Short-term trading for 2024

Hi,

Going to post some trades here. I'm 22 and I have been around the markets for a few years but struggled with consistency and sticking to doing one thing for more than a few weeks / months. I decided to become more systematic in my trading and post setups here to keep me accountable to stick to the same trading approach and not hop to another system after one losing week or seeing someone on twitter post 420R profit scalping the mexican peso futures on the 30 second chart.

My trading system is pretty simple, D1 & W1 charts to generate trade ideas and H1 chart for execution. I trade support and resistance. I trade 12 markets: FX majors, SPX, NAS, DAX, gold and oil.

I am on demo and my goal is to prove consistency before attempting to go live. Not even consistency in profitability because that can't be proven on demo, but consistency in sticking to one trading system for more than 2 months. If I can't follow the same routine for more than a few weeks at a time before falling off the wagon I have no chance. In January 2024 I will go live.

Trade #0:
AUD/USD LONG

I am currently in this trade.

+ AUD has been showing relative strength over the past few weeks and is at weekly support.
+ It traded into the range low daily support level.
+ Range high has equal highs that may be targeted.

Hourly break of structure at the daily level, entered on Thursday at the retest.

Trade #1:
Crude Oil SHORT

I am looking to get into this next week.

- We had a indecisive week after putting in a couple heavy up-weeks and reaching weekly resistance. I think poking below this week's low next week is a reasonable expectation, see if there's more willing bidders below.
- There are 2 obvious levels on the daily chart, resistance at ~90.50 and support / imbalance at ~87.50. If the resistance holds I think we rotate to the gap to fill it.
- The market bounced at the resistance a few times, eventually poked above and found more sellers and broke lower.

Looking to enter at the resistance on the hourly based on how we reacted to it intraday. If you add volume to the chart you can also see high participation at the highs with the market failing to push past the resistance.

Working up the motivation to prepare for next week... why am I so lazy? Do I need cold showers or some other sigma male internet entrepreneur bs to motivate me?

Got short oil in the morning as laid out earlier. Current weakness to work on: just letting the market do its thing and not opening up tradingview every 5 minutes to see how your position is doing. Sitting in class looking at tradingview on phone every 15 min when the trade is expected to take days to play out, most dumbest thing ever.

I have been way too busy and stressed to trade this past few weeks really. Working on personal life & routine, acting like a child at 22 is just not ok. Have some self respect

Update on oil short: should have TPd at the D1 swing low (which is also previous week's low!! good TP point), should not have gotten greedy for lower. When in an uptrend you don't just start targeting way lower. There was a fantastic H1 SFP long opportunity too, in line with the HTF trend and on a deep swing point. Given just how strong oil has been you could realistically target even some old weekly highs or something.

AUD/USD long just stopped me out, it is a decent setup but I could have considered not taking it because I was bullish USD after all.

I will add that in the oil short, every time it came back up and printed a scary looking H1 candle I got the urge to get out. I clearly have some anxiety when my trade is open which makes me want to get out every time it moves against me. This is a leak to be aware of.

Past weeks had no time. With studying and trading at the same time routine is extremely important. I have like none. Skill issue

Still had very little time. I decided to drop SFPs tho and only focus on S/D zone entries. Yes there are some great SFP setups like the oil long but my skill is not high enough to be that flexible with multiple setups. I will only trade S/D zones because that is what I have the most experience with and I still have very little time to actually look at markets day to day.

SFPs are quite time consuming as you have to be there for the close / they can form quickly. S/D zones on the other hand you often see form many hours or even days in advance, so you can spot them and wait for the setup and trade it even if you can't check the charts every hour.

This is my entry checklist:

1. Enter at S/D zone on H1 chart
2. The S/D zone is the last up-close before a down move or last down-close before a up move
3. S/D zone is:
   1. In line with HTF (D1, W1) structure
   2. At HTF level

4. It has to break structure to be valid, and the bigger / more aggressive the move the better.
5. Clear target of obvious stops above old highs / below old lows (can be from W1/D1/H1)

I look through the markets on the W1 & D1 and wait for a clear bias / level. Then I look to execute on the H1. This is basically what every price action trader does, I just defined that I will use these timeframes.

Two trade examples, I watched these but didn't even take on demo. Not taking credit or saying I would have traded but just showing examples for reference.

DAX SHORT and USD/CAD SHORT:

Nasdaq 100 (CFD) SHORT

Ranging for about 2 weeks, and failed to push below a weekly swing low / into W1 support. We broke above the range on Friday.
Monday gave a re-test of range high (I drew it as highest candle body of the range). H1 break of structure and retest at the US stock market open for the entry.
Due to the weekly looking quite good I targeted quite high up. It was a mistake to target past D1 resistance. I should just have gone for the obvious stops and not tried to stretch it.

Potential 5.9R long turned into ~2R. Very clean setup, I messed it up by going for an unrealistic target.

I am finding it very hard to actually pay attention / care / stick to a routine when trading on demo. I'm going to just go live now with a medium size funded account challenge. I've heard other people say it too, demo trading is mostly a waste of time.

First trade on $50k funded account challenge: NQ short, +1.8R, mistakes made. Good H1 supply zone (strong move away, broke structure, in line with HTF bias, at HTF level). Simply tried to hold for too big of a move. Should have gotten out at obvious stops for +4R. I wanted to go for a really big move, there was some logic with DXY risk off but still it's just greed. Risked 0.5% so up about 0.9%. 10% profit target, might hit in 1 month if lucky.

I don't normally trade it but I thought I might want to look at Silver. I saw this:

1. Poked below long-term lows into W1 support.
2. Logical to target internal range liquidity next, W1 swing high in the middle of the range.
3. D1 S/R level at long-term range low.
4. Clean H1 entry, checks all boxes

I am NOT in this trade, just studying what will happen. I see no reason not to add this to my traded markets if it moves well (at least sometimes).

WTI Crude Oil SHORT
Here's another setup, D1 level which was previous support for weeks and had a big move away. Targeting the D1 swing low and current week's low. Also equal lows on the intraday view. I think it's a pretty obvious target if we do go lower, a lot of stops under there after the big upmove last 2 days.
The only problem and reason I'm not taking this is that the H1 is a bit unclear. We didn't make a HH and just broke a swing low which lead to LH. This basically to me means that either it just keeps going higher or it drops off RIGHT NOW.

I just don't feel as confident as if we broke structure after making a HH on the H1, so I will stay out. But it could work.

This is why you wait for the H1 break to look really nice and clean.

Crude oil - clean and strong break in structure on H1. Selling at the H1 supply zone. I have a bad feeling tho, with the way that it failed to go anywhere on high volume after the downmove. But the price action is clear and I can't let my opinion get in the way. I put on 0.5% risk.

Betting on the market going straight through support? Is this really a good idea? I think so. The trade is based on the daily chart. Can't micromanage it on the H1 or you'll just make mistakes. The current week's low and D1 swing low is a good target.

Stopped out for +0.2R. I am done for the week here, I feel lucky to be up 2R on the week considering that I have not been on top form. Better next week. Here's the MT5 screenshot of the trades of the week:

This was the week's performance. +2R, can't complain I guess. Should have been much more given the way NQ went. Nice to see some green, hoping for more. I really like PnL calendars, consistent performance looks so good.

lets go forsen