Slug Short-Term Trading Journal

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I lost 2% today trying to short the Fiber. I went short at 1.3797 with a stop loss at 1.3825 (28 pips).

When I woke up around New York Open I wanted to get out of the trade because it was consolidating and drifting upwards. I was waiting for a retracement to get out of the trade and I got the retracement, but got greedy and wanted to wait until it was at break even or slightly positive. This mistake was very costly and because of this I ended up losing 2% instead of 0.25%. There was one point where my trade was only down 2 or 3 pips and that's when I should have closed out.

It seems like whenever I trade myself out of drawdown, I lose my first trade that I risk 2% on and I am back to risking less than 2% and digging my way out of drawdown again.. the grind...
 
Trading is so legit /sarcasm:

P16Vu9X.png


EDIT: When I took my first profits and went to bed I knew this was going to happen...
 
Just to clear things up now that I have a little time. I shorted Cable at 1.68 London Open and took 30% profits at 30 pips and moved to break even. I got stopped out due to the widening of spreads when the Official Bank Rate was released (6 pip spread, could be worse, but still sucks when you have the direction right.)

Now to take responsibility: Since I was confident that price was going down today (SMT divergence, 1.68 big fig, strong weekly resistance) I should have taken my 30% at 30 pips and instead of moving my stop to break even I should have moved it to 30% of what the original stop was placed at. This way if I did get stopped out I would have broke even and I would have much more wiggle room for the widening of spreads around the high impact news release.

slugFX said:
Trading is so legit /sarcasm:

P16Vu9X.png


EDIT: When I took my first profits and went to bed I knew this was going to happen...
 
Firstly, congrats on the profitable trade. :thumbsup:

Second, as you pointed out, you didn't actually move your stop to "Break Even". You moved to "Loss Removal". Of all the things ICT does well, knowing how to stay in a trade (as he did in his Gold Scalp) is probably the most fascinating one that just comes with experience.
 
Any updates Slug? I know you've been in ICT's sessions a few times, and he's been dropping knowledge on us. Curious how you've incorporated it?

Plus, keep up the good work. :D :thumbsup:
 
I have opened a Forex IRA account like ICT suggested in his Poor Man's Plan to Progress webinar. It's really nice that I can trade that account and not have to worry about paying taxes on my gains and I will not be tempted to take any money out of the account until I am 59 1/2. I am 25 right now so I have plenty of time to build up this retirement account.

I took 2 trades this past week. One was a winner and one was a loser. I will go over the loser:

Risk - 1%
Loss - 0.66%

DAILY
Trend is clearly down with 9 EMA below the 18 EMA. Price is starting to range and sitting above the mid figure with a daily swing low that just formed.

VJj2QWe.png


H4
Market structure break to the upside after bouncing at the mid figure. Expecting a push to the upper side of the range for a shorting opportunity.

bNcEjPE.png


H1
1 hour bullish order block converging with mid figure and 79% retracement.

ZsDzIOp.png


M15
Nestea plunge right through everything that I thought it was going to bounce at. I closed the position 3 pips before it would have hit my stop.

DnM5G2K.png


So guys, what went wrong? Here is what I have in my notes:
-- Against long-term bias (from EMA's, CAD premium in Futures, CAD net long Futures)
-- Entry was between kill zones (10:36 GMT)
-- I kept bumping up my order to get an entry, when I would have gotten filled regardless
-- Price didn't move much until NYO, close out because of this?
 
Hi @Slug

Which broker did you sign-up with for the IRA forex account? Is that a regular IRA or Roth IRA? Is there a minimum amount? Thanks.
 
omfx said:
Hi @Slug

Which broker did you sign-up with for the IRA forex account? Is that a regular IRA or Roth IRA? Is there a minimum amount? Thanks.

It is a roth IRA, my custodial firm is AdvantaIRA which is where I setup the roth IRA account (http://www.advantaira.com/) and then I trade Forex through an account that they setup for me at FXCM. The fee for the account is $299 a year and I think the minimum deposit depends on the broker. I guess it will only be worth it if you expect to make more than $299 over the trading year. They can deduct the fee straight from your account.
 
not sure what ICT says about this but looking at the H1 chart i can see 3 wicks that already touched the OB. my impression is, that these OB are much less likely to hold, probably because a lot of orders already got filled there
 
That's a good point Froxx, I might have been looking back too far for order blocks so in reality the most recent price swing up didn't have a good order block. I have seen him highlight old ones in videos just not sure if they had been cleared out already. I'll have to write that in my notes and keep it in mind when studying the charts.

TopFroxx said:
not sure what ICT says about this but looking at the H1 chart i can see 3 wicks that already touched the OB. my impression is, that these OB are much less likely to hold, probably because a lot of orders already got filled there
 
Hey Slug. I meant to respond to this sooner, but I forgot over the weekend.

I do not trade the CAD, so this is pretty much just my first impressions, but they hard hindsight.

The first issue I can see is that you were bumping up your Entry. That's definitely the start to "chasing Price". It's normally "safe", but if the Level is Important, it'll get there. Or, it'll give you another entry.

Though, the main problem is the attached 4-Hour chart. There are 2 H4 Order Blocks that the CAD was dealing with. It came just short of the Lower one on Tuesday, before moving off. The problem is that the move off from Tuesday, only set the high on Wednesday that Retraced to the Sniper OTE from the Friday (May 23) to Tuesday (May 27) Price Swing.

In a still "Bearish Trend", that was actually a really good Entry to be looking for. But the probably important detail was Wednesday's CDR Range. Thursday only touched back into the Area once, which was actually the Short Signal. Asia Session was Down, it retraced at 9 GMT into the middle of the Asian Range, into the CDR, then came off.

So what you ended up missing was the Trend was still down for the day (obvious in hindsight), but that an ICT Reflection pattern was on hand. That 5 GMT run up also ran back to the Asian Range H1 Order Block and setup a 70.5 Snipe OTE Retrace (Short) on Tuesday's entire Range.

I think that 5 GMT run was the Key bit of Price Action that you overlooked. There was a Buying opportunity that you should have been looking for over Thursday/Friday, but you just setup too early. I've had this problem myself, so I attempt to still trade in the Trend Bias until I'm assured that it's placed in its Lows (or Highs) on the Higher Time Frame.

Also, that Order Block got nearly completely run through. I wouldn't be surprised if it's run through somewhere in the next few weeks.
 

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