How did I trade today? 01152021

15 Jan How did I trade today? 01152021

Sum­ma­ry: Be care­ful what you ask for 🙂

Account (P&L): ‑0.4R

#fin­twit #order­flow #day­trad­ing #dai­lyre­port­card #day­trad­ing #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: 

• Don’t take trades where SL place­ment is sub­op­ti­mal. Instead, reassess for a bet­ter entry if pos­si­ble. Unless there is a planned momen­tum trade.

Good Pre-mar­ket routines

Good Ses­sion PECS

Fair 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): 2

Sum­ma­ry

• GBPNZD
  • IB: IB closed high­er but then a pos­si­ble Evening star in B if C clos­es down. M15 Big Inside Bar.  If not we’ll see a RBR. Don’t want to go in pre­ma­ture again with no com­plet­ed M30 price confirmation. 
  • C: Closed as M30 Evening Star almost retrac­ing all (but one TPO) IB range. Con­sid­ered going short on close but due to near prox­im­i­ty I feel more cer­tain in case of a val­ue accep­tance (espe­cial­ly com­ing off yesterday’s fuck up)
  • D: I put a sell lim­it order at 1.90031 in case of a retest of new­ly formed c‑line
    • Closed accept­ing value
  • E: Short 1.89708 SL 1.89954 TP 1.89215
    • Saw M5 Bull Engulf tran­si­tion into a M15 Bull­ish Inside bar (at test of H4 VWAP in UT) retrac­ing more than 50% and cov­ered the trade at 0.4R
    • Decid­ed to take the rest of the day off…Spend time away from the screens. Come back fresh and strong next week. 
    • Saw the trade tran­si­tion into a M30 bull­ish inside bar clos­ing as a failed auction
  • F: would have tak­en out my SL

Hypos — 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 2 — Return to Val­ue (at moment of writ­ing but will check again tomor­row for review)

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket con­text? Was I aligned with mar­ket context?

• I did well but hes­i­tat­ed to cap­i­tal­ize on the oppor­tu­ni­ty at the open. Per­haps a bit gun­shy from yes­ter­day although I felt fine. Want­ed to take less risk by let­ting M30 guide my deci­sion before jump­ing in on a M15 for­ma­tion. Then when M30 for­ma­tion was formed price was already very close to VAH and thus I wait­ed for accep­tance to hap­pen first (a real one this time :)) Then when price fal­tered I got out at a loss of 0.4R.

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

• I felt good actu­al­ly. Stayed objec­tive read­ing price action and orderflow. 

How well did I fol­low my process?

• Trade selec­tion
  • Took one trade based off val­ue accep­tance which in hind­sight wasn’t the best. It was too close to H4 VWAP in UT and there was bound t o be some reac­tion off it although with price hav­ing test­ed the lev­el mul­ti­ple times I decid­ed to let order flow and price action guide decisions. 
• Trade Siz­ing & SL placement
  • Good as it was an intend­ed momen­tum trade
• Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt
  • Did well here although I could have wait­ed for a retest of VAH from the inside before going short. By that time I would have seen that the trade was revers­ing. Ah well…. Next time gadget. 

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

• I did real­ly well here. No emo­tions. No slump or any­thing. Just focused on visu­al­iz­ing what I do and do not want to see. 

What did I learn today?

• Stay the course. Process is king. Risk man­age­ment is not just on a posi­tion but also in our­selves. Take your­self out of the game if you’re not per­form­ing well for what­ev­er rea­son. Your last 3–4 trades will give you a good clue on that. 

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

• Can’t win them all. The words of David Paul come to mind: “Clus­ters of Bad and Good Luck”. I obvi­ous­ly made mis­takes yes­ter­day so I’m not insin­u­at­ing that I am in a clus­ter of bad luck right now. But David explains fair­ly nice­ly the ran­dom­ness in the mar­ket as well as in our­selves. Here is the link if you haven’t already watched it.

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

• Even though tak­ing a con­trolled loss today I feel I did a lot right. I will review again tomor­row (as I always do on week­ends) and go over if I can spot more mis­takes made this week. Although I have to remem­ber to be nice to myself as we are not per­fect machines oper­at­ing with high pre­ci­sion. We can only aspire to be but there will always be a mar­gin of error due to human (in)capabilities. 

Under the cir­cum­stances, did I per­form at my best?

• I did well

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 01152021

Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold 01152021

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