Hi everyone
Here's my trading journal that's going to be about one instrument (US30) and one pattern (retest of breakout level)
I've simplified everything down to reduce stress and use as little mental capital as possible. The most important quality needed in this type of trading is patience, as the set-up does not come along that often. To help with this, I set alerts so that I'm not always watching the charts.
I suspect I have some form of ADHD (doesn't everyone nowadays?) so in the past I have always flitted around looking at multiple pairs and multiple instruments. Then, when I decided to look at only one instrument, I kept flitting between different timeframes. So, I stick to these rules to stop my flitting about:
Instrument: US30, DOW, whatever you want to call it.
Timeframes:
M15 between 0800hrs and NY Open (1430hrs for me as I'm in the UK)
M1 for the first couple of hours between NY Open and when things start calming down
M5 for the remainder of the session.
In this way, instead of adjusting my position size based on volatility, I adjust the timeframe instead, so I always trade the same size. This reduces the need to make extra decisions during the trading day.
My SL is always 40 and my TP is always 40. I avoid moving SL to break-even as I have done this in the past and it was yet another decision to make during the trade. This keeps things simple. I try and walk away and let the trade do its thing. If things are very slow and 40 doesn't look achievable, then I don't trade.
That's it for now, in the next post I will talk about how I like to set up my charts.
Here's my trading journal that's going to be about one instrument (US30) and one pattern (retest of breakout level)
I've simplified everything down to reduce stress and use as little mental capital as possible. The most important quality needed in this type of trading is patience, as the set-up does not come along that often. To help with this, I set alerts so that I'm not always watching the charts.
I suspect I have some form of ADHD (doesn't everyone nowadays?) so in the past I have always flitted around looking at multiple pairs and multiple instruments. Then, when I decided to look at only one instrument, I kept flitting between different timeframes. So, I stick to these rules to stop my flitting about:
Instrument: US30, DOW, whatever you want to call it.
Timeframes:
M15 between 0800hrs and NY Open (1430hrs for me as I'm in the UK)
M1 for the first couple of hours between NY Open and when things start calming down
M5 for the remainder of the session.
In this way, instead of adjusting my position size based on volatility, I adjust the timeframe instead, so I always trade the same size. This reduces the need to make extra decisions during the trading day.
My SL is always 40 and my TP is always 40. I avoid moving SL to break-even as I have done this in the past and it was yet another decision to make during the trade. This keeps things simple. I try and walk away and let the trade do its thing. If things are very slow and 40 doesn't look achievable, then I don't trade.
That's it for now, in the next post I will talk about how I like to set up my charts.