My multiple criteria trading journal for 2022

Trading Discussion Trade Journals
1

I think this is my 3rd attempt at a journal in here, and hopefully this time I’ll actually stick to it. I have 2 indicators and use my sentiment as a judgement on the signals as well as whether to close a trade.

I’ll post all the trades that get a signal as well as the ones that I take and post the results.

I look at weekly charts on the close, so take trades around market open time after the weekend. Hopefully I can stick to it even when work gets busy again in a couple of months.

There’s been a few signals triggered this year, but I wasn’t confident in many of them. The nature of the strategy is that multiple pairs often give signals together and I use fundamentals and currency strength to determine which to take, usually not all of them at the same time to avoid being over exposed to one currency.

GBPJPY - this was actually triggered before Christmas last year, but I was confident that the move was still strong so got in on it right at the end of the year and made a nice return. Had my lot size set incorrectly due to changing phone, so profit should have been double.

EURCHF + CADCHF - These both triggered together last week. I felt CAD was stronger so took that one. It had a real nice move early on in the week but then turned. I got out with a small profit and it then went below my entry although has since recovered. I was half tempted to keep it open because it’s a positive swap trade and I’m confident it will go up from here eventually, but I’ve been burnt by that before so locked in the profit I had.

CHFJPY* - This signal triggered this week, but I don’t think the JPY was more than a retracement so stayed out.

GBPCAD* - Also triggered this week. GBP has been strong, but it does look about ready to go down. Wasn’t confident either way so left it alone. Looks like it was probably a good signal though.

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Lovely its great as you have somewhere to keep you accountable :slight_smile: Best of luck

3

This is interesting to read. Its pretty rare on babypips to come across anyone actively using the weekly time-frame. Keep up the journal posts. Good luck.

4

I find the longer time frames give more reliable signals. Shorter ones have more noise. The down side is that you don’t get many signals but I’m not aspiring to make millions quickly.

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5

Quick review of those signals since I’m stuck home with Covid this week.

GBPJPY - daily candles
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Buy signal was just after it bounced up from support. Wish I’d been paying attention through December because that was a nice move. Got out just before it went to the resistance line above and it looks like a good exit based on price action since.

EURCHF - weekly candles
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Didn’t like the look of this because it’s been on a downtrend for so long. It did actually bounce and at £1 per pip would have been up to £100 profit before turning around. So it wasn’t a completely false signal.

CADCHF - Daily candles
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I was looking at this to go back to 0.739ish after the Omicron impact has been so small. Got out after price turned last week, but said I thought I could have stayed in and looks like that was probably right.

CHFJPY* - Not much point in a chart, hasn’t really moved, slightly in the right direction so far.

GBPCAD* - Currently about 110 pips in the right direction. Looks like I should have gone for this one.

6

Signals triggered this week:

EURJPY*
CHFJPY*
GBPUSD*
GBPCAD*
GBPJPY*
CADJPY*
AUDJPY*

Quite a few signals due to the change to risk off. I got in late on Friday on GBPJPY*. I don’t think it’ll be a long trade, maybe just a week or two. There are 2 points to watch out for, price turning around 153. If it goes all the way down to 149/150 again then it would be a very strong point to buy based on the last years performance.

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7

GBPJPY* went down to 153 then back up a little bit as suggested. Was a nice 130+ pips if you got in on that move.

From week open to close, those signals gave:
EURJPY* ~50 pips up
CHFJPY* ~80 pips up
GBPUSD* ~50 pips up
GBPCAD* ~55 pips down
CADJPY* ~6 pips up
AUDJPY* ~90 pips up

Would have been a good week if you’d taken all of those trades. If the run to safety continues, then they could get better. No closing signals on them yet, but I don’t have anything open currently.

This weeks new trade signals:
GBPCHF* - not sure about this one. They’ve both been generally strong and the signal comes despite a big green candle. If USD stays strong, it might not be a good signal.
USDCAD - Big green candle. USD has been weak and is due a run with the interest rate rise, but CAD is probably not the best one to go against. AUD and NZD have little reason for optimism right now.
EURGBP - Chart is very bearish. It is near an almost 6 year low, but I don’t see a reason for EUR strength.

Not sure there’s anything I like the look of this week, but history says these signals are right more than they are wrong… Been quite a few signals against the GBP in the last 2 weeks, the daily chart on GBPJPY looks like it might be ready to head down again

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End of week results:
GBPCHF* ~60 pips down
USDCAD ~40 pips down
EURGBP ~110 pips up

I said I didn’t like the look of those, and I don’t understand why the Euro suddenly went that strong. Will it stay strong? Interesting how the system catches it when to the eye it looked wrong…

New signals:
GBPAUD*
GBPNZD*
NZDCAD
CADCHF*
EURCAD

All of those are counter trend trades except CADCHF which doesn’t really have an obvious trend. I’m not a big fan of counter trend trades and the market is quite volatile at the moment so hard to tell if we’re in risk on or off mode.

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9

I really don’t trust the EUR to stay at the top of the strength chart, it never does. Its so heavily traded, especially against USD, that it always gets dragged back into middle territory, not very bullish, not very bearish, no strong determined trends. Especially the case with EUR/USD, which is lagging this week’s surge in the other EUR pairs: as its the biggest pair, that has to be a dark cloud on the horizon for EUR-buyers.

And it will be GBP which takes over as strongest currency.

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Nice to cross another trader using W1.

I look forward to this journal!!

Yes, it was a retracement. It turned bearish a few weeks ago. JPY has been nice lately. I’ve been shorting JPY crosses and they’re going alright.

I’ve noticed that also—that several pairs will do the same thing at the same time.

Haha. I was watching it as well. However, I took the signal and got chewed up. It’s probably gonna reverse in two weeks or sooner.

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Whatever the ECB said on Thursday is what sparked it. I haven’t found what was said yet, will try later. But you’re right. Long term it has trends but short term it is usually in the middle. US data was better than expected, which all points to an interest rate increase, so it could be down for stocks and up for USD coming up. That’ll probably be bad for CHF and EUR because they’re usually traded against USD.

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12

Yup. No need to even go far. As at now, there’s arguably no pair better than any pair of gbp

13

Caught the end of a nice move on GBPJPY. No signals, just looking at the price going up and the channel that it’s been sitting in for nearly a year. Got out just before it shot back down, which it is doing so frequently that I wish I put bigger positions on. That puts me up £220 for the year, and would have been a fair bit more if I didn’t chicken out of NZDCAD* just before it moved.

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Review of signals from last week:
GBPAUD* - 103 pips up (was 200 at one point)
GBPNZD* - ~50 pips up (was over 200 at one point)
NZDCAD - 40 pips u
CADCHF* - 15 pips down. I don’t like this pair for this signal, it isn’t moving enough.
EURCAD - down ~150 pips.

It would have been a slightly profitable week to take all, but I’d have never gone long EUR with its recent form. Didn’t take any though, so it’s all irrelevant.

New signals:
AUDCAD
EURNZD*
NZDUSD
NZDJPY
NZDCHF

On the daily chart, there’s a signal for GBPJPY*. There might be something in this. Counter trend, but it’s rebounded from ~158 to ~153 3 times in 4 months. I’ll wait and see what Monday looks like before deciding on any of these. EURNZD* has potential. They’ve both been week, but EUR has had a retracement and NZD might be due one. It’s probably only one of those trades, so wait and see if the sell off looks like it will continue on Monday.

14

Not a good week. The markets can’t seem to decide a direction. Monday morning started well and 3 hours later my trades were swung around so got out about break even. Tried a again on Tuesday and lost a little.

Not going to bother with signals this week, the market needs to decide what’s happening with Russia I guess.

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Looks like I’m going to be working away for the next couple of months, so this is taking a break. Probably a good time anyway because the markets are making no sense to me and until the Russia situation settles down, I think some unexpected things are going to keep happening.

17

Still really busy, so not been trading the forex markets. Looks like I missed good opportunities, but I have been trading the DAX index and found it much more reliable for signals and easier to predict (excluding unexpected news events).

Spent a day day trading on Monday and got a 5% profit on the account, along with some longer term trades being closed.

So far this year, the account is up 34% with another 3% currently in the open trade. Indices still look like they have room to go up, but I guess we need some good news from Ukraine for the DAX to go significantly higher.

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These are my results for the year. Not sure that all the numbers are ‘good’, but I’m consistently profitable much more significantly than at any point in the past. Maybe that’s the change of market or maybe it’s good market conditions, but I’m happy… for now

Edit:
I’m also finding a good way to day trade is to set an order rather than buy/sell order. That means that the market usually overshoots the entry point and I immediately end up in profit. I can then set a SL just above break even and not lose anything, but if the price moves significantly, then I close a bigger profit.

18

Hmm. This is interesting. Will have to look into this!

19

My work load is reducing and I will have more time for trading, so should be getting back to this in the coming weeks. I’ve been trying out something new with varying degrees of success. When it goes right, I make a lot of money very quickly, but I’m not mastering the exit time of a trade very well.

Trading the DAX. No indicators, no TA, no fundamentals. It’s a day trading strategy and usually only in a trade for a few hours, but could extend.

I watch the price at what I deem to be key times of the day. These are times that I’m determining that turning points usually happen (with the exception of news). I then go the same way that the price is moving with quite a large lot size. Typically using up 50%+ of my margin (30:1) in one trade.

The idea is trying to catch a big move quickly so I can set a stop loss in profit. It gets stopped out way too often, so I’ve started leaving it a little while to get a bit of breathing space. Then set the stop loss at a few pips profit and set an 80 pip trailing stop. As the price continues in the direction, I open up more positions to try and lock in more money. If price continues to move, I win more, if it reverses I win overall.

A big problem I’m having is that the price will turn against the move and either get stopped out, or I close it because I think price will change, but I’ve seen how big the win was and it’s dropped quite a lot. I then get carried away and try to get back in to catch the retracement/reversal/continuation, but the market isn’t at one of my times to enter. I need to handle this much better, and the rewards will be much better. I also need to get better at setting TP. Often the price goes pretty much where I predict before reversing, but I didn’t set a TP in the hope that it would continue and I’d make more money. That has cost me quite a lot of potential profits.

The downside is that I forgot to set a stop loss when the market was trending up. It swung down very fast and I lost a huge amount in one day when I was busy with work. I shouldn’t try this whilst at work, especially when I don’t have a stop loss in a good place.

Graph below shows yesterday’s results (% gain) when I had a proper day to try this. The circles show where I was entering trades at the wrong time, either because I’d been stopped out with profit or trying to get in on the move that hadn’t started yet (too early although I did get the direction correct in the end).

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I think there’s potential here, I’ve had several days with good performance. I just need to time entries better and recover my ridiculous loss. 30% in a day is probably in my top 10 days. The day before was good too and could have been much higher if I got out at the right time.

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Should probably add, the system that I was listing currencies as buy/sell is not working right now. Pre-covid it was very reliable but with all the chaos in the world and huge daily swings in direction/momentum it just isn’t catching it on the weekly timeframe. Maybe when the world settles down again I’ll try it again.

Day trading is more fun anyway :slight_smile:

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21

WOW!! Great job!! That sounds like great progress! Keep up the good work. It looks like you’re certainly putting in the work.