jwpdad's Journal

OK, here's where I document the human error in this journal. The losing AN trade today was a mistake and should not have been taken. The short USDCHF is correct. There was a signal on AN, but it was not supposed to be one of the pairs to trade. I had looked at the other pairs I was supposed to be considering and there was no trade, the last one I was supposed to look at was EURNZD (there was no signal on EN), but I opened up the AUDNZD chart instead. Having said that, I closed yesterday's USDCAD trade in profit before opening the AN trade, which is what I do if the trade has not resolved before the next day's trade entry. That worked in my favor as after that the price reversed upward and would have ended at BE. So I am saying this human error cost me net -12 pips weighted, I am allowed up to -40 weighted pips for human error by my statement above. The actual pips can vary a lot which is why I use the term weighted pips, I explained that earlier in the thread.

But I do have to beat myself up, explanation below.



This is where the problem is, I could just leave it at the paragraph above and say, oh well, I made a mistake, write it off to human error, which will happen. But the fact is at the point I realized the mistake, I could have exited the trade only losing a few pips. I decided to set a 1 pip take profit instead and let the trade run. So I got burned, when the right thing to do according to my rules is to exit immediately upon realization of an error. I let fear, greed, whatever it is, take over because I didn't want to lose any more money. This is the kind of thing that gets frustrating, I am not concerned about starting off with this explorer losing a few trades, that will happen and the good ones will definitely come. But I get irritated by allowing things like this to happen. Of course, the other issue with taking the wrong trade in the first place was not getting enough sleep when I could have, I didn't have a reason to stay up too late I just did it. So I probably would have been thinking more clearly with proper rest. This is all part of proper discipline.

The correct results so far since the beginning of the restart of this journal (post 196) should be 0 wins, 2 losses, 3 breakevens, and -4 other pips (weighed), with today's short USDCHF still pending final outcome. Add to that human error -12 pips. I will keep the results updated in this fashion until there are a total of 30 wins/losses, and will evaluate the net profit and full results at that point.

Ended last week on Thursday with some profit, closed the USDCHF short from Wednesday in profit before taking the NJ short on Thursday per system rules, and that trade ended BE which banked profit with half the lot size at the BE lock point. I do not trade on NFP Fridays. So, ended down a bit for the week, today I'm in a short on AJ. Results for this series of trades starting April 24 through May 1 are 0 wins, 2 losses, 4 breakevens, and +9 other pips (weighted), with -12 pips human error (non-method).

Ended the week positive, still down a bit from when I restarted this journal. Closed the USDCHF long early with Friday discretion, counting this as +29 weighted pips considering half lots were closed at +18. So, still haven't had a completed winning trade (full take profit reached) with this method here in this explorer, now a little over 2 weeks. I am actually encouraged by that because just 1 full win will put this in profit, basically what should be happening (and eventually will) is that there will be about an equal number of wins and breakevens, right now the positive moving trades have all been breakevens. I am taking some profit at the point of locking in a breakeven stop, so with 4 losses the overall negative hit has not been too bad. I am tracking this by a set of 30 fully resolved trades, so far there have been only 4 of these, the 4 losses. Over time the method should yield about 1 resolved trade per trading day, with all the breakevens I am behind that pace right now.

Results of this method since April 24 for tracking purposes are: 0 wins, 4 losses, 8 breakevens, and +26 other pips (weighted), with -12 human error. That means that the method has yielded the initially mentioned results and in addition to that my errors have resulted in -12 pips. All trades this week were executed correctly, I don't consider small slippage of a pip or two from entering a little late occasionally to be human error, only if I took a trade that was not part of the method and the net result of this error.

Things continue to go negative overall, I am fine with this as long as I am executing the method properly, there will be winning trades, this has just been a bad run. Today I have to report human error that cost some pips, there should have been 1 losing trade today on AU, not 2. The net effect of the error is -12 weighted pips.

Test 2