Crawled out of bed unwillingly for this, but a couple of minutes up and the fatigue falls away.

In hindsight the trade I took was valid but it wasn't from a setup I had in my plan, it was just a plain scalp of the break-out from a stall. I failed to keep myself out of the market as the setups I was hoping for didn't materialise.

Pretty much as good as it gets today. Valid setup, good management, profitable trade.

A standard YTC PAT test setup at S/R - not any fancy session opening setup, although the Asian low was my target even if it wasn't my entry.

I need about 20 or so of this kind of trade to persuade myself to go in with real money. And significantly fewer bad or unprofitable ones.....

Too complicated today for a trade. Had a theory that would have worked out, but it was low probability based only on a lower low and a lower high. Staying out was a better decision. Here are the charts.

Stupid situation today. Got up 5 mins late which didn't help but also didn't put my contact lenses in, so spent the hour with my face only right up to the screen, and then my little daughter got up early at 6:45 and wanted to sit on my lap and be hugged, which wouldn't have been a problem except then I couldn't see the screen properly. Instead of doing something sensible like putting my glasses on or putting her in bed with her mum, I just missed the 2 golden opportunities that came along today. OK maybe I'm exaggerating but I should have taken a trade and I didn't.

Maybe I'm lying to myself as well - the BO at the Asian high was big so the entry stop would have been 1.2845 and the initial stop had to be 1.2835. Perhaps I couldn't hack the 10 points risk. But I'll not know now since I was distracted. I guess it's easy to be distracted instead of dealing with the situation.

Better today. Had the emotions under control and no distractions. Was really difficult to get out of bed but definitely worth the pain later on today (although treated that well with coffee).

There was a classic break-out pull-back at S/R although not at the Asian session boundaries. I was biased in the wrong direction but not so much that I was only expecting it to go one way. I caught the sudden move down nicely with my stop.

Weird day followed - volatile but small range.

Missed a 30 pointer today as the market failed to break the Asian high and dropped 40 points to the Asian low. Would have had to be a set-and-forget trade if I'd been there since it took a while, but get there it did. Failed to get out of bed though - didn't get to bed soon enough and sleep disrupted a couple of times in the night.

Missed out on a nice move today - but for different reasons from yesterday.

Made the mistake firstly of not seeing the channel line coming down - but then I never look for channel lines in the morning from the Asian session - maybe I should start.

Secondly didn't have a good target. The first - the Asian low - was too close, the second, the 1.2620 support was too far.

Could have bailed at the first bull bar but decided to try to hold out.


Edit later after seeing the move up from the morning:

- the channel line wouldn't have helped
- isn't it more typical that the market is just as likely to reverse at the end of the Asian session?
- big bars like the one just after 07:00 in the early morning here are likely to be retraced....

I still can't work out what happened on Friday morning. I had 20 points but it turned out to be the low point of the day and I gave them all up wishing the market to take out the big support level at 1.2620.

But even with hindsight I can't see any clues that show me something I could have done better.

I just need to stick to small targets. I could have put in a target half-way down. Or even just 5 pips out from the Asian low which would have been reasonable.

Hi Adamus, Maybe that bar 186 had a much bigger body relative to the last 50 or so bars? In that situation, maybe consider locking in more ticks trailing a stop, maybe below bar 164, a recent swing low? And it looks like there were already two legs from bar 177 to bar 186,(with bar 180 a HL than bar 164, so disrupting the downtrend momentum) and in general, price behaving limited to a channel, and maybe not likely to breakout lower fast at bar 186. Just some thoughts looking at your chart. I got caught in something similar on a Crude fakeout spikedown , Friday, except I got entry stuck at the bottom of the big spike bar, ugh, my fault.

Adamus 

Secondly didn't have a good target. The first - the Asian low - was too close, the second, the 1.2620 support was too far. Edit later after seeing the move up from the morning: - big bars like the one just after 07:00 in the early morning here are likely to be retraced....

Adamus 

I still can't work out what happened on Friday morning. I had 20 points but it turned out to be the low point of the day and I gave them all up wishing the market to take out the big support level at 1.2620. But even with hindsight I can't see any clues that show me something I could have done better. I just need to stick to small targets. I could have put in a target half-way down. Or even just 5 pips out from the Asian low which would have been reasonable.

@Adamus I tried to replicate your chart using the 6E not the $EUR/USD. You posted some interesting comments about your Friday trade. I'm not here to throw a wet blanket on your trade, just voice my opinion of it, and offer a few avenues of thought. I don't want to hand you a fish sandwich, I want to help teach you to fish.

Forgive me for the crudeness of my charts. I marked up several moves on this replication of your 3m chart leading into your short. What I'm inviting you to consider is normal price rotation. If you study these moves over a period of time (weeks, months) the information can be most helpful with entries, exits and stop placement. If you choose to harvest this information from the market, always remain mindful of the "longer" term trend you're harvesting your data from, e.g. In this example the trend has been down for 7 hours, or all week for that matter. If you look at the chart I posted you may see that the majority of the down moves were equal to or exceeded 14 points/ticks (pips .... OK I said it ) and the majority of the "pull-backs" were less than 14 points. In your mission to ascertain this information on your own you may find a different amount for up trending markets and down trending markets. So what does all this mean. Personally, I use this (average) price rotation information as a guideline for entries, adding to positions, exit targets and most importantly stop placement. I'm sure you know, nothing in trading is cut and dried, but your chart (and comments) offered a great opportunity to guide you in yet another direction. To continue, Look at the price rotation in the blue circle, this is the Frankfurt open. You can see the 14 point pull-back held for several minutes at the open then was violated by only 4 ticks, then fell more than 14 ticks. Price pulled back again, less than 14 ticks then made the LOD. Of course I have the benefit of hindsight as I'm writing this, but for the record I was in this trade! The pull back off the low was 23 ticks, if the theory I just described holds any credibility, now is the time to prove it, in this example it did (second chart).

I'm sure you're bursting with questions intending to hold my feet to the fire, so I'll continue. Another comment you made that raised my brow was, " - big bars like the one just after 07:00 in the early morning here are likely to be retraced." It was the "like the one," part that tripped my trigger. Yes, I see many bars that run 20 points, and yes many of them are retraced, but not bars "like this one." What makes this bar different than most 20 point bars is the fact this level hasn't been traded since January! I'm getting ahead of myself here. Most often, if I'm bringing a short position (or a long) toward a whole number (even (00) or 50) I take profits going to that number not, going through that number. UNLESS, there's a (major) significant price level within (hint) 14 ticks on the other side. But we're not talking about the usual or "most often" in this example, we're talking about life of contract lows. So when the market makes a new low, I'm talking about one that hasn't been traded on in a long time (since January), like Friday's 1.2650. I place counter trend trades 14 and 16 points under these levels and take quick profits on the normal rotation back to the even or fifty level. I've had orders resting under every level from 1.2950 to 1.2650 and only one set of orders failed to fill, Friday's 1.2650 and only one set of the filled trades failed to rotate out for a profit (it missed by a tick). I'm not going to post my opinion why I think Friday's move failed, I'm just reporting my experience with the 6E during the past couple of weeks. Remember, I'm talking about the first penetration of these levels.

Lastly, I have to comment on volume, or lack of volume data when trading $ Euro. Volume analysis is a major part of my trading method, I couldn't trade without it. Friday's reversal was obvious to me even without my volume data, when the penetration "stopped short" in comparison to how the other 6 levels (1.2950 to 1.2700) previously penetrated. Even though the reversal in the 50's signaled go long, the market didn't offer many chances to buy in the 50's once price entered the 60's. Every tick up the market makes while I'm deciding to take a long, is one tick more risk I have to contend with, if I'm wrong. But armed with the current history of how price has been rotating around 00 and 50 during the past couple weeks, I was comfortable to take the long trade quick and deep. As I said, I don't think I could trade without volume data, I sure couldn't trade $ FX like you, but I hope this post stimulates your thoughts. Sorry for the long winded post, I struggled hard to keep my volume opinions to myself and only stick to the topic of normal price rotation and how I trade around "half and even" which may be helpful to you in $ FX as well.