Slug Short-Term Trading Journal

S

slugFX

Well-Known Member
I figured I would start my journal on a good day! Hopefully having it public will help me record journal entries when I lose (I tend to struggle with that).

I started off reading the BabyPips FX School and various eBooks about trading in general. I have always traded a small live account (until a larger one this year) and first bought a one-time fee price action course that I studied a lot and got real familiar with. It mainly taught support & resistance with candlestick patterns and it just wasn't satisfying me. I went back searching to BabyPips and never went back to my membership site again.

At BabyPips Iwould consider myself an ICT student. I use a lot of his basic methods, but have really started to expand lately by watching some Vic Noble videos, Larry Williams eBook's, Chris Lori's videos, psychology books, etc. and just trying to find my own style with all the various education sources.

The beginning of this year I started my 5K account and am only 2.62% up the entire year. I will try not to get lazy with this journal, but it is easy when you are on a losing streak... lol

I have a myfxbook account, but I don't know if I'm ready to share it! (finally profitable again ::))

I'll start on the next post..
 
Forgot to mention, I try to get a good entry and hold a trade for a couple of days, but I normally find myself closing it the same day. Today is a perfect example where I probably should have held my long. My overall bias was long EUR/USD because of USDX market structure and high time frame resistance levels.

I first expected a London open push up as a fake out and then spike down into the next support and propel higher.

My first trade today is the short:

PAIR: EUR/USD
DIRECTION: Short
SESSION: London
PIPS GAINED: 53
PIPS RISKED: 26
PERCENT RISK: 2%
PERCENT GAIN: 3.81%
RESULT: $182.09

EUR/USD DAILY CHART
2rfpSuO.png


EUR/USD M15 CHART
OTE after reacting pretty heavily to 1.33, market fakes down after Asia and then propels higher to trip stops and back down to support. Eventually to take out the mass of stops above 1.33 (OANDA and SAXOBANK retail traders were heavily short this pair).
(click to enlarge)
gsfKlrY.png


USDX DAILY
I was expecting this to push up into an OTE area for a short around the 82 figure. Another reason why I took the first London sell. The red line is where price would need to breach to break market structure to the up side.
(click to enlarge)
yAbEghk.png


USDX M15
Shows the bounce up into OTE for a great place to get short the US Dollar.
(click to enlarge)
2Q1ni9W.png
 
Hmm I was thinking long the other day as well on the EUR/USD since it was the stronger one between EU and GU however... GU rose where as EU fell lol... I was pissed I couldn't believe it I wanted a quick long scalp but then I had this jerky price just come lower and lower where GU took off and then came back
 
Tansen said:
Hmm I was thinking long the other day as well on the EUR/USD since it was the stronger one between EU and GU however... GU rose where as EU fell lol... I was pissed I couldn't believe it I wanted a quick long scalp but then I had this jerky price just come lower and lower where GU took off and then came back
Click to expand...

Yeah USDX market structure has just broken to upside. I am about to get stopped out of a EUR/USD long trade that I took around lunch time because there was some divergence between the H1 charts of EUR/USD and USDX and this time can serve well as a counter trend trade (not this time). I should close it now that market structure is broken at 82.40 (USDX), but since it is so close to my stop and that may lend some resistance I am just going to leave it open.

I will get around to posting my 2nd winning trade yesterday and this one once it's closed.

Should have been done for the week after yesterday! Especially since it's NFP week and probably going to consolidate all week.
 
Here is the long trade I made that same day.

PAIR: EUR/USD
DIRECTION: Long
SESSION: New York
PIPS GAINED: 71
PIPS RISKED: 30
PERCENT RISK: 2%
PERCENT GAIN: 3.38%
RESULT: $167.48

Possible improvement to this trade would be to hold it for the stop raid to the upside because that level was so clean so a stop raid was expected.

EUR/USD H1
Tbsq4Lg.png
 
I looked at this week as GBP/USD as the one to focus on the long side.

Ended up taking a EUR/USD long which only went so little then reverted thankfully I moved to B/e Before that happened.... as the GBP/USD laughs and says hey look at me 100 pips up.
 
Would be interesting to hear how you got along - if you on a losing streak it might be a good idea to post it. I seem to get like that too. Get positive gains for like a month then smash it all up in one day. Discipline and over trading maybe
 
Hi guys -

Thanks for the continued interest and sorry I have not been posting everything. I have been busy setting up a reporting suite for my trading and don't worry I have still been keeping a journal of all my trades, I just haven't been posting them here. I use a software called forex trade log to journal my trades and it would be a lot of work to post them here too so I will try finding a format that is easy to copy over to a forum.

I just went on a little 4 trade winning streak and then lost one today. I did not take a full loss as I cut my loss short when it didn't do what I was expecting it to do, but I still should have cut it even earlier than I did.

Here are my YTD stats as of right now. I just pumped another 5K into my account because I have been feeling disciplined and patient lately and feel like I am getting into a solid routine... but then again it could just be the winning streak talking:

2yB32PV.png
 
slugFX said:
Hi guys -

Thanks for the continued interest and sorry I have not been posting everything. I have been busy setting up a reporting suite for my trading and don't worry I have still been keeping a journal of all my trades, I just haven't been posting them here. I use a software called forex trade log to journal my trades and it would be a lot of work to post them here too so I will try finding a format that is easy to copy over to a forum.
Click to expand...

I'm experimenting with boilerplate forms for the journal section of this site. Basically, you select a template for the post which pre-populates the text area and fill in the blanks... do you think something like this would help?

(This is one of many new features that I'm in the process of implementing for the community.)

Anyway, how do you like the journal software? Would you recommend it to others? Does it have an export feature?
 
Yeah, I think that would probably make things easier like in my trade posts of this thread I wouldn't have to type the fields in bold?

I absolutely love the trading software. I work in Marketing Analytics so I have a passion for creating reports and using databases/writing queries and I use the software to help me setup an elaborate reporting suite for my trading. The nicest thing about the software is that you can store images with each trade entry. This makes it amazing for looking back at past trades and analyzing good ones from bad ones. You can also write notes and lessons learned on each trade and break it down based on how many legs your trade had (multiple take profits).

Yes you can export it to Excel and I do that so I can upload it to a database on my computer and run analysis on the data. It's pretty nifty, after each trade I enter it into the log, then export to excel, upload to database, open my excel report and click refresh all to get all my trading stats and graphs updated. I choose to do this because I enjoy it, it will help me find points in my trading that need improvement, and myfxbook counts it as a separate trade when I take partial profits. I will post some screenshots below and attach my Trading Report if anyone wants to check it out. The report is a WIP as I just got the database stuff figured out so there may be errors and I plan on elaborating much more on it.

Progress tracker broken down by month:
CcnuxQT.png


Progress tracker broken down by week:
MmE5Rlw.png


Trade entry screen:
YdlKNh7.png


Miscellaneous stats:
vrr15fu.png


At the individual trade level (this is what I export to Excel):
D8EJEme.png


My Trading Report:
NKSYkT6.png



Jack said:
I'm experimenting with boilerplate forms for the journal section of this site. Basically, you select a template for the post which pre-populates the text area and fill in the blanks... do you think something like this would help?

(This is one of many new features that I'm in the process of implementing for the community.)

Anyway, how do you like the journal software? Would you recommend it to others? Does it have an export feature?
Click to expand...
 
Hmm that thing looks like what I kind of imagined MATLAB would look like except matlab has a few more dozen buttons with the power of x² buttons for each sub category
 
I got stopped out at break even this morning on a GBP/USD short. I don't think I will be trading tomorrow because of all the big news events.

Here are the notes from my trade journal and some pics:

"The Williams Percent R was overbought on the daily chart, the hourly chart was showing bearish stochastic divergence, the 10 year t-note is poised to rally, the yields are dropping, and market structure broke to the down side. I was a little weary of this trade because I missed the entry at London Open and it wasn't exactly on resistance that I had already drawn on my chart. There wasn't a whole lot of confluences for the London Open trade, but there was a pretty expected resistance level on the intraday charts and that is the trade I took. If I had taken the London Open entry, I would have definitely taken partial profits and price got extremely close to my take profit with my New York Open entry, but not not quite. I moved to break even because it was 18:00 GMT and I wasn't getting as much movement as I had hoped.. especially with the FOMC statement tomorrow. So far the only reason I got stopped out was because of the spread. I would still be in the trade and in profit right now if I had left my stop. I still think moving to break even was the better choice. The red line in the images for this trade show 4 hour market structure being broken."

fAFEsnz.png


F0OsiBG.png


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BweH4gu.png
 
Probably a good decision to skip FOMC days, they can be destructive if you don't have a handful of pips as buffer.
 
Slug, thanks for the overview of that journaling software, I'm digging deeper into it now and it looks awesome.

How's trading coming along? Good quarter? :)
 
Yeah, I love the software, it is extremely helpful in analyzing your past trades which according to the new market wizards book is a very important part to becoming a successful trader.

Trading has been mediocre lately. I have recently created a trading plan that I refuse to disobey and it is helping me keep patient and try to pick just the low hanging fruit and weed out all the bad trades. I have had a few break even trades because I am really stressing to myself that even though I have a stop loss at 2% of my total account, I don't have to take the full 2% loss. If my trade idea doesn't pan out (which is usually an OTE with S/R confluence in the direction of 4 hour market structure) then I will bail out of the trade. I have also been stressing to be patient and try to trade less and it has been difficult because I feel like I haven't been doing enough, but on the other hand it feels good to find some patience.

Let's just say I am not losing money, but I am also not making much money. I just pumped another 5K into my account so it is sitting at about 15K right now and I just hope that I can push past the break even stage soon and start making some real money.

There is lots of room for improvement, but that is trading and I think I am getting there slowly, but surely...

Here are my September results to date since following my trading plan:
b3SWyIM.png
 
Hi Slug,

Think I am having similar discipline problems. I knocked up this pop up to show on screen when I take a loss, this helps me to take a step back just at the crucial time. I have attached indicator for you or anyone else if it looks like it may be of use.
 

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Update: I am trading more pairs than just the EUR/USD and GBP/USD.. adding USD/CAD, AUD/USD, and USD/JPY to the arsenal. It helps me pass on a pair if there are no opportunities instead of forcing a trade. I have also been highlighting areas on my charts and staying away from them if price isn't at or near those areas.

Here are my YTD stats below:

ys5zjfT.png
 
slugFX said:
Update: I am trading more pairs than just the EUR/USD and GBP/USD.. adding USD/CAD, AUD/USD, and USD/JPY to the arsenal. It helps me pass on a pair if there are no opportunities instead of forcing a trade. I have also been highlighting areas on my charts and staying away from them if price isn't at or near those areas.
Click to expand...

Nice that you added those as well especially the USD/JPY I can see that pair can give you some hot carry trades.
 
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