this closed above .66 and hit my stop loss today. Looking at this now I was too aggressive in entering this trade as there was no real price action to signal the downward move. It was a good area but i need to wait for confirmation. Must work on patience.
July has closed and I finished down 3.5% for the month. A few big losses and I was mentally compromised in my trading. I had to take a step back and evaluate my trades and what I was doing wrong in my trading. I’ve been going back over some of my study materials to refresh my plan and my system into my head. I took a few small trades to end the month, but I was mostly paper trading the final week. I needed to get my confidence back up going forward. I am approaching August freshly with a positive outlook. I will try hard to be picky about the set-ups I take and should have fewer trades this month than previously. I will continue my current rules, but I will be much more disciplined about implementing my plan. I look forward to a profitable August!
Here is a pin bar trade I took. Pin bar went down and touched the 2.1000 level to continue an uptrend. I took profit at the first level of resistance and am out of the trade. This was off the 4 hour chart
I’ve been posting fewer charts because of I’ve been setting more pending orders recently and they will often close before i get a chance to come screenshot them. Also I’ve been taking more trades from the 4 hour charts recently which is causing me to hold them for less time.
I took a losing trade this morning. This is really frustrating. I can’t post charts here at work so I will try to get one up later.
There was a decent pin bar on the AUD/NZD. I recognized it was in a downtrend, but the pin bar showed a good long entry. I figured it was good for a few pips before continuing the downtrend. I decided to place a limit order and I had plans to be very conservative and make sure I was at break even as soon as it went positive. I have order alerts set up on my phone so I am notified the minute the order gets triggered. The order was triggered as I was sitting at my desk at work and in few seconds it took me to pick up the phone the trade had already moved 30 pips against me! It is now much harder for me to manage this trade being down 30 pips and wanting to just get to break even.
My stop loss was about 45 pips away so I was already more than halfway down. I decided to hang on to the trade because my stop loss was at a recent support level so there was still a chance for the trade to turn around. It took another 2 hours or so and the trade hit my stop loss to the pip. It immediately rocketed off to my initial profit target where I could have made the few pips I was looking for this morning. This is why it is so frustrating! I took a 1% loss.
I need to stay completely away from the mediocre set-ups. I need to make sure my stops are at a safe distance. I need to not be greedy. I need to be careful of overconfidence when I have a big winner or a string of winners.
I may just take a day or two away from the charts to get my head together. This loss was very frustrating!
[QUOTE=“poopoopotato;714912”]I took a losing trade this morning. This is really frustrating. I can’t post charts here at work so I will try to get one up later. There was a decent pin bar on the AUD/NZD. I recognized it was in a downtrend, but the pin bar showed a good long entry. I figured it was good for a few pips before continuing the downtrend. I decided to place a limit order and I had plans to be very conservative and make sure I was at break even as soon as it went positive. I have order alerts set up on my phone so I am notified the minute the order gets triggered. The order was triggered as I was sitting at my desk at work and in few seconds it took me to pick up the phone the trade had already moved 30 pips against me! It is now much harder for me to manage this trade being down 30 pips and wanting to just get to break even. My stop loss was about 45 pips away so I was already more than halfway down. I decided to hang on to the trade because my stop loss was at a recent support level so there was still a chance for the trade to turn around. It took another 2 hours or so and the trade hit my stop loss to the pip. It immediately rocketed off to my initial profit target where I could have made the few pips I was looking for this morning. This is why it is so frustrating! I took a 1% loss. I need to stay completely away from the mediocre set-ups. I need to make sure my stops are at a safe distance. I need to not be greedy. I need to be careful of overconfidence when I have a big winner or a string of winners. I may just take a day or two away from the charts to get my head together. This loss was very frustrating![/QUOTE]
Hello,
I felt this post!. Like many others I’ve been there. And it is so frustrating. You’re definitely right to take a couple of days away from it. Eddieb had some good advice last week (after 3 losers and one I talked myself out of that would have been great) to reduce my position size and widen my stops for a little while to build my confidence back up. If that fits with your plan give a go. It’s great advice I think, although it didn’t fit with my plan or my approach to trading, I did place a couple of small trades and took some tiny profits and it does blow away the losing feeling.
I hit these 3 losers after an unbelievable run of profitable trades and it shook me even though the overall loss was nothing to worry about. Another forum member hit the nail on the head with me. I had asked how other people focus during a dip in confidence. The other forum member asked if there were any stresses outside of trading that were clouding my judgement on taking a decision. There was, and until someone mentioned it I didn’t realise it was affecting me. I took a couple of small trades and some small profit as advised by eddieb, a couple of days away from trading and then back into it fresh and back in profit.
Hope it helps and hope you get back on track.
Good luck
Shy
here is a chart describing my trade. The arrow is the pin bar I traded(not the best set-up). My stop was just below the wick of that pin which got triggered 2 candles later. Of course it ran on to become a good winner later in the day…
Hey,
I hope you don’t mind me posting here?. If I was looking at this without your chart I wouldn’t have entered the trade at all. I trade only price action with no indicators and I believe in the long run it’s the way to do it but I’ve only been trading for 3.5-4 years and I’m not here to suggest how others should trade.
For me I will only trade a pin bar at high or a low or as a reversal signal at a S/R and never as an indication of continuation. For me a pin bar must always stand out from the traffic before I would consider a trade.
You were right it did continue and go the way you thought. It continued on the up trend. The reason i wouldn’t trade it as a continuation is based purely around where to place a stop loss.
I blew the majority of my first live account a couple of years ago for three reasons
1 over trading - too many trades and even forcing trades when they weren’t there which also stopped me from using indicators.
2 my stops were always too tight. I was scared of making losses and I lost out time and time again.
3 my 9-5 was too full on for me to spend the amount of time I needed to be able to spot A+ setups. This was the hardest thing to overcome, we all need to earn money. Someone on here regularly quotes that to be a pro trader for a company you need 10,000 hours of screen time!. I don’t know about 10,000 hours for a retail trader but as long as your eyes aren’t square it can’t hurt to have plenty of screen time under your belt.
I think the journal your posting is great and I couldn’t do it, it’s too brave for me, but I hope you don’t mind me posting my thoughts.
Good luck mate, I wish you all the best.
Shy.
[QUOTE=“poopoopotato;714912”]I took a losing trade this morning. This is really frustrating. I can’t post charts here at work so I will try to get one up later. There was a decent pin bar on the AUD/NZD. I recognized it was in a downtrend, but the pin bar showed a good long entry. I figured it was good for a few pips before continuing the downtrend. I decided to place a limit order and I had plans to be very conservative and make sure I was at break even as soon as it went positive. I have order alerts set up on my phone so I am notified the minute the order gets triggered. The order was triggered as I was sitting at my desk at work and in few seconds it took me to pick up the phone the trade had already moved 30 pips against me! It is now much harder for me to manage this trade being down 30 pips and wanting to just get to break even. My stop loss was about 45 pips away so I was already more than halfway down. I decided to hang on to the trade because my stop loss was at a recent support level so there was still a chance for the trade to turn around. It took another 2 hours or so and the trade hit my stop loss to the pip. It immediately rocketed off to my initial profit target where I could have made the few pips I was looking for this morning. This is why it is so frustrating! I took a 1% loss. I need to stay completely away from the mediocre set-ups. I need to make sure my stops are at a safe distance. I need to not be greedy. I need to be careful of overconfidence when I have a big winner or a string of winners. I may just take a day or two away from the charts to get my head together. This loss was very frustrating![/QUOTE]
Hey,
Sounds to me that you took a long entry on a downtrend?
One bit of advice to help calm the nerves.
The trend IS YOUR FRIEND!!
Seriously, just stay away from counter trend setups even though you see price action showing moves or setups.
Entering a buy when it’s a downtrend and setting your stoploss at a support level is from a sellers point of view an area to take profit so price always has a bigger chance of hitting it.
It’s very frustrating to get in to a trade with a price action signal, only to see it go the other way, hit your stop loss and go the way you wanted it to in the first place.
Waiting for a move to enter in the direction of the trend is the best way to go because not being in a trade is way better than losing a trade so you’re actually being profitable being in the sidelines waiting for quality setups.
When you enter a trade with the trend and it hits your stoploss atleast you’re accountable for what you did and you had points of confluence giving you backing as to why you took the position but the market just moved against you.
When you enter counter trend and lose you realize that it could have been a loss you could have avoided.
Go with the trend, wait for the setups, then execute with military precision.
The aggregate results will prove how well that works and it also makes you patient which is a great thing to have in forex trading.
Y’know the saying “it’s better to be out of a trade wishing you were in it than to be in a trade wishing you were out of it” ?
Keeping that in mind will also help filter which trades to take.
Losses are a part of it so don’t get you down.
Losses help fine tune your criteria so, these are all lessons for you to learn.
Don’t mind you posting at all here. In fact I appreciate the feedback as I think it is good to have peer evaluation in almost anything.
As for that specific trade I think I knew I shouldn’t have been in it from the get go. I was bring a bit greedy and wanting the market to give me a few pips. The market said no.
I don’t use indicators and I mostly just trade pin bars away from support or resistance. I had trouble trading with indicators in demo and it never really clicked for me. Price action is the way to go for me.
As for over trading I am definitely guilty of that in the past(hopefully no more). I think it extends from the lack of screen time you mentioned. I too have a full time job that prevents me from looking at charts throughout the day. I can manage trades from my phone, but it’s not good enough for me to execute new trades from. So I look at daily charts when I get home and 4 hour charts before I go to bed and when I wake up more 4 hour charts. I guess we all get impatient doing this and that for me has been the biggest psychological hurdle. I ride this emotional roller coaster whether it’s greed, or confidence, or fear. I just want to make big returns and I know I can execute good trades that pay off, but sometimes it is easy to convince yourself bad trades can become good trades. I didn’t get into this for a quick buck, and I try to treat it like a business. The psychological side is harder than I expected I suppose.
I kind of started rambling there, but thanks for your comments. It’s nice to know other people have similar thoughts and emotions.
First thank you for your response. I appreciate all forms of feedback.
I agree that it was a bad trade and sometimes the hardest thing for me to do is talk myself out of a trade that I think could go well. After reading everything you wrote I can’t help but think you’ve been through some of the same frustrating situations like the one I went through today.
“it’s better to be out of a trade wishing you were in it than to be in a trade wishing you were out of it”
one of my favorite quotes to tell others, but I need to listen to it for myself. Thank you for your encouraging words, and I will definitely try to learn from this experience.
[QUOTE=“poopoopotato;715013”] First thank you for your response. I appreciate all forms of feedback. I agree that it was a bad trade and sometimes the hardest thing for me to do is talk myself out of a trade that I think could go well. After reading everything you wrote I can’t help but think you’ve been through some of the same frustrating situations like the one I went through today. “it’s better to be out of a trade wishing you were in it than to be in a trade wishing you were out of it” one of my favorite quotes to tell others, but I need to listen to it for myself. Thank you for your encouraging words, and I will definitely try to learn from this experience.[/QUOTE]
You are welcome!
And yes you’re absolutely right I’ve been where you are before.
Your post seems like something I would have wrote a year ago.
I can see where you are and I got a good idea of where you’re going, and that is progress and eventually, success in trading.
We all have to take those counter trend trades during the learning period we’re going thru, to learn from them and not repeat the actions that make us lose money.
You’re not far from trading well I’ll tell you that.
The way I trade is, I plot support and resistance levels on the daily and 4 hour chart.
Then I zoom into the h1 chart and plot some minor resistance and support levels again.
So now that the S&R levels are plotted.
I 1) identify trend.
2) wait for price to retrace to a level
3) wait for a price action signal to form.
4) work out risk:reward and if it’s good I go for it.
Pin bars are great indications of price direction but I wait for an engulfing too.
I put more weight on engulfing candles and if I see a pinbar and then an engulfing candle then the market pretty much has shown a rejection and a move towards the trend both in the form of 2 candlesticks.
Having a job and trading can be tricky and sometimes you may feel you’re missing out on some trades when trading the higher timeframes but just remember that these trades happen all the time and the ones you miss are opportunities to fine tune your strategy and be prepared for more of them.
Also, one more thing j feel you can learn from is besides knowing the trades will come tomorrow and the day after, is to trust is yourself.
To have confidence in your ability as a trader even to take a loss here and there because those setups will repeat.
When you get into the habit of identifying what you’re looking for in the market and waiting for them to form, then you’ll begin to see yourself as a millionaire investor waiting for the market to show and opportunity to you for you to make money out of? Like how a bank approaches high net worth individuals with investment opportunities.
You’ll analyze all the factors of the setup and ultimately say “Okay this seems good enough for me to invest my money in to make some more for myself”
It takes a few counter trend trades, a few weeks of over trading and a couple of trades going against your plan to really let you know what you should do and what you should avoid when trading forex.
These are all lessons for you to find your edge.
As for losing some money, it’s all part of knowing the value of trades right?
You’ll start to calculate how much you can lose as priority rather than how much you can make on a trade and that’ll be what turns things around.
Trying for a few pips on a counter trend move won’t feel worth your time and the stress than ensues.
But waiting for the ideal setup you feel is worth going into, in the direction of the trend with a better probability of winning will become something your inner pro trader will look out for and those trades will sharpen your skills, and increase your wins.
Whenever you want to enter a trade just ask if this is the best trade you see today.
It’s a series of good today’s that’ll amount to aggregate profit at the end of the month.
Don’t be discouraged, let these lessons be yet another step towards your success.
Hey,
Some good advice there poopoo, but I think it’s a little misleading to say you entered Long on a downtrend. I think you were too late to enter and looking back should have been in on one of the bullish engulfing bars or at the previous low. It’s frustrating to think you’ve missed a big move but in these situations I look for the next opportunity to enter in the opposite direction as we can’t be sure how late we are on a move like this.
The red line shows the signal I would have waited for to go short on this with stop above the wick and entering below the close of this bar. It stands clear of the rest of the bars/info. I’d have been looking to be out in the following 4-8 hours with some profit. I don’t trade this pair but it would’ve worked out with enough pips for me. Hope I can post a pic and it’s from my phone so apologies for the basic nature.
Good luck mate,
Shy.
I’ve decided to set a limit to how many trade I am going to take in a given time frame to try and stop myself from over trading. I will have a daily limit of only 1 trade per day and a weekly limit of 2 trades per week. The weekly limit should make me pickier about my entry signals and the daily limit should stop me from being over exposed. I decided not to take the full week off from trading and I only took a single day. I am feeling refreshed and I have a positive outlook on my account again. The comments in past day or so have been very helpful to me to where I think I’ve found some clarity on how to proceed. So I’d just like to say thank you to the community here for giving me a platform to host this journal especially to those who have given me support throughout this process.
That was a Good post to read.
All the best,
Shy
I have entered into a short of the GBP/JPY today. The signal was the 2 day pin bar that formed right at the 195 level. I set a pending order once the 2 pin formation was broken on the low side. The trade was up around 90 pips early in the day but I feel that it being Friday many closed out their positions prior to the weekend. I have decided to hold onto this trade and see if it can regain it’s initial momentum. I have protected myself to this point by moving my stop loss to break even so there is no longer any risk in the trade. I believe there might be some big support around the 191 price area so I’ll be looking to get out around there if it causes trouble. If it goes through quite easily next week i will try to let it run all the way to the 185 level. I have plans to move my stop on the way down if the trade progresses favorably. Will update as this progresses.
This trade turned around quickly on me. It went straight against me on Sunday at the opening of the week and stopped me out at break even. I’ll take break even as a win and I’m glad I was able to close this out without a loss.
[QUOTE=“poopoopotato;715686”] <img src=“301 Moved Permanently”/> This trade turned around quickly on me. It went straight against me on Sunday at the opening of the week and stopped me out at break even. I’ll take break even as a win and I’m glad I was able to close this out without a loss.[/QUOTE]
Phew!
Better get out at break even than a loss.
Protecting capital is priority!
i see GBPJPY made a bullish engulfing on the daily chart?
Im waiting to see if price tries to continue up after a retrace.
The level I’m looking out for is around 193.480.
Let’s see…
Took this two day pin bar. Was entered when price broke overnight and it has retraced a bit. Was looking to use a trailing stop here, but i didn’t wake up to my alert and slept through it. Price has retraced a bit as it is heading right into the .8500 level(my profit target). I have reduced my risk to have so if the retrace carries further I wont lose the whole position. On the shorter frame charts the retrace doesn’t seem to aggressive so I want to give this a chance to move lower again as well.
I have manually closed my position on this trade. Price dropped back down pretty close to my profit target while I was watching the trade. I closed it manually with about a 30 pip gain. I did not want to let it retrace on me a second time so I walked away with a smaller winner. I think I did well to manage this trade and reduce risk while giving it good space to work. While I think this trade could ultimately go lower there is just too much traffic for me to let it run. I think the .8500 and .8400 levels will both act as support. If I should get another entry signal short I will enter, but for now I am happy to have walked out with a profit.
Looking back through my trades I noticed that I was drawing support levels and waiting for signals to enter around the support levels. While looking at my charts I was waiting for these levels to be reached to signal entry’s for me. I found that I would take trades around these levels without waiting for signals to really let me know it was a good time to enter. I think my drawing of the lines was pretty decent but certainly not perfect as I don’t think any drawing of support and resistance lines can be perfect. Anyways, I’ve decided to stop drawing support and resistance lines until after I see a good entry signal. This should prevent me from taking trades without the proper signals. My adjustment will be to locate good price action followed by support and resistance rather than plotting support and resistance and waiting for signals. I think this change will help me stay out of bad trades and make me more selective of good trades.