pbylina's trading journal

Majors:

-EUR
http://i.imgur.com/L1nO9Vj.png

-GBP
http://i.imgur.com/9iMBZlt.png

-CHF
http://i.imgur.com/h6Kb9qG.png

-AUD
http://i.imgur.com/lob61r3.png

-NZD
http://i.imgur.com/CFNNiBk.png

Exotics:

-PLN
http://i.imgur.com/07oXWby.png

-MXN
http://i.imgur.com/jVmS9h4.png

-DKK
http://i.imgur.com/ZI96zQe.png

-XAU
http://i.imgur.com/YhrNuod.png

Tuesday 24 September
http://i.imgur.com/imOnIlu.png

Looking to Short USD - primarily against EUR, GBP or CHF.

Edit:

Shit, missed the perfect entry...GBP D1:

http://i.imgur.com/EJZ6kJk.png

Daily Charts:

GBP
http://i.imgur.com/756TlAu.png

EUR
http://i.imgur.com/pGc9Tsx.png

CHF
http://i.imgur.com/SZyXaOd.png

NZD
http://i.imgur.com/eHK4Rdp.png

DKK
http://i.imgur.com/yNvDtir.png

PLN
http://i.imgur.com/QxgYM6n.png

Calandar for September 26

http://i.imgur.com/PT0crBk.png

http://i.imgur.com/xKjRr0I.png

Trade#1 / EURUSD Long-Loser / 12 September

Why I took the trade: Was around 1pm when Fed budget balance came out - better than expected. Wick formed on 15m candle. Looked like was bouncing off of support. Took Long position. -3%

m15
http://i.imgur.com/WC9vOqr.png

H1

http://i.imgur.com/4uuv8S2.png


What can I learn from this experience: Support was not a good one - look for major obvious S/R's and not shitty inner ones. Market fell from a top and broken trend-line - momentum/trend was downward. Overall - was not a good idea to be going Long.

Trade#2 / EURUSD Long-Loser / 12 September

Same trade as trade #1 taken @ 1:19pm, 6 minutes after trade #1 stopped out. Thought price-action was telling me to go long... -3.7%

Trade#3/ GBPUSD Long-Loser / 19 September

Why I took the trade: Was around 7:30am US unemployment claims came out - better than expected. Wick formed on 15m candle. Looked like was bouncing off of support. Took Long position. -6.8%

m15
http://i.imgur.com/ofN4HF3.png

H1
http://i.imgur.com/Xa5LoRB.png

What can I learn from this experience: Market fallen from top...Hmm...Déjà vu? It did go into 20 pips of profit but still - not a good idea to be going long after the fall. Maybe if the support had more than one point or should of put stop at break-even. Oanda FxTrade does not have the capability to place stop at break-even automatically so may need to switch to MT4.

Trade#4/ NZDUSD Short-Winner / 24-25 September

Summary: Was around 8:05pm. NZD trade balance came out at 5:45pm - worse than expected. Went short on test of Resistance. Tried to read the price action - short on the break of low of inside bar on m15. Took half of position off after it bounced off of the low because it was asian session. Then moved stop to break-even - let the other half ride. The next morning, expecting my position to be stopped out, I was surprised to see it still open. I did notice though that a consolidation range formed - not what I wanted to see but not surprised as I had determined at the start of the week that USD is in a bearish trend. I figured though that I would wait for the US core durable goods to come out. They came out worse than expected and I closed my position. +4.2%

H1
http://i.imgur.com/Obsfkbg.png

Missed the trading day because my alarm didn't go off - I will set 2 alarms from now on.

Ok. I'm not trading good. Who am I kidding. The only time I made consistent money is when I first started out. I had a little account that I made 55% in 30 trades. I have never traded that good ever since.

So what happened? I had to find something better because it wasn't good enough for me. So I picked up a currency strength indicator and blew that account. I have been looking for that perfect system ever since.

I have roamed the entire world looking for it. Running in circles looking under every rock. Well today that search comes to an end. I'm tired and give up. I couldn't find it.

The only thing left for me to do is to trade like I did when I first started out - with a trend. So... Let's go back to the start.

Are tight stops really better for growing my account?

"With a bigger stop, your going to lose more." It's not all about R:R ratio. The other half of the equation is Win-rate. And win-rate is directly related to and effected by where you take your loss and profit. The key is to study your past trades to determine what is appropriate. I thought that keeping a tight stop was better for my account. But after going over my past trades I noticed that on my losing trades, they eventually did go in the intended direction. Using a tight stop hurts me actually in 2 ways:

1. Gives me a loss
2. Gets me out of the trade and therefore I don't make any money

Example:

Tight Stop:
10p SL
20p TP
Winrate: 50%

After 10 trades:+50 pips

Wider Stop:
20p SL
20p TP
Winrate: 80%

After 10 trades:+120 pips

So, the thing to learn here is: GO OVER YOUR PAST TRADES!

Need to start listening to a live talking news feed to warn me about unplanned breaking news/comments.

Need to start using Take Profit orders.

Do not let trades ride - this isn't the stock market.

Don't chase trades - you always get a second chance.

What happened to your tape reading (BMT)?

I just couldn't make it consistently work. My thinking was that dom/tape/chart was all there was to it. I then thought maybe that futures where not "real" markets because they are derivatives. I was sure that Stocks where a true supply and demand market and that it would be easy to take money from them via DOM/tape. So I traded stocks for a couple of months and saw quickly that this was not the case. My theory was wrong. I was disappointed at the time, thought that my trading journey was over. But it was a good thing. It showed me that there was more to the game than I thought.

So as you can see, I came back to where I started: spot fx. I learned how markets actually work and trading in general. I was trading spot for bit as you can see, but no consistency. I was really missing the dom/tape for entry. I would of probably tried to trade futures again with this new acquired knowledge of markets except that I got accepted into a stock prop firm and will be focusing on stock trading for the time being. Cheers!;-)

Ok nice one, good luck with your stock trading venture!

Ok, I take back what I said that there are no trends in Forex....:



Now if I can only keep this up! This is the year, I can feel it!