Capital Preserved

I started at 11.26am and finished at 1.16pm for 0 pips – this time frame didn’t produce a move that I felt had all the criteria to warrant getting in on a trade. The Cable did grow a 20 pip candle at 11.54am but there was no support from the other currencies and the Cable’s upward move was very jerky to trade even on momentum only.

So, staying on that positive tip, my capital is preserved and I have finished feeling good in not risking trading today.

Score for the day 5 out of 10.

Turning a corner

I started at 7.51am and finished at 8.13am for -3 pips off two sell trades and one buy trade.

The first trade was a result of thinking I was missing out on a move after watching the Cable grow into a large candle and produced -7 pips. This candle grew without correlation, the Swissy for example was moving down, the Euro was moving up and the Cable was moving down in leaps and bounds, so no correlation, there was momentum (especially in the Cable), but no correlation and ultimately, when I don’t feel confident in a move I will not get in on something like this again. I will preserve my capital until a good move does present itself. The positives off this trade are that I did GOWID and the trade lasted 12 seconds. Score for this trade: 3 out of 10.

The second trade was a result of revenge trading and was risky though it produced +4 pips. So, staying positive in times like this, I will stay away from revenge trading and I will only trade for a profit when good moves present themselves. Score for this trade: 2 out of 10.

The third trade was also a risky trade, a result of hopeful trading and produced 0 pips. So again, staying positive in times like this, I will only trade for a profit when good moves present themselves – moves with good correlation, strong sustained momentum and confidence in that upon entering the trade it will go positive straight away. Score for this trade: 3 out of 10.

Overal score for the day: 3 out of 10.

A thread I started on a forum last week got a reply from someone who pointed out that I should adhere to The Law of Attraction – I have read about this in the past as well and truly agree with this philosophy, so in writing up my results today, I have tried to do just this – I will be practicing this approach from now on.

Classic example of poor control

Look at the size of that green candle on the Cable........the result of my downfall again today. I started as planned at for 8.00am (7.57am) and finished at 8.28am for -12 pips off two buy trades and one sell trade.

All was going well to begin with – I wasn’t being tempted by the Cable that was moving jerkily in chunks of 2/3 pips downward in the remaining 3 minutes of the 7am candle. There was no correlation, the Cable jerkily moved up and down to finish the 7am candle 15 pips below my starting datum line, as can be seen in the screen shot. It did cross my mind a couple of times, though unwarranted, as to if I could have got a couple of pips out of the 15 pip downward move – I think this was the beginning of taking the wrong thought process which led to my downfall.

Into the 8.00am candle the same type of uncorrelated move, this time upwards, continued with the Cable, all the way up from around 1.6372 to around 1.6400. After this point, the Cable was moving up with a type of correlation, whereby, the Swissy was either holding or moving down by 1 or 2 pips, but most of the time just holding its position, so clearly no momentum. The Euro would move up, but only by 1 or 2 pips and also, with no momentum. But the Cable, would be jumping upwards with big 3-4 pip jumps. So coupled with the fact that I must have been thinking, I got to get some pips out of this candle which is now 40 pips high, and being inexperienced trading moves such as these (being quite jerky and not that smooth), I get in and fail on both buy trades locking in -9 pips between them. Interestingly, these trades lasted around 25 seconds each – the reasonable time frame that is normally required for a profitable trade, though these produced the opposite result. I score both of these trades 0 out of 10.

The third trade isn’t worth talking about, apart from the fact that it would immediately score 0 out of 10, for gambling is simply not permitted – I got in on a sell trade for the sake of it – with no valid criteria present.

So the average score as a whole for the day is 0!

Now for a further kick in the face, the weeks round up;

Mon -2 pips

Tues -1 pips

Wed 0 pips – no trade (NT)

Thurs -11 pips

Fri -12 pips

Total for the week; -26 pips.

Now that I am done with the kicking myself – moving forward – what can I say, however hard it is and however embarrassing this is, I have to take the criticism I am bound to receive from the forums today and accept this as part of the learning curve and move on.

Something to learn from

I started as planned for 8.00am (7.57am when I sat down) and finished at 9.02am for -11 pips off two sell trades and one buy trade.

An experienced trader on a forum recently told me about gremlins making you exit trades emotionally and these gremlins ought to be controlled before it is too late – well today was an example of where I lost control of those gremlins.

That large green candle on the Cable meant nothing today either. It was a really strange market. I’m unsure if the BOJ Press Conference and the ECONFIG Meetings had anything to do with today's tough market, as these didn’t have any scheduled times against them, but something was certainly amiss. To put it simply, my entry points were all bad. With hindsight I should not have entered any trades during today’s session even if it meant that I sat through a whole 1¾ hours and still found nothing suitable – a rule which I did well with yesterday.

I’m going straight into scoring the trades and will leave it at that for today, else, I’m just going to end up giving myself a really hard time which I know just doesn’t help. Instead, I simply need to learn from them and not repeat the same mistake.

Trade 1, score 4 (because I did GOWID and the trade lasted 13 seconds).

Trade 2, score 0.

Trade 3, score 0.

Overall score for the day, 1 out of 10.

And a disciplined finish to the day....

I started my second session today at 11.08am and finished at 12.08am for 0 pips again. So all in all I successfully sat through 1½ hours worth of sessions today without being tempted to trade without the appropriate criteria and me feeling confident getting into a trade.

Whilst sitting through this session, and I think this is one of the reasons that has caused problems for me in the past, I could see that the Cable had moved down through 15 pips (that large wick at the bottom of the 11am candle on the Cable) from my starting datum line and conversely up through 10/11 pips, all during my session of watching – this, at the time made me think that I was missing out on pips – but the crux of the matter is that I didn’t feel confident about any of the moves today and there certainly wasn’t any good correlation and strong momentum – so I almost had to remind myself of these facts out loud in order for it to sink in.

There was however, plenty of jerky uncorrelated moves by the Cable and at one point, the large red 12am candle on the Swissy bolted down with smooth strong momentum whilst the Cable and the Euro did nothing but hold their positions – these and a variety of other moves took place today, but the criteria I need didn’t happen and most importantly, I stayed the hell out of the market.

Now how do I score myself for today as a whole when no trades have been executed – well I’m gonna score myself a 5 out of 10 whenever I stay out of the market from now on -  I think that’s reasonable.

So the score for today as a whole is 5!

Staying Disciplined

I started at 10.13am and finished at 10.45am for 0 pips due to no trading opportunities presenting itself during this slot. There was also an announcement of medium importance that affects the Euro due at 11am so I had to stop at 10.45am.

It was relatively easy today to stay out of the market, though there was a green candle developing on the Cable, it moved up through 11 pips since 10.13am – but the criteria for entering a trade was not there – so out I stayed and feel good about this session.

I will be sitting down again at 11.15am for another session after which I will hopefully still be feeling good about today’s trading or, lack of trading, as a whole.

Choppy

I started at 7.25am and finished at 8.18am for -1 pip overall, off two sell trades and one buy trade. The first two trades were examples of poor entry points and lack of patience on my part in waiting for a reasonable period from first sitting down to the point of entering a trade – e.g. I got into my first trade today at 7.26am – not enough time to understand what was going on in the market this morning – though it is possible to grab a good trade so soon as I did a of couple Fridays ago, today was definitely not one of those occasions.

The first trade, which I would score as 4 out of 10, had a duration of 42 seconds. This was somewhat too long in my opinion. And though there was some correlation, strong momentum was missing. So really speaking, I should not have entered this trade. Thankfully GOWID was used well enough to limit my loss to -1 pip.

The second trade – score, 0 out of 10, was very poor, this trade actually went positive by +1 pip – it also went negative to -3 or -4 pips before going positive – and yet I didn’t GOWID and only did so when it went back to -3 pips. I was clearly trying to recoup the -1 pip loss from the first trade and also, less than two minutes had elapsed between getting out of the first trade and getting into this trade – basically, revenge trading. The duration of this trade was over 2 minutes – way too long. But, this trade must have shocked some sense into me as the third trade was much better.

Between the second and third trade however, over 45 minutes elapsed. I was not going to make the same mistakes again today. So I watched patiently and painfully, as the Cable moved up haphazardly through 40 pips creating a great big green candle as can be seen in the screen shot. I say I watched painfully, because during that +40 pip move, I didn’t feel confident about getting into a trade that had the criteria that I was looking for and as an announcement was due at 9.00am I was going to finish my session at 8.45am – I was beginning to think that I wasn’t going to find a trade before then.

But then, the third trade presented itself – score, 8 out of 10. So not perfect but much better than the earlier trades, certainly a vast improvement on the second trade of today. Correlation between all the currencies and strong momentum was present and I jumped in on a buy. The trade lasted 18 seconds and produced +3 pips – I GOWID because I felt the move was over and it certainly looked as though this was the case, at whilst I was taking the screen shot anyway – I closed the platform down shortly afterwards.

The average score for the session overall today is 4.