Trading journal

[dushimes]

@darthdimsky

I just noticed half of those trades (7/14) were on GBP/JPY despite MY OWN analysis recommending against taking those trades… that’s just dumb

No no. I don’t think that’s dumb at all.
There are people who only trade EUR/USD. Why would GBP/JPY be any different?

You are learning how it moves. If you trade it frequently, you will learn that pair’s rhythm better than others who don’t trade it.

I think it’s good to have your favourites, and some extras on the side.

For example, the first pairs I look at are the majors, USD/DKK, and (recently added) USD/SGD.

However, after that, I’ll look at the rest of the other pairs.

@darthdimsky Trade on!!!

[dushimes]

@darthdimsky

In my case I’m avoid reversals mostly where I can because I’m not skilled enough to trade them properly yet (my entries are too inconsistent and flawed).

Oh man. We gotta discuss this. This is what I’ve been working on…

[darthdimsky]

@dushimes

No no. I don’t think that’s dumb at all.
There are people who only trade EUR/USD. Why would GBP/JPY be any different?

You are learning how it moves. If you trade it frequently, you will learn that pair’s rhythm better than others who don’t trade it.

I think it’s good to have your favourites, and some extras on the side.

That’s the issue though I’m not following specific currencies.

Every day I have a mechanical method to identify potential trading pairs and use the prior analysis to determine whether it’s a good trade or not. Because it’s mechanical I’m apathetic to currency pairs, meaning I don’t remember whether I had a good/bad trade with the same currency pair the previous day, until I analyse my journal or I still have a running trade from previous days.

Basically what this means is that I made an independently conscious decision to break my rules 4 times on each of those unique days for GBP/JPY.

When I took the first trade on the 12th I didn’t know I had failed twice already on the same pair on the 06th. But when I took the 2nd/3rd trades the same day it was either emotionally driven by the loss or I believed I timed my entry incorrectly.

Either way they are clear deviations from the plan and should not have happened in my case. That’s because I have another rule that states if I find an analysis to be incorrect I halt all trading, close previous analysis (marked no longer valid) & open a new one for the pair. By open these trades I believed the analysis to hold true and still went ahead. This makes it a serious gap in my trading for me.

I’m going into too much detail on my own trades and methods. I’ll stop and do it in my own thread when I decide to open one. LOL.

[dushimes]

I’m just about done with my orders and trades. There are several trades that I normally would have taken, but decided to leave alone because there was too much room for error–too much uncertainty of where price could go.

However, I also see trades that I didn’t notice or doubted, and they could have been very nice winners.

No point crying over spilled milk.

Most of my recent trades have been around 0.5% risk or less. I’d like to trade 1%, but it seems scary. I’d be scared to trade 1% on 10 trades, then the market reverses.

However, trading 0.5% with good entry can yield nice profits. Then again, there’s no need to feel like I have to trade 1%. I think that strategy works if you only have 4 or so trades running across less-correlated pairs: AUD/JPY and EUR/USD, for example; as opposed to several USD minors.

I kinda like the strategy I’m using now. Low risk with early entry.

[dushimes]

This is a trade I lost. D1 CAD/NOK. I was fishing deep waters to dig up this exotic pair. Haha

This is a mistake I have made several times: taking the wrong trades.

The white arrows are the price zone where I should have placed my SL. But I didn’t do that. I placed my SL outside the support zone for that channel. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough. I wanted this trade and took the risk.

One of my rules is to include recent candles in my SL placement. But, if I were to do that here, then the pip value would be so low I couldn’t make any money that would justify this trade.

So, instead of just walking away from the trade, I forced it and took a loss.

[dushimes]

I’m going thru my W1 charts. When I see charts like this W1 GBP/USD, and I see these HUGE candles, I can’t help but think:

“WHERE THE F**K WAS I???”

It reminds me that there are parts of my routine that I’m still falling short in. A week ago, I don’t think I checked my W1 charts…and look what it cost me!! I could have shorted GBP/USD and had a very nice profit. Imagine adding to that position on the way down!! Holy cow!!!

[dushimes]

Here’s another one. What was I doing that caused me to NOT profit from this HUUUUGE bear candle???

I’ve got some thinking to do. Perhaps I’ll jot down some ideas today.

[dushimes]

oh man!! Look at that gap on this W1 TRY/JPY!!! One day you’re in a profit by 40%, and the next day your account gets liquidated!!

I guess I won’t be trading this pair.

[dushimes]

Another jem hidden deep in the exotics! CAD/CNH W1

[dushimes]

This morning, I didn’t do any trading. Just reviewing W1 charts.

Normally, I go to the desired pair, and switch from D1 to W1. This is a little annoying because on Monday, I have to switch all the charts back to D1.

My brain uses this as an excuse to not want to do it.

So, instead, I spent the morning creating new folders for the pairs on W1 charts. I’ll do the same for M1. It’s worth it to not have to keep switching back and forth each week/month.

[dushimes]

It’s funny. I think last weekend I was taking a break from trading to focus on journaling.

I feel like journaling should be a priority below trading, for me at this point in time.

[dushimes]

I’ve been trying to stick to my routine: review all pairs for set-ups, review my open position, then open new positions.

I did catch myself getting distracted and opening positions as soon as I find a set up.

I’ve been digging into exotics the past two weeks. I like it. Not so much the spread, though.

Some crosses/exotics don’t have such high spreads. GBP/DKK was prety high on IG.

Honestly, I’m doing less journaling. I have limited time and I gotta get my positions open.

Yesterday, I reviewed all my W1 charts. It took extra long because I had to draw my trend lines for everything. I ran out of time and went to bed. I had to skip a few trades.

When I woke up I saw I had missed several very nice entries.

That’s life.

I’ve been cautious with risk management. My risk hasn’t exceeded 0.8% or 0.7% very much.

Sometimes, I’ll risk 0.5%. It helps me survive the losing streak.

[dushimes]

I realised that I didn’t set any OCOs for any of the trades this morning. The OCO is my “in case I’m wrong” protection.

This is what happens when you see a set up and you’re sooooo sure about what’s gonna happen.

Then it doesn’t. We’ll see how those trades play out.

The end of the month is coming. We’ll also see if I’ve made any progress in my account margin.

[dushimes]

I woke up this morning to a string of losses. Eight. Eight losses. At first, I was thinking “whatever, keep it moving”.

But I had to take a step back and realise that understanding the loss is essential.

So, I did my trading and at the end I went thru my bad run. I didn’t journal them neatly with screenshots and all that stuff. I just needed to understand why.

During my morning trading I noticed that even though I thought I didn’t set any straddle orders, I actually had set a couple.

Another trade, a loss that had hit my SL, was just breaking resistance—I hadn’t missed the chance to catch it.

A couple of the trades were just movements I can’t foresee. I thought price would bounce, but it broke thru S/R. These things are of no fault of my own.

However, the majority of these losses were just careless mistakes: sloppy trendlines, misplaced SL, etc. I had to face the conclusion that I was rushing, and it caused me to make costly simple mistakes.

Another thing that happened was that my friend called. We talked for about an hour. Even though we’re talking about politics or business, it still slows me down.

He’s a super close friend; like a brother. If I told him I can only talk for 15 minutes, he would totally understand because he works a lot as well. But I feel guilty.

The bottom line is that it’s slowing down my trading, which means it slows down my progress.

It’s not his fault—it’s mine. There are business people who do not take any calls until a certain time, or only calls related to business. If you’re calling to talk about whatever, call me in the afternoon.

I thought I could trade while talking, the same way I thought I could trade in a rush, but I can’t.

Going forward, if it’s not emergency, my friends can call and we can talk for 15 minutes. After that, “we’ll talk later, sorry.”

[dushimes]

This morning, there was a trade I was looking at trade that looked tempting. However, the determing D1 candle was only a few hours old. It reminded me of a lesson I hard to learn a few times: never base a trade on a young open candle.

It’s so tempting to look at an open candle and assume that it’s your trading signal. But anything could happen before it closes. If it’s already given the clue I need, and it’s about to close soon, then I’ll jump in.

I’ve lossed so many times that now I just stay away until it closes or it’s about to close.

[dushimes]

I’m learning the importance of risk management. It’s soooo important.

Recently, my risk has been ranging around 0.75%, down to 0.38%.

0.38% is not a magic number. The amount I was comfortable trading for a while was 0.38%, that’s all.

I decided to limit my swing trade positions to 0.75% max risk, and my S/R bounce trades to 0.65% max risk.

It doesn’t sound like much, but it prepares me for the event of repetitive losses. This will keep me in the game long enough to keep trading.

My recent losses were bad. I had about 8 losses. But I wasn’t worried because I only lost 4.2% total. That’s not bad.

Imagine if I risked 2% per trade!!! Oh god!

These trades varied between 0.3% to 1.0% risk.

Now, I’m strategizing my position sizes. I can reduce the risk based on what the situation is, but I’m establishing a max risk, and the max risk is quite conservative.

My greed tells me “the higher the risk, the higher the profit”, but I understand that the losses could be higher as well.

[MattyMoney]

@dushimes

My greed tells me “the higher the risk, the higher the profit”, but I understand that the losses could be higher as well.

I have found that I do much better overall risking 1% than I do risking 2%. It is strange. Maybe it’s because I’m comfortable losing 1%. There is something in my brain that switches when I start trying to up my stakes, maybe it’s overconfidence, or greed…but it doesn’t usually end well.

So, despite the temptation, I will be sticking to my 1% risk.

[dushimes]

I used to think I want a lot of money. Even now, sometimes I fantasize about what I would do with $1M.

But the truth is, if I had that much money, I’d be really scared. When you are working class and never had more than a few hundred dollars for spending money, $1M is a lot of money. It’s like driving a junk car than normally can only go 60km/hr, then suddenly you’re sitting behind the wheel of a sports car than goes from 0-100km in 5 seconds.

If you were wise, you’d realise you suddenly have the power of speed, but not the ability to drive it. And if you try driving that kind of car without the proper training, you could kill yourself.

If you’re accustomed to a $30k/year salary, then suddenly have $1M, you should be scared. Terrified.

[alphahavoc]

@dushimes

If you’re accustomed to a $30k/year salary, then suddenly have $1M, you should be scared. Terrified.

You will be happy. Time is money, money is time.

[dushimes]

@alphahavoc

You will be happy. Time is money, money is time.

Yeah, that’s what I thought! But when I think about it now, it actually frightens me. That’s a lit of power to suddenly have. You have the power to suddenly buy and do everything you’ve dreamed of, and also the power to change your family for generations to come.

When the excitement hits you, by the time you start thinking rationally, the money could be gone.