Xirtam's trading journal, growing a small account

An other loss this week, not on my a game lately. Taking some trades slightly off edge. Took a trade on US bank holiday, that isn’t against the rules but the trade itself was not off the highest probability.

Screenshot 2020-10-17 at 11.09.02 Screenshot 2020-10-17 at 11.09.18

Hey, I am curious what happened here? This pair has been ranging for almost a month now, did you not notice that? Or were you expecting a breakout? I myself (along with my signals group) traded within the range a couple times last week, managed to get two 90 pip trades short from the1.8972 area

Yes I was aware of the range, I didn’t traded it for a breakout necessarily. I think a lot about my trades, analyse them in my head etc etc. After every weekend I’m up for a fresh start and I won’t make the same mistakes, then I somewhat force a trade with my own confirmation bias that sets me up for a loss at the beginning of the week. I just realised I did that for 3 weeks in a row now. Just took an other loss on EN. Just became aware of this weird loop I’m in. Make a loss on a Monday, don’t trade the rest of the week because I am then extremely picky.

Had a look at these results. You have a good number of trades to see how your method is performing here. Something has to change here. Either you find a way to get your gains higher to keep up with the low success rate of 33% or you increase your success rate to maintain the gains you are taking.

Have a look at one of my newer students results last coupl weeks as a example to see how he has similar success rate but his RR kept him in the green, despite all the mistakes he made. :

Number of trades: 8 (3 winners, 5 losers)
Success rate: 37.5%
Reward to risk ratio (Avg winner/ Avg Loser): 2.1R
Total return 3 weeks: 1.3R (0.65%)
Biggest winner: 3R (1.50%)
Biggest loser: -1R (0.50%)

Hi,
I started to use this strategy with real money right away. So I was a complete beginner when I took my first trade using this strategy, normally you backtest first, use a demo and when you are profitable with the strategy you go live. So the data is a bit skewed since I skipped the first two stages. Besides my trading I am backtesting the strategy itself, backtest new ideas within the strategy, journal trading results, analyse my psychology in a trading journal and I keep an online journal on babypips to document my journey. My intention is not to show off or justify anything, just to document my journey.

How long did it take you to become consistently profitable?

Tracking and journaling is definitely the best so good on you.

To answer your question, i left a short intro here if you haven’t read that yet

I am a rare case because what i did was cram my learning curve in addition to having a legendary mentor. It took me about 2 months to find consistent profits but in hours about roughly 900 hours (60 days * 15 hours).

This is great to hear. It took me over 20 years to even learn about confirmation bias, let alone do anything positive with it. In my case, it was a huge overinvestment in highly leveraged property that we are now deleveraging, not Forex, that cost me more than anything else. Leverage is great, but only when you are sure that the total amount risked is within your plans to recover from.

As mentioned before, took one loss on EN last Monday.

Screenshot 2020-10-23 at 16.32.30 Screenshot 2020-10-23 at 16.32.40

Oh yes I totally agree. Trading is such an interesting dynamic between the markets and your own psychology. When you first trade the markets you feel overwhelmed and anxious, hoping to feel more confident about your trading. When you finally feel confident in your trading you fall in your own confirmation bias and puts you right in to your spot again. Finding a good balance between being a confident trader but be very aware of the pitfalls of having too much confidence is key when I look back on these past 3/4 months.

There is a natural progression I’ve observed in not only other traders but even my students. It’s the move into confidence, then fall into pride and ego. Both of these lead to overconfidence and loss in logic and humility, which are both key trading virtues, especially in creative trading styles. I can spot this pattern in traders like clock-work that as soon as they start doing well, they are like that 5th-wave, they risk collapse. There are more rags to riches to rags stories in trading that happens behind the scenes.The secret has and always will be humility, it’s not about what you think you see, it’s about reading what the market is showing and offering.

Couldn’t agree more!

Last week’s trading results: -0,13%. Took a mistake on Monday (again), however, had a pretty good week overall. This week I probably won’t be placing any trades due to the election madness.

Screenshot 2020-11-03 at 06.52.10 Screenshot 2020-11-03 at 06.53.55

Didn’t make any trades last week. Election week volatility and university kept me out.

1 Like

No trades last week, crazy volatility from the vaccine news. Next week I am done with uni work, so I can fully focus on trading again.

1 Like

have u given any thought to that market aproach i ve given you? try that out for a week dude, i know t s difficult having payed for that astro course etc, but trading should be cristal clear, easy and not much confusion going on. anyways, good luck

Hi! No I have not backtested it to be honest, I first want to get this system down, and then go for yours. Been putting so much time in making this system work, that I don’t want to let it go yet. I know it’s profitable when applied correctly. However, I definitely didn’t forget the system you proposed. While I’m trading this current system, I sometimes spot setups like you presented, but I have not been backtesting them, I am aware and I am eeping an eye out while trading the markets!

From now on, I will only upload my monthly results. I’ve noticed that I’m too focused on weekly results. I’m here for the long run, not for weekly snapshots. I’m active on babypips everyday, but won’t be posting every week.

1 Like

It’s good to see someone share their strategies. I am tired of my own charts. Want to see what others are doing.

2 Likes

How about weekly and then monthly wrap up. Best of both worlds!

I get your point, but like I said in my previous post, I became too fixated on my weekly results. That affects me negatively, weekly snapshots don’t mean anything, the shortest timeframe for benchmarking are monthly results in my opinion. So I just stick to that :slight_smile:

1 Like