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Trend was down all day today with a range for my entire trading session. Price had exceeded average daily range and put in a bottom at 0920.
As this was when I began my live assessment, I felt price would be likely not move much lower, when in fact it did not go lower at all. I also felt it was unlikely to see a move beyond 1.3079 which it never even reached.
Thus overall I had expected price to do more or less what it did. My defined range I expected for my session was 1.3035-1.3079.
With the long weekend here in Canada I will likely not be opening charts tomorrow, so I expect that I will not post to my journal either. I will take some time for study and review.
Got some sort of flu on Friday, been out of commission. No trading, no posts, no watching charts often no going online. Lord willing I will be back at it tomorrow if my heads clear enough.
Feeling confused about a lot of trading things today.
Do I really understand Future Trend Direction?
Appears I, as has been suggested before by trendisyourfriend, am wanting to change my bias of trend direction too quickly and too often.
The trouble I am finding is, I am unsure of where to actually make the change. I am unsure of how to identify trend anymore. I am unsure of how I can learn this and what exercises or drills I can do to practice and improve. I am unsure of how to grade or rank myself to see if I am improving and how to set procedure goals in this area.
I will review my notes, my journals, my plan and the books I have used to come up with my current plan this evening in an attempt to come up with a concrete plan of action for my growth and improvement in determining future trend direction.
I encourage you to start with the simplest of things, and also start with a minimal amount of things.
So pick one, perhaps two, simple ideas within your trading you want to focus and improve on. Try to be specific. For example, maybe you need to work on not moving your stop. Big post it note "Do NOT move stop under any circumstances, ever, period, for any reason!"
Perhaps you want to work on not over trading, post it note: "Do not take more than 3 trades no matter what!".
If you lack confidence in your methodology, then it can be any number of things, but here are most common ones:
a) You have not researched, backtested and most importantly forward tested your method. Until you have a large forward tested sample size, it is impossible to have much confidence.
b) Your methodology is discretionary, but you treat it mechanically trying to remove all emotion and feel for the market.
c) Your methodology is overly complex, and impossible to execute on.
d) You are trading with money you cannot afford to lose.
e) You are not focusing, but instead are on the phone, surfing the web, watching TV, listening to a trade room, etc.
f) You are reading other traders opinions on the market, then getting confused about your own opinions.
There are solutions for each of these. First step is to identify what problem areas exist in your trading, then slowly tackle them one at a time.
As for grading, I use a simple "A-F" grading principle. The grade has nothing to do with the net profit of the day. If your goal was to not take more than 3 trades, then if you took 2 or 3 then perhaps you deserve an A. If you took 5, you deserve an F.
Keep focusing on just one or two items every single day (same items) until you have a long string of A's, at which point you can move on and add a new item.
I think this is what he is trying to do by focusing his attention on means to identify the market direction. So far, he seems to be doing fine but he could clarify what he thinks is not going well.
The biggest thing I see as an issue is that I really am uncertain whether I am making progress in identifying the future direction. It appears to me I am still changing my direction bias to frequently. This is also the area I am having a difficult time grading. Looking over my plan, notes, books etc. I am thinking if at the end of the day when I review where I noted direction change if was correct (in hindsight) on all changes, if I missed no changes, if I kept from adding unwarranted changes I receive an A. For each area listed I err I drop a grade. To move to another section/area of my trading to work on I must receive consistent A's (80%+ over minimum of five days).
Reviewing I feel has been a help and just thinking these things over. Tomorrow I will begin my grading of my live future direction assessment.
My overall assessment of future direction went well today and I give myself an A.
The NY session started in a downtrend and after about 40 min my bias was sideways/range.
0945 my trend bias changed to down.
1020 trend changed to up, price having been accepted above the 50% retracement from low to downtrend line.
1035 I felt confidence in uptrend as price was accepted above previous sideways area.
1140 direction bias again down. Price accepted below 50% retracement from high to uptrend line.
1150 direction confirmed with price being accepted below the uptrend line.
Looking at an hourly chart I would have said price future direction was sideways for the entire period. Also the two times I marked trend confirmations were more for my own confidence while assessing the future trend live.
Comments specifically about the change of direction from down to up and the price action from about 10-11 would be greatly appreciated.