MJ12 Trade Log

Majestic, awesome trades, GREAT work man!

I can't trade CL (I live in the USA and I am not ready to put up the money for futures), so I can't be upset at myself for missing this trade.

And I have never figured out how to completely play gaps correctly. If you have any thing to share on this, I would love to read it. I know gaps often close, but I have always struggled with knowing exactly the most profitable way to trade them.

Was the GPBJPY basically just a break out then pull back touch trade on the one hour? Break above 131.00 with a 1H BUOB and then a touch trade on the retrace of the BUOB?

I have not taken a trade in a while. I was ready to go long on the EURGBP yesterday with a burst above the two day high, but the burst was just short of getting me into the trade before I pulled my order.

Great work man, keeping me motivated.

Thanks unlv. I'm still learning so i'm not sure how good the trades actually were. The point is i'm not losing money so thats good

Gap trades I learned from a trader on trade2win called Trader_Dante.

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/firs...rformance.html

He has his own trading room of which i am a member.

EU is the best pair for playing them from what i've heard although i don't have any hard data. A lot of them close as soon as the market open on a sunday so its best to be around for then.

Spot on with the GJ trade that is exactly what i saw.

Two bad trades i took yesterday. The first i realized was a bad trade and came out of it for a small loss and the second i had ample opportunity to move to BE and i didn't which proves there are still some demons still lurking.

I've cleaned up my rules a bit so i know exactly when to move to BE and this will always be a number of pips before my FTA or target so i can ensure i don't go as far into profit and still end up with a loss as i did with the gold.

March is over now and i will be marking up all the march trades in the first post with links to each chart. A good first month in general trading this method and I've learned a lot. My main focus next month will be improving my mindset and sticking to the obvious trades - not over-complicating things. A little mantra or list I'm following at the moment is:

1. Follow the big money
2. Find the obvious
3. Prepare/Plan the trade
4. React appropriately

sorry about the caps - copied from my desktop trade plan!

ON LIVE (small account)

1. DAILY LEVEL, NO BRAINER TOUCH TRADES WHERE YOU KNOW THERE WILL BE ORDERS WITH ADDED CONFLUENCE OF AT LEAST:

-FIB
-TREND LINE
-MULTIPLE HIGHS/LOWS
-GOOD CLEAR CORRELATION
-FUNDAMENTAL REASONING

2. WEEKEND GAPS ON MAJORS TRADED AT 0.5R

3. SPECIAL PA SETUPS AS BELOW ONLY OFF MAJOR DAILY LEVELS >1H ONLY

ON DEMO

1. PA TRADES OFF OF MARKED UP DAILY LEVELS ONLY AND AT LEAST ANY OF:

-BREAKOUTS
-BIG ROUND NUMBERS
-RETRACE NEEDED IN MOST CASES
-ADDED FUNDI CONFLUENCE
-RSI DIVERGENCE FOR COUNTER TREND

2. BREAKOUT ROUNDED RETRACE PULLBACK TT'S TO VERY STRONG AREAS OR OF, BASIC STRONG PA

I noticed something quite startling today while going through my trades. It was that whenever i have a losing trade 75%, thats seventy-five percent of the time the next trade is a loser also! Now i know that i have a much better strike rate than 25% so there must be something psychological that's really effecting me after losses. I'm going to have think of some practical ways to sort this out that i can put in my trade plan as its obviously costing me heaps of potential profit.

Could it be the "I want revenge on the market" so you force it on your next trade after a loss?

Yes i think it must be something like that. Its more subconscious than that though which is why it needs to be brought to mind. I used to play a lot of heads-up poker and you could see from the records of that i had a similar problem there. Thats the important thing about keeping good records - so you can see where the are leaks in your game.

Short USDCAD 9682

Made a good entry here but i got nervous with the subsequent price action and moved my stop to BE. This was obviously a mistake since i would have taken profit on one of my positions by now. Trade location was good trade management was less good.

Long EG 8745

This was a stop on EG, i have to question whether i should have been trying to play this pair given the upcoming big figures and the fact it had broken the trend line. I guess in the back of my mind i was thinking that the BOE will hold interest rates and this has led to a bearish move on GBP in the past.

UJ long 8475, not looking good

Out for 0.73R on the JPY trade - very nearly stopped out and i entered on the wrong broker which has a bigger spread so not happy about that. left another position on to see if it can get to just below the highs.

Long GU 1.6355

Entered GU in the wrong place somehow. I must have moved the level by accident!! seems ridiculous but i was entering in a bit of a hurry and not prepared. Still the level i got in at was not too bad but the level i had marked up was about 10 pips lower. It all comes down to not being as prepared as i should be and how easy it is to move lines accidentally on mt4 if you have a lot of them. I thought it was not how i had drawn my fibs on before - oh well i will have to think of ways to minimise this type of mistake.

Out for BE did not like the fact that i made a mistake on entry. I think it was a spike that was made on fxpro feed during the bank rate that threw me.

Very frustrating as i should have finished with a win on GU to finish the week. However i did not enter the trade where i wanted to and for some reason this made me think to abandon my plan and exit the trade which went on to be a winner - price was coming down to a 50% fib and major weekly highs and i wanted to enter 3 pips above these highs which would have been the perfect entry. However there was a spike made by high spreads on fx pro during the bank rate that made the charts a little out of whack and i mistakenly entered earlier as i was rushing.

I think a major drawback of MT4 is that you only see the bid price and some brokers change the spreads by very high margins during news and at certain times of day. If you are trying to trade levels this can make a difference to where your entry or exit might be. It is a shame there is no way to display the historical mid-price on mt4 as you can on Oanda's charts. I think from now on the only solution is for me to check every setup i find on oandas charts to check there are no nasty news spikes or price anomalies getting in the way of proper analysis.

i suppose this is also something bear in mind with whole numbers as the bid price will always be a pip or two lower than normal.

More importantly i can see that if i had followed my trading plans and not moved to BE on my trades before i was supposed to i would be up this week as i have had 2 BE 1 win and 1 loss. I also missed several great trades as my entry has been to conservative.

Overall i have not made any very bad mistakes that have caused losers. But i have made mistakes that have cost me winners. This is a mental thing that i'm sure will be overcome once i have the confidence that i am consistently entering winning trades.

I have been trading full time total for 2 years of which about 14 months has been on FX, its been a long, hard, painful and financially burdening journey but i'm finally starting to see some progress in my results and also in my approach towards things. I have seen lovejoy80 write before that it took him 2 years just to realise what it takes and i would say i'm just getting to that stage to.

This was the GU trade i entered to soon which caused me to deviate from my plan...

This was the UJ trade. The second position nearly hit the TP but just came down and hit my stop under the whole number for 0.91R.

Majestic, keep up the good work. It has been 3 and 1/2 years for me. I have learned a lot about trading and a lot about myself, and for the first time thanks to James16 and LoveJoy's threads, I think I can see a faint light at the end of the tunnel.

I still have a lot of the same problems. I take a good trade and I am fine and confident, then a few hours later I will be in profit and I will just take the small profit.

I don't have enough confidence in my TP. And I need to work on that BADLY.