Running Naked with Scissors. My Price Action based Trading Log

Trading Discussion Trade Journals
86

Lost 3 big trades today. I had them all set and ready to roll. They just triggered and did their thing. Unfortunately its not what i needed.

AUD/USD
Price. 1.07073 SL: 1.07221 TP: 1.06671 TF:1H

Ok so i have my trade and zones. I went to sleep with this one on like i said. But something about this graph doesn’t make sense. I am using the times in my Java app to recreate the action but when i put the time into my MT4 it just doesn’t line up. I high lighted where i should have gotten my TP filled. But didnt. I dont really know what to say about this one. Because on a 5 min chart that wick down occurs before where i should get stopped out. Saving this graph. If anyone has advice for what happened here or could look at the action in their chart i would really appreciate it. At least i scaled out 33% of my position at the dotted line. I have highlighted my zones and everything. same colors as usual.

Average weighted net: -1.9667 pips

EUR/USD
Price: 1.42942 SL:.42624 TP1: 1.43621 (scale out) TP2: 1.43236 TF:1H

Here i picked a level that made a large wick on a previous upswing that was quite large and spent a lot of time. I guess it was not strong enough to take it away as i had hoped. I could have taken a small profit but i figured i would stick to my plans and let the market do its thing. So i walk away with a loss.

Net: - 31.8

GBP/USD
Price: 1.62067 TP: 1.63980 SL: 1.61650 TF: 1H

Dang really having 2 orders in correlated pairs at the same time can be a double edged sword. No idea that would happen because GBP as going up while my fiber was in the toilet for a while. Anyway at this rate I may go broke but who cares. I am sticking to my plans. I guess that’s consolation enough. At least I am good at getting filled on candle wicks.

Net -41.7

Total Daily: -75.46666 really ouch

87

Lets start with the trades for today first and the rant later.

USD/CHF
Price: .79566 SL:.79250 TP:.80820 TF:1H

massive move up from the origin of this zone on the other side. Also it was stacked on top of a 4H zone. Although this was in my opinion a great zone, the market decided to tell me otherwise. Yes it was more risky than the 4h zone below it because it didn’t have the level on level odds enhancer. But it was very strong and fast move away. Also was near the buy zone of Traders Trinity( something i have adopted but find hard to use in trending markets). Possible reasons for failure, are ranging before hitting my order, creating resistance. Zone also began on weekly m2, i don’t know if this was good or bad because it was support turned resistance or would help me with a great bounce.

Net:-31.8

AUD/USD
Price: 1.07611 SL: 1.07911 TP: 1.06411 TF: 1H (level inside level) 4H main level

This was a great trade for me. except 1 thing. FEAR!! I lost out on more than half of my move because i took profits at 1.07060 I saw bad price action and got worried in a smaller time frame 1H. Boy was that the wrong move. I would have gotten my complete TP by now and would be happier than a clam. But we can not complain about pips left on the table, it was purely my mistake and i hope to not repeat it again. Also fantastic wick fill :stuck_out_tongue:

Net: +55.1 pips

USD/CHF again

Price .79286 SL: .78871 TP: .80186 stopped out filled at: .78884

So we take the entry at the 4 hour level that was under the 1H level previously. Well it turned out to not do a dang thing either. Also we got some slippage on our SL fill. At first it went in my direction and i was like ok, this is working and then BANG. right in the kisser.

Net - 40.2pips

Some scalps off of NFP

AUD/USD
Price:1.07216 Closed: 1.07111
Basically price was 2.5 pips away from my actual limit order for much more units. However it didnt get triggered by the news, so i took a market with less than half of the lot size of the original order because of news risk. However i thought it was alright.

Net: +10.5

GBP/USD
Price 1.67143 Closed: 1.62389

Scalp again. This time into a 5 min level. Took this trade and then cut out on some bad price action reversals. Both of these trades had trailing 10 pip stop losses. we went well into profit but i let price determine my exit.

Net:+5.4 pips

This week was just horrid. I got smashed and dragged through the mud and beaten with bats. But thats OK next week I will power through. I will do some training exercises this weekend to help me with my game, Also i just finished ‘Trading in the Zone’ to help me with my psych problems. Great Book and i recommend it to everyone.

Weekly Goal: -119.966666 pips LOST - FAILED

ACCOUNT (from original capital): -1.486%
You have got to love money management. Anyway i hope next week is better.

88

Due to my last performance. I am going to increase my discipline and be quite a bit more selective with my trades. I am hoping that this will increase my overall results. Also I am adding the confirmation entry to my arsenal. Why you may ask?? Isn’t this all about limit orders. Yes, However on some of my ‘acceptable’ or borderline trades I have been crushed due to the price action above when it was triggered unsupervised. I believe that this may be a way to help stem that. I will still enter the trade inside my zone, however I will have discretion on how the price action enters it. This will significantly decrease my trades overall. However I have had significant amounts of trades being triggered each week as it is. So i am not worried, lets just make more of them profitable.

Also I am increasing the quality of levels I will be taking. Lets put it this way acceptable was around a 7 out of 10. We are going to use 8 out of 10s for confirmation entries. 9 out of 10 for possible limit orders or confirmation depending on PA. and 10 out of 10s for 100% limit orders. I will be canceling all my current orders and re evaluating every trade starting this week.

I finished reading 2 books this week “Trading in the Zone” and “Forex patterns and probabilities”. Trading in the zone was amazing. Forex patterns and probabilities was alright. But hey you can never learn to much. Take what you like and file the rest away.

Now for the usual pre week analysis.

EUR/USD daily

Daily hasn’t changed much. But in previous weeks i had this level that i have no in orange. Before I said this was a supply level then removed it because of several touches. This was tradeable before and i traded it. However this current price action can allow this level to be ‘refreshed’ or ‘renewed’. The rule i use for this is it must move at-least 3x the distance of the level. The level is about 100 pips wide and we are very close to the 300 mark. Allowing us to use this level again for the another entry. As you can see from the previous times it was here the move down was much choppier and very railroad tracks and wicky. This time it is a clean and fast move down. The thing that will solidify this level is if it makes a lower low than any of the other times it was sent out of that supply zone.

EUR/USD 4H

We are now in a zoomed in picture of the daily demand zone. I have highlighted a pin bar on the 4 hour that has begun to make a rebound price but Monday will tell the tale. This is NOT a level inside a level. A level inside a level much be ‘structurally sound’ on its own. Meaning that it meets all the criteria this one does not. Therefore u can not use the level inside a level risk reduction and probability enhancer in this situation.

How will I trade this daily supply zone?? I will continue to drill down to 1H and 15M to look for entry points. I will want to go long in this area but because daily zones are so wide I do not like to take entry for the entire zone and reduce lot size to manage risk. I am sure I can find a structurally sound level inside. If not then I can take a ‘confirmation entry’ or let it pass and take the more conservative entry below. We will see what PA next week brings.

GBP/USD
Daily:

Pretty much the same deal as last week. I highlighted 2 areas that are not considered zones. 1 was a reaction to a previous level that well was dang ugly. The reason is that level had so many pins sticking in it it could be a catcus. Yes it had the price reaction we were looking for but it is not a high probability low risk level and more. This is a prime example of levels we do NOT want to take. the lower circle does not meet the distance requirements(profit margin) to be qualified as a level.

4H:

Lets break down the reaction to this daily level. First price got very close and rocketed away. This is usually an indicator of strength of a level. Now we have to find our entry. Well this daily level is quite wide, and at the 4 hour level we do not see any structurally sound levels inside, because of the large amount of wicks. Price has currently pierced this level more than 50% making it invalid now. Now we could have taken an entry here and been in profit if we took the entire level with a low position size. This level is nearly 100 pips wide, i feel that the position size would be so small its better to try to reduce our risk and find a better entry. However we couldn’t find a level inside a level. What now?? Well we expect to have a large price reaction once we enter a level. The daily shows a single bull candle. You can take a PA confirmation entry, or let this on go. Personally I am going to let this one GO because the price action above is quite ugly and it reduces our profit margins and increases our amount of resistance above. Also the speed of rebound after entering more than 50% of the level was quite small. This should lead us to believe that this level is not worth taking.

89

USD/CHF Daily:

I lost a ton of money and pips on USD/CHF. so I have posted the newly created supply level but lets talk about my failure. Why did this seemingly good demand zone not do what i needed it to do? well… Some factors that may have contributed to my failure, a long term ranging of price had previously been at this level on the daily. Meaning that this was a ‘equilibrium point’. The last time price had a reasonably sized price reaction it was a supply level and stopped a huge rally up and pushed it down then price continued to range. I have no idea exactly why it failed but i will try to avoid these types of levels in the future.

4H:

i have highlighted all the action that was in my zone. I think its because i was focused so much on the lower time frames. I couldn’t see all the actions higher up. Failing to follow the rule ALWAYS LOOK LEFT!!!

USD/JPY
Daily:

is exactly the same. just endless ranging. there is a 4H level supply level marked out. I will show you below.

4H:

Here is a good example of price returning to a previous supply level. Then creating a much larger and faster drop down ‘renewing’ that level or even ‘improving’ it. This makes it a very tradeable level. The green lines at the bottom are the low and the dotted one is where I would like to go long if UJ ever gets there.

90

AUD/USD
Daily:

Here we have a new demand leve formed. Which a great run up and now we are turning back down into it. It is a very tight level which is good for our position and risk reward sizing. About 80 pips on a daily isnt so bad. Considering demand level 1 is about 220 pips :stuck_out_tongue:

4H:

I have highlighted my entry in chartreuse in the new demand level. This is where i would like to get into the trade. Also in orange I showed the level that gave me the most profitable trade of my week. I showed my entry point. However I exited my trade out of FEAR. something I am still working on conquering. Which made me cut my winner short. It was a great short near the weekly supply level and it is still dropping. I will look to go long at the daily level. when price get there

EUR/GBP
Daily:

Same levels as last week except some levels that are not qualified. Not level 1, is not a level because price has been there many times, also the last time price was there it spent too much time there. There are 4 spinning tops there and that means that market indecision (supply demand were at equilibrium). Just because there was our expected downward price action does not make that a level we would like to take again. We are looking for strong direct moves showing there was a large amount of imbalance between supply and demand. Even though it is near our long term supply level. Not level 2, price has been here twice but the 2nd time was much faster and stronger than the first. Usually this means we have a ‘refreshed’ level. However if you take that entire level you do not get 3:1 minimum. There is a possibility if you drill down to find something acceptable but not here.

4H:

I have highlighted right above Not level 2. something that resembles a good level. but if you look left there is a ton of price action at that level before. So its no something we are going to take. There is no good opportunities looking at the 4H inside either of the Not Levels.

91

Actually I forgot to add a level to my USD/CHF. i was so focused on the failure. Here is a supply level that we are coming into on the 4H. If your wondering the olive colored lines inside the large timeframe supply level are ways i can reduce my risk and increase my position size. I have showed how i have done that before but if anyone is intrested I would be happy to share more examples.

92

Today i tried to play the gaps and got burned. FOr some reason my MT4 does not show the gaps so i cant create the charts.
I thought i saw 2 ‘novice’ gaps (gaps that are created after price has moved in the same direction) and these types of gaps i feel should be faded. Though I am not a gap expert and should have done this in demo. But hey we all make mistakes.

AUD/USD
PRice:1.05932 SL:1.05565 TP: 1.06882 CLosed;: 1.05699

Price action basically went south and i closed it manually. Opted to take a smaller loss than i was risking before.

Net:-23.3 pips

Same deal on FIBER
price:1.41647 SL1.4983 TP1.43147 Canceled 1.41384
Another gap loser. both gaps today were not filled.

Net-26.3

Total lost today -49.6

93

About fiber…remember we are in a strong downtrend… try to find good pullbacks, resistance areas and PA to sell… if you are buying then you are trying to fade a strong move…very risky…

Sure, we are entering a pretty good support zone (1.4000-1.4050) …so unless you have sold around 1.4400…any trade should be analyzed carefully…

94

Yes Yunny I will try to trade with the trend. So today all my trades were with then trend. I believe that trading with the trend helps you gain maybe 10-20% edge on your overall trading plan. which is sufficient so i did all trend trades today. Some where orders that were lingering. and some i put on today. I had so many losses today i dont feel like putting up charts now but i will. I am taking a break. I hoped my Forex experience would have been much better and not as soul crushing. But it is. We will see when I can return to the live markets.

Euro/USD
Price:1.41132 SL:1.40826 TP 1.41441 Closed: 1.40638

Tried the demand zone again. against the trend , this was triggered while i was sleeping. I closed the trade it was close to my SL but the PA inside the zone was horrid. SO i just chopped the trade right there.

Here i have in orange where my notes say my SL was but i have where i actually closed the trade lower. I dont remember moving my stop or doing anything of the sort. I actually thought i killed the trade before it reached SL. Not a good sign.

Net:-49.4

Euro/USD short
price:1.40744 SL:1.41056 TP:1.40444 stopped out at 1.40996

SO yeah a lot of slippage there which sucks. 6 pips worth. which is ridiculous. at least i took out 30% of this trade at 8 pips at a minor speed bump level. I was selling the retracement back up and trying to go with the trend. But at the during the London open there was a huge spike that stopped me out.

Net:-25.2

USD/CHF short
Price:.79330 SL:79680 TP79030

Took massive up candle as great entry into the level. Not knowing the news boned me here. Basically not paying attention to the news calendar. The light blue line is 1st tp to take 30% the darker blue is my objective. Obviously I am on the wrong side here. I bet everyone wishes they were long with NO TP in sight.

Net-29.7

USD/JPY
Price:77.104 SL:77.204

This was a 4Hour level. that has been above the range the entire time. I thought i could paly back into the range. The amount lots here was quite high use of the low ATR based on UJs movements. SO yes i only lost 10 pips but its the same amount as if i lost 30. I was stopped out in the same minute i was filled.

Net:-10

Total-114

95

So I have done a lot to refine myself overall and come back fighting this week in the live markets.

I read several books including, [U]Remenices of a Stock operator, Trading in the Zone, Forex patterns and probabilities, and Most of the way through High probability trading strategies, entry and exit for the forex futures and stock markets (though its really rough a i dont know if i want to add all that to my system yet intresting though).[/U] I watched the Online Trading Academy Pro Traders Course and it was about equities. Not bad, good foundation. Also I bought Forex Tester 2 been testing on FIBER here is my report card. NOT GOOD.

Days processed=2869
Months processed=95.63
Total trades=129
Profit trades=47
Loss trades=82
Profit trades cons.=5
Loss trades cons.=11
Trades/day=0.04
Trades/month=1
Profit trades/month=0
Loss trades/month=1
Max profit trade=20.28
Max loss trade=13.58
Net profit=-97.34
Gross profit=225.25
Gross loss=322.59
Profit/month=-1.02
Average profit=4.79
Average loss=3.93
Max drawdown=160.50
Profit factor=0.70
Return, %=-19.47
Max lot used=0.02
Restoration factor=-0.61
Reliability factor=-0.01
Profit probability, %=36

Yeah so i dont know whats going on after the first 3 years i was rocking it. Then the market just didnt have any spikes or good demand levels. It was a highly trending but no volatility environment IMHO. So i got a lot of stop outs bcause te levels had be a lot of candles or were very close to long term ranging (a few days to weeks worth) Anyway I will go over a my trades. I went off the deepend before i took this I wanted 100 months. But i accidently didnt put a SL and since i was going really fast. I was down about 250 pips. So I took the report from right before that trade. Gosh 9 hours straight of back testing will make you slip. Anyway I should have about 100 months worth of fiber in my head now. About 100 failures and things i have noticed. Hopefully it translates into better performance next week. I was trading 1H and 4H TFs only. So it would be weeks until i had a set up. This is not the method i would prefer to trade with in real life. It is too slow. Although I can take those trades when they offer themselves up and grab 100-400 pips. But I may go down to lower levels. Oh yeah I never even came close to blowing my account even after 11 straight loses. SO i think my money management is solid. Now lets just up my trading skills for a winning combination.!!!

Due to such a drawdown all my live trades no matter the R:R (3:1 is my minimum anyway) will use [B].25% equity[/B] If i suffer 3 losses in a row It will go down to .20% and continue down until i get some wins. then ladder back up.

96

So thats a loss of 20% in 8 years?

97

Yes sir. I don’t know if that’s OK but i am pretty sure that means I cant go broke at least in my lifetime :stuck_out_tongue: Also thats trading fiber with a 3 point constant spread (i made it a bit more difficult for myself) Since I trade Oanda and the spread is usually .8-1.1

Upon review of my trades here is a list of all my mistakes I feel contributed to my losses.

  1. Taking Rally-Base-Rally (works vice versa) even though it has a small drop to create a new base. It is still MID MOVE
  2. levels that are close to lots of trading action or ranging
    3)Drop-Base-Rally. but before the drop to crease the level there was a lot (about 13 4H) candles. Creating resistance and lots of orders around that price zone. Creates unpredictable outcome or volatility that could stop you out.
    4)Too many candles in the base (its not a specific number but usually based on the TF your looking at)
  3. Against the trend (1h 50EMA was used) even though 4H might still be moving in that direction the disparity means that a trend change is imminent or at least a correction.
  4. Ranging or Conjustion right before (above or below) my entry point.
  5. Not large clear entries or single large candle to trigger my order. price walking in is not effective enough to prove a lack of pressure or order flow to bounce. This means that a slow amount of increasing pressure is building. Instead of working inside the order flow ‘gap’ for a quick bounce out.

That is all in summary i spent loads of money on that simulator. But i learned 7 lessons and saw about 8 years of fiber action. Is that worth it???

98

So because I am freshly out of FOREX TEMPLE. my own personal training and reconstruction program. I am now getting back in the game of live trading. I am going to focus on Fiber and Cable for a while. UJ is up there but i think those 2 are the core currencies most people trade. So I will only be putting in analysis for them until i start taking in the other currencies again. I was considering only doing fiber. But i just cant help myself.

Fiber Daily:
please ignore the MT4 orders. this is for my demo account and since its the weekend i can not cancel the order to get rid of the lines.

Obviously we have the supply level we just left. As you can see here price has reacted there many times. However this time is significantly different, not only the speed and directness of the drop off. But it cut through all of that whipsaw action that was created before it rallied up into that zone. Indicating Supply zone 1 to be very strong. Well we can see that from the drop off. Supply 2 is way up there i don’t think it will be useful any time soon. Demand 1 I have an order there to go long at the orange line. I think it will defiantly have a price reaction there and i am targeting around 3965. That was the origin of basically the entire move up that peaked out at supply 2. If price keeps dropping demand 2 is definitely another spot to go long.

4H
Doesn’t really have anything that isn’t already included in the daily.

Cable
Daily

Supply 1 is where we just came from. We are currently in Demand 1. I would have gone long here last week but since i was banned from trading I was unable to take a position. Depending on PA here I may be able to take a confirmation/PA entry long. Ugly demand is the level beyond this but it is quite nasty.

4H:

pretty sure i have had these levels drawn before but. Here the thin green line shows the ‘bottom’ of the level which is a candle stick i pointed to on the left. And on the right you can see the price reaction that’s occurring there. But you can also see why this is not a trade I will probably take unless its very short term scalp type situation. On the daily chart it looked like a fairly clean swing down. But on the 4H we see there has built up a serious amount of congestion as price started to enter this level. This not only reduces are R:R to about 2:1 but also increases the proximity of the selling pressure. This level as it looks now could be broken through because of that additional Resistance right on top of it. Do i think you can get 50-60 pips of it probably. Is it higher risk trade. absolutely. So this one i may not take unless the PA and candles show me otherwise. But this is why we drill down into multiple TFs.

Cheers and Good pippin.

99

Took the trade i had highlighted earlier in the post above. its doing really well. I scaled out 30% of my position for about 55 pips. Then took a scale in for another 11. Since its all from the same trade, to me its the same trade idea in the same direction. So its not complete so i will give a full report another time. But currently I am looking at holding my open position which is up 101 pips right now with a 50 pip trailing stop and leave it at that as i sleep.

Today: +65 pips.
Day 1 back from Forex temple= weekly pip goal complete!!!

100

That trade was spot on. Really amazing skills - perhaps sticking to those really strong turning areas yield the best results on daily and 4hr. I will certainly highlight those areas. This benefits my trading.

101

Just did another back test but for 15 Min and 1hour time frames. Again I started out with 500$ and traded .01 lots. A lot of my stats have improved dramatically. My wining trade earned vs losing trade loss ratio is larger than 1.5:1 now, not great but last time it was negative. My max draw down is only 10% of my account size. Also i was taking more trades and being profitable at 9.99% ROI (yea its over the 2 trading year span so you figure 5% a year its alright not amazing though). Also I halved my consecutive losses. So pretty good improvement from trying to avoid the mistakes as last time, I do believe this system still works on the 15 min time frame with 1H reference. I have been a fan of 15M TF but now i have solid numbers to why i like it so much.

Time:
Days processed 585
Months processed 19.50
Trades:
Total trades 86
Profit trades 39
Loss trades 46
Profit trades cons. 3
Loss trades cons. 6
Trades/day 0.15
Trades/month 4
Profit trades/month 2
Loss trades/month 2
Max profit trade 22.80
Max loss trade 10.12
Income:
Net profit 49.95
Gross profit 215.60
Gross loss 165.65
Profit/month 2.56
Average profit 5.53
Average loss 3.60
Max drawdown 49.32
Profit factor 1.30
Return, % 9.99
Other statistics:
Max lot used 0.02
Restoration factor 1.01
Reliability factor 0.05
Profit probability, % 46
Loss probability, % 54

102

This trade below is one of my proudest moments. Definitely didn’t get to hit my TP but made quite a bit of pips.

Tp 1.35010 SL 1.34190 TP: 1.396530 TF: daily level


Orange Up arrow is my entry (yay wick fill) thick green is the start of the level. so we are in the middle of the level. Yellow green is my fill line. 2 down arrows are my scale out and SL. Orange is scale out red is trailing SL fill. But they are so close it doesnt matter

Here was a daily demand level and we had a rebound out of it. I scaled out 33% at 69 pips and i put a 50 pip trailing stop when i went to bed to lock in profits but still have room to breathe. turned out it closed at 64.2 pips unfortunately. SO my estimates yesterday were well overblown to what i actually have in my pocket today. But a win is a win.

Average Net: 65.142 Pips

Also i scaled in and took a long scalp for 10.9 on Fiber. Then made a stupid play today on Cable because i missed a fill and loss 10 pips. So pretty much the psych thing affected me. Instead of walking away I chose to play a correlated pair. Somehow as soon as i wanted to cancel my order because i realized my mistake Oandas Java Client crashed. I would have only been down 5 pips if my cancel would have gone through. But this is why we have stop losses.

Net .9 pips

Total: 66 pips WOOT!!!

104

SEPT 13 CONT

Fiber Long
Price: 1.35782 SL:1.35533 TP 1.36566 @ scale out:1.36241 TF:1H/15M

Well i saw a great set up to get back in on the long side. I thought I was done for the day but i the market gave me a set up so i took it. This time i only scaled out 25% of my position @ 45.9 pips and moved my SL to BE. I am glad i did because I ended up making more in my TP that way. Although ikinda regret not leaving part of my position on to just let it run. Since i keep hopping in and out. But can you really complain hitting your tp for 78.4 pips?? I high lighted the level on the 1H timeframe because it was the clearest. But i really focused on the 15m timeframe when i was taking this trade.

Weighted average net: 70.275

New Total: 136.275 pips

all new personal best!

105

Thanks for inviting me to this thread,

I’m going to learn alot in here . I will keep my thread going also.
perhaps we can all help each other.

thank you

106

Yeah for sure I am always looking to talk trading and learn a bit of something from everybody.

Trade Journal for Sept 14th

Fiber Long
Price:1.36165 SL: 1.35815 TP: 1.37915 TF: 15m

So here is a 15 min level. Still going long on fiber due to our presence inside a longer term demand level. However as you can see highlighted in yellow is a lot of congestion and then we get filled then we reenter that congestion/ranging. This is usually something I dont like. So as soon as we moved out of my fill (blue arrow) we got some decent movement about 20 some odd pips up. then i moved my SL to BE+1. right away. The orange arrow shows where my position was closed. As you can see I should have just let it ride out. Because the level would have held however since i was trying to enter for a longer term trade, you can see my TP level is not in the chart at all. I could have gotten out at previous high for about 115 pips. But hey I didnt lose money so its a winner in my book. I get the bonus of knowing i picked a solid level that created the reaction i was expecting although i was not able to cash in on it. my theory was sound.

Net: +1.3 pips

Well I just missed a fill on GBP/USD by 5.5 pips and it moved my way about 35 pips in 5 minutes so pretty pissed off about that. I always miss my fills. dang i was really hoping to lock in a solid win today.