thewardiknowof 

Great job in resisting to trade unprepared. If it had turned out you may be tempted to trade again that way. Wise decision in my view.

Today though I made an error on one trade and that proved to be the chink in the armour which allowed the market to get me. Instead of handling the loss on one trade, I allowed the market to hustle me into another trade straight away which proved just as expensive and twice as badly thought-through. A humbling experience.

Yesterday's trading. I traded a longer period, thankfully getting the chaos in my day under control a bit now. I had a few lessons to learn from Wednesday.

My recurring psychological weakness is obviously now impatience. If I see a big bar in the direction of my bias, I just leap in without waiting for a setup, or if I missed the trade, I leap in late. I need to be quicker with my analysis so I don't miss opportunities, and I need to stop myself entering a trade when the setup's gone, non-existent or just wrong, instead of throwing the analysis part aside.

I'm still working on my record keeping. This chart looks pretty horrible, but I don't know how to do it better without putting the notes somewhere else which isn't ideal either.

Today's chart.

Couldn't handle it today and actually fell asleep at the screen so stopped. Need more sleep.

I made one trade, so probably started getting a bit too cautious now.

With only one trade, I guess I'm focussing really close on what I did wrong, and the stop position was 1 pip too close.

I put the stop 10 pips away just inside the last highest high at this support level which I was planning on shorting.

So why just below the HH? Dunno, that was subjective. And why 10 pips? Nice round number, and that was the exact 8 bar ATR on the 3 min chart.

However the advice is to put the stop at a point where, if the market got there, you would no longer want to be in the trade. But how far is that? Another subjective question. The down trend from Support that I wanted to catch actually started right from the point where I was stopped out.

Maybe a better approach would be not to enter so quickly (my lack of patience again) but to wait a while to see where the stall / reversal range builds. Then I probably could have got in at a better price and would have been happier to place a stop above the last HH.

I actually thought several times about widening the stop before it got hit, but didn't on account of the learning experience and consistency. After it got hit and as price hovered around just below again, I figured I should just get back in again, but in the heat of the moment I couldn't make up my mind whether to sell at the market, use a stop or try a limit order, so I missed it as it proceeded south. I think my mind was clouded by the loss and not sure whether I should 'allow' myself to leap straight back in.

A long day.

Had a 100 points in either direction to play with and didn't completely blow it. 10 trades, numerous cock-ups and several major lessons learnt. Many errors due to the wrong bias - once or twice totally wrong, but a couple of times just wrong because I hadn't switched early enough.

Decided to extend the chart into 2 shots to fit the notes better.

Bad sleep over the weekend meant I was out-of-shape mentally with fatigue today and only managed to put in 3.5 hours trading time. Not only does the fatigue affect my judgement by slowing it down and causing poorer decisions, but it also makes the pre-session analysis take so much longer as I struggle to get a grip and focus.

I made 2 trades today and probably shouldn't have attempted the first at all, and the second perhaps not either. The first one really, I was just messing around. The setup wasn't really valid for a start - price was in what looked like a trading range and I only had the faintest bias of bearish vs bullishness, and I had not even stopped to consider what other traders' sentiment might be.

The 2nd trade was also a low probability trade - a support level within a trading range which had just been broken out of in the other direction.

I think the Lesson Learnt is that I should just not trade when I'm not looking at a high probability trade. I can leave those low probability trades for the future when I might have the ability to assess them properly quickly enough.

Interesting day from a market structure point of view. It didn't move more than 50 points while I was trading.

hi adamus,

i noticed you trade during the day after 12pm. i usually stop trading after 12pm because trading usually dies off then and setups tend to get stopped out sooner.

are u trading on a live account or still demo?

I'm still in sim.

My trading starts at 9:30 and it has occurred to me that it might be easier trading earlier. When I was analysing historical charts, a lot of clean action seemed to happen right from the end of the Asian session and I figure I'm missing that now.

It's just the way my day is structured. Obviously I've only being doing this for a few days so it's a bit early to decide that I've picked the wrong trading times - but then at this stage I need all the help I can get so I probably shouldn't be passing it up. Restructuring my day to fit around early morning trading would be awkward but possible. I'll have to talk it over with my other half, because she'd have to alter her routine too.


ps just to be clear I'm in London time zone - my 12:00pm is an hour or so before the NY opening.

Adamus 

Bad sleep over the weekend meant I was out-of-shape mentally with fatigue today and only managed to put in 3.5 hours trading time. Not only does the fatigue affect my judgement by slowing it down and causing poorer decisions, but it also makes the pre-session analysis take so much longer as I struggle to get a grip and focus. I made 2 trades today and probably shouldn't have attempted the first at all, and the second perhaps not either. The first one really, I was just messing around. The setup wasn't really valid for a start - price was in what looked like a trading range and I only had the faintest bias of bearish vs bullishness, and I had not even stopped to consider what other traders' sentiment might be. The 2nd trade was also a low probability trade - a support level within a trading range which had just been broken out of in the other direction. I think the Lesson Learnt is that I should just not trade when I'm not looking at a high probability trade. I can leave those low probability trades for the future when I might have the ability to assess them properly quickly enough. Interesting day from a market structure point of view. It didn't move more than 50 points while I was trading.

This could be a excerpt out of my own journal, except in my case it's a lesson I tend to learn over and over lately There seems to be a fine line sometimes between "trading expectation" and trading the system--will comment in my journal as soon as I'm able to put my recent activity in perspective.

Adamus 

I'm still in sim. My trading starts at 9:30 and it has occurred to me that it might be easier trading earlier. When I was analysing historical charts, a lot of clean action seemed to happen right from the end of the Asian session and I figure I'm missing that now. It's just the way my day is structured. Obviously I've only being doing this for a few days so it's a bit early to decide that I've picked the wrong trading times - but then at this stage I need all the help I can get so I probably shouldn't be passing it up. Restructuring my day to fit around early morning trading would be awkward but possible. I'll have to talk it over with my other half, because she'd have to alter her routine too. ps just to be clear I'm in London time zone - my 12:00pm is an hour or so before the NY opening.

oh i see. so you were trading during the asian session at night. thought it was during the day. but yeah, the asian session is pretty bad to trade as well since theres very little movement.

well good luck and hopefully you'll find your comfort trading schedule soon enough.

dwusbu 

oh i see. so you were trading during the asian session at night. thought it was during the day. but yeah, the asian session is pretty bad to trade as well since theres very little movement. well good luck and hopefully you'll find your comfort trading schedule soon enough.

No, we're getting our lines crossed. The times on the charts are all London, UK time (GMT+0 since DST change).

Thanks for the encouragement though. Something in me says 'dont change your times now' because if I do and I still have problems, all I've done is set myself back. I don't think the market's insane, just the US session is definitely more volatile as a rule than the London morning session. I am also getting used to seeing the chop blitz at 13:30 when NY opens.