A journal to keep me disciplined


Had a long order on the USD/CAD open over night. Have a pin bar back to support in an uptrend that I previously identified. Looking at it now I failed to see that it did not close within the previous bar so it does not actually fit in as a true pin bar. Fortunately, the trade has still moved in my direction and is positive for me at this point. I have reduced my risk to the daily lows and I will look to move to break even if the trade progresses favorably. I will not be holding this trade long term and will look to close this one prior to market close for the weekend.

Another Frustrating loss this morning. It seems I am still failing to find the balance between letting my trades breathe and limiting my risk. I moved up my stop loss quickly here but not all the way to break even, and the trade was stopped out. I took a half percent loss. Price rallied soon after stopping me out and now is beyond my entry point and headed towards my profit target. It’s tough to watch a trade close and lose money only to turn around. I should be sitting on a decent winner, but instead I have another loss.

I have to figure out how to let these trades run and stop micromanaging or at least get out at break even given the opportunity. This continues to be my most common struggle.

This is actually good. Most people don’t even get here. Maybe you should consider your stop loss as your entry next time.

Trading is hard. Keep it up!

I made a big mistake. Probably a few. I had multiple orders set up with the intention of closing them as soon as one opened. Well then I fell asleep and all of them triggered. They all lost. Then I tried to make it up the next day. I mismanaged a trade and should have gotten out before I did. Lost. I am pretty mad at myself and I just think I haven’t been thinking straight these past few days. I had to pull an all nighter for work and was trading shorter term charts at a time when I usually sleep. I have definitely let my emotions get the best of me. I am taking the next few days off and won’t be trading again this month. Thanksgiving is coming at a good time to help me get out of my own way.

Just found out about your thread and I will definetely keep an eye on it. I also want to wish you the best on your journey and thank you for sharing your progression.

Thank you potato for sharing my world. I have so stunk these last few weeks and there have been fabulous moves in pips. I, too, get nickled and dimed to death using stop losses. There has to be a wiser choice for entering a trade…starting to tinker with indicators to see if a correlation exists somewhere in this chaos. Just keep plowing forward and experiment with different angles. Keep on pippin’.

Na zdrowie,
Tim

here’s a free article link, about why it’s usually best to not move your stop loss…thought it might be helpful. hang in there! i think every trader goes through this frustrating period, i know i did…it’s why i took a long break from trading. but when i came back, i had new perspective and patience. good luck :slight_smile:

[QUOTE=“poopoopotato;734237”] Another Frustrating loss this morning. It seems I am still failing to find the balance between letting my trades breathe and limiting my risk. I moved up my stop loss quickly here but not all the way to break even, and the trade was stopped out. I took a half percent loss. Price rallied soon after stopping me out and now is beyond my entry point and headed towards my profit target. It’s tough to watch a trade close and lose money only to turn around. I should be sitting on a decent winner, but instead I have another loss. I have to figure out how to let these trades run and stop micromanaging or at least get out at break even given the opportunity. This continues to be my most common struggle.[/QUOTE]

Hey,

A little tip on trade Daily chart pinbars.

When you see a Pinbar on the Daily chart in the direction of the trend, plot your fibs from the top of the pinbar to the bottom of the wick.

Basically the whole Pinbar or the day’s high and low.

Set an order to buy/sell when price retraces to the 50% level.

It almost always triggers and you can see it did the same thing on this trade before it short up.

The retrace is buyers or sellers getting a better price to enter into the impending move.

Try it out and see for yourself.

It’ll wades your stop loss too cause your entry is way more refined doing it this way.

Good luck

I’m back to trading after taking a few days off for the Thanksgiving Holiday. I have a clear head and a positive outlook and I feel like I am in a good place to take successful trades again. I have taken 3 actually since my last post and all 3 were positive for small gains. A few people posted here and it was nice to see the encouragement so thank you to all of you who follow along with me here. MissLexy posted an article that I found to be pretty helpful and changed my outlook a bit. I am going to get more conservative on how I manage my trades and when I move stop losses. I think the article was pretty accurate on describing why I moved my stop loss and what it meant for the trade. In the past I have moved my stop aggressively to reduce my risk, but I think this was mostly motivated by fear and not logical thinking. My new process is simple:

Whenever I think it is time to move my stop loss(break even or otherwise) stop to think about why you want to move it. If the reason is because I am afraid the trade will turn and lose my profits I will simply close the trade and take what I have. I shouldn’t be in a trade if I am afraid of losing the money I have on the line anyway.

I’ve been managing my trades so far this past week and I have 3 winners. My guess is that I will end up with more winning trades, but they will all be much smaller. I think most of my past trades that broke even would have been small gainers as well. My one concern is that my losses could be larger because I won’t be moving my stop loss as much, however I anticipate that I will be closing trades manually for small losses also.

I’ll start posting more charts again soon. Here’s to turning it around for December.


Short AUD/JPY

First trade back on here was not a good one. I took the pin bar/engulfing bar second from the most recent. Price dipped just low enough to enter me into a trade over night and then shot quickly to my stop loss in the morning. I could have gotten out first thing in the morning for a small loss but I decided to let it play out further. Next thing I knew I got a stop loss notification.

I realized also that this was an AUD/JPY trade which a while back I had removed from my trading list. It seems to be my nemesis as I have never had a single winning trade on this pair. I must have added it or switched to defaults a while back to get it back on my watch list. I am going to remove it again to avoid it at least until I am consistently making gains.



I had a long entry trigger on the EUR/GBP this morning. I made the play based on the pin bar formed right at the .7200 level. It looked like a correction in a larger uptrend. I entered right around the blue line and got out pretty close to the top actually at the red line. I decided around 9:00 AM EST that I no longer wanted to watch and manage the trade and I was happy with the profits I had so I manually closed the trade. I turned out to be great timing because price never reached that level again for the day. This trade put me back positive for the month and I consider it a total success.


I had a short on the NZD/JPY trigger this morning. I made a play on the 2 day pin bar right at the 83.000 level. I thought it may be a good reversal signal. The trade didn’t make a strong move in either direction while I had it open and I decided to close it and not wait around for it to move against me. I closed the trade just above break even for the tiniest of gains. Price did continue to fall for a bit but met strong resistance and quickly turned around. I’m happy to be out of the trade at break even and not at a loss.


I had a long trade trigger on the EUR/USD this morning. I made a play off the 2 bars in the blue box. Blended together they make a pretty decent pin bar reversal signal.

There was a big news release this morning for the US dollar so I didn’t want to stay in the trade while that was going on. I got out of the trade around the top of the green box and you can see I left a lot of pips on the table. I could have held on longer leading up to the release but got nervous and closed the trade with my small profits in hand. This goes back to my new philosophy that if I am nervous about losing any profits I have made in the trade than I shouldn’t be in the trade at all. So while I missed a good opportunity for gains I am glad I got out with something rather than nothing.


Had a pending order set and the Australian unemployment news really set things off. I went long AUD/USD with the pin bar in blue. I entered at the top of the box and got out at the top of the green box. I decided it was enough volatility for me and was close enough to my profit target to manually close. A nice quick winner for the evening.


The volatility also got me into trouble on the EUR/NZD. I had a short based off the pin bar in blue. My entry was just at the bottom of the box and you can see price made it low enough just to enter the trade and turn around. I manually closed the trade not wanting to give any more back to the market. The red box shows how much I lost. This is why trading around news releases is dangerous of course.


This trade I am still hanging on to for the moment. It is a long on the NZD/JPY. Price initially made a move in my direction and retreated against me. I have decided to hold because I believe the trade will move back in the direction of the initial move.


I decided to manually close the trade with a small gain. I did not want to let the trade sit over night again where I could not watch it’s progress. I was right in the fact that it turned around even though it did not shoot off as I expected. Either way I’m happy to have this small gain that the small loss I considered closing out for yesterday.


Had a Long on the EUR/JPY trigger over night last night. There is a pin bar in blue there that closed right above the 133 level that appears to be a good S/R level. Over night the trade made some small progress, but price was against me in the morning when I woke up and most of the day. I am still holding the trade because I have not seen a 4 hr bar close below the 133 level. If I see a bar close below that level I will look to close out, or if the trade gets back above break even I will look to close out.


Here is how my EUR/JPY trade ended out. I ended with a small gainer. I held it throughout the day today up until the FED decision. I thought the impact would be low because the USD wasnt involved in the pair. I was quite wrong on that one. The volatility leading up to the decision was enough to carry me to my profit target. I got lucky on this one.

I also failed to see a longer downward trend on this pair when I opened the trade and in hindsight I don’t think I should have ever entered it. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good they say.


I made a big mistake on this trade. I had a pending order set to go short on the NZD/USD from last night. I failed to cancel the order leading up to the fed decision. It was no where near close to being triggered all day so I just forgot about while watching the EUR/JPY trade I was already in. Well the fed decision created a lot of volatility of course and price dropped low enough to trigger my entry and raised high enough to stop me out at a full percent loss all within the hour. I never even really had a chance to see what was going on.

I knew the decision was coming today but I figured that since it wasn’t until 2 I had time to get in before the announcement. I need to make sure I cancel all my orders ahead of news events especially when they relate to the USD because it so clearly effected all the pairs on my watch list. I have to stop these stupid mistake if I want to be profitable long term.