S&R short term bounces

ECB President Draghi is going to speak... so no trading for now

Boom

another nice one. missed that as well.

went into a long position, although I´m not really sure with that one. very small movement today.
maybe I´ll reduce TP and SL. but for now...

trade #18

gbp/usd - long

TP 12
SL 26

trade #18

+12

that´s what the big SL is for, cos you never know the exact level, where price turns...

trade # 19

eur/usd - short - bounce off resistance

TP 12
SL 26

So now, with price flirting within a couple points of your TP...do you set your stops at b/e, close for +8 or +10 or whatever it may be or hold out for those extra couple of points?

Oh and congrats on getting net positive

I can't speak for the OP but playing it arbitrarily like that simply screams a lack of discipline to me. Emotion has no room in trading imo - in the case of moving a stop we have a fear of losing our profits as well as the greed of wanting to lock in our gains. Why complicate it - if an edge is an edge, you can let it run and not worry.

I agree completely. That being said, this is discretionary trading, the aforementioned level has provided a reaction and one that came very close to an arbitrarily determined target (TP of 13 pips has nothing to do with current market conditions/support and resistance/etc).

That's the trick to discretionary trading...are you closing the trade "early" due to fear or greed? Or because it's obvious the trade has played out & provided the reaction you anticipated, getting within a point or two of a TP number that has nothing to do with current market conditions.

I'm curious as to how Findus manages it.

That's true. My luck has been that I misjudge those types of moves though and price typically had another short move to make before reversal, but I suppose that all comes with experience.

trade # 19

- 26

...became a loss. I was struggling with myself, if I should put SL to BE or not. But I didn´t do it. I just wanted to sit it out without being emotional...but sam, this is absolutely great what you say there. there´s a big difference in being emotional (greed/fear) and just watch what the market does and react. I knew that at a point the bounce was just sideways movement and there would not have been any reason to obviously stay in the market, but I guess I just didn´t want to show fear by moving the stop... but it was no fear, it was actually pretty clear to me.

I´ve had that situation a couple of times before and one time I moved it to BE and got out with +2 and the other time I didn´t do anything and took the loss.

trade #17 http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...36#post6453836
trade #6 http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...18#post6435218

I think this is a great lesson for me that you both (Sam and Kanzler) just taught me!

I´m trading in the forex market for a few years now and I think at this point I can handle my emotions pretty well (when I compare to the beginning). I have no problem seeing my SL get hit or wait out market decisions. I think earlier when I tried discretionary trading it just didn´t work because the mindset wasn´t ready. Then I stepped away from it and just wanted pretty fixed rules to make it easier for me, because there were way too much emotions in it.

I think now would be a good point to manage the trade discretionary again and make decisions when the market tells me (not the emotions).

thank you both

edit: the red arrows in the screenshot just show situations where I sould have put SL to BE. (no trade entries ! )

Sam, I guess you have taken that one... I just missed it while replying to the journal...

No problem Findus. I would warn you that there's a large amount of misinformation in this business, often considered "conventional wisdom", that I've found to be misleading or even outright false. One particular piece that is relevant here is that a losing track record happens because you're not disciplined, because you're allowing emotion to come into play, or similar. However I consider the truth to be that most people simply don't have a viable edge. You can have all the discipline in the world with an MA cross system and you'll still fail.

Of course, trying to prove to oneself that you actually have an edge is a difficult task in itself due to the inherent subjectivity of chart interpretation. In the case of the MA cross system, luckily this is easily demonstrable with a computer, but throw in any kind of human element where the eye is required and the task becomes much more difficult and perhaps even impossible. It might be a good idea to start from the most basic elements and work your way out, though. The difficulty in quantifying some aspects of trading is why I claim it is more of an art than an exact science, although many would fiercely disagree with me.

Hope that helped in some way, the correct words to express my thoughts were not very forthcoming.

trade #20

long - off daily open

gbp/usd

TP 13
SL 26

trade # 20

+13

trade # 21

eur/usd - short

TP 13
SL 26

it just missed my TP by 1pip. So this time I move my SL to BE. Won´t risk a loss now.

trade # 21


ok, I couldn´t even move the SL... profit was hit before I could do that.

+13

trade # 22

eur/usd - long off RN + touch of Yesterdays High

TP 13
SL 26

Findus, I think this will all become more clear as you have 200, 300, 400+ trades to back up what you "should" have done. For all you know, your move to hold for the +13 was the right one and this loss was just variance...and in most cases, say 75/25, you holding would have resulted in a win and not a loss.

Kanzler was right on re: his concern over greed/fear driven decisions. My response to his point was that there is also the factor of making discretionary decisions to close early/breakeven/etc. But do you have the data at this point to make that discretionary decision?

Continue to keep solid notes as to when things work out and when they don't. Now that you have forextester, you should be able to run this scenario several times over a few hours and see what works out best.

Kanzler made another great point re: viable edge. Put some serious hours into forextester, trade exactly as you would live. Export the results to excel & review. Do this on a constant basis, keep your confidence up & continue to prove to yourself that your edge is still alive.