Okay, it was a good week, the Bank of Japan hit my Take Profit for me, so I'm going to be typing up a review.
Note 1: No Friday trades. I slept okay, but my allergies are flaring a bit. I'm pretty tired (rougher "night" of sleep), so there's no sense taking anything else. I had profitable weeks on Demo Cable & Real UJ.
I might eventually start posting Charts, but, well, tired enough not to do that right now. I had 5 UJ trade targets on the week.
Trade 1:
Date & Time: Monday NYO.
Physical State: Good when doing analysis.
UJ went through a range break, over a Key Weekly Order Block & now local KSR level on Thursday of last week. I was expecting a retrace down into 107.52 during either Monday or Tuesday. Especially with the Swing Low + Order Block stack at 108.00.
Low of the week was at 107.60, per Oanda's feed. This was an analysis mistake. We'll be getting far more insight on this in ICT's Market Maker series, but this was a pretty straight forward "Hidden Fib" trade setup that I should have targeted for a 107.70 entry. 107.40 was the Inversion level. The H1 Order Block at 107.55 is a Range Break move, and those really aren't Order Stacks. Those are responses to eating up the Stops that were resting there.
My physical & mental state was good until early NYO Monday. Then I went to take a nap and slept for 8 hours. That actually put me at 16 hours of sleep over a 24 hour period. I had to change around a meet up with a friend on Tuesday as a result, since I wasn't going to be awake for it.
End Result: No Entry
Trade 2:
Date & Time: Tuesday NYO
Physical State: Nearly asleep when it happened
This was a Short targeting 108.15. This is what I call an "Order Block Inception" trade. UJ produces these during consolidations. Basically, it's a collection of 2 or more H1 Order Blocks. Takes a little practice to draw the box properly, but an entry right at the beginning, especially going right into a news release, is a clean sign for at least catching down to the retrace.
I didn't take the trade because I went to bed (day after going to sleep 6+ hours early) 15 minutes after I would have taken the trade. Further, I wouldn't have likely set my TP level properly and it could have resulted in a loss. This is why I try to avoid trades that I haven't scoped out thoroughly when tired. (Even then, I'm going to be very wary of taking trades while tired, in general. Though I'll leave a Trade and go to sleep. Don't ask, I just sleep really well when I do.)
This was also an explicitly counter of the weekly trend trade, as FOMC was almost a pure given for going up. UJ would continue within a fairly strict range through Wednesday. Granted, I also was still thinking the pair would get to 107.50 before heading up, at this point. But, going Long at the H1 Order Block it ran down to was pretty much the trade of the week. (At the moment, that trade would have had a 2 pip draw down and 360 pip ride up)
Have I mentioned that UJ is a H1 Order Block pair? ICT hates it because it's a bifurcated pair. The BoJ runs it differently than the Federal Reserve does. Setups either happen in Asia or in New York. There are continuation setups in late LO, but those are really "end of Tokyo" trades. A lot of UJ trades can be left to be hit a day later.
Oh, and UJ is hilariously obvious in what they're doing on news events. They're always pending Orders that didn't get filled during Asia (during NYO news). I've seen "Good" USD news pop 5 pips up and run down 20, wander around, then continue going up. UJ doesn't like to retrace cleanly a lot of the times. They'll do the retrace to an Order Block on news events, whenever they can.
End Result: No Entry
Trade 3:
Date & Time: Wednesday LC/FOMC
Physical State: Was in really good shape for this, actually.
My entry was at 107.85. I'm on Oanda, which was part of the issue for the setup location. I simply expected the Sweep/Judas of the daily low and an Order Block before taking off. That's what normally happens, it just didn't this time. Oh well. I only got missed by about 15 pips. I'd rather "high-side" my entries on News. Would rather be missed than get stopped.
End Result: No Entry
Trade 4:
Date & Time: Thursday NYO
Physical State: Good (don't expect this trend to last most other weeks; I spent days getting my schedule setup to trade properly this week)
Entry:
9:19 GMT USDJPY Buy Limit 109.055
Exit:
14:12 GMT Loss (Stopped) @ 108.805
This was one of those situations, like a lot of I've run into while developing, where I executed "well", but not perfectly yet. I've slacked on working out my logic matrix for news event pushes. I've got a good knack for reading the initial move direction, but a lot of those are going to reverse on the news. That's what happened here.
I knew I should have closed it @ 109.30 when it splattered against the level and pulled back. But, at the moment, I try to not close on the news. I had problems, at the beginning, with trying to close things too fast. Partially I need more experience & built up logic, but it's more just where I am at right now in my development. I let it ride because of what was going to happen next. I already had the lower levels of retracement laid out.
It did manage to spike down at the end to stop me out. (On the raw low of the day, by 2 pips. 2 pips is my kryptonite, haha)
My major mistake was in setting up at 109.05. I should have known it was going to seek out the Big Figure. So 109.02 is where I should be setting up. Obviously, that'd have kept me in this trade, but that's less the issue. My analysis needs to be better when the pair is that highly pressed near the top. The pair bounced off, nicely, from 109.30 in early LO. 109.30 being the 50% of the Order Block it was running into.
Trade 5:
Date & Time: Thursday, London Close
Physical State: Getting Tired, but this setup was laid out 12 hours previously. Just waited for the pop off the H1 Order Block and pulled a Fib.
Entry:
16:13 GMT USDJPY Buy Limit 108.91
Exit:
1) 18:36 GMT Manual Close (half) @ 109.39
2) 2014-10-31 4:44 GMT Take Profit @ 109.58
My original take profit was at 109.48, but, well, 2 pips, it only reached 109.46. I closed 1/2 before I went to bed. Moved the Stop Loss to 109.15 (missed getting tripped by 1/2 a pip), but 109.15 is where UJ would be breaking to go back down, so I'd rather take another trade from lower. I had locked in a +.5R day at that point, so I was very happy with that execution.
Now, as I type this, the pair obviously ran 180 pips beyond my take profit. However, the BoJ doesn't announce new QE measures every day. Nor does it shatter 6-year highs that often. Just saying.
Total for the week was 57.5 Pips of Profit, 32.5 Net Profit. Around 200 pips left on the table by slightly missed entries.
Secondary Take Profit Note: While looking at the H4 UJ chart, while editing this post, I realize I should have moved my TP2 to the Previous High. Partially, I didn't see the charts again until just before UJ exploded up, so there was no "awake" time spent on adjusting it. But the pair really did, from where it was sitting before the news, that breaking the September high was going to happen. However, I wouldn't have expected more than that. Noting for future TP logic. (Something I've had to spend a lot of time on)
Next Week's Outlook:
UJ normally ramps up between Monday to Wednesday before NFP. NFP almost always will result in a Sell-Off the next week. (There's a 2-week rhythm to UJ due to posting Directional Orders at different times; I haven't figured it out too clearly, as it doesn't show cleanly on the Weekly Chart, but it's a noticeable effect. They do Yen -> USD trades at different times than USD -> Yen trades. Second Week of the Month normally seems to have the Low. I should ask TopFroxx to run that analysis for me...) Anyway, with that huge ramp up, Next week is going to be wacky. I'm still going to be Buy Bias'd, but I'll take some smaller setups, either way they happen.
We've hit the first response level at 111.50. Next upside is 112.70 for the next Weekly Order Block. I'll have to draw up some new KSR's this weekend.
I also plan to post my notes for ICT's Market Maker Series, which hits in the some number of hours. I'm looking so forward to that.