Daily Report Card 07032020

03 Jul Daily Report Card 07032020

#dai­lyre­port­card #trad­ing­forex #forex #FX #XAUUSD #GOLD #day­trad­ing #trad­inglifestyle #day­trader­life

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. No secrets here. As always, feel free to reach out to me. 

My week­ly goal

My goal for this week is to get my siz­ing right. What­ev­er asset, I need to have the cor­rect con­tract size rep­re­sent­ing 1% of my account.

Good Pre-mar­ket routines

Bad Ses­sion PECS

Bad Trade selection

Bad Trade siz­ing

Good Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.

Good Risk Adjust­ed Returns

Yes Dai­ly review

Mup­pet meter (1 being best — 5 being worst): 4

Sum­ma­ry: Don’t trade the holidays

• GBPNZD
• Had put a sell stop at 1.90715 and it just got trig­gered. LN open below val­ue. Drop with­in IB + IB exten­sion after a M15 con­sol­i­da­tion and bear engulf fin­ish­er. With­in H4 demand but no low­er time frame demand in the way. Larg­er time­frames bear­ish. I under­stand a big con is the hol­i­day today.
• Real­ized my posi­tion was again too small so added to my posi­tion. Straight away.
• E TPO closed out­side IB range. WIll mon­i­tor TPOs for fur­ther assessment.
• M15 Bull Engulf against my posi­tion so not look­ing good. Like­ly get stop tak­en out. If so, that will be it for me today.
• Stopped out at 1.9102. I will mark to not trade hol­i­days. This com­bined with a wider than usu­al IB range could raise the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a failed auc­tion. As point­ed out ear­li­er, I could have tak­en the posi­tion off ear­li­er due to TPO F clos­ing inside IB and M15 bull engulf / M30 inside bar. Although I should not have tak­en the posi­tion to begin with. 1) I was not feel­ing at my best 2) IB range was wider than usu­al so should have been more care­ful 3) today being a hol­i­day 4) before putting on the trade I was again think­ing I should not trade today and went against it any­way. Because of this I felt I should take the full stop to hope­ful­ly enforce not to make the same mis­take again. “less haste, more speed”. I’ll be back fresh on Monday.

Week­ly Goal Achieve­ment: Have appro­pri­ate sizing

• Again used the wrong siz­ing. Had con­tract size for gold still in the order win­dow. Noticed it straight after my sell stop got it so added the appro­pri­ate amount.

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket context?

• Based on what I saw I did okay but not con­sid­er­ing over­all pic­ture so bot­tom­line. I didn’t do well. And with active trade man­age­ment I could have tak­en a small­er loss but didn’t want to. Hope­ful­ly, this will help me to stop devel­op­ing a bad habit in its tracks. 

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

• Tired before the trade. Should not have trad­ed. Dur­ing the trade I felt less con­fi­dent again. Then under­stand­ing what was going on in rela­tion to me trad­ing today I caught myself on what I had done and then act­ed to try and make the best of it. In this case, I under­stood I should not have been trad­ing at all today. 
• There will be many more trad­ing days to come and I will show how I am at my best. Like I have done so in the past. Luck­i­ly, these moments of poor deci­sion-mak­ing are get­ting less and less. Also, not as crit­i­cal to my account. I took a ‑1R loss today. Which is okay. At least I didn’t over­trade, revenge-trade, add to los­ing posi­tions as I am sure we have all done in the past.
•  ‑1.6R on the week. Have the next 4 weeks left in the month. I will do bet­ter. I’m sure. 

How well did I fol­low my process?

• Not too well as addressed above

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

• Poor­ly. I didn’t sleep well a few days in a row. I had these fail safes in place before which I will rein­state again. 2 days of insuf­fi­cient sleep = no trading. 

What did I learn today?

• That I am only as good as my men­tal and psy­chi­cal game allows me to be. 
• Don’t trade on hol­i­days and just take a break. The mar­kets aren’t going anywhere. 
• Get good rest before com­ing into the markets. 

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

• Under­stand when I make a mis­take and then keep observ­ing fac­tu­al data to make the best of it. I did well here though. I caught myself and then tried using it as a les­son while of course slight­ly hop­ing the posi­tion would turn around and go in my favor. This was not my main focus though since I saw price action devel­op­ing against me and there were at least 3 instances that I could have got­ten out at. 

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

• Trad­ing when not well-rested

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold XAUUSD 07032020

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 07032020