Today was Freaking BRILLIANT. I had all winners after a week long of losing. I woke up this morning to find i had already 38pips bagged while I was sleeping. Seriously that was better than my girlfriend waking up and cooking my lazy butt some breakfast.
So a trade from my weekly analysis was filled. Fiber Long @1.42895. I had been waiting all week for a trade from my analysis to be triggered. Blue line is TP. Blue dash line is 50% position profit taking. Red is SL Green is entry. This was pretty sweet cause i got filled in a candle wick which is always my goal. Didnt go up as much as i wanted. After Taking my profit i moved my SL to BE+5. So i netted 50% at+38 pips and 50% at + 5 pips.
I took a scalp on USD/JPY because i saw it bouncing off the wick of a long term low. It was ranging quite badly but i thought i could take 15pips. It just didn’t work out though and i only took + 2 pips. I don’t think i can justify this trade as well as my mind was thinking when i saw it re bounce of the low. This is really a learning experience that went things are ranging tightly walk away. just because you think you can play the tops and bottoms of the range doesn’t mean you should. Blue TP, Red SL, Green Entry and Orange my close of trade. I closed because look at the price action after i took it, so nasty.
Euro/Usd Long Scalp Price:1.44401 SL: 1.4470 TP: 1.4410. I took out 50% at 4 pips and moved my SL to BE. I used a 1 hour level. It closed out at BE and that was the end of it. Net +4 50% and BE 50%.
Cable this was something i saw. I thought it was a a good level as i saw it on 1hour and 30 min. I drilled down to a 5 min level. Price: 1.65650 SL: 1.65403 TP: 1.65903. I thought it was good but i lost that trade. Net -24.8 Pips. This may have plummeted down because LC was going to finish in 20 minutes. This could be a reason not to trade on Fridays. I forgot to mention that this was filled and stopped out while i was writing this post. So i did have a loser. Time to analyze over the weekend and come out firing on Monday.
My net loss for the week was: - 1.33%
I am going to reflect over today and really see what i did because i may be over trading this Friday.
I think i definitely over traded today. I will have to evaluate my plays this weekend and come up with results.
I am going to concentrate on shorter timeframes. The weekly and monthly will be updated at less frequent intervals because well they just dont make bars frequently.
Daily:
These levels are the same for last week. The arrow points to a pinbar that gets close to the demand level but doesnt peirce it and creates a big price reaction. It hasnt reached that low again but its just been boucing back and forth between these levels. This is highlighted in white, its a consolidation peroid in my opinion. It also looks like the range of consolidation is becoming tigher. Also since there are 2 supply levels stacked on top of eachother and the next demand level is quite far away. I am going to be leaning to more shorts. Although this consolidation does create a fair amount of resistance in this range. So watching how price will enter these areas will determine if you should take the trade and will directly affect how much profit margin you will have.
4H:
The demand level in yellow-green is the only level on here that hasnt been touched. This is just an effect of ranging and consolidation. It is backed by a demand level on the daily but this is just builting more and more mass on both the supply and demand side that is squeezing range. Making Lower highs and higher lows. The Yellow X is where i put a level and that level failed. I took a trade there and the massive bull candle just destroyed me.
Here is where we can see some mistakes i made. The X is in the middle of the ranging not towards the extremes. I did not mark the supply zone (red dotted line). If you look left that is the origin of the level creation. The red highlighted zone is the 2nd reaction and the decline was not as pronouced. This is why i didnt mark it prevously, however it is much closer to the daily supply level than my level. The arrow shows what is supposed to happen when you get a level correct. It will just wick into it and drop off straight away.
Overall now there arent any 4hour timeframe supply levels that i would take. I will wait until we get into the daily level and then take a trade there. For going long i will take a 4 hour level there backed by the daily. The distance between the levels is about 100 pips. if you want to be very conservative you could wait until the daily level.
CABLE:
Daily:
Same supply and demand levels as last week. Execpt the new one that is highlighted. This was just created and looks quite good. Its offering ~4:1 with all candles being bull until they were close to the supply level then they created a whick and began to fall again. I think this level is scored Good. Another positive factor is that we broke through all the consolidation on the left. I thought that would take a while as had built up a large mass. So if we get a clean break down this is a good trade to target 3:1 or you could go all the way back to the supply level. As always I recommend taking some profit out and moving SL to BE. I would do it at around the sideways movement highlighted in the 4 hour.
4H:
I have highlighted the sideways action. Here is where i would make my first TP and move my stop to BE. between 30-50 pips depending if you take the wick or the candle bodies. Intrestingly the daily levels are also the only levels of significance here on the 4 hour. Definately going to try to get long on cable this week with the great level on level oppertunity.
We have a continuing strong downward trend here. There is an obvious supply level. Where price has just continued to fall from there. The last few weeks have given us massive wicks and gave us a bull pin bar. This is a possible demand level but we will have to drill down and confirm because it doesnt meet our drop base rally or rally base drop criteria. I didnt include a monthly chart because there was nothing even remotely close or intresting near our current price that wasnt covered in the weekly.
Daily:
Here you can see in side the area of intrest. There is actually a drop base rally and therefore a demand level. It also happens to be the all time low since 2005 which is as far back as my data takes me. This gives this level significant implied strength. this gives us our minimum 3:1 measuring to the candle bodies so this is confirmed to be a level. I will try to get long on a retest here. Although the wicks are quite long and i may drill down to lower time frames to decrease my risk.
4H:
Here we have drilled down to the 4H and the yellow arrow points to the candle which is the origin on the move up. Which in it self is a level. You could take that but the you run the risk of getting stopped out. as the previous rally had a very long wick in it (green dotted line) and then the original large wick. Unfortunately we were only able to decrease our zone by about 30ish pips. Usually we are able to decrease over 25% or more of the level. You could put entry at the dotted green line and hope for a fill but it could rebound before you get filled, which would be very conservative. My strategy here may be to put 30% of my position in the aggressive zone and have the entire zone as a SL. Then 70% on the dotted line with only half of the zone as an SL. But this is not set in stone as I will continue to do analysis as the price retraces to the level.
Here we can see an obvious down trend. Also with 2 very good supply levels that have not been touched before. Supply 2 is already offering over 5:1 and Supply 1 is offering over 7:1 with out narrowing down to smaller TFs. The circle is highlighting a rally base drop that does not qualify as a level because of the large wick to the down side.
Weekly:
Here we have a zoomed in view of what would not be a level on the monthly. However on the weekly this just barely gives us 3:1 which makes this level acceptable. For me this means you must heavily monitor your trade and agressively move your SL to BE and have a plan to scale out quickly.
Daily:
the daily doesnt give us anything good. just a zone to look deeper into. though like the weekly to monthly we may only squeek out a barely manageble level. something worthy of a scalp for 20 or so pips. The higher on the TFs the large the scalp but still. Its more high risk than something i would just leave as a limit order.
4H
actually this is quite disappointing. i was hoping that something would be tradable in the near term but that doesnt look like the case. We can see in between the yellow lines we have a just been ranging with no break outs lasting even 1 candle. Also the possible level inside the zone of intrest was horrible. we can see so many speed bumps and just ugly price action on the way down. This is just not a profitbale zone and is not to be traded off off.
Today i practiced something that i was lacking on Friday -PATIENCE- I didnt take a single trade. Just had my set ups and left them alone. I did some tweaking of my orders as I may be taking things to the nth degree and in the end hurting myself. So we will see what happens. The benefit of using pretty much all limit orders (100% of my orders thus far have been limit) is that the market pulls the trigger for me. I should let it do its job. Well maybe this week will be more exciting I have several trades that are going to be triggered in less that 100 pips. And my chart for fiber is completely trapped if it goes up or down i have something to catch it with. Cable as well but they are farther away. We will see.
Thank you for your compliment. I am glad people are actually reading this. In 100% honesty i am a loser at this moment I am negative -1.17% in realized P&L at this moment (i currently have open positions ATM). I have kept track of every trade here in this thread, both for myself and for others to hopefully learn from my mistakes. One day i hope to be profitable. Today is not that day.
Today was really good. I had a record amount of pips come in and NO LOSING TRADES YAY!!! actually it was really sweet. Though i did have some psychology issues, worried about taking my profits to early and being aggressive with trimming down my lots. I will just have to systematize it more so i can take more of myself out of the equation. But its nice to see that the things i am doing are working. Great confidence booster. Also the 1st time i made it the entire way to a TP. which could be part of the reason i am so apt to take stuff off the table. As i get more skill i will reach my TP more often.
EUR/USD Long
Filled at: 1.43585 SL: 1.43285 TP: 1.43985
Notes: this was a 30 min level (10 pips wide) with 70 pips to the peak and 40 to a clean TP. However a slow drop down caused a slow start. I took 20% off at 5.2 pips and moved my SL to BE. I removed 33% at 14.5 pips. {this kinda thing where i think i am getting overzealous taking lots off the table} Due to slow action over several hours. TP filled at 1.44003 for 41.8 pips. Weighted Average: 25.5
Arrow is the candle i was filled on. Green is the price level, blue dotted lines are where i took some profits off the table and solid blue is the full TP value and fill.
EUR/USD Short
Sell: 1.44869 SL: 1.45281 TP: 1.44369
Notes: We were in the middle of the supply zone, and i was wondering if i had missed the boat because recently i had been putting my levels too deep. So i was considering moving my order down when i got filled. This was really scary cause i got the feeling i was placing a market order, because i saw the market i knew what i wanted. I wanted to be filled. Also i saw that this was also inside a ICT OTE zone. (i have been playing with them in my free time). SO i was going to move it down into that area, EVEN THOUGH IT WOULD BE ON 2nd TOUCH. so all these things racing in my mind and bam filled. So i was really worried about this one from start to finish. Sell zone of the weekly range as well. I took 33% of the trade out at 4.9 pips and the rest at 18.6 pips. God i was shaking in my boots i would have hit my TP if i just would have calmed down. but if i moved my BE to SL at 5 pips i would have been stopped out. Heres my chart.
Red line is sl Green is entry ( ignore the pair of green ones at the bottom) 2 dotted blue lines are TPs and the solid one was my original target. arrow is my entry candle.
Very nice. This is one of the trades I was looking at today but my resistance level was too high (1.4500) so nothing was triggered for me. I guess the only thing I would say is your SL looks a bit large considdering where your profit target is and where you actually took profit, the risk/reward ratio doesn’t seem in your favour. I’d prefer a bit better than 1-1 as you can probably tell if your resistance/support has been broken well before (I guess you could always manually exit the position earlier providing you have good self control).
On another note I’m interested in how you are placing your supply & demand zones and how you initiate a trade once they’ve been reached. Are you using previous highs and/or closes or a certain amount of pips around a previous close? If so at what stage do you enter a position? When the price either breaks through or retreats from the zone?
Well Done Derek. Your patience is paying off, as is your skill and determining high quality levels. If you have a chance, look at the EUR/GBP 15 min chart for this week. You can see the same high quality drop, base, rise from the beginning of the week, and notice how when price made a huge (but perfectly smooth) drop back into the level, it exploded out. I entered a bit early as a hedge I had on another position, but you get the idea.
Stop is at BE in red, target in green. - NOTE: target hit at 8735, was taken early due to smaller TF supply level coming up.
Yes your absolutely right about my SLs being too large. Honestly this may be part psychological and part not understanding the Forex market which feeds back into psych. Most people tell me my minimum SL in spot Forex shouldn’t be less than 20 or 30 pips which i have been sticking too because of using market makers or stop-hunts etc… I do not yet have confidence enough in spot Forex to use 10 pip levels although i am quite capable of drilling down that tight. So hopefully as i gain experience or have some one give me some insight i will keep trimming my levels slowly but it definitely destroys my R:R. I really need help on this.
I place my Supply/Demand zones on where i have seen large movements of price in the past, that move in 1 direction and are not choppy. I initiate by having a limit order there that is trigger. My goal is to use 90% limit orders however through out this thread every order has been limit. I set these orders by drilling down into smaller TFs inside my zone to find a good entry. Although i have been getting too deep the past couple of days and been missing my fills because i am just too deep into the level. Getting missed fills by 5 pips for a 50-100 pip move really stinks. If you have any questions on my levels or how i drew them feel free to ask.
Thank you so much for your support. I really feel like i am growing into a trader. I hope i will join the ranks of the profitable ones soon. Though the journey can be long and arduous.
Nice journal meihua. I do like to see how you are setting out your trades and your honesty in posting out your wins/losses. And I definitely will follow it for tips!
I think I get how you are triggering your trades now. Picking a range of support/resistance based on previously tested highs/lows (not really a specific value but a conservative value somewhere in the range) and placing an order to buy/sell the bounce of that range. Sounds like a solid strategy, I’ll be watching with interest.
This was an awesome trade. I mean i was smiling when this happened. I got to play the bounce between to levels and basically picked another wick fill. So the previous rocket up created a level i highlighted in light green dashed lines. this was key, so i drilled down to 5 and 1 min charts and picked my entry. I was filled and hit my 30 min and BE point in the same candle. It happened in what seemed to be 1 minute but actually took 3 1 min candles. I was like WOAH!!! so immediately moved to BE and let it sit. However this triggered right when i went to bed. I knew today was going to busy and i couldn’t manage the trade, so it was up around 50 pips and i set a 30 pip trailing stop and just let it ride. So i ended up getting stopped out sometime for 33.6 pips.
Net average gain 32.5 pips
Side note i just failed to get filled on another order and have been having serious psych problems. Because i was right again and wanted to play the bounce down again. Anyway i saw price action and canceled as it was approaching I was too deep again. i need to get more confidence and figure out how to trim my SLs. My new trading goals. Also I already passed my weekly goal and its only Wednesday!
Scalp short fiber:
I had been looking to get short on fiber. so i saw a 15 min level but the 5 min level looked good. I used a MARKET ORDER HERE. i was being offered 1:1 and it lined up with an OTE (i dont know if i know how to use it properly). But that was a just 1 more thing. I think i was being too greedy targeting for something beyond the demand level that pushed it back up. I am not very good at playing these levels. Also it turned out i faded the news, i had no idea what the hell was happening and i was shaking in my boots. All of a sudden there was huge spike into my zone i was inspecting and i sold. little did i know a report was coming out at that time. God it was horrible. anyway After some really scary roller coaster action we slide down to my 33% take off and i as filled at 27 pips. I was hoping after that awesome way down i would eventually punch through to my target. But as i saw the ranging from the demand zone. I moved my SL down as marked in the chart. Ended being stopped out at 7.4 pips. If i hadnt been greedy i could have taken much more. As i begin to win more trades i begin to have to develop my psych i keep talking about it but it really affects me. I don’t know what to do about it. This trade could possibly had been avoided all together but i had 2 systems line up ( i thought i was using ICT correctly. inside the kill zone. on the traders trinity, and at MR1 with a institutional level within 15 pips) and my supply level and clean rise back up. SO i was like cool synergy lets pull the trigger. But there was a part of me that wanted to get short all day. it just looked soo juicy. anyway that’s my scalp and last trade for the day. I am closing my trading platform now.
Here is my trading report for today. Unfortunetely i am not at my own computer so i cant post my usual charts with anaylsis.
EUR/GBP Short
Filled: 88102 SL: 88350 TP: 87350
I was asleep last night and got filled on EUR/GBP i had limit order there. Unfortunately upon looking at the fill on my java app i see it was the 2nd touch, that was what caused this failure. However the massive amount of sideways action should have tipped me off to get out at a small profit. I just let it ride not knowing it was the 2nd touch. But that really cost me and marred my perfect week,but loses were bound to happen and we learn and not do that again. BTW i know i broke my rule of sticking to majors but i thought it was a really good level while looking for correlations. but i dont think it was the currency that was my mistake, it was the lack of [U]canceling the order after bad PA. [/U]
Net: - 24.5 pips OUCH!!!
How do i use limit orders and just set and forget. If they could be triggered on the 2nd touch, even though this order was on a 1hour level line. It bounced back down 5 pips away from my fill quickly then filled me and ranged. Can i only set orders while i am at the computer???
I was very keen on getting in on this short term level. It was a quick scalp and i had a short bias. I immediately moved my SLs and TPs tigher because these are my defaults. The up swing was fast approaching and i wanted to set my order, then modify. Unfortunately it was filled while i was tweaking so i put the original settings. My SL moved to 10.9 (10+spread). I was targeting the previous swing low but there was a 1 min demand level and it began to have some trouble breaking through. So i just cashed out and didnt get greedy. However scalps are set at a much smaller lot size than trades on 1H and up so i am still down cash. But as a trade it was profitable, which is all that matters.
I have been getting long on cable for the last couple of days. I saw this level here and took the level inside the level, for a very conservative entry. It had a great straight shot down and i thought it had a lot of potential. It was offering 6.6:1 which is fantastic including my 30 pip stop. after i woke up I saw that my 33% 30 pip (actually it ended up being higher than that 34.4) scale out had been hit and that was nice. Around 56~ pips at my lunch time i slapped on a 30 pip trailing stop and just let it do its thang. Got stopped out at 1.63009. This was alright i wish i could have made my TP but profit is profit.
Weighted Average Net:29.47 Pips
Short Fiber
Price: 1.44351 TP: 1.4345 SL: 1.44652
OK so the news created an awesome level in my book. Massive clean swing down, huge swing back up. Giving me the green light. I thought it shouldn’t matter what created the level just that there is one. But boy did i pay for it. I was pretty much instantaneously stopped out. Unfortunately i had an order 8 pips away from the bottom where it dove down but it wasn’t triggered. So i thought OK an amazing level has just formed lets play the bounce back down. I gave it my largest lot size , it was giving me 3:1 (with my 30 pip SL) and almost 9:1 if i just used the straight level. Boy did it backfire in my face. DONT PLAY THE NEWS!!!
Net: -30.1 pips
Wow the news is kicking my A today. as i was writing this i get a message another order has been filled. I don’t like getting filled this late on a Friday but these order have been resting there for days. Some weeks. So i am going to stick to the plan and see what happens next time. don’t usually carry over the weekend but as i have to go to bed its going to happen. Volatility your best double edged sword. Sometimes it gives you gold sometimes it slaps you in the face and tells you to call it daddy.
Summary for the week: this has been an amazing week for me. I have taken some loses but overall had many winners. for my 2nd week in the game i am very pleased with myself. I am only down on my current account .767%. I was hoping to get into profit but its ok. Also I am contemplating adjusting my trading plan to have higher lot sizes but only take 3:1 including my stop trades and adding EG and AU to my line up. This will give me more high reward low risk trades. But also adding these currencies will give me more opportunities because those chances come around a lot less often.
Total pip count this week: +76.43 Weekly goal COMPLETE!!!
Yes definitely i would love to get more input and help refine my strategy. I believe i trade the expected price reaction to those levels as well but I cant wait for your input. Definitely traders helping traders.
