I think I've used up every excuse for not starting this journal so here we go. :crazy_pilot:
Background
After some heavy early losses in stocks and ES in 2008/09 my real and psychological capital were severely damaged and have both never recovered.
To avoid the pain of losses I traded 6B almost solely in SIM for 2 years until around January this year.
During this time I read just about every book out there on trading and psychology.
Despite all my SIM work I still did not have the discipline required to follow my plan and to some extent I see it as wasted time or at least what I learnt should not have taken as long as it did.
While I would keep a journal I'd blow out and then just gloss over it because it was SIM and I could just close the journal and start a new one and just pretend it never happened.
When I did start trading live again at the start of this year I was fighting the trend or just watching setups with the trend go by. When I did take trades I'd exit for 2 or 3 pips just to feel good for one moment - only to feel worse as price went on and way beyond my target.
Then with my small targets I'd scrape away 10 or 20 pip days only to have a blow out and go past my loss limit at -60 pips.
Trend Fighting
I find it pretty amazing that despite around 4 years of working at this I can turn up to trade and still have this overwhelming desire to trend fight.
I know it's in our DNA. I know about the tests on monkeys that prove this but I still find it surprising how hard this urge is to overcome.
I think underneath it there is a part of me that thinks I don't deserve success. At least I'd like to think that as it could help explain a part of why I make the same mistakes over and over again.
I had one period in my journal where we had been in an uptrend and my last 120 trades were all short! Not a single long! I'm not joking. I only broke that run of shorts when the down trend started. Then I went long...
I've tried embracing this tendency and becoming a successful counter trend trader. This ended pretty terribly and hurt my emotional capital more because I know that the higher probability trades are going against me.
Goals of this journal:
To overcome my trend fighting tendencies
To learn to better accept losses and risk
To help define what I'm good at so that I can focus on it
To consistently maintain my journalling efforts due to the spotlight effect
To get support and feedback from other traders
To help other traders learn from my journey
Important Components of the journal (as per Dr Brett)
Observations about myself AND about the markets themselves
Obervations about my best trades (not just my worst)
Review prior day but also prepare for the next session
Specific steps/goals to work on
Performance metrics
System
I am an intraday scalper.
I trade EUR/USD only.
I predominately attempt to trade pull backs in the trend on a 4 range chart and use a 60min and daily chart for major levels and context.
I define an acceptable long entry on a 4 range chart as follows:
Enter on the close of a positive closing range bar after at least 2 lower bars where the low is less than 10 EMA and the 10 EMA is higher than the 33 EMA.
Vice versa for shorts.
I don't display the EMA's on my charts but do display the signals at the close a bar.
I also show the mid point, VWAP and LVN/HVN peaks/troughs and pivots.
I don't take entries mechanically. I use discretion to determine which entries to take.
The exceptions to these rules are that I can take trades at intraday 38% and 50% retracement levels only on the close of 4 range bar off the level.
I still use Investor RT with 6E even though I'm now trading spot FX through LMAX which it doesn't support.
I use Multicharts for timing entries after identifying in Investor RT and for now I use the LMAX java/html interface for trade execution.