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Intricate's TST Combine training + Real Combine Journal
I have been told that starting a journal is an excellent way to keep accountability to my trades. I started off a year ago with my best mate (Raider (on this forum), learning about how to trade. However, he started to actually trade while I got held up with university work. But now I am ready to continue my journey trading.
A bit about myself: I am an Australian living in Canada hoping to move to New York in the fall to go to university there. I have a long term goal to start up my own fund with my mate and for our trading to continue to grow in profits. As for my short term goal, I hope to be able to consistently make enough money that my job at the restaurant I work at is not necessary. Hopefully this journal will help me see where I am going wrong in my trading, where I should hold traders longer and where I should let them go sooner. Where I made trades with my emotion that went bad and where I made logical great trades.
A bit about my trading: Me and my mate started off in the spot forex market with a broker called Avatrade trading with indicators and you can probably imagine how that went....It resulted in us just giving our money to Avatrade essentially while we tried to figure out what we were doing wrong. Luckily, we managed to get in contact with a mentor who has become very successful trading. He told us about the uselessness of indicators and the importance of volume. Since then I have been looking at trades through order flow ( I use Jigsaw for it cause I love how it displays order flow) and through price action.
I saw 2260 as a support for the declining price rebound off of. However, I also placed another buy limit at 2257.25 so that it'd be a scale in with the strong support at 2257.75. I gave the odds for this one working about 60% given the market context and it worked out for a good 3 ticks.
ES long 2257.75 - 2260 ✔
I saw this price as a strong support and gave it 70% odds chance of going in my favour. I was right and made just over 2 points off it. I got out as it met resistance going up.
ES long 2259 - 2260.75 ✔
I felt it was still going up as it was starting to break through the resistance. However, I only give this one 60% odds. It worked out in my favour
All in all, a good trading session considering I got on late.
The Asian and Euro session tonight was very very slow. Only made one trade.
ES long 2264.75 - 2265.25 ✔
I saw it break out of the channel and looked for where I saw a spike of volume on the order flow and also where price action showed support. This was were I placed my buy order. However, the market was so slow that it didn't move much in any direction. I decided to limit out at 2265.25 and just take the few ticks. I gave the chance here 60% & It worked out. Next time I gotta pay more attention to the time of the night that I am making trades to ensure I'm not stuck in one late into the night when I have to wake up early for the NY session. Also taking more into account the impact of volatility or the lack thereof.
This trade was at the end of a wedge formation and I thought that it might of been going down and limited in. However, I was wrong as it continued up. I shouldn't of guessed the way it was going to go and instead relied more heavily on the price action and order flow. 1 point loss.
It started to break out of a support zone. However, it was getting really late and I wanted to wake up earlier to try and get more time in the NY session. Thus, I closed it for the one tick and went to bed.
Gotta make sure to only make logical trades. NEVER just guess which way its gonna go without basis. If I wanna gamble, I may as well go to the casino.
First losing session but I still look forward to the NY session tomo!
This session went quite well for me! I find that I love trading retracements but need to get better at trading the breakouts. I have limits set in great spots for where the breakout might go, but I am unable to trade the breakout properly yet. I gotta research into ways to trade these better. Anyways, here are my trades for the day.
ES long 2255.25 - 2256.75
I made 1.5 points here except I accidentally did it on the sim account.... I saw the support at the bottom of a big drop and caught the retrace!
ES short 2259.50 - 2258.50
I made a solid point here. The price had gone down around 7 points and I had set up a limit at a resistance above it for if it retraced back. It did and I got out for a solid point. Could of held it a bit a longer but I was okay with getting out with just a point. At a 2nd glance, it turned out that that resistance was also the top of a channel. This also helped my trade. I gotta make a mental note to try and get a bigger view of the charts for chart formations more often. This could help me find strong support and resistance locations.
ES long 2259.75 - 2260.25
It was breaking out of its channel as it was getting closer to the end of the session. As it was breaking upwards, I got in but didn't want to hold it for too long as I find the end of the NY session to be too hectic for me as a beginner. Thus, I got out for the 2 ticks.
All in all, a good session although I only traded part of it and only made 2 trades. I gotta research more into trading breakouts and I gotta practice and recognising chart formations to better my trading.
Was waiting for this breakout for a while during the session. I had stop's placed above and below the range it was trading in with respectable distance for traders hoping to hit stops and then reverse. It worked out well however I was looking too closely at the S/R and I should of seen the large amount of market sell orders that came through. This reduced my profit from 1 point to 3 ticks but still a great trade Just gotta pay more attention to my order flow in the future!
This morning went pretty well minus a slight blunder on one trade
ES long 2262.50 - 2263.25
Made 3 ticks here. Played the breakout of the resistance which led to the easy 3 ticks!
ES long 2257.75 - 2258.25
This trade was also played as a break through the resistance. However, there was another level of resistance only 2 ticks up so i set my sell limit there to get out for the 2 ticks. Turns out that it broke through that level of resistance as well and went up ~4 points. Damn, got to look for indications in the order flow for likelihood of it breaking levels of S&R. This could definitely help my trading.
ES long 2262.25 - 2262
This was my bad trade of the session. I had my stop set up for if it broke out of the resistance as it was up trending. However, I should of paid more attention to the candlesticks and the order flow that showed a still fair amount of resistance. I placed my limit too high up given the circumstances and I could of make 3 ticks but instead I had to settle for the loss of one.
I have to pay more attention to potential resistance in breakouts to determine where to put my limit. I am getting better at breakout trading now, which was an area I was hoping to focus on this week, as well as recognising chart formations. Hopefully I can continue to make good trades in the Asian and Euro session!
So my 15 day trial ended and I thought I may as well just go for the real combine as I should start making some real trades with something on the line instead of just on a demo.
However, the nerves of finally trading with something on the line might of slightly gotten to me.
Euro Session Tues, Jan 24, 2016
ES Short 2260 - 2260
I wanted to stay out of any risky trades and try to start the combine with a good first trade. However, I made a dumb mistake and placed a stop limit order too close to the level of support and instead of catching it going down, I caught the bottom and it started to rise a little. However, through watching order flow and price action, I managed to get out at even, which I guess can be good.
Just gotta make sure I pay more attention to how close my stop limit orders are to levels of S&R.
Anyways, I stopped not long after this trade as I wasn't liking the range the market was trading in ( there was 6 doji's out of 8 candles in a row...) and also I was pretty tired. To ensure I dont make anymore silly mistakes tonight I decided to just stop and wake up a bit earlier tomo to catch more of the NY session. Hopefully I can make some good trades and hit the ground running on this combine!
(If you want gratuitous, unsolicited advice: take your time with it, use small position sizes and never be in a hurry to trade when the set-ups aren't exactly right for you.)
Thus, I got out for the 2 ticks. 
