My FX Journey... From Dream To Reality

[macilme]

DAY 3 UPDATE (03-22-19)

Hey Journal…

So I finally finished with my Journal set up… here’s how it looks like now:

You’ll notice it’s much cleaner than what I posted up the last time around. Well that’s mainly because I don’t have any trades active yet, also it’s going to be less cluttered since now I will be trading off of only the daily charts at the moment (the 4hour charts will come soon enough, but only after I’ve gotten a pretty good hang of things on the daily).

So if you observe on the extreme right on the board is where I have my morning routine. It is the first list on my journal board. There’s a checklist in there that must all be ticked before I can consider trading for that day. here’s a peek inside:

Once I can confirm these conditions by ticking off the checklists. Then I can resume trading for the day. I try to make the checklist as straightforward as possible. If you think I’m missing something important that should be there do let me know

Now all the way to left side is just a look at the pairs I will be trading … nothing spectacular… you’ll get a look at how I’ll be filling these once I have my first ever trade on this new journey haha…

on the extreme left on my journal, this is what you’ll see:

Yeah, you guessed right, my evening routine, just like in the morning I do this at the close of the trading day. Because I’m trading New York Close Charts which close at 10:00 pm my local time, my evening routine is completed after I am done looking at my charts and placing or adjusting trades as necessary. I will be competing my journal then around an hour after the daily close.

Here’s a peek at my evening routine checklist:

Again, if you have experience with keeping a journal do let me know if there’s something that helped that isn’t on my checklist…

So, that’s pretty muck a run down on how my journal looks and works… If you find it clicks with your needs shoot me a message and I’ll be happy to share my template… something for the community that’s given me so much eh?

YES WE SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING WITH YOUR JOURNAL, BUT EXACTLY HOW DO YOU PLAN TO TRADE?

Ah yes! That
If you took a pretty good look at my journal you might have figured that out already. I am going to be trading off of price action mainly. I will be trading three main candle patterns:

1. The Bullish/Bearish Engulfing Bar
2. The Pin Bar
3. The two Bar Reversal

On the other hand I will be trading also Breakouts. This will be the only PA I will be trading beyond Candlestick patterns. I will use both volume and SSI as supporting elements while I trade this strategy.

Maybe I’ll be talking more about this trading system in the coming days.

To round up these are the pairs I will be watching on the daily time-frame for my trade entries:

I have grouped them into two different profiles for a specific reason…

I will be trading the first group based solely on my three candlestick patterns while with the second group based off of both candlestick and breakout strategies. they are separated that way because I can only get volume and SSI (Speculative Sentiment Index) data for the second group and not the first. Remember I need those to support my breakout trades. I get these values from the FXCM Tradingstation platform.

Phew, today’s entry wasn’t intended to be this long, so appreciate if you manage to read it to the end.

Catch you guys tomorrow.

Hassan

[xfowokan]

Well Done and all the best…You have inspired me
Will be watching this space

[PipMeHappy]

Hello there , I thought you might want to see this:

My journey journal...from demo to live...and beyond

Hi everyone. I’m finally gonna get my own thread going. This thread is gonna track my progression in my business venture. So, this will be a personal outlet for me. I’ve been wanting to do this for quite some time now. I do feel it is important to have a place to journalize your thoughts, experiences, lessons etc…And what a great place to do it here in BabyPips, where we all come together. And also this is very important to me because I really just do not have any other outlet. I simply do not…

[macilme]

@PipMeHappy thanks man… an honorary member on my thread… yeah yeah😎.

In truth… @MikeWolski’s link you shared was the single best influence in my decision to not only keep a journal (I mentioned that in my introduction post thread)… but keep it both online and within the community itself… I follow mike and have read through a sizable portion of his thread… hopefully I’ll ship him a bottle of champagne if this turns out to be the sauce in my trading in future.

Really though… thanks for popping in here to see what I’m up to… appreciate

[PipMeHappy]

Great to hear, Macilme.

You will find that this trading and journalling will be exciting to begin with but it can get too much in terms of the frequency of reporting to the rest of Babypips readers and of having time to do that on top of doing all your trading, reading, trading analysis, etc.

You will also be less willing to be so generous with your time, especially as trading is not a paid job: if you were a paid trading analyst, you would spend a lot of time publishing daily articles/videos, but as your focus will be turning from someone with no trading experience to someone who can earn some kind of money from it, you will have to make hard choices along the way (time, after all, is our most valuable currency).

[macilme]

DAY 4 UPDATE (03-23-19)

Hey Journal…

So it’s the weekend, nothing much going on. I basically used the time to binge on my current favorite PA thread Forex Price Action. It’s an old thread but with such useful information… It’s got pretty much sufficient details on how to go about trading my candlestick patterns, I only wish the thread is still active today as it was years ago. Ah well, you can’t always get it all eh?

Nice nugget of wisdom there @PipMeHappy, that really resonated with me in a lot of ways. I remember when I was trading 30+ currency pairs on the 4hour charts on multipe strategies, I had to watch them all, update the charts, make my journal entries (with pictures by the way), and be ready to go through it all again within a four hour intervals, it was crazy.

That’s part of the reasons why i switched to the daily. you’re right, I probably in truth may not be able to keep up with the current frenzied pace of updating my journal in here, but it only takes 20 minutes daily, my trading takes roughly four time that length of time. The rest of the time is for reading and work. I think the daily charts provide me with enough time to do that.

Documenting my activities regularly in here is something I believe is gonna keep me on track. It’s pretty much like having accountability partners right?

Anyways, I’ve got some pairs I’m looking at for monday… that should help us hit the ground running if i find something tradeable… I’ll upload pictures tomorrow… until then, have a nice weekend guys…

[macilme]

DAY 6 UPDATE (03-25-19)

Hey Journal.

Morning Routine completed…

wish me a good trading Journey guys

END OF DAY UPDATE

So, first official end of day. No trades, a couple of close ones but none that met my entry criteria. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit different… Just on the side though… A good A+ trade every two or three days is sufficient enough for my trading plan.

these are the pairs that caught my attention today as Pin Bars:

I didn’t enter on both. US30 Pinbar didn’t look convincing enough for me and was coming on the heels of a big bear candle… I had a limit entry set on the break of the large red pinbar on the Silver but it didn’t get triggered. I have since deleted the order and observing the PA at this level.

I am pretty positive I’ll have at least a breakout trade tomorrow on the yen pairs at least. Guess we’ll see how that turns out. That’s it for today.

@Ambrianky Nice to hear bro… We from the same hood so I feel you on that. Hopefully you can have yours set up too and we can journey together lol.
hope you stick around sir.

[Ambrianky]

I’ve personally been trying to start one for myself but I’ve failed thus far. Hopefully this will inspire me to start… I wish you all the luck in the world…

[macilme]

DAY 8 UPDATE (03-27-19)

Hey Journal

Morning Routine completed…

So I finally took my first trade in the early hours of today…

TRADE 1:
EUR/USD Short…

Looking for price to at least reach the recent low as price has been in a slow downtrend on the daily.

Entry: 1.12570
TP 1: 1.12183
TP 2: 1.11132

I’ll be taking partial profit at first TP level and moving my stops to BE for the remainder of the trade.

So I mentioned I’d show how my trades get recorded in my journal, each trade get’s recorded on a card which goes in the list created for that pair, EURUSD for example goes here in the list I have already created for it:

This way I can monitor all the trades I’ve taken within any particular time-frame (last three months for example) on that particular pair. Hopefully it gets filled up with quality A+ trades.

Also you can see those multicolored labels below the chart image on the card, it’s how I sort, much like the same way you can use formulas to sort trade data in excel. Here’s how it looks in detail:

Here, you can see how the labels are used, in future i might want to see trades I took on breakouts only, so i filter with that label and everything else gets taken out temporarily and I can do whatever I need to do… I might show that when i got more trades on my board.

Hopefully this works out as my first profitable trade… I’m a bit worried about price going below the two recent lows before the breakdown so I have set my TP’s accordingly to cover those.

Fingers crossed and we’ll see how this pans out haha

professional inputs very much welcome.

[jairusmaloba]

Keeping a journal is a good idea, however, you could be getting over-complicated. Your journal looks like your trying to develop a very scientific setup. The more simple the better using just basic principals. Hopefully as you go along you will realize what is irrelevant and keep it out of your journal. Do not write what you do not understand and do not put indicators on your charts that you do not use. Also do not drown yourself in too much data that you will eventually be unable to analyse.

[macilme]

DAY 9 UPDATE (03-28-19)

Hey Journal

So another day in the bag, morning and evening routine completed.

No of trades today: Zero

Current Trade Update : EUR/USD short.

So price made it to my first TP, I’ve taken profit on half my position and moved my stop to BE on the other half position still open. So safe to say my first trade on this journey has been profitable… will it rake in more money? Guess time will tell.

it’s been just over a week and I only got one trade. Slow days but i’m okay with that… minimum of one trade per week is good enough for me as long as they’re A+ trade set ups.

During this time I have found some trade set ups that weren’t convincing enough for me to trade, most went in the expected direction and satisfyingly enough I feel comfortable in retrospect now watching them from the sidelines…

Hopefully the coming week will have more trades in stock for me.

[macilme]

Keeping a journal is a good idea, however, you could be getting over-complicated. Your journal looks like your trying to develop a very scientific setup. The more simple the better using just basic principals. Hopefully as you go along you will realize what is irrelevant and keep it out of your journal. Do not write what you do not understand and do not put indicators on your charts that you do not use. Also do not drown yourself in too much data that you will eventually be unable to analyse.

@jairusmaloba thanks for the input here… I guess you’re right in your impression of my Journal, I got to say however that that is exactly the aim of the journal, To be Scientific in it’s outlook and detailed enough for me to be able to extract as specific information from the records. .

What I plan to be as simple as possible are my trades, my records and trade analysis is not meant to be simple in any sense. It is where the Golden information is to be found.

An example of what you could find out is maybe a particular strategy works only with a specific number of pairs more often than not, or maybe in certain market conditions than others. It might even be in the end that you might discover that your R:R plan is skewed against you. There are many different things you can find out from your trade records other than the ones that worked and those that didn’t.

But as always though, different people have different strategies so what works for me may not work for others I guess, just my view on things here.

[Joshysmart]

Hi @macilme. Its Josh also from Nigeria, and am a newbie trying to figure out PA. and how to enter and exit the market using what I’ve learnt so far.
If you’d permit me asking… “What gave you the signal to short”?

[hafidfx]

remain optimistic and money will come

[jairusmaloba]

Thanks for your response and for making my understand your point of view. I guess you are right in what you are doing as it will definitely be of benefit in the long run.

[jairusmaloba]

That was quite a good setup (food for thought), however, I prefer the four hour and one hour, I guess I am not patient enough.

[macilme]

And it’s the weekend…

Fist full week of trading

No of trades so far ; 1

We only got to take one trade the past week which isn’t a bad rate by my standards (4 trades per week minimum, most preferred are A+ trades only).

Thanks @Joshysmart, @hafidfx and @jairusmaloba for your recent comments on my journal here… good to see you guys popping in .

@jairusmaloba, good to see you understanding my perspective, many traders sometimes see going against their views as an attack on their strategies… Different strokes for different folks right?

@Joshysmart, my sure guy from Naija, how hustle na? (that’s Nigerian english so feel free to ignore if you don’t understand guys haha ) Actually that EURUSD trade I took was my own version of breakout trading and it involves a few things in confluence with the breakout itself… you will notice here:

That the level I have marked is pretty relevant even though price had broken through it and back above a couple of times before. Price breaks below the level but what confirms my short entry was the switch from negative (red) to positive (green) on the SSI indicator below the chart. You can do a google search on the indicator if you are interested.

So that’s it for this week’s trade… hopefully next week is gonna be as profitable. See you guys on the other side of Monday.

EDIT:
This is a similar set up here that I might be taking come Monday based off this strategy:

[Joshysmart]

Lols! We dey Hustle am dey go, las las we go dey alright.
I understand, thanks for the info. I do need to check out the ssi indicator too.
I’m stalking this journal if you don’t mind.
Chears!
Safe trading.

[jairusmaloba]

Im Watching

[Ambrianky]

So far so good. Recording what happens in one one is great. However, a new habit takes about 21 days to take route. Struggle, fight hard to make sure that you make this new habit sticks. Good luck…