1-2 Punch and Point of Entry - A new personal journey

UPDATE:

Time to get back on that hamster wheel

Markets - DAX, DOW, AUD/USD and GPD/JPY

DAX - Trading time around 3.00 pm here in Perth so I get a chance to plan out the session in the morning and throughout my day before being involved. Usually looking at around 1-2 hours of setting trades before my journey home.

DOW - Trading time around 9.00pm here in Perth so it's ideal for after kids go to bed and the missus gets stuck watching her soapies. Again similar to the DAX, looking at the levels and being involved around the open for a few hours

AUD/USD - Home market and therefore I am looking at the fundamental base

GBP/JPY - Because everyone likes this beast.

The plan - Weekly and daily levels draw on a line chart and trying to determine what the likely direction will be into those key levels. Watching on the hourly and then trading on the 5/15 min. I am trying to limit the number of market entries and instead find the areas that I am happy with.

Why Line Charts - I just prefer levels that are drawn around the bodies as opposed to the limits of overshoot. I use the overshoots more as validity that a level has held or has broken in trading.

No indicators - Just trendlines and S/R levels.

Trade explorer - Created to help me track my result more accurately. I have tried in the past to run manual journals and tracking trade results but in a busy life where trading is not priority number 1 these things tend to get pushed more to the side. At the very least I am looking towards building more confidence in the approach and seeing whether I can break this mold.

Risk - Is irrelevant in respect to the explorer. I have chosen to put in a small amount of a greater amount of savings (both from income and from past accounts). As trading is not priority number 1 and I have a fairly good 'job' which pays well, the risk aspects of this account will be 1 standard lot for the indices (because that's the minimum) and 5% for the others.

Why so high - Foreplay works in the bedroom but in the markets it is entirely pointless without a large account. The amount in the account does not reflect my true position, its an amount that should something untoward occur then I am not going to be left devastated. As that amount grows (should it grow) then I will at the end of the month move the growth to the bank and revert back to $200 (or an amount that reflects the margin requirements to trade further).

What do I want to achieve - Personal success and to beat a game that so many fail at is part of the ultimate goal. I don't care much for the money aspect, that will be a by product of whether I am successful and how much so. I have been trading on and off for the best part of 10 years, I always come back to it which must mean that I have a passion for it. I have come back after losing streaks and winning streaks so long term it would be nice to have the confidence to make this a 'greater' priority in my life and there is a fundamental reason for this. I want more of 'my' time to be free to explore other things in life. I don't see myself at 40 stuck like so many on this treadmill we think is life. Going to work 9-5 just obtain money to get in more debt to then have to work longer hours or find a better job. I say 'Fuck that'. I would love the opportunity to be able to find a niche in my trading, to make 75% of my current income so I can quit my job, begin a hobby farm and live a greener, richer and more prosperous life. The day to day drudgery bores more and so I am ultimately looking for something that gives me more time to find alternatives to offset the need for greater amounts of money.

So let the games begin!

Trade 1

Taken earlier today this trade comprised 2 entries. The first was taken on the signal but during a major screen close down session on the laptop, resulted in me closing the trade thanks to 1 click trading and hitting the cross. The re-entry was taken but the purpose of the trade was still there and highlighted below.

Details of the trade

AUD/USD - Short @ .93468, SL .93579, TP .93351



Trade Reason - False Break of the longer term decending trendline. The best entry for this was a trade at the close of the false break candle however being away from the chart at the time and coming back to the chart after the low was broken I instead went for the point of break of the pin bar on a retest. Watching the trade evolve required some patience as we can see from the next screen shot.



The entry candle travelled offside and revisted the area of resistance before closing lower, leaving a tail which gave me more confidence in the trade working out. The SL was moved down above those highs as it would be at that point that I would be looking to close the trade and not take a full R. We got the break after 3 hours and I took a manual profit as we hovered around the lows. The result was not a full return but for a first trade it worked well.



The best entry and my normal approach for fakeouts or false breaks is to take the aggressive trade, opening the position on the candle close. In this case it would have worked well.

Results

TP @ .93389
MAE - .93554 (8.6)
MFA - .93298 (17)

The day moved forward with US news bring more longs to the AUD/USD but day 1 down....

Trade 2

Trade was taken based on the break point of trade 1 which created a new low and I was looking for the entry back at the point of break for a small SL position aiming for the trade to move lower. Looking back in immediate revision the trade was not a good one. News coming up was the concern and whilst we got a positive move, in the end it was the news to took out the SL.

AUD/USD Short @ .9346, SL @ .93556, TP .9330



SL was shortened during the move down to +7 points which helped shrink the outcome to -.52R as opposed to a full R loss.



Results

SL @ .9351
MAE @ .9351 (5)
MFA - .9339 (7)

RT

Trade 3

Failed break at the top in AUD/JPY. Entry was on the close of the candle and for all intents and purposes the trade worked out very well. The only problem with the trade was that I was not awake when it missed the target by about 2 points before heading higher. I happened to wake and notice the missed TP and subsequently took profits. The upside to doing this, and not just seeing if it would go back down (a past habit that hurt more often than not) was that I at least took something off the table.

AUD/JPY Short @ .98486, SL 98.607, TP 98.222





These will happen from time to time as I tend to take setup at all times if they present themselves. As we move forward I will be looking to use alarms around key areas so that I may manage the trades more closely.

Results

Manual TP @ 98.39 (9.6)
MAE - 98.565 (7.9)
MFA - 98.245 (24.1)

A personal note:

After the first day of trading again I have to admit that it is very different, more so than I remember, and especially in comparison to the use of FT2. With the testing program there was not waiting 1 hour by 1 hour for trades to occur; the setups where there, the parameters measured and the trade executed at which point I could then simply skip through the next 2-4-10 hours whatever it may have been and get the results. If there was a win I chalked it up, if there was a loss I moved on but yesterday, particularly the first trade, separating myself from the screen to just let the market do its thing was tough. The 3rd trade in which I seemed to sleep easy whilst it was running was easier, although I missed a potential exit.

Ah the lessons to be learnt.

RT

Trade 4

We have a breakdown after 3 attempts to completely fill the gap on the AUD resulting in cumulative highs that closed well down with the breakdown candle being a BEOB. The Daily pin bar from Thursday which had me thinking bearish was broken on Friday thanks to US news however the market failed to close above it so I am more short term bearish compared to bullish, plus the AUD economy which is so heavily reliant on its export specifically Iron Ore is facing tougher weather thanks to another drop in Iron Ore over the weekend. I am leaving the TP off this one for now but will monitor if we can break the Trendline for potential added shorts.

Entery .93686, SL .9379, TP to be confirm pending PA over the next few hours.



RT

Trade 4 UPDATE

Break of Trendline so have added to position as I target more downside. First position and 2nd Position SL above the break candle.

Close both positions at .9341. It was a little earlier than I wanted however nearing the initial TP and not having a solid place I could move my SL I have closed and will consider shorts depending on what happens.

Trade 5

Higher risk Swing Failure with small SL and small TP. Looking for small pullback on this run down.

Well that was short lived. 15 Min Swing Failure, not an hourly. Lesson learnt...

Trade Outcomes to date:

A quick analysis of the trade results from account history thus far are very poor. I have screen shots of the trades I have taken to date but havent been able to upload all but will try to get around to it on weekends.

Results so far are well below that of the testing results which I can conclude are more the personal battles to picking the right entry and not rushing, sticking to the plan 100% of the time and cutting the losses when they appear to be not behaving as per the plan.

2 trades in the bunch which were outside my rules where the short AUD trade less than an hour from NFP, in which I tried to be clever anticipating good US numbers and a fall in the AUD (which the opposite happened), and yesterdays 15 min chart SFP, again trying to pre-empt a trade which on the hourly never occured. Both these trade hit pretty hard with full 1R losses. The purpose of this journal has been about ownership and learning which is happening and my hope is that the more honest I am within myself that the better the trades will be.

As per the total results I have the following:

Total Trades - 15
Wins - 5 (35.7%)
Losses - 11 (64.3%)

Average return is 1.48R

This overall translates to a negative expectancy and is noted in thhe negative overall results.

If I was to take out the 2 trades that I should not have touched the results would be slightly better win a Win% of 38.5% and an average return of 1.73R giving just the slightest positive results however the equity curve would not be at all pleasant due to the number of losses.

The journey continues.

RT

June:

Overall a solid month for the account. Which saw initial growth over 100% before some small losses brought it back. This month however managed to ride 3-4 solid trades that made the difference and as a result I finished up with close to $600 from the $200 starting point.

The numbers are pretty sick when looking back (and I don't mean sick like awesome).

Total Trades for the month - 46
Winners - 16
Losers - 29
Win % - 34.80%

Ave win - $51
Ave loss - $14

R/R - +3.65

Patience was my biggest problem (as it often is) and jumping the gun particularly early in the moves instead of waiting for it to get to the area I'd planned (which at times ended up being the bigger trade) contributes to the high number of losses. There were also a few trades which turned out to be stunners but because I was on a small loss streak I just didn't sit on my hands and got out or moved to BE way to early.

DAX was my best pair of the month with +175.4% - The home currency AUD/USD the worst at -19.3%. The AUD was a bias issue and I am wondering whether I can really trade this pair with too much focus on the fundies and not the techs necessarily. Will evaluate at the end of this month.

July has started with a few Gold trades and the last was a mental error where I should have never taken a loss. The account now goes back to $200 and we start again.

Welcome to Sit on your hands because doing anything less than just leads to trouble.

My last post, Patience was my biggest problem and often has just summed up this month thus far. Im not so much upset by the results but more at my personally meddling which, just recently saw me exit a long DAX position which really in my mind I was disgruntled about which lead to me opening another long position, playing with the SL during a retracement and ultimately knocking me out of a position that is now some 800 points higher. The first entry was better than perfect as I anticipated the move and got long with a SL that I was comfortable with. The gap closed and started to pull back and as a result I got itchy (no thanks to the shit run I had put myself in trying to catch a falling Aussie knife) fingers and took the profits to fill in some of the hole I had already dug.

I know personally, that my trading habits will generally return a higher loss rate as I look for positions but cut them if the structure doesn't fit the mindset, leaving them to run when they do but just this month after having a pretty good June just seems to be something that says I need a better plan.

For example, The AUD/USD, my home currency has been the worst on account of personal bias about our economy. This certainly clouded the views on the recent experience were I had a mindset that was looking for returns back to 76's, but ignored all the bearish setups. My failure to just look at the market with a flexible mindset is hindering me from getting any consistency. The best market for me has been the Dax, an instrument I have come to enjoy and I am thinking for the time being, just focusing on the Dax and the Pound/Yen. I have to stick to this. There is no point in me saying it and then next week opening a trade on a 5m timeframe looking to scalp the XXX/XXX.

So the challenge. I am still up and the goal is to get back to it. Money will come and go but I need to find a consistent and stable mind point.