Really? Must say this would put me off, too (I wouldn’t want patients seeing it!).
Sounds right to me. (The worry is that he’s not going anywhere, and that can even continue?!).
Thanks for the update, David. Keep going1
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Market was a bit odd today, some ranges were big and it seemed to be playing around the SMAs quite a lot on some pairs, maybe a day not to trade?
Overall 2 wins from 7, SL were just not quite big enough for two of these, here’s the details;
I traded USDJPY for the first time and as you can see it was a nice quick win. I waited a bit as I wanted to see how it reacted to the SMA and entered as soon as it looked to be through that area.
AUDUSD had been messing around the SMAs with no obvious trend and the range was about double what it usually is, so possibly one to leave alone.
As you can see I entered on a very quick downtrend that made me think it had eventually decided to be bearish and I timed my entry perfectly just before it pulled back and hit my SL a couple of minutes later.
Of course the SL needed to be 1 pip more to make this one a winning trade. I’d set it at 8 pips which is much bigger than normal and at the mid/far side of the range, usually that’s fine.
I was quite confident with EURGBP as it had been playing nicely in a good solid up trend and wasn’t even really testing the SMAs until I decided to enter a trade, then it decided to test the SMA. Another one where I needed a bigger SL but I am never really going to set a SL that big trading this strategy.
EURUSD was looking good but never really moved enough, had I entered as soon as it broke out I would have had a win but I waited until it started breaking through the SMA as often it bounces off these levels.
GBPUSD, another one where the SL was fractionally too small. And with hindsight I needed to make it 1 or 2 pips bigger to cover the middle/far side of the range so my mistake here.
USDJPY played nice, ignore that image I’ve put the wrong one but it was similar to GBPJPY.
USDCAD, nothing much I could do here, just didn’t quite move enough.
Ultimately, had I just followed the programme and entered the trades as soon as they broke out then the results would have been better as then EURUSD and USDCAD would both have hit TP at 1/1
The other trades would still have won/lost so being “clever” cost me today, difference between a profitable and a losing day.
I did leave all the trades open which is something I have struggled with in the past so that was a positive, although had I closed the USDCAD early I could have saved a bit of money.
Most of my SL were perfect as well.
I am now in an overall loss on this account which is the first time since I started trading it, so much for experience!
Traded the US open and got 4 wins from 7 at 1/1.5 so you see I can sometimes actually make a profit!
I did take a profit (EURGBP) a bit early as I have to go out and usually when I leave the computer it all turns to excrement.
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Two wins and two losses today, small profit as I did squeeze a bit extra out of both the winning trades and a mini light bulb moment, here’s the details;
AUDUSD first, now I didn’t want to take this initially as it was against the trend, but I realised there was enough space between the range and the SMA to make a winning trade, around 10 pips. My SL only needed to be about 5 pips so I took this, I also know AUDUSD tends to be a bit more predictable than other pairs and sure enough it behaved itself and I squeezed an extra pip of profit out for a win at 1/1.1
EURUSD was with the trend and a nice easy trade, again I squeezed a bit more profit out of this one.
Oh, also I note maybe the SL can be smaller if the SMAs are within the range? Price often revisits the SMA, but if they are inside the range I don’t need to worry about this so much?
USDJPY, I entered fractionally early here, with the trend, but the candle was a couple of seconds from closing, so my bad. As you see it didn’t close outside of the range, so I shouldn’t have taken this one, I set the SL in the right place but I knew it might want to go back and test the SMA (50 in this case) so while it lost I actually feel like I learned something here and it still didn’t surprise me, in the end this did breakout to the upside and was a winning trade if only I could follow simple instructions.
Now for GBPJPY I went against the trend, but as you can see it was a very strong move and it broke through the SMA 50 and 100 quite easily, I entered on the next candle and at the time it was another bearish candle, but my impeccable timing meant I entered exactly as it hit the low of the day and then never looked back.
So, don’t go against the trend until it has been confirmed, another trade I shouldn’t have taken.
Below are the trades I didn’t take, I feel these are worth sharing for the learning;
EURUSD, this was against the trend, had I taken this (I’ve marked up the entry and SL based on my findings) this is a win as it moves 12 pips or so and my SL is around 8 pips - but it hasn’t fully reversed as it is still fighting with the SMAs and hasn’t tested the 200 SMA yet.
GBPUSD again, would have been against the trend and would probably have been a loss, so correct decision here.
USDCAD again is reverses and tests the SMA, this would have moved enough to be a winning trade.
So I am thinking now, don’t go against the trend, but perhaps I do take these but with a smaller RRR? Say 1/0.5 or something?
Anyway, I feel I learned a lot again today.
Squeezing out that extra profit from those two trades has netted around $3 in profit today which is obviously insignificant, but if I can do that every day it’s ~1% more profit every month!
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I was really patient today and did everything right apart from one dumb mistake that cost me about 1%
Three wins, two losses and three break evens, overall profit of around 0.5%
AUDUSD first, you can see this was basically in a slight downtrend coming into the open but it was messing around the SMAs so I was cautious here and patient. I waited for the breakout and I wanted to see it was established above the SMAs and I then entered and this was a fairly easy win, I squeezed an extra few cents out of this one.
GBPUSD was a nice easy trade as the trend was clear and I just waited a bit as I wanted to make sure there were no pullbacks, again squeezed an extra few cents out of this.
EURUSD was similar, nice easy win and a few extra cents squeezed out of it.
USDJPY, looks like a win doesn’t it? Well that’s what it should have been but I did a dumb mistake and opened two trades, a buy and a sell. I had intended to open a sell on this, as shown above and the buy was supposed to be on GBPJPY but somehow I opened another trade on USDJPY
Now I managed to mitigate that by closing it for just a tiny loss but instead of closing the buy, I closed the sell! So I lost the winning trade and took a full loss, I’ve not done this before (at least not on this account) so I’m just chalking it up as one of those things but yeah very annoying.
GBPJPY next and you see I didn’t take that early break to the downside and I did the right thing there as it then looked to be reversing into being bullish, I entered once the SMAs had been broken but this lost as the pullback was too big - still learning about this pair I had used what I felt was a pretty big SL that covered the middle of the range (and all the SMAs) but it needed to cover the far side of the range, this is now going back up again.
USDCAD and EURGBP were both closed around 9:15am for around break even, USDCAD had nearly hit my TP but looked to be retracing so I closed that for a small profit and EURGBP was just doing nothing so closed for a small loss, I am classing these as break evens.
Being more patient does seem to have paid off although the USDCAD was a win if I entered sooner, but I did avoid at least one loss so overall I feel it worked out.
Weekly update, another losing week but at least I got back into profit overall today, I really need to get that win rate up.
A bit of analysis on my actual trades with 5%ers, this is overall win rate by pair, also by long/buy and short/sell, interesting.
Not sure if it’s a big enough sample yet to make any decisions, about 40 trades per pair.
Thoughts;
Stop trading USDJPY and EURUSD entirely
Only take Long trades on GBPUSD and EURGBP.
Other than that everything else is above 50%
Now, do I make this decision now or wait for more data?