serious biezniz

In the name of "what gets measured gets done" I'm starting a trading journal again. Alot has happened since my first journal for sure. Mostly stupid dabbling around because I lacked confidence in my trading ability. Until roughly 3 months ago i found a mentor and have been really going 200% full power since then. First I started with my old method again, but this time I decided to analyze it to death until i knew everything about it, and knew everything about my edge, mostly so i have the confidence to back all my real time trading decisions and so i know my rules are based on truths that are tested long term and not guesses or 1 or 2 months of poor backtesting.

So I did some real analysis, not your "I'll analyze it for 2 months and decide my entire trading life on that" style what most people do on 60 different systems, only never to settle on 1. I analyzed everything I could possibly run in to, all the data i could get, all logical variations, which hours are good/bad which days are the best/worst, etc etc. I continue to analyze more daily so i find every possible bit of edge i can get my hands on. Apart from that i obviously also track all my live trades and analyze those.

Because I like to stay focused i basically only trade 1 system, 5 (main) pairs on 1 TF. The only thing that can change in the near future about this is that I'm looking to reduce my risk per position and diversify only by adding some higher timeframes (due to a lower impact of spread on results mainly), but as you can read in paragraph two, that will take insane testing and calculations before implementation.

I will not be going into a lot of specifics on my current strategy here, because quite frankly i think that is pretty pointless. There are hundreds of good strategies out there. I trade an FF strategy that is tweaked to my liking and as i said analyzed so i know exactly how to trade it. anyone that want to be profitable in my eyes only has to do the same: invest time and get laser beam focus.

My intention is to share a weekly report. This is so I measure my progress, and commit myself to do this weekly by posting it (around sunday). If it would be helpful for other to read that would be a nice byproduct.

Kind regards:
nevie2

Weekly accomplishments;
Achieved +23.5% growth
Reached my growth target for reducing my position size
Reached my net profit target for increasing my account balance
Set up this trading journal with weekly reports

Next weeks goals;
Don’t miss any trades that are according to the rules, especially slight pierces & late news entries
Mark all red news until start of January on all traded pairs for better news impact analysis
Analyze 2 pairs on Daily with standard rules and Mondays included

Problems & challenges:
Hedge situations (include way of handeling in rulesheet)
missed trades due to long trigger time and no finishing of news analysis

Comments:
Very good week again, win ratio 7% above target. 4 missed trades, 3 winners and 1 loser. Not missing these is a top priority in the coming week. 2 were missed because it took long to trigger, 1 because of a hedge situation (the loser) and 1 overlooked because of a long time to trigger again. lower position size per position worked out well, stayed well within margin most of the time which was main goal of doing this. Profits should remain roughly the same because of more trades taken but a little less profit per trade.

Kind regards,
Nevie2

weekly growth: -9.2%

Weekly accomplishments;
kept relatively cool in the face of pretty significant draw-down
Only one real trade missed, and that was only due to a hedge situation (losing trade)
Traded half size on Thursday due to big news as planned
mapped all news on charts
analyzing Armstrong articles was professional the entire week
Kept focus even though i moved and had a sports event all weekend long

Next weeks goals;
Trade as much as possible without getting involved in the really crazy brexit spreads
Analyze 1.5 daily tf pairs
analyze the completed 4hr backtest and complete the test set for all 5 major pairs

Problems & challenges;
One trade was kept over the weekend which was extremely stupid and not my intention, trades need to be really closed in weekends like this, although it was a big winner eventually it could just as well have been a big loser.
There was some procrastination here and there where I really should have done daily analysis
Daily TF trading does seem troublesome on some pairs, contrary to what I expected
I still need to work on gaining more consistency, overall weekly drawdown was small but during the week it was significantly larger at times

General comments;
Losing week was due according to my projections. Win rate was standing 5% over the highest target which is 10-13% over what I really need to make money. Win rate is currently floating between my expectation and my highest target, which if it keeps up like this is almost perfect. The losses came at a bit of a bad time considering I just increased my account balance. I did this because I reached the profit target that i set for myself. Because the balance was increased, the losses were larger, this made it look like i performed a lot worse then what my win ratio was telling me. Even though there was a losing streak in the end i kept in the green overall. I'm happy about that because i would have decreased my balance again if i would have would have reached net drawdown. Overall pretty much worked out the way i wanted it, i calculated that i would only increase my balance if I could comfortably endure some losses right after without going in net loss overall, which worked out perfectly.

Now onto the most important decision britain has made in decades. I don't think i'll personally will trade alot of the action considering the high spread but we shall see what happens. I got a solid plan in place so no matter what i'm ready.

Quick explanation why i think everyone should do at least some form of daily/weekly reporting:

What gets measured gets accomplished. You need to do this for the same reason you need to write out goals: so you stay focused, know where you are and where you want to go and especially so you know what you're doing wrong and what you're doing right.

The reason that you don't do it and don't want to do it is also the same for both weekly reporting and writing out goals; you commit yourself to expectations. This means that if you don't reach those expectations you are afraid that you will experience negative emotions. Everyone know deep down that summarizing what you have done last week and laying out what you want to accomplish next week will be extremely helpful to their progress, yet so little people do it (supertip: try to guess if it's the 5% or the 95% that actually do these things). Of course it's easy not to analyze what you have done, of course it's easy to dabble around aimlessly: if you aim at nothing, you'll hit anything.

I can highly recommend stepping over you fear of reporting and goalsetting. Analyzing every move you make weekly will give you a very clear picture of what you're doing wrong and what you're doing right, how far you are in the process of becoming successful and more importantly what you need to change. This will increase your learning curve dramatically. If you do more of what you're doing right and less of what you're doing wrong each week you'll get there, we all know this, so just f*cking do it.

Weekly growth: 0%

Weekly accomplishments;
Only 1 missed entry which was taken as a re-entry as it was still per my rules
Moved money to USD partly in advance of brexit and completely after brexit (second was after the bounce back so still happy with the price I got)
completed analysis of 1 4hr pair
reread all peter crowns posts
shifted analysis from 4hr to a different exit on 1hr due to rereading peter crowns posts for another test of exit variables, did 2 pairs and draw conclusion to postpone further research untill later due to worse then expected results
rewrote business and personal goals
finally wrote out my affirmations

Next weeks goals;
Say my affirmations out loud twice a day
tweak my goals and affirmations by the end of the week
Take all dibs trades as per the rules again
finish 4hr analysis for all pairs
find the best platform to start managing other people money

Problems & challenges;
Lack of focus, missing some clear direction in a day, like what to research exactly, what to do exactly, need to start my day with making a clear list of to-do's, according to weekly goals and other stuff that comes up. I hope that reading my goals and saying my affirmations out loud will help in achieving more focus.
In complicated market issues like Brexit, i need to think ahead more, write out a plan of action and stick to the plan

comments:
There is still sunday left for completing more of the 4hr analysis. If i stay focused i should be able to do alot of the analysis done. Alot of good things happening this week on personal ground, mainly that I finally perfected my goals and wrote my affirmations the way they should be, which was a little harder then expected. Happy to get that done though. Now onto the next week, time to pick up the trading pace again and uphold the amazing figures of the last few weeks.

weekly growth: +16.5%

Weekly accomplishments;
Performed a little better then my strategy by using PA, without meddling with my strategy in a hurtfull way
Took all trades available
Analyzed good, bad and medium (according to some variables I check) days over last months live trades
Analyzed draw down protection by diversification over other instruments and the 4 hour timeframe
Analyzed what the best and worst days of the month are for long term positions (of the classic DIBS strategy)
Set new dietary goals and tracked food and calorie intake thoroughly for 2 days
Meditated 3 times
Said affirmations out loud at least twice a day (often more)
Drew conclusion not to start managing others people money yet

Next weeks goals;
Research if using 4hr is useful or distracting, if useful further backtesting
Meditate 5 times
Take Pa alteration into the written out rules
Make sure to say affirmations out loud just before going to bed and after waking up not just during the day
Draw conclusions on helpfulness of meditation


Problems & challenges;
Still some lack of focus and to much distraction . It can be difficult to stay focused as further analysis can seem unnecessary in nice and easy weeks like this.
No real good platforms available for managing other people's money at this stage as those also need investments, which I do not deem wise as I am still to much in a growing stage and my track record is not long enough to my opinion.

Comments:
Again there is still a weekend left in the week, but I find that I like writing my weekly reports just after the trading week better because the trading part of my week is fresher in my memory. I will include more personal stuff in my reporting as that is just as much a part of success or failure as the forex specific stuff is.

Nice and smooth week, ready for some real ass kicking weeks ahead as I keep improving, stepping out of my comfort zone and trading profitably,
Kind regards,
Nevie2

Weekly growth: -10%

Weekly accomplishments;
1. Delved deeper into drawdown causes, started and almost completed 1hr E/J research for diversification to get my Position size down while retaining growth potential, since starting got more sceptical of this however as this is not real diversification and is only distracting, refocusing on 4hr analysis of my known pairs will be my focus for next week again
2. Traded almost fully according to DIBS rules dispite of illness for half of the week
3. Found out that american bank holidays cause some of the worst trading days, this will be extremely helpfull in the future as I won't be trading these except for when there is major news in the future, also included this in the rules
4. Concluded that 4hr analysis is worth it so will be doing that fulltime untill finished now
5. Read half of Trading In The Zone
6. Read The New Market Wizards

Next weeks goals;
Use every possible free minute for 4hr analysis
finish trading in the zone
Finish King (Audiobook by elliott hulse)
affirmations before and after sleep
gain 2 kilos of weight
exercise 5 times


Problems & challenges;
Illness caused some issues, trading still went pretty orderly and managed to almost follow rules completely and get all trades, but apart from that I took illness as some kind of sad excuse for procrastination. Recovery is important but if i'm going to be staring at my phone it might just as well be a trading book, fx charts or something similar, next time: refocus weekly goals to what is still possible from bed
This also meant I lost some focus on meditation, affirmations and my dietery goals (obviously )
First time I encountered something that seemed like stophunting by my broker

Comments:
Equity progress is stalling a little bit due to some down weeks, also this week would have been break even if one weird sl would not have been hit, have been in contact with my brokers customer support and their reasoning was one of the weirdest I have ever heard. trying not to blame other people but not quite sure if this is something I can prevent in the future. Profit is still high overall but I need 1 good week or 2 ok weeks to really get back on my expected track.
Also, some really nice insight came from "The new market wizards". Can't believe how fast I went through that book. Really funny to see what kind of weird conclusions the author draws from the interviews, after about 10 words I skipped his introduction, after 2 sentences I skipped every conclusion at the end of the chapter (only read 2 sentences of 1 conclusion and not 1 word of any after) and it took my 3 minutes to skip his conclusion, as well as some interviews.

This ties into something really important:
When reading something like market wizards or any other trading book: only listen to people that are where you want to be in the future. The author defnitely doesn't come close in the slightest bit to my defnition of where I want to take my trader. His first couple of conclusions and statements are ridiculous, and then if you read the interviews you see that the real succesfull traders don't even mention alot of his concept about succesfull trading, although at the end of the interview he seems to draw the conclusion that they did. Only take advice of people whom you greatly respect, and are where you want to be in the future.

Weekly growth: +2%

Weekly accomplishments;
1. Decided I do want to to some small diversification. Only diversifying by adding 1 method of entry, apart from that roughly the same TF and exactly the same pairs. Found new edge, rough tested it first, completed thorough testing on 3/7 pairs so far, looking very good so far
2. Furthered reading King and Trading in the zone
3. Made an oversight of the performance of every week, divided by every month, so I can easily track performance per week/month

Next weeks goals;
Determine risk profile for the 2 strategies
continue testing of the new strategy
affirmations before and after sleep
gain 2 kilos of weight
exercise 5 times

Problems & challenges;
There was some bad trading this week. missed 2 trades for stupid reasons that were both big winners. Have not had a week where the result according to rules was way better then the actual results I got, pretty frustrating but a little more about that in the comments.

Comments:
Definitely the most frustrating forex week i've ever had. Missed out on so ridiculously much. In total week should be 15-25% better. There is no room for "should" in trading though, need to learn how to handle this because frustration has no place in trading.
Apart from this i missed a trading day and most analysis time in the weekend, need to find ways to keep this time away as low as possible. Birthday was on monday, traded thrue the celebrations but managed to miss good trades and only get the bad ones this way, not sure if this is coincidental or not but this keeps happening on days im partly away which is not completely logical as all trades and trade times should have similar risk and are all set and forget.

Weekly growth: +5%(with one position open that will swing it to +2 or +8 when finished depending on result)

Weekly accomplishments;
1. Shrugged of frustrations after a frustrating Monday and Tuesday morning to go into a profitable week
2. exercised 2 times so far, so the goal of 5 is still within reach (and will be reached) before sunday
3. Bettered eating patterns tremendously again this week
4. Finally made very good progress with the 4 hr analysis again (which was also a goal this week but forgot to post it here)
5. On target with affirmation and breathing exercise goal
6. Determined way forward with testing and trading again

Next weeks goals(on holiday);
Reread "you're first 100 million" by Dan Pena
finish "Trading in the zone" by Mark Douglas
Relax completely from trading, but make sure to write up an concrete action plan for the coming weeks
meditate/wim hof breathing 5 times

Problems & challenges;
Beginning of the week was frustrating again, missed a trade due to my birthday festivities (which does not in any way count as an excuse)

Comments:
Beginning of the week was frustrating again, still the same problem, missed some good trades that I should really get, next trading week i'll make sure to get all trades again. Next week is my holiday, so no forex at all, still alot of positive action, trying to relax and let all build up stress go are main priorities.

Weekly growth: +5%

Weekly accomplishments;
Took every trade exactly according to the rules
thought of new angle for building strategies on which looks very promising
altered 2 goals and rewrote affirmations accordingly
made small improvement to summary section

Next weeks goals;
Write out a new morning ritual routine, inclucding breathing exercises cold shower and whatever more is needed
Find the most compact and efficient way to summarize my weeks, which includes all variables instead of just the normal
Rethink sport goals, then training and write out plan on these thoughts
Calculate estimated profit ratio for my current 3 methods Im testing, find out which one has the most potential and focus on that one again
Test out new self made superfood muesli recipe (to use as ready made breakfast)
Make a spreadsheet for easier tracking of sports per day, affirmations per day

Problems & challenges;
Lack of focus for sure
some issues with not executing my exercising, mostly because of lack of rhythm because of holiday last week but also partly because I need to rethink my sportgoals as mentioned in the goals section

Comments:
Decided to take a little bit more of a break on holiday then i had planned, was good to relax completely though as I've never worked nearly as hard in my life then the last couple of months. Downside of that is ofcourse that it's not that easy and smooth to get in the killer rhythm. Decent trading week nonetheless.

The week I was on holiday was the worst week for my strategy since I started keeping track (some 4 months), took no trades since I decided to take a total break so that was nice. Trading performance has slowed down this month, due to the random distribution of trades but also partly because of my own mistakes. Performance is still positive but I really need to take the next steps and continue the process.

Weekly growth: +10%

Weekly accomplishments;
1. Executed my strategy to absolute perfection again
2. Completed all goals of last week but one, which is the least important one and will be finished this sunday (the making muesli goal), which means my work time was really properly focused on my goals at hand this week.
3. Calculated that I can now reduce my risk without letting my goals get compromised, by spreading the risk out a little bit better and furthering my exstensive research on my current main method, which is continually getting slightly better. Current risk of main strategy trades stands at 2% per position now.
4. really got back into my sport rhythm again, making progress nicely again (also found out that my break period was active enough to not really disturb my fitness level)
5. Got on track with eating healthier again after a small break from dietery regimen during my holiday

Next weeks goals;
1. finish analysis of strategy number two, so that I can start fully incorporating the strategy into my trading, as this method has proven to be the best of the strategies I am currently testing and is also coincidentally the least distracting from my main strategy (although at a smaller risk per position rate)

Problems & challenges;
Focus on my goals was there, but the goals were not set high enough at all. This was the first week I accomplished all my goals, but on the other hand this was also one of my laziest weeks since starting the journal. This journal was started on advice of a wise man who also stated that setting low goals makes you lazy and do barely enough to reach the goal and not go further and setting high goals (perhaps even unreachable) makes you work hard in order to accomplish them and thus in the progress getting way more done. I must say this week really made me understand how that feels in the real day to day world as that is exactly what happened.

Comments:
Pretty good week. Trading was good but analysis was pretty lazy. In a normal week my forex related work is mostly a combination of executing trades and analyzing (as I imagine it is the case with most of you). Trading was perfect this week, but my analysis was very lazy as I mentioned. This is a though contradiction as you see you account rise nicely but I still feel like you didn't put in the work, because I didn't. I believe good trading is only done by at least working 10x harder then everyone you can possibly think of. Being in the 5% means you need to at least work more then 95%, and not only work more but also better, smarter and way more efficient BUT MOST OF ALL MORE FOCUSED. This is why I only trade 1 method on 1 TF, and mostly only research 1 other method or variation on the side. And I constantly check (for which this journal is pretty convenient) if I am still focused and on track.

A good week to all,
Nevie2

Weekly growth: +10%

Weekly accomplishments;
1. Managed to my main strategy perfectly, even did better then I should have because i missed friday (which happened to be a bad day)
2. Introduced my new strategy with decent succes, 2 wins and 1 loss, with the wins being about 3 times bigger then the loss
3. got rid of my main distraction these last couple of weeks, ready to fully focus again
4. got a little furher but did by no means finish the analysis of the new strategy unfortunately
5. Good week of sport

Next weeks goals;
1. calculate possible earnings for new strategy and look at the historic overall drawdown/run-up per week so I know what extremes to reasonably expect
2. Finish last two pairs of new strategy analysis
3. Work out 5 times & perform daily morning ritual 3 times

Problems & challenges;
Lack of focus, I did delete my main distraction at the end of the week, but then went away on a planned trip on the weekend, need to really get back into laserbeam focused mode on forex.
The lack of focus is also partly because of the weird contradiction where I am making good money without putting alot of work in at the moment, because i'm reaping the benefits of the last couple of months of insanely hard work. However i still want to do way better so BACK TO F''CKING WORK NOW.

Comments:
Pretty nice average couple of weeks, trading was a little thin, but as long as the equitiy curve keeps pointing up enough, i'll be happy.

Weekly growth: -10%

Weekly accomplishments;
1. Did a enormous load of random to-do's
2. Delved really deep into FF to find an actually reliable source of information for a new strategy and general tips and advice (someone with proven experience, a proven system, a proven mentor and most of all that has done what I want to achieve (FF user: TheRealThing))
3. read alot of his stuff and started taking notes of the most important stuff, already extracted a valuable new principle from this (a MM strategy variation)
4. Performed a new sport, ate healthy and took some cold showers
5. Good week of affirmations
6. Traded my main system perfectly yet again
7. Did some pipsize research on my last 4 months of livetrades, found out that the smaller positions have an increased chance of succes

Next week goals;
1. Finish reading the entire blog of TheRealThing
2. Finish goals 1 & 2 of last week
3. perfom morning ritual 7 times
4. Work out if pipsize of my positions is a determining factor of a main strategy trade's succes, use the backtest data already gathered

Problems & challenges:
An interesting week where i was actually fully focused on work, just not completely on my set weekly goals. Early in the week I decided to prioritize my goals slightly different so this was actually planned, just not jotted down first. So overall not unhappy with my focus (which means this was an absolute killer work week ). Only real problem of the week was that I still didn't execute my morning ritual (which consists out of breathing exercise and a cold shower). Need to start killing this immediately next week!

Happy trading and kind regards,
Nevie2

Weekly growth: - 15%

Weekly accomplishments:
1. One of my most focused weeks I've ever had, despite it being the worst trading week ever endured (not related though)
2. Decent week of affirmations
3. Read most stuff that needed to be read on Joel's Blog
4. Did some really good analysis of the impact of pipsize on the strength of an inside bar breakout

Next week goals:
1. Calculate in best work block for university
2. Work out the best routine to trade and attend classes at the same time
3. change up dibs rules to reflect new insight on pipsize of DIBS bars
4. get settled into uni life in general again

Problems & challenges
By far the biggest DD since starting the new strategy (-28% from the top), while managing to get alot of work done and stick to the strategy mostly I still made some small mistakes:
1. Took 2 trades an hour to late according to rules and got punished immediately
2. Was late on 1 trade (though i managed to still take it later)
3. messed up 1 position size
All in al this meant my losses could have been reduced some 5%, good lessons for coming weeks: STICK TO EVERY F RULE OF THE F STRATEGY.

Comments:
My university life starts again after a 6 month trade break, lets see if I feel they'll actually teach something this time around.

Happy trading,
Nevie2

Wise words.

How is the trading going?