How did I trade today? 12102020

#fin­twit #order­flow #day­trad­ing #dai­lyre­port­card #day­trad­ing #trad­inglifestyle #day­trader­life #grasshop­per­sanony­mous #trad­ing­forex #trad­ing­com­modi­ties #NEXT

Sum­ma­ry:  Trade in the pres­ence of con­fi­dence. Observe in the lack thereof. 

P&L: FLAT

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

Good 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): 1

Sum­ma­ry

• GBPNZD
  • IB trad­ed down
  • C: Extend­ed down 1x IB
  • D: I am mon­i­tor­ing for a test of IB edge and a pos­si­ble con­tin­u­a­tion down. Instead, closed as a huge Inside Bar Retrac­ing almost all of C and fail­ing auc­tion, H1 pin bar or Ham­mer formed react­ing off H4 C‑dem. 
  • E: Closed as an Inside Bar with longer sell­ing wick with­in IB. H1 ham­mer could see a con­tin­u­a­tion here so will mon­i­tor for anoth­er exit down from IB. 
  • F: M30 Three Inside Down, H1 con­tin­u­a­tion and trad­ing below IB again.
  • G: Closed low­er form­ing a 4 TPO struc­ture but no LLs
  • H: Formed a Poor Low. Then took it out…. Wow, a pop tak­ing out H1 demand. Per­haps a pop of the round num­ber in 1.8850 col­lect­ing orders as the H4 demand still stands to hold until 1.8827 slight­ly fur­ther down. Although with the news: No com­pro­mise from either side on Brex­it is prob­lem­at­ic, we could just see a con­tin­u­a­tion to the move. 
    • And the lat­ter it is. We took out H4 demand as well and formed a sin­gle print on H.

Sum­ma­ry

• GOLD
  • IB trad­ed down
  • C: Extend­ed down 0.8x IB
  • D: Closed as an Inside Bar and weak failed auction
  • E: Closed as a pos­si­ble Base inside IB. 
    • Still hav­ing a hard time align­ing myself with Gold. Part­ly due to main focus still being GBPNZD but also lots of con­tra­dict­ing price action
  • F: Closed mov­ing through IB and extend­ing over com­plet­ing a Neu­tral Day and H1 Bull Engulf
  • G: Inside Bar with slight­ly longer sell­ing wick
  • H: Trad­ing back with­in IB. 

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 4 — Trend Continuation
  • Although unfa­vor­able but due to W1 Inside Bar with longer sell­ing wick we could see see a con­tin­u­a­tion down. In case of a con­tin­u­a­tion I’d like to see a sus­tained auc­tion down tak­ing out demands. Best bet a low ini­tia­tive day. Still trad­ing into demand can be tricky to say the least. 
  • 100%
  • We had a momen­tum move down tak­ing out LTF demands but when we hit H4 C‑dem it proved quite reac­tive. Due to this we saw a com­plete­ment retrace­ment in D fail­ing auc­tion but pro­ceed to trade low­er again. Prob­a­bly due to the H1 Ham­mer (high fail rate) we saw a con­tin­u­a­tion to the move in line with a W1 DBD as hypothesized. 

Hypos — GOLD

• 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 1 — Mean Reversion
  • Pre­ferred: Strong bull­ish price action, IB exten­sion up (momen­tum) and sus­tained auction 
  • 70%
  • Instead we had an exten­sion down fol­lowed by a failed auc­tion push­ing price high­er form­ing a Neu­tral Day. Still not much of a mean rever­sion but that could be since we hit a D1 Dem Base after a UT.

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

• I did well here stay­ing out. I don’t like trad­ing into demands as tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion in my hypoth­e­sis. Although I have spot­ted sev­er­al oppor­tu­ni­ties where I could take a 1R oppor­tu­ni­ty. Per­haps 1.5 but not always a clear 2R tar­get. Hav­ing said that I am learn­ing more on per­haps using LTF price action to get a bet­ter entry as to reach that 2R. All the while under­stand­ing that due to trad­ing into a SD zone the ini­tia­tive activ­i­ty will be low or medi­um at best. 
• With news reports on EU/UK talks going on and the Pound weak­en­ing I did take into effect a pos­si­ble sell­ing pres­sure on the pair. I nor­mal­ly do not con­sid­er any of the fun­da­men­tals as I believe I can see in the price behav­iour if there is align­ment with the nar­ra­tive. If not I shouldn’t be trad­ing any­way. All the while I am observ­ing and learn­ing which is just as valu­able than actu­al­ly trading. 

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

• I feel great actu­al­ly. Adjust­ments in diet real­ly help with this. 

How well did I fol­low my process?

• Trade selec­tion
  • I was stalk­ing a pos­si­ble Paper Trade on a retest of IB edge before a con­tin­u­a­tion as I did not go in on the IB exten­sion down. When Price action showed a failed auc­tion I decid­ed against it. Although due to the sta­tis­ti­cal nature and strength (or lack there­of) in a H1 ham­mer for­ma­tion I could have put more weight to the M5/M15 Evening Star for­ma­tion that was formed after the failed auc­tion occurred. As well as ADR being exhaust­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, W1 nar­ra­tive, News, IB extend­ing down 1x IB range. All good stuff I will be tak­ing into my playbook. 
• Trade Siz­ing & SL placement
  • The afore­men­tioned play of test­ing of IB edge would have had a great a good SL place­ment and 2R prof­it tar­get at the base of the move down pre­vi­ous­ly done in C. At the moment of writ­ing this the trade would have hit 2R and we formed a Poor Low. 
  • And Poor Low tak­en out togeth­er with H1 demand and con­se­quent­ly H4 demand got tak­en out. Trade even­tu­al­ly hit 4R.
• Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt
  •  The Paper Trade would have been on a M5/M15 Evening star mon­i­tor­ing H1 for a sus­tained move down. 

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

• I did well here. Acknowl­edg­ing I was the­o­riz­ing a poten­tial play and thus wasn’t some­what cer­tain of the play. Even though it did play out in a vari­a­tion of it. Hap­py to bring this play into the books and per­haps next time (when tak­ing riski­er trades would be war­rant­ed as well as hav­ing gained more expe­ri­ence) I will take the trade. 
• I seem to be very much in synch with FX and not so much with com­modi­ties. Noth­ing wrong with that. I will still keep track­ing Gold and see if there is a way for me to get in ‘flow’ as I have just start­ed track­ing Gold again. But.. hon­est­ly I am think­ing to just stick with FX. Espe­cial­ly when I do my challenge/combine. 

What did I learn today?

• A 1x IB range exten­sion could war­rant a fail­ure of any failed auc­tion and con­tin­ue in the direc­tion the pro­file extend­ed to (also con­sid­er­ing ADR had been exhaust­ing dur­ing Asia pri­or). Con­firm­ing with price action we could be look­ing to trade on a sort of 2nd chance entry off the IB edge. Com­bine this with a LTF entry for a great setup. 

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

• Just observe and take notes. Trade in the pres­ence of con­fi­dence. Observe in the lack thereof. 

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

• I did well here

Under the cir­cum­stances, did I per­form at my best?

• I did well here

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

Pre­mar­ket Prep GBPNZD 12102020

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Pre­mar­ket Prep Gold 12102020

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