02012019 Trade Plan — Tired but stayed composed

01 Feb 02012019 Trade Plan — Tired but stayed composed

02012019 Trade Plan — Tired but stayed composed

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
• TTF = Trad­ing Time Frame
• HTF = High­er Time Frame
• Hypo = HYPOthetical

Per­son­al Checklist

5 pos­i­tive 1 negative	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri
-	1/28	1/29	1/30	1/31	2/1
Beers night before	6	0	0	0	5
Time bed yesterday	4:20	23:19	-	21:37	3:37
woke up	13:38	7:56	-	6:32	8:04
Hours sleep	9:18	8:37	-	8:55	4:27
Awake	1:31	1:23	-	1:17	0:20
REM	1:20	0:37	-	0:40	0:39
Light	4:31	5:26	-	5:59	2:29
Deep	1:56	1:11	-	0:59	0:59
Sleep well?	3	4	-	4	3
Mela­tonin	0	0	-	0	0
Neg­a­tive thoughts?	3	3	-	1	1
Exer­cise yester(to)day	3	3	-	4	4
Grat­i­tude	4	5	-	5	5
Joy	4	5	-	5	5
Anger	1	1	-	1	1
Fear	3	2	-	1	1
Focus	2	2	-	3	2
Cof­fees today	1TC in after­noon 1 scoop	1 espres­so spread over 1 hours afternoon	-	1 TC in the morn­ing, 1 espres­so in afternoon	2 weak espres­sos in the afternoon
Inter­mit­tent fasting	no	yes	-	yes	no
Water L	3	3	-	3	3
Vit­a­mins	yes	yes	-	yes	no
Cig­a­rettes	0	0	-	5	5

Health review (for the past week)

• How would you describe your over­all health?
  • Over­all health is good just have not been sleep­ing enough since I am trav­el­ing still and this inter­feres with my con­cen­tra­tion. How­ev­er, I am still try­ing to make the time to fol­low my process and keep stay­ing dis­ci­plined in doing my prep work and trading.
• How do you feel?
  • I feel tired but that is to be expect­ed with less than 5 hours of sleep. I might take a nap in a bit.
• How would you rate it (1–5)?
  • 2

The Big Pic­ture (dai­ly)

• What hap­pened yes­ter­day? Where are the tech­ni­cal levels?
  • Yes­ter­day was an inter­est­ing day. Dur­ing the AS we moved down from excess area down to LIS around 54 level
  • Then reject­ed that lev­el dur­ing LS and moved high­er to 55 lev­el dur­ing NY to only drop hard to below LIS around 53.75 and then ranged around the LIS for the remain­der of the session

Intra­day Tech­ni­cal Analysis

• HTF
  • Define con­text
    • Where were the overnight highs and lows?
      • High    55.457
      • Low     53.718
    • Where is the LIS?
      • 54.15/.25 area
    • What didn’t happen?
      • We failed to break to new highs and hold that lev­el around 55
    • Where do you think it should go?
      • Prob­a­bly a HTF VWAP BD 
    • Where’s the best R/R? Opportunities?
      • BD from VWAP
• TTF
  • Dialling in on opportunities
    • Where are the areas of estab­lished “val­ue” and “excess”?
      • Val­ue area around 53.90
      • Excess area around 54.95
    • Is there a shift in value/excess migra­tion? What is the cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tion? Are we trend­ing, balancing/range bound? Where are we in the trend range axis?
      • Not so much. More of a widen­ing of the excess area but we are still with­in the same range as pre­vi­ous day
    • What trade loca­tions among this struc­ture would l like to get involved in that will offer me the best R/R opportunities?
      • A BD from HTF VWAP would also be a BD from Val­ue area
      • Or a con­firm­ing as sup­port of this same area
• LTF
  • What has the Asian Ses­sion printed?
    • AS tried to BO from LIS but then quick­ly dropped to val­ue area and and has been rang­ing around this level

Trade Idea

• Hypo 1 Short
  • A BD from val­ue area (HTF VWAP) could war­rant a drop to HTF 50MA to then reverse back up
  • Entry around prev low of 53.70
  • PT around 53.40
  • Stretch PT around 52.75
• Hypo 2 Long
  • After HYPO1 plays out we can look for longs around 53.40 level
  • PT Val­ue area around 53.90
  • Stretch PT 54.20
• Hypo 3 Long
  • BO from val­ue area into LIS and con­sol­i­date then BO from LIS
  • Entry around 54.10
  • PT around 54.25 and then 54.50
  • Stretch PT around 54.90

My goals for the day (Dai­ly Report Card)

• Define win­ning
  • Per­form well by EXECUTING 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 LS opened we moved won from val­ue area and I took a short trade
  • T1 win 10.1 ticks
  • We bounced off the TTF 200MA and might go back into val­ue area
  • I only took one oppor­tu­ni­ty but two trades
  • Done trad­ing for today

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?
    • TTF
      • Where are we as opposed to the val­ue, excess and LIS areas?
        • We dropped from val­ue to prev low
      • What tech­ni­cal lev­el are we at?
        • Prev low above TTF 200MA
    • LTF
      • Is LTF confirming?
        • Momen­tum picked up towards prev low and it is here I took a short
      • What risk am I going to put on?
        • 15% of intra­day loss but might add to position
      • Entry: 53.719
  • SL
    • 53.95
  • TP
    • 53.577
  • Trade Man­age­ment
    • After I took the short PA moved up against me to the LTF VWAP and I held my com­po­sure and wait­ed to see how it would react to this lev­el around 53.85
      • when I saw that we were not like­ly to BO from this lev­el I added anoth­er short
    • I saw PA pick­ing up on momen­tum and when it had hit 2.0 SD of the LTF I decid­ed to cover
    • Entry 1
      • 53.719
      • Cov­er at 53.692
      • Win 2.7 ticks
    • Entry 2
      • 53.847
      • Cov­er at 53.773
      • Win 7.4 ticks

• P/L

Open Time	Type	Size	Item	Price	S / L	T / P	Close Time	Price	P/L ticks
2019.02.01 10:39:36	sell	2	wti	53.847	53.963	53.577	2019.02.01 10:47:06	53.773	7.40
2019.02.01 10:26:46	sell	2	wti	53.719	53.948	53.577	2019.02.01 10:47:55	53.692	2.70
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	10.10

Dai­ly Report Card

Date:	2/1/2019	Week­ly Goal	Exe­cute play­book trades
Com­bined Score	84
Process Report Card (10 each)	Per­for­mance Report Card (10 each)
8	Pre-mar­ket routines	7	Hypos
8	Ses­sion PECS	9	Real-time analy­sis
9	Trad­ing the process	7	Trade selec­tion
9	Dai­ly review	10	Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.
10	Progress toward Week­ly goal	7	Risk Adjust­ed Returns
44	Total	40

• Define win­ning
  • Per­form well by EXECUTING 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?
    • HYPO2 played out which was an alter­ation of HYPO1 so I’m hap­py with that. 
  • How well did I man­age my phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and cog­ni­tive states?
    • I did good when I was in a trade but after­wards I lost focus and was not real­ly watch­ing the screen as much. 2 big rea­sons for this is that I had pock­et­ed prof­its already tak­ing shorts and then when the direc­tion changed like I wrote in my HYPO2 I failed to cap­i­tal­ize on that. It is a bit hard for me to switch gears from short to long and vice versa.
    • I cut myself some slack since I have only slept 4.5 hours last night and I am trav­el­ing. I think I did fair­ly well to keep com­po­sure and not lose my wits or go on tilt. 
  • What did I do well?
    • I did well to under­stand real-time PA and I stayed calm dur­ing trades
  • What do I need to improve?
    • When the mar­ket shows that the direc­tion has changed I should not be hes­i­tant to fol­low and reverse. I nor­mal­ly don’t have a prob­lem with this if I haven’t already tak­en a posi­tion before the rever­sal. It is when I have and then have to switch gears that I hes­i­tate. Prob­a­bly because I don’t want to give back profits. 
  • What’s one thing you learned today?
    • That even though I’ve very tired I can stay calm and com­posed. I think learn­ing to be patient is key here. Just wait­ing for setups to arise
  • What’s one thing I need to do more often?
    • Be patient
  • What’s one thing I need to do less often?
    • Don’t watch YouTube while trad­ing. I catch myself break­ing this rule when I’m tired and not as sharp as I nor­mal­ly am. As stat­ed before I am tired and trav­el­ing so I cut myself some slack for that. I won­der if I would have been so lenient if I had lost on P/L today though. Food for thought.

Feed­back?

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