Sqa's Stage 1 Trading Journal

FTMO Trader Scouting

sqa

Village Scribe
This is Stage 1.

I've been attempting to type my thoughts up on this, for the FXGears' crowd, for several days. I think this is the type of Journal that Jack really wants: this is focused as much on Psychology as the technicals of trading.

So, some background to start:

- This will be mostly USD-JPY Trades.
- Yes, ICT's hatred of the pair is apt. It's a nutty beast.
- I'll have some GBP-USD trades in December, more than likely.
- I plan to update it weekly on what I was looking at, what I took, *why* and my physical state going into the trades.
- My physical state sets my mental state, and it directly effects my trading.

The background, and what makes this a little different, is that I'm very different. I'm a recovering cripple. And everything that goes along with that. The rebuilding process is still going, and will for several years.

That's the compounded aspect to all of this. My sleep schedule (as anyone in chat will know) is a mess, quite a lot of the time. There's only so much that can be done about that at the moment, so I simply deal with things as they happen. I have a habit of attempting to go counter-trend when I'm tired, so I simply do not trade when I'm tired. I miss plenty of trades, but that's the nature of it all.

My long-term goal is to get to 40 pips, per week, per pair I trade. (Net Risk-Adjusted) My Risk-Down Scaling method will be for Stage 2. (Well practiced in Demo) Stage 1 is .5% Risk, per trade. Which, for the current account, is simply $.50 USD. The psychology and the practice of real environment takes precedence over the Monetary amount, for this stage.

I'll update what I'm doing mostly on the Weekends or Fridays. We'll see as I go through. This Journal will run through the end of the year.
 
No you don't do ya mate!
Im looking at AUDJPY tanking with any luck, if it does start to tank, i will ride it to the bottom...
to me, measuring USDJPY to AUDJPY, AJ looks more like it will drop out of the sky.
that is my theory anyways....
i like your journal thread
pardon me if i ask to many questions, just slap me if you like, but what happened?
and what is your real name


PS you can PM me if you like....
 
My real name stays pretty far away from anything I do online. I'm pretty careful on that type of stuff. I'll toss my medical background into a PM, as it's due to a unique genetic condition and, frankly, it would be possible to relate my disorder with my name. At least, in the future. Part of my trading profits will go for a deeper study of the issue, mostly as "solving" the problem required re-inventing part of Medicine in the process.
 
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.
 
Good luck with the journal! :thumbsup:

And yeah, BOJ remarks sent the N225 launching as well. That was a very fun ride! :D
 
it will be good if you share trade picture with entry and exit.That will help newbie trader,I am also new trader.
 
For jony92, I'll attempt to go back and lay out my thoughts on the missed Trades, with charting.


This was the Trade I was hoping to make Monday. However, I had a long Sunday, slept "hard" last night and it really took a few hours for my head to get around to trade. When UJ is +350 and all I can figure out is a possible Short, I'm just not in a place to trade yet. The pair is Trending and "Trend Continuation" Trades are the name of the Game until Late Tuesday/Wednesday, when UJ normally locks up before NFP.

This is all based off Higher Time Frame analysis (which I'm somehow able to do when I can't figure out trade Ideas that work; feel free to figure out why that is true, haha, because I don't know). All of the Key levels for this week are from 2007. Watch how they're respected.
 

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Okay, Week 2 review.

I went over the trade I missed on Monday. So we'll start from Tuesday.


Trade 2:
Date & Time: Tuesday NYO.
Physical State: Okay, but no workout, which throws my schedule off.


I slept in pretty far most of the week. I was rather tired, which was going to be a trend until Friday. Always a bad sign for my trading.

I was targetting a Long for more Trend Continuation trades. However, the problem is I'm not quite to the point of trusting the Tool. And, being tired, I did what I normally do when I'm somewhat sure of the action: I "high-sided" the entry. So my entry was set for 113.02. As you'll see in the picture, it was in anticipation of a full run down to the Week Open.

But, as you'll see from the Arrow, this was an ICT "Big Fig" trade. The Big Fig version just happens to happen at the Figure. It's actually a specific price-action response at an institutional level. It's something that ICT has been hinting more closely at over the past few live sessions, and I'm finally noticing it. Didn't mean, especially in a tired state, that I completely trusted it.


2h5nvqe.png



A lot of the problem was the result of injurying my left deltoid during my workout on Monday. Not only did I missed an awesome trade on the week (220 pips available), but I also messed up a good portion of my week in the process. I have to just let it heal, and it's not a bad injury, but it does effect my sleep.

Further, I was out shopping in the late afternoon (West Coast USA), with the pair sitting @ 113.55. I knew they left some clean highs and it looked like it was ready to break up, but, as I was on my smartphone & shopping, I didn't take the trade. 120 pips were still there (as I'd likely have closed at +120 on Wednesday), but taking trades that I haven't fully laid out is not the point of using the Smartphone. I'm willing to take an entry, if I'm waiting for a bounce off a KSR/MS Break, but this trade wasn't fully laid out, at that point.

End Result: No trade, hurt shoulder.


Trade 3:
Date & Time: Wednesday NYO through Thursday NYO.
Physical State: Okay when I did the entry, fairly bad when I was managing the trade.

This was actually the "same" trade that I had open through Wednesday LC, killed, and then re-applied before I went to bed. As you'll see in the picture, I framed it during Wednesday NYO on the "Big Fig"/Inversion level setup. The entry was at 114.22. You'll notice that the Sniper OTE level & a M15 Order Block, right on-top of an Old High. Was a good entry for Wednesday.

After it pulled within a range, before going to sleep around Asia Open (short day, head was okay, but very tired), I put the trade back on. I actually sleep really well with a pending Order. Go figure.

Even without the Asia Data, the level, including the Stop Loss Range, covered what was actually important: 2 separate Order Blocks & previous highs. Oanda feed puts the low at 114.04. I was cognizant of the Stop Loss being below 114.00, as there was a sensitive "range" more than a specific level. But the levels were good.


mkgjmx.png



The issue was Thursday. I knew I was in bad shape, as I couldn't read the Cable or Fiber Price Action, but, in hindsight, I was in a lot worse shape than I thought. I'd slept pretty bad, slept for a while and woke up to the trade being +38. After looking at where it was, before UK or Euro Bank Rates, I took half off. It was likely to keep going up, but we were headed into news & I couldn't read the direction. I chose Profit Protection (which I do when I'm tired), so closing half was a safe decision.

Now, here's where I made some mistakes. The plan for the week, especially NFP week on UJ, is to get in Monday, ride to Wednesday NYO and be done. However, I missed both Monday & Tuesday setups & Wednesday was really quiet. I knew UJ should make some runs up & down, just because they do that for NFP week. (2nd week of the Month is normally all of the Japanese news, which is why that is normally a down week; except all of the news is going to be terrible this next week, so the trend is still on) I set the TP of the second half of the trade to 115.10. I should have looked left a little further, seen that Spike up to 115.05 and put my exit at 114.98 and been done with it. As it was, it missed by 5 pips. As the pair start rebounding around a KSR forming at 114.85, I took 1/4 off there. And, the biggest mistake, I set my SL on the last 1/4 to 114.45.

2qvsgie.png


When I set the stop loss, I was "done" for the day, I knew it, but I was mostly done with that trade. I set the TP too high (116 range) and was just going to let it ride. However, I should have just closed it. Or, with a little more energy, put the SL to +3 (so 114.25) and the TP at just below the previous spike high. Given the Environment of the UJ at the moment, they like to run it up during Asia before LO, clear the Stops before NFP and run down. (This is much more of an understanding from the current Economic/Maximum screw-over setups, than just pure Price Action) So my Exit should be been around 115.30 or so. Or just close it all at 114.94 like the one part.

Still, I got my "net" pips for the week. Which is the goal. And to get comfortable with reading my tools properly.


End Result:
Exit 50%: @ 114.588; +36.8 pips
Exit 25%: @ 114.943; +72.3 pips
Exit 25%: @ 114.448; +22.8 pips

"Net" Pips: 42.1 pips

Weekly Target: 40 "Net" Pips.

Trade 4:
Date & Time: Friday NYO
Physical State: Fairly good.

I'll outline this one next week. This is something I'll rarely do: it's a UJ hold over a weekend. We're in a hard Trend and there is a slaughter of Japanese news next week that isn't going to be good. I'm not expecting much of a Gap, but there will likely be some. Entry @ 114.33, Weekend Hold.
 

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I don't normally plan to do mid-week updates, but seeing as how I created for myself a bloodbath this week, so far, it's a good idea to type up my thoughts on my mistakes.

I'm going to skip Charts for this one, just as it's not too important.

Trade 1:
Date & Time: Friday LC to Sunday Open
Physical State: Good on Friday, decent on Sunday.

End Result:

Entry @ 114.33 (Friday)
Exit @ 114.079 (Sunday)

This was a Weekend Hold trade and intended that way. My expectation for the first part of the week played out exactly as I expected. Sweep below the Week Open on Monday, then a hard run up. However, there wasn't a Gap on Sunday and that's where my trouble started.

A running problem I've had is knowing when to get out of trades. So far, if we take into account trade entries (actual posted orders) that missed by less than 20 pips, I'm sitting at 14 of 17. 2 Misses (just didn't pull back) and 1 really stupid trade. (I'll get to that) My actual targeting for Ranges for bounces is quite good, it's what happens next that's been the problem. This is less a "Take Profit" issue and more not being far more careful with what the actual possible results of the trade setup can be. I'm working on structuring a far better mental priority list for punching out of trades, as a result.

In the case of the Friday Hold trade, there were two mistakes: 1) When it didn't Gap on Sunday, I should have closed it. 2) When the M15 Market Structure broke, I should have closed it on the pull back. ( Minor 3rd: Being +35 on a late Friday trade should probably just be closed anyway, but that's really down to where the MS is going into the close.) I simply didn't read things right, even if I was out & about. As simple as that.



Trade 2:
Date & Time: Sunday Asia
Physical State: Extremely Tired (placed then went to bed)

End Result:

Entry @ 113.70
Swing Low @ 113.85

No Trade.

I was just too tired to trust my *marked for a week* KSR & "HTF High with committed price action showing it's importance" Level. Really not much past that. I wasn't awake for what I knew was coming, so I had to make a fairly tired set of judgment for the level to use. At least I didn't put it at 113.85. If I had missed that trade by, oh, 1 pip, I'd still be insanely pissed about it. There was a pretty clean 200 pips there.


Trade 3a & 3b:
Date & Time: Monday LC through Asia (Tuesday "Asia" session)
Physical State: Tired, but not too bad

End Result:

Entry @ 114.53 & 114.40
Low @ 114.63

No Trade.

This was pretty much the same setup. I just thought they were going to make a sweep back out of Japanese news to at least the Week Open. They pulled back to a M15 Order Block before proceeding. However, I also wasn't able to get in on the Trend Continuation trade @ 115.20 I was expecting, as I zonked out right at midnight New York time, which is when it happened.



Trade 4:
Date & Time: Tuesday LC
Physical State: Very good, actually.

Entry @ 115.48
Exit @ 115.228

Loss.

Ugh. Several levels of ugh on this one. If you pull up the Chart, you'll notice I was on the receiving end of a 100 pip CDR range for this one. Basically, I had Alerts for 115.85 & 115.70 when it was sitting at around .78. I was actually out chatting with a friend and really thought about closing it. At .80, .70, .58 and while driving, when it was stopped out.

Though I wasn't too upset about this loss, actually. The New York session for Yen produces what I call the "New York Raiders": some group really does put in their orders right at CDR time in New York. And, after most of a big move is really to launch, they'll do 1 more re-run back during the CDR. It's normally after a reversal break in the Market Structure happens, but it's happened In-Trend as well. No biggie. They ran back to a H4 Order block level that matched up with a few swing points. My trail of messes up after that is where I botched it all.


Trade 5a:
Date & Time: Tuesday post-CDR Asia (Asian Wednesday)
Physical State: Too tired.

Entry @ 115.53
Exit @ 115.228, 3 minutes later

Loss.

Okay, this is where the tiredness stacked up. After watching the CDR run down (and looking to get in but with no clean pull back), I updated my analysis and looked to grab an expected pull back during Asia. However, seeing that the entry wouldn't happen for 5 hours, I flubbed something serious. The last hour of the CDR saw a spike up 30 pips. I needed to run an errand then (3 pm West Coast time), and I simply didn't update my OTE pull nor recheck my HTF levels. When the trade got triggered, I was surprised at the level it was at. When the pair had only traded up to 115.70, the setup made more sense than, well, what happened. This was a complete Analysis of Time & Price break down. I just completely screwed that one up.

What happened next, however, is when the Tiredness turned to a lot of stupidity.


Trade 5b:

So, I actually got stopped out by only 5 pips in trade 5a. So, since it stopped where my analysis said it actually would, I went looking for another entry. I waited for a M5 Market Structure Break, then tried to enter on a pull back. The pair didn't even pull back, on a 5 minute chart, more than 50% on the entire run back to 115.86. At this point, I was insanely frustrated.

By that point in the week, I had: Not seen a MS break and taken a loss for not executing properly; Missed the trade setup of the week because I wasn't going to be awake at the proper time and missed the entry by 15 pips because I didn't trust my HTF analysis; Gotten stopped out of another trade that I should have closed, sitting and thinking about closing it; And had just screwed up a very basic OTE + Order Block stack trade by not double checking an entry for 3 hours. I was tired, highly frustrated, then I botched another really simple trade. This was lead to the 2 trade disaster that comes next.


Trade 6:
Date & Time: Early Wednesday, pre-LO
Physical State: Stuck on Stupid?

Entry @ 115.603
Exit @ 115.36

Somewhere around 115.55 is the 50% current consolidation level. And, somehow, I got myself stuck on the M1 Chart. This was a completely, utterly stupid trade. If I had realized practically anything, I wouldn't have been trading. But we were into a S&D phase until NYO. That tells you pretty much everything about how I misread the situation.



Trade 7:
Date & Time: Same time
Physical State: Same level of bad decision making, almost on Tilt.

Entry @ 115.444
Exit @ 115.172

Loss.

The last 2 trades were as Market Orders. This was actually...not a stupid setup. There was reason to suspect that it might bounce there, after sweeping the Asian Range Low. However, I shouldn't have taken that trade & I shouldn't have been trading.

I've still got a lot of work to do, but I can crawl out of this small hole. I shouldn't, however, exist in the first place. I plan to see this never happens again.
 
Well, the picture really says a lot about my week. :(


10y4ew3.png



Those were the big entries for the week. I ended the week down 127.9 pips. Learned about, however. Pure Frustration can hide the fact I'm very tired. Good to know in the future.

The other major developments of the week:

1) Moving to a 3 pip "cushion" for entries & exits. Oanda's spread gets out to 2.5 around most reversal points.
2) Protection & Control of my Sleep Schedule moves up to a much, much higher priority. Work is a lot harder when I'm not at the computer.
3) Some improvements to my Entry setups. I get a little too attached to specific entry levels, not giving myself the room to actually get tripped into the trade. (I'm trading 25 pip SLs, and my normal entry is 4-8 pips of Drawdown)

Not much else, as the important stuff was in the previous post. On to next week!
 

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Just my 2 cents.. Why would you use a marketmaker broker who actually has interest to knock you out from a trade,and playing around with spreads, instead respectable no dd one who gets the job done and actually its in hes interest that you make money, because hes getting paid from you commissions?

-P
 
Piper said:
Just my 2 cents.. Why would you use a marketmaker broker who actually has interest to knock you out from a trade,and playing around with spreads, instead respectable no dd one who gets the job done and actually its in hes interest that you make money, because hes getting paid from you commissions?

-P

I will in the future, but I got rejected from the good "option" for a low money account. (This is Stage 1 for me: real money, super-small account, fixed risk & SL.) I was a little surprised that a "$400" minimum to open suddenly meant you needed $20k USD in a bank account to back up the deposit. [Not that I would ever show that balance to a company for that reason]

Oanda was a fall-back. This is a $100 USD account. I don't plan to use them for my full account, but that's next year. Trust me, they weren't my first choice. And, as a US Citizen, I've got really limited options.
 
Kuzia said:
Just a quick question why not FXCM they are american company?

Basic issue is two fold:

1) It's pretty much Forex.com, Oanda or (so they claimed) MB Trading for US-based companies if you don't want to drop $2000 USD into the account.

2) FXCM has a pretty terrible reputation. Even if they're a fully regulated & listed company.

Part of the way I'm handling the development process is by trading small. It's not the lack of $2k, it's my desire not to send $2k to a company I don't yet completely trust. I do the same for Online Retailers (and have for years), so I wouldn't start doing things differently for Brokers.

At the moment, I'll likely go with TradeStation (IB requires $15k, which is a little rich for my blood at the moment), but we'll see. I'm taking it slow & methodical in my development. It's about cleaning up the errors, executing the trades properly and getting out consistently profitable. *Then*, we worry about rapidly increasing the account size.

But FXCM's new commission model is really tempting.
 
Well, another week down. I'll put the result for the week up top, then point out what I'm looking for this week. And a review of the two setups I missed.

Trade 1: +3.9
Trade 2: -21.7

Net: -17.8


I guess I'm not "calling" a trade, but, well, I'm going to be setting up for this. Likely @ 116.91.

inh2lk.png


For any ICT-types, this should be a brutally easy setup to see. D1 & Weekly Charts are massively broken to the Upside. Trend is still on. But, USDX broke new highs Friday, while UJ decoupled for the day. BoJ President Kuroda has a speech at 8 pm Eastern, on Monday. It might not get to that point until Tuesday's Asia session, but this setup is pretty clear. It's just a question if I can trade it properly.

Note: I wouldn't assume this trade can be held to blow through 119.


Speaking of trading things properly:


Trade 1:
Date & Time: Late Asia Monday/pre-LO
Physical State: Too tired

Result: No Entry.

I got my sleep schedule around for this week, but Monday was just a complete wipe out until London Close range. By that point, everything interesting for the day was done. Couldn't do much about that.



Trade 2:
Date & Time: Tuesday LO
Physical State: Good

Result: No Entry.

This is one of those times that I normally would have caught the entry at 116.37 to 116.40 range. But, well, the first run down happened so quickly, I didn't have an entry put in. The Japanese Prime Minister prorogued the Japanese Diet. It was expected. The announcement time, however, wasn't expected by any English sources I could find. Oh well.

With how hard it popped back up, I waited on the next setup. It simply ran the low (plus to the actual level I was targeted) very rapidly. And I just didn't catch any pull backs. After it cleared 116.50, I had an entry for a retouch, but it never got back.

There was a very expected Range Break entry @ 116.80, but it didn't clear the level until the CDR period. I try not to trade then. Obviously, it would have worked, but I'm trying to avoid bad habits. I also don't want to take trades when I'm tired, at the end of my day, unless it's something I'm expecting, like the Monday trade.





Trade 3:
Date & Time: Wednesday LO
Physical State: Good

Result: No Entry

I wake up at 0 GMT, normally. I was expecting it to pull at least back to an OTE within the Asian Session/CDR high/previous High. No dice. Grind up all day until FOMC minutes. But I was too tired by FOMC minutes. It was mostly a quiet, pre-FOMC-type day. Nothing wrong with that.




Trade 4:
Date & Time: Thursday LO
Physical State: Good

Entry @ 118.27
Low @ 118.279

Result: No Entry, minor frustration.

At this point, while H1 MS was down, H4 MS wouldn't be down until Friday Asia, though there's the an important bit about HTF KSR that I'm still working on trusting. Short version is I nearly got Short right up at 118.90. 119 is a BIG, BIG, BIG UJ level. If we get over that, we're looking a free-fall pretty soon. But, I'm trying to get to the point I don't feel the *need* to want to take that type of trade. I want to be at the point of actually taking it because I know my tools & analysis well enough to execute something like that.

And, yes, those types of trades are for mocking other people with. ^_^

Anyway, this trade was a sign they were going lower, as they didn't get to the level where the Stops & Orders would have been. It means they were going to do more above 118.50.



Trade 4:
Date & Time: Thursday LO (Entry), NYO (Fill)
Physical State: Good

Entry @ 118.038
Exit @ 118.077
Net: +3.9

This was a pretty clean entry and a "good" exit. Not perfect, but I'll explain the error, even if I was really happy about the trade.

Big Figure & Asian Range Stop Run is a good place to be, right before US CPI, which I expected as a good posting. So, excellent there.

Now, the Exit. If anyone is still reading this Thread by this point, you'll have noticed my problem with Exits on non-breaking trades. (Pretty much, I miss entry on the big moves by a hair; don't get out of the trades that are good, but still have more counter-move to come) So, after last week's disaster, I worked down a full logic system for handling those situations.

However, there are two types: News Events & Non-News Event exit types. I exited this trade on the Non-News version, which is why I didn't close it at +30. The real problem being I didn't have a chance, yet, to actually test the news event version until this trade. I was more confident in the other one.

The Yen splatted almost perfectly at the 50% range of the "KILL BAR!", the M15 or H1 (depending on trade) Order Block previous to the current move. If the Pair doesn't break the Market Structure (i.e. it's just placing more orders on the news), then I close the trade. In the case, I waited for the M5 Market Structure to break, which is why the positive value on the trade was lower. But, great trade.

The one change, for a News Cycle trade, is I'll hang out on the M1 Chart for the news release itself. It's the only time I plan to be on that chart, but for how rapidly this type of event moves (especially on the UJ), it's just necessary.





Trade 5:
Date & Time: Friday LO
Physical State: Good

Entry @ 117.829
Exit @ 117.612
Net: -21.7


I was actually pretty happy about this trade. I didn't execute my Exit Strategy perfectly (I waited too long, so I was exiting when it popped out), but it gave me a massive amount of confidence in exiting system. Now, I just have to actually exit on those signals. I could have, in fact, gotten out at +2 on this trade, which I probably would have been beaming about. I didn't, but the entire point of typing up all of these trades is exactly this type of event. Building confidence in my trade system & style, to the point I simply exit and entry when I know I should. Even in the face of other events.


Which does lead me to my two major mistake on this trade. The first is that there were 2, H1 Mitigation blocks that the pair was going to run into first. And, the second, is I completely missed that Draghi was going to be talking. The USDX Range Break, that I was expecting, was obviously going to be setup by the Draghi speech. I just completely missed it on the listings. That was a preparation error. But, those will happen. My Bailout system will save me from those, when they happen. Obviously, I'm working on letting them happen less.




Trade 6:
Date & Time: Friday NYO
Physical State: Good

Result: No Trade

This was one of those days where the Price Action and the out-side events were conflicting. With the run down in Asia (on the ending of the Japanese Diet's session), UJ broke H4 Market Structure Down. That's why I'm expecting that trade at the top. So I should have been getting short when Draghi first started talking. There was a really, really clean H1 Order Block short. However, D1 is broken up & USDX was back to trending. I'm not taking a Short, and expecting it to go far, in that environment. It'd have worked, actually, but that's just tempting fate too much.

If you look at Friday's NYO price action, you can see what it was doing. Which I *still* have no clue what that Price Action is. I've never seen UJ do that. That wasn't Grinding, so I can only assume that's a Decoupling event. Due to UJ being a heavy Cross, all of the action was being countered by a set of Brokers in the UJ itself. At the time I hadn't thought about that possibility, but I knew I didn't want to be involved with the pair for the rest of the day. So I took my good experience from the Week and moved to the side-line.
 

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Update on that Trade Setup.

Late Monday, I was reassessing a few things. I messed up the H4 Market Structure. It had not broken Down. I was trying to force a H1 Swing point to be a H4. It isn't. Which means we're less likely to see the full retrace. We might not hit that level again for a bit.

117.50 is a lot more important than I first thought. .50's are "important", but the work put in at 117.50 sent me back looking more closely. It's a lot clearer in the early 2000s, but 117.50 got worked hard, over many years.

117.80 is the 50% of Friday's Consolidation. The entire range from 117.40 to 118.20 got worked really hard. Given the hard trend we've been on, seems like it was a possible distribution point. (Need to read more up on that the A/D understanding)

Long Tuesday LO @ 117.74, right into that H1 Order Block Stack inside a H4 Order Block, on a Asia Session Stop Run, pre-expected good US News in a few hours.
 
News Event Logic working great.

Power in the City? Not so great.

Backup Cellphone Mobile App? Great... except the connection out of the Cell Tower was also down. Calls/text worked, though!

Battery-based UPS moves up on the Equipment Priority List. (When the DSL modem is run through it, it generally still works through power outages, in the States.

Still in the Trade. Would like it to prove itself more, though.
 
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