It’s not a joyful prospect to be on a losing streak. When one starts getting losses after losses, the thought of losing money which was hard earned starts playing tricks with one’s emotions. That is why you need to trade with money you can lose and not depend on trading for your income until you achieve an edge. At this point in time, the temptation to go on revenge trading is very high. This is because you want to get back the money you lost. Revenge trading, that is, taking more trades and looking for opportunities just to trade, will further compound your losses. Instead, this is the time to evaluate your trading to find out what is wrong. Most times, you will find the answer in risk management and having good position sizing. These two strategies will help you to preserve your capital until you get out of the losing streak
I did an expectancy calculation on the ten trades I have taken so far and found that I was losing $8 on every trade. The data sample is very low but it was an eye opener. It helped me to see that I should stop taking low RR trades. So, I am working on that.
The opposite of a losing streak is a winning streak. One has to also be careful before overconfidence and carelessly creep into one’s trading. Some traders who after losing discover that they could win again would want the emotion of winning to continue that they would stop trading prematurely. That too is shooting oneself in the foot. It has no relationship to one’s strategy. Whether you are winning or losing, you should try to take the opportunities in the market according to your strategy.
It has been an interesting week of lessons learned although only one trade was opened for the week.
I am gradually beginning to understand what an exit strategy involves and so have learned not to panic when a trade is going against me. I used to close my positions prematurely because I want to earn something but just earning meager amounts. Now, I have understood how not to do this. Slowly increasing in confidence.
Learned the importance of zooming in and out, especially when price seems to be in a tight congested zone. Some price direction that seems non-directional might actually be a trend if you zoom out and some that you think were trends might just be a congestion zone when you zoom out and see things carefully.
I have also learned that even if a retracement at Support and Resistance involves just one candle, it is still a retracement provided the candle has high volatility. But because this areas are ambiguous, I would step aside if I am unsure if a move is a retracement or not.
I have resolved that I will never take a trade whenever I see an inside bar. Inside bars represent volatility contractions. When volatility contracts, it will eventually expand and no one knows the direction it will expand to. If you take a trade in the wrong direction, you become a trapped trader. So, rather than gamble, I would stay out of inside bars or volatility contractions.
Yeah. I hope to get there as time goes on. I have been converted to tradingview.com and the charts there are awesome. So, you might see me posting charts from tradingview.com. I wish my broker has that platform. I would suggest that anyone who is not on tradingview.com give it a trial. It is simply an awesome experience. I also post my ideas on tradingview.com. This is my first idea on tradingview.com. You can check it out. I intend posting more ideas.
This is an example of the pin bars I traded to help illustrate my strategy.
Two bullish pin bars that followed each other. See how the market was forceful in rejecting low prices and the rally that came about. Very good setup. Look out for setups like this to make money.
I will highlight some emotional challenges that people have that could be reflected in their trading.
Low self esteem. People who have low self esteem don’t expect good things to come to them. They are surprised when people do them favors and expect others to find them unworthy. While trading in the market, people with low self esteem usually cut a winning trade short because they don’t believe they can make large profits. They prefer to take their profits as they come. They usually want to scalp because they prefer the instant gratification of small profits than having to believe they are good enough for large profits.
Impatience. Impatient people cannot concentrate for a long time on a task. They want to get it done fast and quick. Impatient traders do themselves a lot of harm in trading. A position might fall into a congestion zone before traders start showing their hand but impatient traders would not have that. They would rather close a trade quickly if it shows sign of losing momentum than wait to see if the trade would go into their favor. Impatient traders want the market to do their bidding without realizing that no one can control the market. That is their great failing.
Stubbornness. Stubborn people do not listen to anyone but themselves. They believe they are right even when the evidence says otherwise. When a trader is stubborn, he would fail to cut short a losing trade even when there is evidence that the trade will be so. Stubborn traders always want to be right in their trades and end up shooting themselves in the foot. They do not realize that trading is about probabilities.
Do you fall into any of these? Then you need to start working on your trading psychology.
Don’t believe the hype on Facebook or Instagram where you see purportedly successful traders flashing money and expensive cars with the promise that you can be part of the secret in trading if you enrol in their online course or subscribe to their signal. A fool and his money are sooner parted.
Trading is hard work. You also need patience to succeed. There is money in the business but you need to be ready to put in the hard work required. There is no short cut to success in trading. Do not rely on signals unless you can trust the source. If you don’t want to put in the hard work, forget about trading.
The problem is not the strategy. It is you. When you put in what is required, you will succeed. Trading can make you happy, proud and fulfilled. It can also make you angry, frustrated, unhappy and dissatisfied. You choose which state of mind you will be in. Yes, it lies with you. Not with the market and not in the strategy provided it has been back tested.
But even though it’s hard work, you can have fun trading. Join a trading forum and have fun sharing your experience with other traders. It helps to ease the tension.
Some people over trade because they think trading will fulfill the emotional needs they have in life. That is far from the truth. If you think trading will fulfill those needs, you will end up hurting yourself.
If you are looking for excitement you won’t find it here. Otherwise you would be seeing opportunities where none exists.
If you are looking for self esteem, don’t look for it here. The market will make you close your positions earlier than you would make profits.
If you want recognition you won’t get it here. Nobody cares whether your account is up 500% or down 10%. They are interested in what they can get. If you have a good strategy, they will be happy to copy it. But don’t expect favors.
The market is neutral. Your emotional needs won’t be satisfied at the market. Rather you might end up further compounding the problem.
Charts illustrating what to trade and not trade when it comes to pin bars.
These are good examples that shows the power of pin bars.
There are some pin bars that are not tradable and we cannot be gambling but taking high probability trades. We want the odds to be on our favor. Notice how this pin bar had a large nose, suggesting that it was rejecting both low and high prices. A good bullish pin bar should be showing strong rejection of low prices. Note.
There were 4 pin bars between 16 march to 24 march in the chart. The pin bar noted as 2 was not tradable because it was more of a doji than a pin bar, and doji signifies indecision. We don’t trade indecision. Pin bar 3 was reinforced by pin bar 4 that gave a big rally.
Another good example of pin bars reinforcing each other. Both pin bars, 1 and 2, were at swing points, i.e swing highs, and they ensured that the downtrend continued despite the fight by the bulls.
that s why price goes down and was going down, and will probably continue to do so till will reach a lower price that will be attractive for buyers.and u should see high volume on the wide spread down bars with bullish reaction into some support or new low ground, that s signelling demand, not some cristal ball or made up market maker book.
Yeah cool, @coolBuTcute.01. But I think your profits should be private to you. Flashing your profits is like flashing something private that should not be shared with others. Otherwise, I have seen it before.
Do you use volume indicator while trading forex? I think it will give you false signals. By the way, the consensus on trading volumes even with stocks is conflicting.
what profits mate? demo profits? he buys and sells probably the same pair and only shows u the 1 trade that worked lol
he s selling at support and buying at resistence from what i ve seen so far, and what s pissin me off is that there might be newbies that would fall for stuff like that. he s also averaging down, which is a sure thing to lose ur investment unless u have a SL in place and all the trades u open are calculated, a thing that not many can do due to fear and greed. that s a stupid way to trade, then i see people on here opening threads with forex is a scam, doesn t work> cos they blew up.
the diferrence between tick vol data and real vol is around 10%. false signals are born when u don t know how to read price in relation with vol. actually, i ll tell u 1more, for free if u do decide to learn how to use volume in conjunction with ur price action strategy which i think should be based on S&R levels and engulfing and pins…(pls corect me if i m wrong), then u should be capable to filter out so many of those signals that u get or fall into. like a nice pinbar at support but that has a lot of vol on it with a bearish reaction and it ends up breakin support and so on and so forth. look into it. i ve traded what u trade now and i can still trade ur system or market aproach, but in conjunction with volume, maybe add some divergence to the mix just to increase the odds(more confluences the better the odds). cheers
Bro relax.
I dont buy and I dont sell at the same time.And its true i open alot of trades at the same time ,but thats only because i know what i am doing,also you are wright if price goes against me ,i lose ALOT. But price dont go against me ,at least today .
I dont use stop loss because i know what must happen on chart for me to close all my positions. Its just I personally dont like 1-2 percent of account to one trade,this way you will never earn. And if i know 100 percent where price will go why i cant open all i have/
Once again,relax bro
dude, first of all, no SL is a killer. what if war breaks out tommorow, or another pandemic, or trade word center etc etc… or swiss flash crash when the swiss banks decided to lift the peg? there is no 100% in forex, what ur writting is nonsence, u know excatly where price will go…u should start a new religion…dude, it is nothing personal, i m only against this type of marketing and BS. and every trader that s trading for a living and has a few years of trial and error will laugh in ur face. just do ur own thread and leave these poor people alone to try and learn to trade the right way. (by trial and error).
inside information? brokers don t have the holy grail, all they have is order book(flow). large buy orders or sells could come in at any time creating the imbalance etc…unless ur trading with a bucket shop,and ur orders never reach the actual market place. and then again u have no profits, just time to kill . so full of BS lol
@coolBuTcute.01 do not bother to write me back cos then u ll piss me off with ur crap. just do ur own ■■■■. like the saying goes, it s not the thief s fault that he tries, it s urs cos ur letting him con u @Emekadavid didn t meant to clutter ur journal, sorry about that bud. keep on working, u ll do great. cheers
if u do decide to learn how to use volume in conjunction with ur price action strategy which i think should be based on S&R levels and engulfing and pins…(pls corect me if i m wrong), then u should be capable to filter out so many of those signals that u get or fall into. like a nice pinbar at support but that has a lot of vol on it with a bearish reaction and it ends up breakin support and so on and so forth. look into it. i ve traded what u trade now and i can still trade ur system or market aproach, but in conjunction with volume, maybe add some divergence to the mix just to increase the odds(more confluences the better the odds). cheers