MinceMeat’s Trading Journal - My Walk to Freedom

LTF FTB to a daily SR with LTF fib confluence. Price was moving quite impulsively as it approached the level which was perhaps a good enough reason to step aside. Price broke through the level and hit my SL on the same hourly bar not giving me any options to reduce my risk.

Lessons learned - 1st day of the month / quarter can be quite erratic similar to the last day of a month / quarter as funds look to re-establish positions / exsposure.

Entry: 5850
SL: 5880
TP1: 5830

Stopped out at 5880 on full position.

Profit/Loss: -1R

Another level I was watching today was this crude short, again price was moving quite impulsively towards the level which should have been reason to trade with caution. Had I taken the trade I would have most likely reduced my risk by moving my SL above the hourly bar which penetrated the level and been taken out for a partial loss on the next bar.

Another level I was watching. I like to trade the first time back to the broken level which unfortunately in the case of GBPCHF was too soon after the level was broken for my liking (first red arrow). I like a bit of time and for price to form an arc before testing the level. Price did come back to the level for a 2nd time with a bit more of an arc formation (2nd red arrow) and you can see that it reacted again and hit the FLR.

I had a sell order on EURCAD today which was narrowly missed.

Entry: 1.3247
SL: 1.3275
TP1: 1.3225

Had I been filled I would have looked to have taken half profit at the first level of support (grey level) and tightened my SL on the 2nd half in attempt to get a bit of a runner. Once priced closed strongly below the FLS I would have moved the stop loss down to just above this area. FOMC minutes would have most certainly worked in my favour :-)

I was looking for an opportunity to get long in Crude today following yesterday's BUOB.

There were 2 levels you could have entered at, the 104.58 daily SR level where price broke through and you would expect price to hold and the level slightly lower, the 104.11 minor SR level where there was a Supply / Demand imbalance previously and demand exceeded supply. Either way if I had entered at 104.58 I would have had my SL below the 2nd level or you could have entered 50% of your position at the first level and 50% at the 2nd level.

This is an example of how I try to play daily PA bars (Candlestick patterns) by looking to get a discounted entry at a retrace to a SR level. At the end of the day this was not a great trade but it shows the principles of what I would look at doing.

I'm new to trading news and still in the process of learning. Saying that I do not and do not plan to regularly trade news but will look to take a position after big macro economic news events (Non-Farm Payroll, interest rate announcements, GDP and inflation data & FOMC statements as tonight) and only if the outcome is an extreme deviation from the expected result or there is a market moving statement which is obvious and easy for me to digest into an expected outcome.

After tonights FOMC meeting minutes, I took small positions on the following:
USDJPY long (expected dollar strength)
USDCHF long (expected dollar strength)
EP short (expected sell off in equities)
Gold short (expected sell off in commodities particularly gold)

Quantitative Easing which is the increasing of money supply is generally postive for equities but has inflationary effects and would ultimately weaken the dollar. Since Gold can be seen as a hedge to inflation and a weakening dollar, investors would look to buy gold in the expectation of a weakening dollar over time. With QE3 possibly off the cards after the more hawkish FOMC minutes it seemed logical to see a strong sell off in gold and equities and a strengthening USD.

Equities is a tough one, because although Quantitative Easing is seen as good for equities, the fact that we may not have QE3 is positive for the USD and for the US economy and thus risk appetite. So after an initial sell-off we saw a strong reversal recovering the losses caused by the news.

Another option was to go long CAD as CAD is a big beneficiary of a good US economy so normally you would expect the CAD to strengthen on good US data.

FTB to a LTF SR, due to the fact it was LTF SR and that there was a strong downtrend meant I risked less than usual on this trade. Trade management on this trade was not great, took half profits just before my FLR when price came close and then started to move away. Then took another 1/4 at the FLR before tightening my SL and being taken out at BE+ on the remaining quarter. I had additional confluence with the USDX at monthly resistance and the EURX and a daily support. increasing the probability of there being a bounce on EURUSD.

Lessons learned - USDX and EURX provided additional confluence and thus confidence that we would see at least a bounce at this level. I also need to stick to my original trade management plan and not take any profits sooner!

Entry: 1.3122
SL: 1.3094
TP1: 1.3133
TP2: 1.3144 (FLR grey area on chart)
TP3: 1.3123 (BE+)

Profit/Loss: +0.42R

A trade I had marked up but somehow missed today while I was paying too close attention to my EURUSD and EURCHF trades

FTB to a weekly SR level with 61.8 fib confluence. SL would have been below the 2 daily bars marked by an x and TP1 would have been the red monthly level at 101.85.

I've been looking at supply / demand zones where price normally consolidates or forms a bit of a base and then moves very quickly away with little or no pullback. First time back to these areas can often be good trade opportunities.

For example have a look at the demand zone on USDJPY created when the FOMC minutes were released last night (grey box) and see how price reacted almost to the pip when it returned to the area today.

This was another missed opportunity from yesterday but thought I would put it up as it was a good daily level IMO.

Would have liked price to have come a bit higher up but you can see why price might have reacted where it did looking at the hourly bar closes to the left.

Not a great trading day for me, spent most of it watching EURCHF and missed 2 trades that I had planned on taking today.

First trade was the GBPJPY. FTB to a good daily SR. Price hit FLR where I would have taken at least half profits, it has now broken above this level and tested as support where I will be looking to tighten my SL.

And this was the other trade. USDCHF short from the FTB to daily SR with LTF fib confluence (see 4 hour chart). This would prob not have been a profit trade for me but I definitely would not have taken a 1R loss on it. Price reacted to the level and formed an hourly pinbar and came pretty close to my FTA before turning and going to up to where my original SL was. As price approached the FTA I would have either looked to move the SL just above the pinbar or to BE either taking a small loss or BE on this trade.

After the long Easter Weekend it's taken me a while to get back into it. 2 trades I missed on Tuesday, had the GBPJPY level marked up but the trade triggered first thing in the morn before I had a chance to put an order in.

Both good examples of a break of a good daily SR and First Time Back to test as resistance. Virtually no drawdown.

LTF FTB to a daily / weekly SR. Chose to enter below the main HTF at the hourly bar lows where I expected price to react. Trade was managed very poorly as after price initially reacted to the level and after observing price action on EP and UJ I decided to tighten my SL to just above the weekly SR. Which in hindsight was a poor decision as the correlations between markets aren't always exact and more importantly I was playing the weekly SR level which price had not even hit yet. Price came up tested the level and took me out before shooting off in my direction to close as a pinbar.

Lessons learned - intermarket correlations are never exact and I don't think there was good enough reason to tighten my SL after looking at UJ and EP. Additionally I have always had a rule not to adjust SL until after hourly bar close which I did not follow in this case.

Entry: 66.36
SL: 66.75
TP1: 66.16 (Closed before hit)

Stopped out at 66.60 which was my adjusted SL.

Profit/Loss: -0.6R

There were a couple of supply zone shorts which could have been played yesterday on the LTF. Something I have only recently started to look into but would like to trade these zones completely independently to the SR levels that I normally trade. Would most likely be very short term trades for a couple of pips.

Zones are formed by price consolidation and then a very sharp and fast move away. FTB to the zone we can expect to see a reaction.

Missed the below trade yesterday. FTB to a daily / weekly SR with LTF 61.8 fib confluence. Price came up and missed my order by a couple of pips and moved down to hit my FLS. At this point I removed my order but you will see that price came up again and would have filled me and hit my TP again but better to be safe than sorry as quite often the orders which you were expecting to move price down to your TP have been consumed on the first move up and down.

FTB to a HTF SR level. Price had come close to the level the day before and formed a base but despite of this I still thought it was a good level and worth a risk. Entered just above the SR and took just over half profits at the FLR before moving my SL to BE once the 1 hour bar closed on the level. Price came back to take me out for BE on the rest of the trade on the next bar.

Lessons learned - under the current market conditions there have not been many opportunities to get runners, under such conditions it may be prudent to adapt the management of trades to take a larger percentage of profit at the FLR or FLS.

Entry: 1.00025
SL: 0.9982
TP1: 1.0011 (Just over 50% profits taken)

Stopped out on the rest for BE.

Profit/Loss: +0.2R

FTB to a daily SR. Trade was managed badly by myself when I chose to manually close my trade for BE after watching GBPUSD, USDCAD and equities and concluding the level would not hold. Bad call as trade was based on the setup of GBPCAD and I was only overcomplicating things, price eventually hit the FTA.

Lessons learned - Trade should be managed based on Price Action on the pair / market you are trading and not on correlated markets or components of the pair as these are not always reliable as was proven on this trade.

Entry: 1.5869
SL: 1.5838
FLR: 1.5889

Closed trade manually at BE.

Profit/Loss: 0

FTB to a LTF SR. Price reacted to the level and moved towards my FLR. With Equities breaking support and retesting as resistance and Silver coming close to the FLR I decided to tighten the SL just below the hourly bar lows. Price broke down hard and took me out on the next bar.

Lessons learned - Overall I was pretty happy with the way I managed the trade although I may have wanted to tighten the SL a bit more even to BE since price did come pretty close to my FLR and with Equities breaking a significant SR level and retesting it as resistance it was very likely that commodities would follow suit.

Entry: 31.95
SL: 31.73
FLR: 32.11

Stopped out at reduced SL at 31.86.

Profit/Loss: -0.41R