Journey to consistency

Uptrend still intact.
If I see a bullish candle I'll attempt a long.

But price retraced below the mood indicator (blue line) that doesn't mean much if the HH and HL's are intact nevertheless I should be careful just in case if this turns to the downside.

Lost -10pips on long attempt

Decided to wait until price jumps above the mood indicator I have a feeling that retrace was too steep ? maybe bears are just around the corner if the low is taken out that's a trouble for the bulls but we don't have a LH yet.

I have the get the "right" low.

London low is out I'm not feeling that retrace I'm not bullish no more.
Last attempt.

will wait if there's LH.

-19pips

the more I trade the more I seem to lose.
calling it a day here.

from tomorrow and onwards I'll only trade London and will try to capture the major tide - max 3 entries are allowed.
lower TFs can really drag you into a deep deep hole, if you don't know when to stop and can't orient.

In the meantime daily trades are going

I closed GBPCAD and EURNZD because I wasn't feeling them.
Now the remaining two are floating above +250 pips

Closed GBPNZD cash rate is coming up tomorrow for kiwi in the AM just to be safe.
I didn't realize I held GBPNZD through inflation hearings that didn't seem to do much to it really, and I'm on daily.

+98pips.

I've got GBPAUD and GBPCHF longs running.

Just scanned more pairs I've also got few yen pairs on the watchlist, HL's are developing.
USDCHF is also at a critical level coming up to a resistance.

Btw EURCAD now looking back don't seem bullish at all although it did make HH and HL's it failed to bounce back up and kept dropping further - that retrace was too steep to be considered a correction same goes for DAX... that fall I'm seeing that now ! although I'm loving daily I'll have to keep up my beloved DAX going on the side because I learn so much !

CAD is the strongest comm, USD seems to be the strongest major

I'm liking what I see on USDCAD (short) and AUDJPY (long)

Kiwi dropped after the announcement now I'm starting to think on daily I shouldn't be bothered with news releases however big the maybe as the prices already seem to factor those in.

Since USD seems to be the strongest out of the majors camp and CAD out of the comm camp I'm a little wary on USDCAD combo, But I definitely like AJ long, GJ long is also in , well almost all of yen pairs are headed up I mean the up move is building up on daily but since USD and CAD has been so strong there has been little retracement so not a good place to enter.

Closed GA long on demo as it retraced back against me +58pips, also closed GBPCHF long at +18pips
Currently I have AJ long and UC short running altogether about +85pips.

In the meantime I've lost -30pips on DAX this morning on my live.... if I keep losing on my live and making pips on my demo it doesn't make any sense that I keep trading DAX on live and daily on demo.

I'm really close to calling it quits with 5m, I'm applying the same concept swing HI swing LO, sell the LH buy the HL etc... and the contrast is very obvious maybe I'm not built for trading lower TF's yes I did learn so much trading 5m and my progress probably would have been slower if I were trading daily in that sense what I have paid thus far is nothing.

My current DD is at -2% yes it's nothing compared to -99% where I was before twice and I hate to be in that place again so I"m concerned and becoming wary of how things are running on my live, I mean it's obvious that something is wrong with me now you could argue few months back but I'm only learning, I'm supposed to make mistakes when I'm in the learning phase but now things have changed somewhat because I have a solid reason to enter trades and not some voodoo magic in other words I'm not 100% dependent on few lines on my chart , plus I'm trying to apply exact same concept for both daily and 5m something's not right with me on 5m and I believe it's not the system stopped working on 5m this time around because I've got no system, it's me my mentality screwing things up when I'm on 5m.

I'd do anything within my power to avoid digging myself in a deep hole -99.9% again, I need to learn from my mistakes it's happened twice I'm absolutely sure that I do not need another apocalyptic scenario 3 don't think I can recover from that mentally and emotionally.

I think the good thing about daily is that since my SL has to be much larger and since it takes couple of days for the setup to develop whether I like it or not I'll have to be very careful what to place my bets on, I'll do 1 setup at a time with so many pairs on the watchlist don't think there's going to be lack of good setups. I'm seriously considering the pros and the cons.

DAX, what can I say I am disappointed in myself not you...ok I admit that I hate myself for not performing well but me hating myself that's not going to change anything so to move forward I need an action, the right action - this is not a time to drown myself into one of those long dark depressive episodes, I ain't got no time for that gotta keep moving forward life is too short and my time is ticking.

So I'm going to use what I have learnt from trading the beast and also Jupiter and his marvelous journal and apply them on daily as I have been on my demo but this time on my live and see how things get on ? what do you say journal ? is that the right action ?

I'm a bit skeptical when you say that you learned so much trading the 5 min time frame. My opinion is that the lower you go, the more "noise" you get and the more difficult it becomes. Try the 1 min and if you need more adrenaline, try trading the ticks !

That's maybe why you are successful trading the daily, where the candlestick levels have, in my view, more meaning and where all the inside "noise" is filtered, that exact noise that you try to trade in the 5 min !

There is also a feel of urgency in your post, it looks like you give all the time to the daily trades to develop because you don't really care as it's not real money, while at the same time you are in a hurry in your 5 min where there is real money to be made...

That's not to say that something is better or bad, a lot of guys are successful scalping the 1 min chart and that's fine but if you struggle at it, before going that low, you know that there is a world of time frames in between, so why don't you try them and see how it goes ?

Some thoughts that maybe could widen your thinking...

For this month thus far I'm down -0.78%
% wise I'm doing worse than I did the prior month, but I do feel like I'm making a progress.

I have about 10 days left until the month ends.
I need to straighten things up.

I did babble on about changing the trajectory (trading daily and going back to currencies) I had been jumping from 1 thing to another looking for the next best thing. So I haven't been consistent but I have been trading DAX exclusively for the past 6 months and on and off for about a year and a half so familiarity is developing for DAX making it difficult and illogical for me to change things "again".

I'm going to push myself to turn things around this month while still keeping my lot size same as how I have been trading since my first loss in Mar, I think I am getting the hang of things of course I still do misread and make errors but what's holding me back from recovery is that I had been really bad at holding trades "good trades" and I had been trading too much !

So I'll stay 4 hours a day from London, and will limit myself to two entries max per session.

This run up doesn't look like a proper uptrend for now plus we've made LL and there's been LH until it makes a HL bears are in power.

I am starting to differentiate between a proper uptrend and just a retracement, and correction in an uptrend the dynamics !!

Let's wait and see.

If I'm not consistent in my approach, and keep hopping around from method to another I'll never reach consistency hard cold fact, when something stops working I used to hop around between different currency pairs/indexes and methods hoping to find the perfect solution instead of working hard on what I already had I have wasted countless precious hours doing just that.

Reality check :

where am I now ?
have things gotten any better ?

big fat no.
I'm still a sore loser as I always have been.
I think I have a commitment problem in all areas of my life, and it is affecting how I trade.

I remember reading from FTI's thread "that you can lie to some people all the time, all people some of the time, but not to all people, all the time, similarly, theses studies can work in some market conditions all the time, all market conditions some of the time, but not all market conditions all of the time."

How profound that statement was !

I have traded divergence and have faded moves and traded countertrend on DAX but after few consecutive winners when I hit my first loss on my live acc I was proven wrong again that trading can't be simplified, and for those of you who still thinks it is simple it is not ! but I can only wish it was.

So naturally I started encountering losers when the conditions weren't right.

Do I have clear rules and mental roadmap ?
Half yes

Do I follow my rules ?
No

Then why do I keep hitting a brick wall ?
Now that I have written things down I think the reason is obvious.

Bottom line is that I do not have a robust method, clear rules and appropriate mental roadmap to be trading the markets live.

what I have is, half done half perfected methods...

I don't think it makes any difference what I choose, because I think all are valid in their own right but what matters out of all is how I use them and how I put it all together.

So what do I do now ?

I don't think at this point I should change anything, although I'm losing still because the problem isn't DAX or the Tf the problem lies with me and how I trade. But I'm not going to rule out the possibility of me going back to what worked until it stopped working and really narrow down to when it works and when it doesn't and build a robust system along with a clear mental roadmap. I need some time to think what I should do next.

Out of everything I've tried the promising ones were

a. Divergence and MAs on 1h
b. Countertrend trades on DAX

plus what I have been doing since Mar although I'm not 100% sure what I was doing no wonder I kept losing.

Now both of these method do not work all the time since they are somewhat mechanical but helps me identify opportunities in that sense I do have a rule and mental roadmap with these two but both needs a lot of work and needs a lot of familiarizing to do.

now I can either pick and choose either 1 of those and go with that knowing full well their limitations.

or

build a robust method based on what I have observed and learned the past 3 months.

I have to go with the one I'm most familiar with and the one that pays enough with minimal risk and less working hours.

Can I build a robust method based on what I have learned the past 3 months ?

Absolutely, and I am inclined towards keeping thing as usual and not change course again and more importantly I think the foundation I've built the past 3 months is the truth so as I get better and better at identifying opportunities this should work all the time and since I am trading on 5m it also means that its the least risk and least time plus I've always liked that I had set time for work and not keep checking the charts every 1h or 30m.

I've learnt to assess the terrain not fully but I am putting some of the pieces together, identifying the trend differentiating correction from the impulse wave. That's a progress so I'm not too depressed about hitting a wall again this time around.

Now I whilst I was learning to assess the terrain I haven't been paying any attention to patterns, and now I'm realizing patterns are what makes me pull the trigger, I need to go for it at the right time plus pattern can confirm my assessment.

 

1. Assess the terrain (Determine the high's and low's , tell apart correction from impulse wave, drawing signficant levels of resistance and support)
2. Pattern recognition

Assessing the terrain.

I will mark significant levels of support and resistance when I get to work when Frankfurt opens.

For today I did lose a bunch of trades nothing new there business as usual I'm in the business of losing , but most of them were along with the main direction which was up since the beginning of London but things didn't go so smoothly you'd think if you have figured out the direction or if you're trading with the trend or wave it's easy peasy but turns out timing that entry at least to me seems much more challenging and difficult.

So after a lot of obstacles and challenges I'm slowly but surely building up my mental roadmap to be more coherent and above all precise so that I can see price in a structural pattern whereas just few weeks ago I was all over the place gambling away without any observation and intention.

I feel like it is all coming together piece by piece, the jigsaw puzzle I have been trying to solve the past few years, months and weeks. The truth ( ) I'm coming for you ! watch out how I dance those "moves"

On top of not knowing the terrain in and out , I think this has been the problem for me and trading on 5m didn't make things any easier as things shift and transition from one point of reference to another so much faster on 5m than say on 1h or daily. But I am getting used to the tempo on 5m especially DAX, I just need to hone my skill to assess the terrain and execute my steps with the rhythm.

Mental roadmap

Price either goes up or goes down - I'm not going to count ranges in an uptrend or downtrend because a range will soon transition into a trend, up or down.

Uptrend is characterized by series of HH's and HL's
Downtrend is characterized by series of LH's and LL's

Now it's easy for me just copy paste the theory but I have practiced recognizing the right High's and the right Low's - I used to include range high's and low's and get all confused but I think finally I'm getting the hang of counting the right high's and low's in an uptrend and in a downtrend and I am also learning to tell correction apart from impulse wave in an uptrend or in a downtrend.

And in an uptrend there's impulse wave which is an up move and a correction wave which is a down move
In a downtrend there's also impulse wave which is a down move and a correction wave which is an up move

Let's summarize what I have just babbled on,

Uptrend HH HL
- impulse wave
- correction wave

Downtrend LH LL
- impulse wave
- correction wave

Continuing on when price goes up in an impulse wave or down in a correction wave it doesn't go up or down in a linear fashion on a straight line but more like a zigzag pattern in other words if there's a move there's a PB. Let's add that detail into the mental roadmap.

Uptrend HH HL
- impulse wave --> MOVE + PB
- correction wave --> MOVE + PB

Downtrend LH LL
- impulse wave --> MOVE + PB
- correction wave --> MOVE + PB

Trading is all about the now, knowing the big picture is essential assessing the high's low's and determining if I am trading the impulse wave in an uptrend or correction wave in a downtrend but as fti rightfully pointed out hanging on the past and already gone present moment <point of reference> can have a detrimental effect on your psyche and on your account balance as I have found out myself. So I am learning to move along with the present moment while of course keeping the big picture in the background - this is hard.

So how do I know the now ?

Any disease even cancer begins within a single cell and as time goes on the faulty gene affects the whole cell to few thousands to a whole organ and as more time goes on to a system of organs eventually the whole system crash. Detecting the faulty area as early as possible can stretch or even save one's life. The longer you keep a faulty bug the more detrimental the consequences will be.

So how will I know if impulse wave in an uptrend is turning into a correction wave ? or a downtrend impulse wave ? how is this metaphor going to relate to trading ?

It's usually best to detect the faulty bug as early as possible, but I don't think modern medicine has reached that level just yet but maybe in 10 or 15 years we may even get to eliminate certain faulty genes ! not even cells prior birth how convenient ! but of course as with everything that should come with a hefty price tag for those who can't afford maybe better to leave faith to their destiny.

Getting back to trading to detect any change I should also look at my smallest indicators which are "MOVE and PB" = just as cells make up organs and human body; MOVE and PB's make up the chart they are the smallest structure in a chart like a cell in a human body. So the question remains still "how" , what would be my point of reference ? I need a point of reference to detect a change in a MOVE and a PB just as how they detect faulty genes in a cell they compare them to a healthy cell, I need a comparison a reference point.

From here on it's all about reference points to dance the dance and to remain in the dance. This is going to be a crucial part to my execution or MO. I do have some ideas about point of references but I'm too tired to type anymore and collect my thoughts but I'll be back on it tomorrow.

Besides not being able to keep up with the tempo - because of lack of knowledge and experience

I also do suffer from the general and the commander conflict, I do keep analyzing when I'm in a trade as soon as it goes against by 5pips or 10pips.... I do understand that this is mostly because of my inability to comprehend the terrain so unless I do learn how to dance the dance the conflict will be here to stay.

As for now the only thing I'm doing good is MM - yes I lose about 30pips daily on average and yet my DD is about 3% nothing to be proud of I do understand when it gets to 5% I'll pause live trading and will go back trading demo. But at the same time I also do think I learn things better when there's real money involved however small it maybe, I'm not sure if I can take demo trading as serious.

But I'm definitely making a progress working on my preplanned sequences.

S&R
High Low

Dance will get going in about two hours.
Do I feel 100% ready I don't know
But can I react on verification ?
I better ! and not on hope !