on the 5M in the overex­tend­ed area made want to get in 
        • Plus I want to be more aggres­sive in tak­ing trades
      • Entry: 51.814
  • SL
    • A lit­tle wider than usu­al giv­ing it a lit­tle bit more room to breathe sort of speak
    • 51.664
    • Risk­ing 14% of dai­ly risk and 0.29% of my account
  • TP
    • 51.914
  • Trade Man­age­ment
    • Got stopped out at 51.647

Trade Review

• Did you let your trade play out or did you cov­er or stop out soon­er? If so, why?
  • I tried let­ting the trade play out but when I saw resis­tance on the tape I decid­ed to take ear­ly profits
• P/L for the day

Tick­et	Open Time	Type	Size	Item	Price	S / L	T / P	Close Time	Price	P/L ticks
2068102018	2019.01.17 14:08:41	buy	2	wti	51.814	51.664	51.914	2019.01.17 14:24:16	51.647	-16.70
2068099261	2019.01.17 11:45:14	buy	1	wti	52.013	51.947	52.107	2019.01.17 11:46:32	52.023	1.00
2068099044	2019.01.17 10:42:00	buy	1	wti	52.214	52.164	52.445	2019.01.17 11:05:41	52.305	9.10
2068091923	2019.01.17 10:42:00	buy	1	wti	52.214	52.164	52.445	2019.01.17 11:04:15	52.305	same as 9.1
2068091783	2019.01.17 10:20:06	buy	2	wti	52.183	52.081	52.323	2019.01.17 10:39:07	52.076	-10.70
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-17.30
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-0.31%

Dai­ly Report Card

• Per­form well by stick­ing to play­book setups and be hap­py by doing what I love and under­stand­ing that I give myself over to the ran­dom­ness of the market
  • How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket context?
    • I thought Hypo 2 was going to play out and it did par­tial­ly but then failed to bring price back up to excess area for me to take a short there
    • But I did trade the long oppor­tu­ni­ty of the val­ue area rejec­tion into a pos­si­ble swing high into excess area
    • We then con­tin­ued to make low­er highs and when we final­ly burst through the val­ue area at 52.05 I should have been extra care­ful to take a long posi­tion. Good thing was that I used what I call con­ser­v­a­tive siz­ing on these trades. My set­up doesn’t allow for good trades when in a sharp trend since the swing highs or lows fall with­in the KC chan­nel and my rules dic­tate PA has to move beyond the bands
      • This then leads me to think I need anoth­er set­up to trade these oppor­tu­ni­ties (which I am learn­ing now by being part of the com­mu­ni­ty) and won’t be trad­ing it until I’ve done some back­test­ing on it
      • For now I will focus on tak­ing trades in the cur­rent set­up that I am try­ing to master
  • How well did I enter into and sized positions?
    • I did well to be very con­ser­v­a­tive with my siz­ing. Because we were in a down­trend my set­up only arose on the swing lows of the move and thus could only take fad­ing posi­tions which don’t have good R/R and should prob­a­bly not be done yet by a noob like me
    • I only risked 8.5 to 15% of my dai­ly risk on a giv­en trade which is 0.17 to 0.29% of whole account. 
    • I didn’t see a A plus set­up or else I would have risked 30% on my dai­ly risk.
    • Down 0.31% of account size for the day
  • How well did I man­age my phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and cog­ni­tive states?
    • For the first two hours I was on point and lock and loaded. Then I start­ed to get tired. Last night I woke up sev­er­al times and even got out once so didn’t have too much rest. Sur­pris­ing­ly, I didn’t feel as tired in the morn­ing. I start­ed to notice my atten­tion going towards any­thing but the screen and I strug­gled to keep my eyes on the screen. This is when I went for a walk and came back to reassess the market. 
    • Dur­ing the trades I was fair­ly calm and col­lect­ed. I think I han­dled my emo­tions well. I was more focused on the chart and if my trade was still working
  • What did I do well?
    • I I did well to under­stand where the mar­ket con­text was indi­cat­ing the direc­tion of the ses­sion was going to be. 
    • I did well to place con­ser­v­a­tive sized risk on each trade. 
    • I did well to pull the trig­ger when my hyp 2 set­up arose and once more when it first stopped me out. Then when the sec­ond trade went in my favor I did well to take half off the table at a tech­ni­cal lev­el and assess­ing if I should let the oth­er half run. Which showed signs of weak­ness and I took that off as well.
    • Anoth­er thing I did well was to take off piv­ot point lev­els and focus on less, name­ly the val­ue and excess areas. This sim­pli­fied things for me as well as give me more time to focus on what mat­ters more like read­ing mar­ket con­text and hypoth­e­size on pos­si­ble outcomes.
    • Final, I did well to keep in mind that each trade is just 1 trade out of a group of 20 trades that I can ana­lyze lat­er on. One trade on itself doesn’t mean much
  • What do I need to improve?
    • I need to work hard­er on the qual­i­ty of my setups and reassess if the way I was doing things before is actu­al­ly nec­es­sary or just dec­o­ra­tive and with­out pur­pose (like I removed the piv­ot points). I will need some time to assess this. 
  • What’s one thing you learned today?
    • I learned that there is still so much I have to learn and that I’m excit­ed to learn them but I feel I’m get­ting closer. 
  • What’s one thing I need to do more often?
    • Pull the trig­ger when set­up aris­es in favor­able conditions.
  • What’s one thing I need to do less often?
    • Dur­ing the ses­sion I take a lot of notes and I think I should only focus on key lev­els and how PA inter­acts with them and espe­cial­ly dur­ing a trade. You can fill in the details of the trade afterwards.
  • Grade your­self 1 to 5 (5 being the best)
    • 3

Feed­back?

Any ques­tions or feed­back you might have please feel free to leave a com­ment or con­tact me directly.