More 50:50 today on this trade. Maybe I should take the loss now since it doesn't feel good but the rule is to leave it now after 08:00

Edit: got doubts about that support level at 1.2538 or so - I think it was from a daily high on wednesday. was it converted to support? I don't know, need to check the charts. It certainly bounced off that level once.

If I hadn't been using that level I wouldn't have played the test of support setup.

I was also too quick to jump in after it hit the MA - I wanted it to go up, but it was a decision point for the market, not for me - if it had gone up from there I could have waited till it hit the Asian low again and maybe got a B/O-P/B there with more probability. But just as likely as going up, the market could have bounced back down off the MA - well, it did and I felt like bailing but did it stay below?

It'll be interesting to see what happened.

So later: Looks like the support level at 1.2538 is valid after all my doubts, after checking price behaviour around it in yesterday's trading.

The key things I can take away from this trade -

• no point in dithering about whether an S/R line is valid or not
• let the market decide what it's going to do at the MA, don't take it as a confirmation signal just because it got there (stupid)
• there was a long moment of indecision before placing the trade - I figured it looked OK. It should have looked good, not just OK.
• losing makes me emotional. Heart rate up, adrenalin, the works. Maybe when trading long sessions I will have to take substantial breaks after losers.

Enjoy your weekend!

Mike

Bank holiday here so I was lazy and didn't get up. Family picnic was happening so I needed to conserve my strength for the abuse I was going to get from my siblings. Families

Just as well. The market action at the Asian low was almost as if it had never heard of the idea of a Break-out Pull-back failure. That's essentially what it was but it looks nothing like it. That would not have been fun.

I was talking about the drudgery of back-testing on another thread and I'm going to complain about it again here. Say I have an idea, for instance I think that the market will often retrace right across the Asian session when it doesn't show decent break-out price action at the first boundary it hits. Like today hitting the low but pulling right back and then doing it again, getting a bit further, and then pulling back just as far, showing more respect for the trend or the channel than for the Asian low. But then it fails to reach the next support and just turns and rallies up thro the session to the Asian high and beyond.

Or any theory that I want to back-test.

If I go back days and weeks, I spend so much time checking the S/R lines and then I only look at the chart briefly and then I move further back in time and have to do it again.

Basically I need to write an indicator which I've thought of writing so often but I can't see how. I need S/R lines from swing highs and swing lows on the 60 min chart. Guess I can write it but as soon as the market starts to consolidate seriously the indicator will just block out the chart with lines. I'll have to try it and find out.


Edit: completely changed the comments on the chart, if you just looked it :O

Trying to write an indicator at the same time as trade, that's why I didn't do any prep notes on the chart.

Thought it looked like a great setup but it died on me.

After the fact, looks like I was suffering more impatience. Another trade I should have stayed out of and deserved to lose. Didn't take time to do my psych work with my entry statement. Tried writing an indicator at the same time instead.

Should have seen the bear tails on the preceeding rally and in fact throughout the setup. The bear swing in mid-Asian session was strong, but they didn't have enough to push down past that double S/R level and away from 1.2500. Instead of giving a decent B/O and push down to the Asian low, it eventually went up to the Asian high. Must keep my eye on that and define it better.

No trade, would have liked to trade just 3 mins longer today since the setup I was watching, had been pretty unconvincing but suddenly started giving good signals (which I only saw after I got out the shower)

Got up late after going to bed late. Helped a friend moving house yesterday evening. But then missed all the action which kicked off early today right after 06:00.

Post-analysis: bears tried a break-out pull-back eventually at the old Asian high. Failed though.

Not trading today with the US Labor Day holiday. I figured the market would be too difficult to trade with the lack of interest from other traders - even though hardly any of the traders trading now are in America, they are probably all thinking like me. At least the speculators.

Working on an indicator instead, to plot the Asian high and low automatically. Mainly for going back in time to look at previous days, so I don't have to keep drawing lines. My coding in C# has got a bit rusty.

Lots of action but couldn't see it happening.

In retrospect, I guess I was OK.

The setup I was after dissipated into chop. Not sure which exits I should be using here - (a) give the market room and take a bigger hit if it goes wrong or (b) keep the stop tight and risk missing the move after getting stopped out.

The first setup was the break-out pull-back at two lines of support - although it bounced up more than I liked, the market is bearish after the Asian session's drop, and it bounced back down nicely off the MA. Just made a doji though and went back up to my stop. Makes me think, I should have exited that on bad price action when the push down failed on the entry bar.

Second entry was more in chop so perhaps I shouldn't have taken it at all.

OK so now it's the NY session and looking back, it was all just chop. I asked the right question above - shouldn't I have got out on bad price action instead of relying on my stop? I think the answer is yes, but I think I'll trust it more (and do that more) if I can go back and look at history to see what the odds are over the long term of trusting single bars as indicators.

I've tried several times to go back over the history but it takes me ages to set up the S/R for each day compared to the 1 or 2 mins that I spend looking at the actual price action afterwards, it just drives me nuts. I think I complained about this before. Anyway, I'm going to put an indicator on my chart to do the S/R now, I've been looking at a couple here on futures.io (formerly BMT) and on the NT7 support website. Will probably adapt one of them and then I can just jump back day by day and check a whole year in just two hours or so.

I also have to get my lazy hide out of bed to trade at the right time because this morning I skipped most of the prep work and it showed. Actually I have it in my plan to get out of a trade if price action tells me to - but I didn't know for sure this morning on that entry where it reversed on me, I just don't have the experience to know whether I should have got out.

I have to write into my plan that I will stop trading on a loss like today and analyse it, work out what I did wrong or what I was having trouble with, work out whether my emotions are still stable and then go back to trading.

No good today either. Cleared out of a bad trade quicker though. The market is obviously trying to mess with my head as it then went on to prove me wrong. But I had 2 good reasons to exit - it was bad PA but it was also counter-trend.

The fact that it wouldn't have hit my stop and went on to hit my target is essentially irrelevant. Can happen every other day. Had to stop at 08:00 on the hour. Thought I had carefully considered the trade and accepted it in the 5 mins post-trade, but I hadn't. Needs longer.

Thinking back,this trade brought up another question that I need to work out the answer to and put in my trading plan.

Just before I entered the trade, I had the sell stop sitting there below the stall, waiting for the market to do something. Then I just thought, what am I doing trying to go short here after that big push up without any significant price action except the pull-back from the resistance? I tried to cancel it but I was too late to cancel, and instead of carrying through my train of thought and backing straight out of the trade, I just rolled over like a puppy and went with it, started juggling the price action exit or the stop exit - didn't think about exiting straight away! Idiot.

Looking at it one way, it was good to bail out since the move I had aniticipated failed - it did retrace up thro the stall zone and then hang around again just for a while longer before moving in the direction anticipated - which was a second opportunity. Not sure I justify myself saying it was right to get out - if I'd left my stop in place I would have been alright, and if I had entered again, it would have been a couple of ticks lower... so it would have been much more profitable, like only 1 commission not two, plus no loss on the first trade, plus a higher sell. Hmmm. But the risk of running into my stop and losing more and not getting another trade was higher. So that means logically, what? No conclusion there I think.