Jay's interpolation (connecting dots)

Hello,

I don't know if it's the right place to post. Let me know if it is not.

The idea is to create a journal with my thoughts, ideas, trades, in all honesty. Feel very free to add your own deviations!

Pardon me if my english will be sometimes a bit, I'd say, disrupted. I am Canadian but english is not my first language. French is.

I developped interest for forex particularly in junuary of this year. Since then I'm filling my computer with word documents, screenshots. My desk is a mess. etc.

I am eating all the information I can. And now I must drop it somewhere else than everywhere in my room.

This journal is the perfect place.


I composed this out of the blue this morning (EST). I thought it was appropriate for a first post.


Stop biasing.
Evrything is in front of my eyes for me to see. There are trades that will go against me but thats OK. If I refuse to see things as they are I must admit I will never enter a decent trade. Im condemned if I think in terms of a single trade and I keep questionning myself about why it went wrong. I need to always stand on the shoulder of giants. This is : considering only my overall P/L for a decent period. A single trade is nothing! Of course its part of the wheel but really I cant count on a single trade. And I dont know which ones will pay. But some will pay for sure, and this is why I have to be in the market during those times of high probability. In accordance with Support/Resistance. All the while protecting my assets : S/L, appropriate leverage, Target, appropriate margin use, appropriate broker.

What I see this morning is what the charts are telling me : Moving averages , fibos , divergences, Highs & Lows, - : Supports and Resistances ; there is nothing more or less

TL;DR I never think in terms of a single trade. It opens my eyes on the way the market works/not in line with my calls on a % basis.

By the way I want to make it clear that I am not trying in any way to provide trading signals or any bs as such. Most of those trades I will take and place here I highly recommend to NOT follow. They are a newb's mind interpretation of the market. Not an interpretation you would want to follow.

I am trading EUR/JPY only. I adopted this pair as my pair of choice. Simply because this is the pair I started with.

Any pair is good. But I had to choose only one and focus on it.

My style of trading requires full attention directed at one place.

I am not saying trading multiple pair or even basket trading is not good. It is just not my style and I recognize that perfectly.

I am trading on a long term structure with a single pair that is.

Yesterday something happened. I took a trade and I did not post it here. I could try to vizualize this in as many angles as possible if Id want to hide the truth. The truth is I was afraid of being wrong. And I state it another way : I let my emotion overide my plan to post my trade here. This is not a physical mistake as such. It is a mistake in the realm of confidence. Lack of confidence. I lack confidence as a trader.


Trading is not about me being wrong or right.

For the curious here is the trade in question.

Attached Image (click to enlarge)

I notice that at the moment of taking my trade I was becoming very tired and it could have been a very bad mix on the psychological level (i.e. forcing a trade : the exact thing I am trying to avoid. We dont know what might happen when our min dis blurred. Fortunately it was not but it could have become so.)

I fell asleep very deeply after that and did not hear various alarms throughout the process of the trade. I was confident in the trade but it needed monitoring, like most of my trades (a pinch of it).

Dont get me wrong though I enjoy taking a trade, not forcing it, and moving on and only coming back to see if either of S/L or T/P has been hit. I focus on long term BUT yesterdays entry was a returnal with already an hidden divergence showing at last low.

First market retraced from it fast and gained imbalance with hits on resistances at high levels (I use 1H chart and 4H) that was a proper sell in my opinion even if that trend was considered done by some because of hidden div. It is a question of momentum in my opinion. I think about it, my entry was in the moment, the hidden divergence was (by the fact of the retrace) in the past.

The hidden div. is the reason I put my T/P 10 pips above last low. Because I thought lower levels would be hard to break in order to create a lower low. Better safe than sorry. It almost got triggered. Wasnt safe enough. Intraday move. Life goes on.

Now, that was clearly from the beginning not a long term entry mostly it was intraday entry. I should have selected 40 pips. An intraday entry for me is 40 pips. Sometimes i twill be 20 pips depending on market conditions.

This was my first trade of the week.

Will talk further about it. Now it is documented.

S/L in less than 5 minutes.
Barely had time to write about the trade !

Entry at 20H00
Just to make sure it is stated before (now after) facts : this is an emotional trade.

First I have no predefined S/L and/or T/P.

I put those at random levels.

I traded as such because I Dont allow myself to trade between 17 and 20. At exactly 20 :00 some psychoemotional factor came into play because I was eager and thought this is now with the new Daily things will move. I needed to take the entry because of this novelty of a candle.

I’m able to state all this minutes after taking the trade, while it was running (now it is done).

Why did I take the entry in the frist place ?! That is what I need to overcome. I have food for thoughts.


Don't get me wrong ! that trade was very different in terms of feelings and intentions than let's say, my trade yesterday. Today I was out for supper and went in and at this moment I look at my chart and totally subjectively put a sell order. The demo psyche comes into play a lot too. The f* it moment is more tempting. I have a small live account. But I don't use it since Brexit. You can totally see why.

I am over for today. Trading immediatly after a loss is a bad idea in my opinion.

Or is it according too much credit to that loss? Only I decide and the right thing to do will be clearer over time.

‘’Trade only what the market says it will do’’

My goal is to trade only what the market ‘’communicates’’ very clearly to me.

You will think : but Jay, what about your last entry?

I know.. It was pretty lame.

The good news is I truly want to adress the issue appropriatedly. I know this is something major with me. I am aware that I take very bad emotional trades more often than not.

I already made a checklist before, without very clear intentions. I need to work on it. The checklist will help if I create the correct association in my brain each time: no trade if the checklist comes out as negative. I have to take the time to check the few important things when I start seeing an entry (I’m aiming long term entries so I have much time to see the picture drawing itself anyway).

It is always when I come back to my charts a couple hours later that I take the worst entries. For example, I leave my charts and come back 3 hours later like today and I literally take an entry out of a kind of habit. The old ingrained habit of feeling left out and that something is happening but we’re not part of it; plus the simple need for action. Yet I am able to wait hours on end sitting and reading and taking notes. But as soon as I ‘’disconnect’’ and come back to my trading spot there’s a mental gap to be filled between reality and screen, but I will NOT fill it with bad entries anymore lol.
I had already come with the idea of : the first entry of the day I let it go. In order to filter bad early session entries. But this is kind of restraining my week of trading because I am aiming for long term entries : my ideal entry levels are not met often. I already try to avoid Monday and Friday afternoon ( I always stay tuned anyway but never take entries). I don’t want to create unwanted stress where I’d miss ideal entry on Tuesday because I need to let the first trade go. No!

What I need to do is to gradually turn my mind on until I slowly accomodate to the trading mindset. WIth trading mindset there is no more wtf entries. I don’t plan on making it super long, just a kind of ritual involving meditation/vizualisation of, for example a perfect trade under my criteria and taking slowly the mental time to check if everything is correct with that mental trade. Then I put it mentally live and get mentally rich !

In all seriousness, I think that just taking some time before I get into the game to sort things out and be sure I don’t sit in front of the screen with unwanted bias will be the beginning of the solution.

I think about perfect entries. Why are they labelled ''perfect''?

My answer is because they are favoring us. They has an edge.

Systems are built to highlight this fact. They do so in very very particular manners under certain market conditions in different fashions not everytimes. It let me with a random occurance of the patterns I am after. And chances are there that I will halucinate some patterns. Even if it is not on purpose, what I am doing in these times is called Gambling. If I use a system but I don't trade exclusively the full setups it highlights then I am seriously sabotaging the outcome.

Enough for tonight. Good night!

This is the checklist I came up with.


1) Did you just open your charts and saw something and felt an urge?
2) Is there a news incoming?
3) Are you disrespecting the not Sunday/Monday rule (Sunday 17 :00 to Monday 17 :00)?
4) Are you disrespecting the ‘’not between 17 :00 and 20 :00’’ rule?
5) Are you disrespecting a rule within a single trade(The edge exists through a combination of factors)?
6) Are you counter-trading?
7) Are you trading without a s/r level?
8) Are you subjective? Everything has been taken into consideration?

The goal is to get as many No as possible.

For each and evry trade I have an excel sheet where I'll combine the Yes and No. At the end of the week I will select the rule which has been the most disrespected. The second week, if I have only one Yes for that column I stop trading for the whole week.

By the way I took a trade at 14:00 after FOMC :



This is the third trade of the week.

For my last trade I had 4 No and 3 Yes.

This is a bit high considering I took the trade anyway. :0

So I closed the trade. I was very lucky I could realize and close it near my entry level.

I am happy because I did the right thing

When I realize I made a mistake I lose no time and act.

I updated my checklist if anyone is interested to look at it :

It is a very personal checklist which refers to some of my pet peeve's as a reminder before I jump in the water.

I believe a checklist must be simple and easily comprehensible.

As I stated yesterday I had already created one but it was drafty as hell.

I have two yes on my checklist. The last question is pretty subjective and I answered yes because at the moment implemanting all this is a step further and I fear leaving something out due to information overload. The other yes is a problem with target and stop. I feel subjective about them, particularly the T/P. I feel I'll have to monitor the trade and be careful when time to T/P. I say this because this week my T/P was miss by a couple pips because I was sleeping lol.

Just got stopped out

I had a ''tight'' S/L : 16 pips. I usually put 40 pips. What I did this time is put my S/L a bit above the previous high on the 1H.

Anyway I am cool with it. I respected my checklist and losses happen.

This is my fifth trade of the week taken at 13h03.



I took it a bit early for my taste. The best would have been to wait for a hit on support instead of taking it in the void.

''Understanding oneself''

What are my ideas about this subject? What does it mean?

It means to know what are the common trap that I am most likely to fall into. Particularly emotionally.

Exemple : -becoming frustrated after/during/before a trade
-Being overconfident because of a serie of wins.
- etc.

When we know ourselves only then can we put measures to contain the bad behavior that's within and get back to the reality of trading.

T/P