Not Another Trading Journal!

Pair: AUDCAD
Timeframe: 4Hour
Date: Dec 27/2010
Went Long at: 1.0126 (First blue area)
Closed at: 1.0106 (Second blue area)
Reason For Trade: Pin bar at support area.
Reason For Exit: Price stalling.
Profit: -20 pips
Comments: Okay, this trade kind of went nowhere for a couple of days after I got in, so I got out after losing 20 pips. Right after I got out there was a perfect Pin bar setup, but I wasn’t at a computer so I wasn’t able to trade it.

Pair: USDJPY
Timeframe: 4Hour
Date: Dec 29/2010
Went Short at: 82.300 (First blue area)
Closed at: 81.980 (Second blue area)
Profit: 29 pips
Comments: Nice pin bar at resistance on a downtrend. And yet another trade where I should have stayed in longer.
Maybe I should do trailing stops instead… I don’t know.
I hate it when my feelings of cowardice takes over my feelings of greed. :rolleyes:

Try taking partial profits if you’re not sure it’s going to continue the trend. For example taking 80% of position out at whatever levels you’re using right now and leaving 20% at break even. See how that works out for you.

Agree with mozdef. Ideally, feelings shouldn’t play any part in your trade. :slight_smile:

Having a trailing stop or partially liquidating is a good way to lock in profits. Just be sure that you follow a system to take in profits. This will eliminate the need to base decisions on greed or cowardice. :slight_smile:

That’s my 2 cents. Also, it would be helpful if you can also share what the R:R was or what the R:R you expect is when you take the trades.

Just curious since you mentioned Pin Bar and Inside Bars. Have you looked up Nial Fuller’s site? I think he also trades similarly.

  1. Mozdef and Vonner, thanks for the advice. Partial profits are something I’ve never done but should probably look into.

  2. I don’t really keep track of the Risk/Reward. As long as it’s above 1:1, I’ll make the trade.

  3. I have looked at Nial Fuller’s site over the last few weeks. There are some really good things on there. I’m going through the (free) videos right now.

Pair: GBPUSD
Timeframe: 4Hour
Date: Dec 29/2010
Went Long at: 1.54073 (First blue area)
Closed at: 1.54608 (Second blue area)
Profit: 54 pips
Comments: A pin bar on a very small uptrend near a decent support level. And I got out at another decent support/resistance level. And the same formation happened about 24 hours later, but I wasn’t able to take advantage of it.

Week #2

Pair: USDJPY
Timeframe: 4H
Date: Jan 5/2011
Went Long at: 82.184 (First blue area)
Closed at: 83.209 (Second blue area)
Profit: + 103
Comments: So far it’s been a quiet (but profitable) week. Here’s a long pinbar off an uptrend at support that paid off quite nicely. It moved up through a couple of resistance areas. I manually move my stop loss up for this one. The price stalled for about 17 hours so I got out with a decent profit. This one went in the red about 25 pips for the first 4 hours before it turned itself around.

Week #2, Trade 8
Pair: AUDCAN
Timeframe: 4H
Date: Jan 5/2011
Went Short at: 1.00180 (First blue area)
Closed at: .99296 (Second blue area)
Profit: + 88 pips
Comments: I entered and exited this trade at roughly the same time as Trade 7. I’m not sure if these pairs are negatively correlated. Anyone know? I should perhaps avoid trading pairs that are correlated in the future.
This one also went in the red about 20 pips for the first 4 hours before it turned around.
Once again, I manually moved my stop loss as the trade moved in my favor. The price went nowhere for the last 16 hours so I got out. I probably could have gotten in the trade at the earlier pin bar but I wasn’t home at that time.

Nice trading

Thanks, Viper5.
Although you may want to take that compliment back when you see what happened on my next couple of trades. :slight_smile:

I put in six pending orders on Thursday night and when I woke up Friday morning, they were all filled.
I was a little wary putting in that many orders as I’m sure some were positively/negatively correlated.

Week 2, Trade 9
Pair: USDCHF
Timeframe: 4H
Date: Jan 7/2011
Went Long at: 0.96572 (First blue area)
Closed at: 0.96201 (Second blue area)
Profit: - 37 pips
Comments: Another trade that went into the red 20 pips about 15 minutes after I entered, practically begging me to get out. Seems a lot of my trades are doing this. Even the winning ones.

I almost didn’t enter this trade because the trendline was so steep. But it was a pinbar at nice support.

It ended up hitting my stop loss (0.96201 ) about nine hours after I got in. It looked like a good trade. I can’t see anything wrong with it. Can you? :slight_smile:

Well, as I scroll back in time after the fact, it looks like there was a little bit of resistance in the area I placed the trade. That’s never a good thing.

Week 2, Trade 10
Pair: AUDUSD
Timeframe: 4HR
Date: Jan 7/2011
Went at: (First blue area) 0.99107
Closed at: (Second blue area) 0.9944
Profit: - 33 pips
Comments: Another one that looked like a solid trade when I placed it. But as I now scroll back now, I see there was a fair bit of resistance right around where I opened the trade (0.99130).
I got out when it clearly broke my trendline.

Week 2, Trade 11
Pair: EURUSD
Timeframe: 4H
Date: Jan 7/2011
Went Long at: 1.30074 (First blue area)
Closed at: 1.29498 (Second blue area)
Profit: - 57 pips
Comments: And this is what happens when you trade while you’re drunk. Well, actually I wasn’t drunk when I placed this trade. Maybe that was the problem.

I took this trade with a pending order. I went Long on this trade, against the trend because it was at strong support line from early December and the price looked to have stopped falling.
This trade was over in a merciful 12 minutes.
And the next time I feel like trading against the main trend, I’m going to take a long hard look at this trade again. :slight_smile:

Week 2, Trade 12
Pair: EURGPB
Timeframe: 4H
Date: Jan 7/2011
Went Short at: 0.84082 (First blue area)
Closed at: 0.83593 (Second blue area)
Profit: + 50 pips
Comments: I manually moved my stop loss on this trade until it was finally hit.
When moving the stop loss manually, I should still give it some room to breathe. Had I done so, I could have doubled my profit on this trade.
I should have been more confident, especially because there was no resistance nearby to worry about.

Just another example that one does not need tons of indicators to trade. I like your technique. This is pretty much the same method i use for trading except that my timeframes are alot smaller i.e 5 min, 3 min and one min.

going through your trades it is pretty obvious that you are facing the same problem that many of us – new traders — face. You do not let your profits run. I suggest you to not keep a profit target in mind. Let your trade run and hit your stop loss (which you would keep moving as your trade progresses).

Good luck!

Hi Raza,
Glad to hear you’re using a similar method on smaller timeframes.
Like you said, I am trying to let the profits run more than I have been before. Still not that easy sometimes though. :slight_smile:

Week 2, Trade 13
Pair: EURCHF
Timeframe: 4H
Date: Jan 7/2011
Went Short at: 1.25138 (First blue area)
Closed at: 1.25129 (Second blue area)
Profit: + 1
Comments: Luckily I had a large stop on this one so it didn’t get hit.
I exited because it broke my trendline a couple of times and didn’t look like it would ever move the way I expected.
I ended up with a nice, fat, juicy total of one pip for my effort.

Week 2, Trade 14
Pair: AUDCAN
Timeframe: 4HR
Date: Jan 7/2011
Went Short at: 0.99004 (First blue area)
Closed at: 0.98878 (Second blue area)
Profit: + 12 pips
Comments: Another trade I was kind of hesitant on entering.
Maybe because the trendline was so steep, maybe because price had already dropped quite a bit and I had already gotten 88 pips from it.
But there was decent resistance with a pinbar and an inside bar right after that.
This one sliced through two support levels while I slept and then came back up. I guess I should have had a Take Profit set up for it.
I closed it because it was Friday afternoon.

Well, Week #2 was a [B]great[/B] week that quickly turned into a [B]good [/B]week. Good thing it ended before I could turn it into a crappy week. :slight_smile:

One thing I didn’t pay attention to was the the U.S. Non - Farm Payroll Employment Report at the time of spikes in price at on Friday, January 7. Something to obviously keep in mind in the future.