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I'm starting my first personal trading journal in this forum.
As of now, I document all my trades by hand on sheets of paper in order to gather information on what I'm doing well and what doesn't work.
I plan on using my personal trading journal in this forum in order to complement this handwriting with a space to reflect upon the trading day as a whole.
My goal is to be the best trader I can be, each and everyday. For me, this starts with being focused, patient and disciplined.
If others can learn from my personal journey all the better. Cheers!
Friday is a bit of an awkward day to start something new, but in this way the ice will be broken for next week.
Because it is a quadruple witching day, I was expecting somewhat of a wild, probably choppy day, and I think I got it.
I sensed a lot of indecision in the first half of the day and decided to trade the day as if it was a range day, unless proven otherwise by price action.
This worked out fairly well for me, as I managed 3 scalps and 1 runner out of 5 trades. 80% success rate is what I aim for and I got it.
Two of my scalps were near the bottom of the range just before price action took off in the most unexpected way. I wasn't actually surprised prices came up to test the overnight high, but the way price blew through it on the second attempt was surprising. Quadruple witching day it is.
In any case, this action makes me doubt of my trailing stop strategy. I've actually been testing a few different options in the last two weeks: trailing each bullish bar, trailing each one-bar higher low, trailing each higher low that shows some kind of support, and using a price target limit order based on measured move. Each strategy has its strengths and weaknesses.
As I did some research today, I found out using a close below the EMA could be another strategy to test.
All in all, it doesn't seem like there's a strategy better than others in terms of taking profit on the runner. The strategies that allow to grasp the bigger movements usually don't give much or nothing at all on more choppy days, while the strategies that trail more tightly give a more consistent profit, although much smaller. Like with everything in trading, the choice of strategy has to do with a trader's own personality and objectives.
In my case, I tend to prefer smaller but more consistent profits, although when I enter a move like today's (starting around 11ET) but am stopped out for 1 tick profit because my strategy was to trail every single bullish bar, that makes me realize this strategy is definitively not working out to my taste.
To try: I'm tempted to give the EMA strategy a shot next week.
To do: quad, hamstring and calf stretches during the trading day. If someone is looking for inspiration look up "Bob and Brad physical therapists" on Youtube the guys have a lot of material for whatever your needs.
Weaknesses identified: My only loss of the day was due to an entry that doesn't respect my criteria. I was too aggressive and had I been a little more patient, a better setup was setting up a few bars later. That is almost always the case. I need to work on this, that is, I need not be aggressive at all.
I like to think in "do" rather than "don't", so let's say I need to be patient, more selective. I already know that. Another way to say it is I need to be peaceful (the opposite of aggressive).