Day 28. +7.5. Mexican standoff

Started off not catching a bunch of moves, a couple of them you can see here with my canceled pendings and then having price bust through, hah. I kept watch over myself to make sure anxiousness or impatience didn't creep in. They both came forward a bit but I noticed them and kept them at bay for the most part.

When my trade did hit it it stalled immediately and retraced a little but again, it was one of those times I felt strongly about the direction. Some of the reasons for that were 1) price had been trending down 2) it recently fell through support then retraced and bounced back down 3) though price was moving up after entry it was being forced back down. Felt like it was trying to climb higher but something was forcefully pushing it down and sooner or later it would give and deliver a nice pop.

As price continued to slowly move up against me it got to the point where I planned to exit if it went up another pip. But it came back down and just as I anticipated, it popped down nicely. It went into 2 pips profit, where in the past I would have exited. But I knew this was one of those times I needed to hold a bit longer. Also, I wanted to make sure the reward was worth the risk that I went through when it retraced on me. BUT, I didn't want to get caught up in that and was ready to bail if need be. Holding on in hopes of hitting a target is what got me in trouble when I was trying out larger targets and stops before. So anyway, I held as planned and exited when it seemed like it was gonna reverse. Got a very pleasant 7.5 pip profit.

Done with my session now and just gonna enjoy the morning. This will be the last I write in this blog for the next 2.5 weeks (except for a weekly recap if I have time). I leave to China Sunday night. I thought about trading the Asian session while there. I don't know, just seemed like it would be cool to trade the Asian open while in Asia, hah. But nah, I'd rather sleep in and enjoy my vacation!

For now, I leave you with this masterpiece of a film, of a scene, and of a musical score:

 Addddios!

Day 27. +4.2. Blam blam.

Started at 5am and noticed that for the previous hour price had been making nice moves. But soon as I sat down price ranged between 15pips for a while. I thought about taking a trade when price made a nice little move I but wasn't confident in taking the trade while ranging so stayed out. The next trade I missed because I wasn't fast enough in putting the order in. Also, there weren't many smooth moves so I was just watching and waiting. I noticed myself getting impatient and took a few breaths to calm down and reminded myself that it's better to be out of the market until a good trade comes, rather than being in a bad trade hoping things go my way. So I waited. And waited.

Then a good trade setup came and BLAM. Got it. Then soon after, another trade. Blam x 2.

The second trade actually stalled for a second upon entry. But again, I felt it would be one of those to pop, so I gave it a little more time, and it went in to profit, stalled again, and I exited.

Oh, that's myself (with the rifle) and a friend spotting the target for me during our trip last weekend. Good times. It just beyond the Sierra's and had been snowing. Was freezing. I had on two jackets and two pairs of pants, hah.

In other news, yesterday I got a call from the bone marrow donor program. Few months ago I signed up to be a donor. They called yesterday and said they found a match. So I'll be going in for some tests upon my return from the China trip in a few weeks. If I'm the best match I'll begin the process of donating marrow. In total it will be around 40 hours over a 6 month period. The person who would receive it is a 32 year old male with Leukemia. So we'll see how it goes!

Day 26. +2.1. Skirmishes

Lots of back forth today. Felt like I was fighting a battle. Even though there was lots of movements, price wasn't behaving the way I'd like for most of my trades, though I did come out ahead in the end.

Small profit on first trade, then two consecutive losses. Then an easy win on the fourth trade. The market had been going down hard all morning and I felt that it would continue to do so but price ranged for a bit then rose and came back down. When it headed down I strongly felt that if it broke past the previous low it would continue a bit for a winning trade. So I put in the pending, and the order hit (circled). Enter, the war of the wills. Price immediately stalled, then moved down a tad then up, putting me negative a couple pips. I still felt strongly that price would go down but I started to doubt myself. Normally I would have exited already but I held on, still thinking it would go down. I recalled ForexBird's quote that "assumptions are quickest way to perdition" and gave another thought to exiting. But I didn't feel like I was just hoping it would go down, I actually felt it would based on the trend strength, price action, etc..So cupped my nuts and held on. Price then took a swift dive and stalled once more, which was my cue to exit. As you can see, price continued downward so I left some pips on the table. In a previous post I mentioned that I have to work on holding longer when I feel it will pop well. So today I did that with the entry, but I have to start doing that when it goes in my favor. Hold on a bit longer for a larger profit.

Anyway, 5th trade was a small loss.

Price had been making smooth moves once it hit/crossed the ema so I put in some short pendings to go with the trend. But around 7:10 it seemed to me the trend was changing so I canceled the short and went for my usual breakout/continuation trade, but going long. Which won me the battle and saved the day. Yooo-Joe!

Day 25. -.04. Tiny ones.

Slow session. Took a trade on UsdJpy and it stalled so exited with a .05 loss. Next trade on EurJpy, price hit my trade and sat there for a bit. I tried to hold but it began wobbling back and forth between a few subpips so exited with a small .01 profit. hah.

Got back late yesterday so couldn't get a lot of sleep so Asian it was. Will trade Asian again tomorrow as well.

Day 24. No Trades. Crazy.

Been watching the charts last couple hours and price is crazy. Spread at 2+ pips. Keep seeing huge moves but it's too wild with those spreads. I could get in and immediately have it jump against me by 5+ pips plus spread so I'll just stay out and call it a day.

I won't be back until Monday morning to trade they NY session again. Our backpacking trip has been canceled due to weather. Instead, 3 of us taking a roadtrip to Nevada to meet up with another friend. Lots of camping places out there near his house. So we're gonna go there and do some hiking, camping, shoot some guns and ride some atv's. Gonna be awesome. Aight, see ya all next week!

Day 23. +1.5. Who wrote the book of love?

Just two trades for a total of 1.5 pips. First trade went into tiny profit and stalled so I got out quick. Just in time as price reversed hard. Second trade got some quick profit, stalled again, and got out. Went a bit further but that's cool. Was going to trade some more but I really shouldn't. My girlfriend and I are going through some not so great times right now. Nothing to do with forex though. She's very supportive of that. Anyway, things are a little bumpy with us but we'll be fine. Just probably not the best time to trade. So I'm done for the day. Ohyay.

Day 22. +1.3 Pippy.

Not a whole lot going on today. Got one trade in for 1.3 pips. I had the chance to wait just a moment longer, which I should have done but did not. Price then went higher for several pips. I should have known too. Because price couldn't break that threshold and I knew that if it did it would pop up nicely. So I should have held juuuust a bit longer. Live and learn!

Day 21. +16.3 Back to the boulevard

Went back to the old setup. I'm also starting back at day 21. Make myself work longer until the next leg of the 60 day challenge.

I'll be trading Asian this week because I'll be gone this coming weekend on a backpack trip and want to spend time with my girlfriend before I go. Which is hard to do trading the NY. So Asian for now. Anyway, one trade on Eur for a tiny win. Then noticed the Jpy jumping all over and the exact setups I look for. So got some trades in there. Lag in Oanda kicked in although it turned out well. The last trade showed movement in my favor on the NT charts. But Oanda price wasn't moving at all, even after the 10+ pip movement. My Oanda p/l showed a loss on the trade of .6, so just over half a pip. I thought that sucked but didn't want to have price jump against me so I exited with what I thought was a lose. A little irritated because it should have been a nice win but looked like a loser due to lag. Fortunately, at the end of the session I found that the trade did work as it should have and I did get the 10pips. So bueno.

Gettin my mind right

No trades today. Won't be trading tomorrow either.

My mind obviously isn't in the right place so I've gotta take a step back and take a breather. It was nice to sleep to 7am this morning though! Holy shit that was great, hah.

Monday though, it's on.

Day 26. -18. Ugh

Don't have access to chart shot from today but I took 4 trades. 3 losers, one breakeven. hah. A bit disheartening. Not really sure what to do. Feel like I'm in limbo. I started this making consistent small gains. Now that I've changed up the style I'm making large consistent losses, hah. Maybe that's the issue. Go back to what I was originally doing? The # of trades I took doing that were so few each day that I'm worried I wouldn't know if it's profitable long term until it's too late. I don't know. I don't know.

Day 27. -25. The Thunder from down under.

2 trades enter, 2 trades lose. Welcome to the Thunderdome, bitch!

Yeah, that wasn't fun. Kinda hard to tell if I did anything wrong here. The only thing that I can possibly see is that the second trade did start to reverse gears a bit before stopping me out. However, it did the same exact thing yesterday so I exited early only to see it go back the original way and would have hit my initial target. So not sure about that.

The other thing I can think of is that there was no news today. Maybe with news price would have continued in one direction longer. Bleh.

Day 26. -18. OBEY.

Today was a pretty disappointing day. The trend was down so beautifully but I got negative pips. Shiiiiet. Going back over it though it seems pretty clear to me why I did so bad. I didn't identify the swing high/low's well enough. Fuck. Also, I jumped out of a trade too early. And I also took a trade when I thought the trend had changed but seeing as how the trend was down was steady I should have waited longer to ensure the trade really had changed. Even though today was my worst day, the fact that I can see why is a bit reassuring. No floundering in the dark. My fuck ups are plain as day and tomorrow morning I'm gonna chew some bubble gum and kick some ass. And wouldn't you know, I'm all outta bubble gum.

Day 25. +13.9 Smoothies.

Two trades today. First trade almost reached the 3R point. But to make sure I didn't just lose all those pips I brought the stop up to around the 2R point which was then hit. Eventually price started trending upward but each of the breakouts of the previous high would not give me the correct R:R ratio. However, I noticed that each time the price dipped below the ema then crossed back again it would continue in that direction enough to make my RR. So I entered and soon price began to stall. I worked on being patient but often when I see price surge and make long smooth moves, as this had been doing, then repeat the pattern but in a stuttered motion it often means the end of the trend. So thinking that there was a much higher chance of losing this trade I exited. Price would have later hit my target, hah, but oh well.

One good thing I noticed was my emotions with having a larger RR. Knowing that I only needed around 1 in 3 winners really helped me to relax. I was still a little back and forth in my emotions when it looked like I was going to be stopped out but it was much better than yesterday.

Day 24. -14. Caca

That's not the entire chart, first part is cut off otherwise is too compressed.

Anyway, this is proving more challenging than I thought it would. I'm really used to getting in and out fast. So holding on presents me with a few challenges:
 
1) The time spent waiting for the target to be hit. My thoughts were back and forth. "Ahhh, this fuckin sucks. About to lose this trade. Oh wait, it's turning around, cmon keep going. Yesss..oh wait it's coming back. Shit! Go the other wayyyyyyyy!" and repeat. I must work on remaining calm. I have the patience to watch the screens for 3 hours until a good set up comes so I know I have the patience for this if I apply myself. I will do it.

2) I'm not use to the size of losses. The larger wins will offset the losses but still, mentally I'm aghast when I see a 10+ pip loss when I'm used to seeing 1 or 2 pips. This then puts me in a bit of a funk thinking I'm further behind than I am. This then led to the last challenge...

3) This was the dumbest thing I did. At the end I felt really far behind and felt the pressure to hit a homerun. The last trade on the chart was a 15pip winner at one point but I was gunning for 20+. Had I taken that 15pips when the price seemed to have trouble I would have come out a small winner for the day. However, it felt like in order for the day to be worth the trouble I went through in the previous trades I needed to have at least a 10+ pip day. So I held on. Price went down down down. And THEN, I had to get to work so I left the trade on and went to work. Check on prices later and saw I must have been stopped out. Now that was soooooo stupid. There is no way I'd leave a trade like that if I were trading several lots so why the hell do it now? Stupid stupid choice. Which just illustrates to me that I need to make some changes to my mindset in order to successfully trade PA setups with larger losses/wins.

So how do I overcome these challenges...

1) I will have to be aware of my mental state. When feeling flustered I will breathe slow. I'll do some pushups. I will remind myself it's all part of the plan.

2) This will resolve itself I think. As I trade this way more often I'll get used to the size differences. But if I start feeling flustered, see #1.

3) This one will be the most challenging. But a good place to start is probably to put myself in situations where I'm more likely to win a trade that will cover several losses. Something like a 3:1 ratio in profit to risk. So far most of my trades have been 1:1. So when I lose a couple in a row I feel pressure to now win 2 to 3 in a row. But with a 3:1 ratio I can be right just once in 3 times and still come out walkin like I'm in the lollipop guild.

Day 23. +.6. Multicharts and GBPUSD

I noticed that since I hit my milestone the other day, I've suddenly felt like I'm better at trading than I actually am. And that since I was able to follow rules that now it's ok to start changing them all up. That's retarded. I need to continue sticking to a plan and giving it time to prove it's worth.

Instead of going back and forth between 1-2 pip momentum moves vs Price Action. I'm going to stick with Price Action. It means that lag will be less of an issue as will spread since the targets will be larger. It also means I can use just one program to chart and trade (multicharts). Lastly, using PA, for me, is less mentally fatiguing and easier to gauge my progress. The one thing I am changing though is the pair I trade. GBPUSD tends to make longer moves than EURUSD so I'll be trading that from here on in. Spread is larger but since I'll be using profit targets (limit orders) I get a small credit back from MBT based on their new paid for limits thing. So the overall cost will be diminished a bit which is great.

And on to the chart...first trade kicked me in the ass. It might be a difference in the way GBP acts vs the EUR because I did not expect it to bounce like that right there. And would be pretty certain the EUR would have chopped a bit more which would have told me to get out. Which makes sense. I mentioned before that GBP moves longer than EUR. So perhaps this was an example of that. Anyway, lost that trade.

Second trade I was almost stopped out. Made it out alive by the skin of my nails (nails don't have skin!) and hit my target.

Third trade lost again. Same way as the first.

Fourth trade was a small winner. News was scheduled for 7am and the trade was into 6:57 so I just exited to be safe. Didn't want to get caught in some crazy news movement.

Last trade broke the ceiling making the highest high in a while. There was no specific resistance to target so I made an educated guess at 6330. But price moved up hard and I figured it would break that level so I increased the target to 6360. However, price stalled a bit at 6340 and the momentum side of me said "Get the fuck out, NOW!!!" so I exited. Practically perfect exit.

In the end I was up almost 5 pips but commission took most of that away. Left me with .6. hah. But that's cool. It's just the beginning.

Day 22. No trades.

Slow movements and then when the news at 7am hit, price was smooth sailing. Made nice moves, just what I look for. See screenshot:

But, Oanda spread was 1.5 and I usually don't trade unless it's 1.2 or lower. Then it hit me. Duuuuurrrr. The moves that I look for, those smooth end to end bars, are a result of volatility. And volatility usually happens after the open and after news. During news, when prices go crazy, Oanda spreads are 10+. Immediately following the news, when price settles down a bit and make those smooth moves, Oanda spread is 1.5 - 2pips. So I often can't trade the moves that are best for my style. I've been watching the MBT spread each day since day 1. And during the times of those moves spread varies from 1/10 of a pip to a full pip. So during these moves and including commissions, at it's worst MBT is the same as Oanda and at it's best it's lower than Oanda. The problem though is the lag I experienced with MC. I'll give it another shot though. There so many pro's about using MC with MBT over Oanda with NT on MBT that it's worth giving another look.