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I spent most of last night watching Mike’s recording of this past weekend. Wow, some great stuff. Thank you, Mike for doing that.
The video got me thinking about how I place my stops and profit targets. I am going to spend some time reevaluating this. I believe a change is on the horizon.
Trade 1
The GBPUSD had been in an uptrend all morning. Around 5:30 it put in a L/W, but was starting to look like it was range bound. The range was about 20 pips. I was attempting to take a scalp out of the range. I broke one rule of not entering at the top or bottom of the range, instead I enter on a market order which had slippage 2 pips below the candle (strange) there was some good support 20 pips below. The following bar had a rapid swing down to support, but it didn’t break support. I left my stop alone. The next bar was an inside, low close bar, and no big deal. The next bar pushed right to support and stopped. I knew it was time to get out. However, I didn’t exit on a market; I moved my stop to +4. I should have closed with a market order.
Grade D
While I was watching the GBPUSD, I missed a great trade on the EURUSD. I was switching between each market charts, so I did see it developing. However, the support from yesterday was about 10 pips away. The smart move would have been to trade 2 cars with the first target right above support and a runner. Around 5:30 there was a break of a long term trend, then sideways, and then at 6:30 it started down. There was a nice weak PB and then off to the races.
Today I planned on working on my initial stop placement, trailing stop and profit targets.
Trade 1
The EURUSD had been sideways in the most of the night and then at 5:00 AM MST it dropped off a cliff. I was thinking about taking a reversal at 6:05 1.4139, but the move down was so strong I decided against it. Around 6:30 we broke below support from 3/21 and resistance from 3/18. Again, I was thinking long, but the overall trend was down. After the really weak P/B I placed my order 2 pips below the close of the bar at 7:10. I got filled and quickly moved my targets. The first target was 2 ticks above the S/L. The 2nd target I had at 1.4904, support from a couple of days ago. I quickly realized that the nice round number of 1.4100 might be mental support for some, so I moved my stop to 2 pips above that.
I quickly hit my first target. Once we made it 10 pips past the S/L I moved my stop for the second target to there. After a small P/B, I missed my target by 3 pips. I got very defensive and move my stop, to within 10 pips, good call. There was a nice P/B and I would have given back a lot of pips.
Grade A
I had a late day to the office, so I was looking at shorting again at 8:25 1.4132. I thought this was just going to be a nice P/B and then back down. I was right and wrong. It pulled back further then I had thought, then went down. All in all I am happy with the day. I need to keep working on stop placement and profit targets.
I have been working stop placement and profit targets. Instead of having fixed targets and stops I am using P/A to tell me where to put them.
Trade 1
After a failure to continue lower, I thought we might go sideways or up. I had place limit order long above the breakout candle and got filled 1 bar later. My first profit target hit was right below some support; we had no problem getting there. After my 1st target was hit, then candle closed sort of bullish so I tightened my stop up. The next candle was a doji, then a bear, so I thought this might be the end. I closed out on a market order. Silly me, I would have hit my 2nd target, but I am not complaining. Experience will help me learn where to place my stops.
Today’s Total: 12
Week’s Total: +15
Trip with the boys this weekend. I will not be trading tomorrow and most likely Monday, too. I am off to Phoenix for some golf, baseball, hockey and heavy drinking.
After a long weekend. I had to catch up on things for my day job, so I didn't have a chance to trade today or yesterday. I will be back at it tomorrow morning.
Finally back in the saddle after some much need time off. I have to admit, I was excited and very nervous about trading. I know I shouldn’t have been nervous, but it had been 4 days since I looked at charts and 5 days since my last trade.
Trade 1 From the London open the GBPUSD had been trending down on the 5 Minute chart. After I missed the P/B at 6:30, I wasn’t going to let the next P/B get past me. There was a shallow P/B leading up to the US open. I put my limit order in after a nice close down. The next bar was an inside bar down, so I left my limit order in place. I was filled on the next bar, with 2 pips slippage. The following bar closed down so I felt good about the trade.
The next bar closed up, but it was a weak bull bar. About that time I realized an uptrend on my 30 minute chart. I was close to the TL and decided this was not going to be going down anytime soon. So I exited with a market order.
I am really upset with myself for not giving the large timeframe more respect. However, I am happy that once I realized I was wrong I exited. As Mike says, “Push the damn button” Which, by the way I have on a posted note, stuck to one of my monitors. So instead of taking a 11 pip (22 total) lose, I only took a 6 pip (12 pip total) lose.
This week and next week I am really focusing on exiting trades when they don’t go my way or another way of saying it “Capital Preservation”
With unemployment clains coming out at 6:30 MST, I slept in a little bit because I don’t trade around news.
Trade 1 The start of London open the GBPUSD had been trending down. I waited for news to clear before even thinkning abuot doing anything. I have been working on my entries while reviewing charts and thoughth I had a good DT, PB in the works. I put a limit order to go short right at where I thought there would be a DT. I got filled and then promtly stopped out.
There was room to move down on the big chart and thought the PB was weak, but I was wrong. I missread the market, so I need to spend more time with old charts.
Grade: C- -5
Trade 2 I was slow to change my opionon on the direciton the market should have been going. After my stop out there was a weak bull bar, then followed by a string bull bar, I was still looking for shorts. After a nice large bull bar, I thought there was enough room to the last pivot for a scalpe. I went long with a limit order and then we went into a trading range for 20 minutes. Looking back at this I knew it was going up, but I broke a rule about staying in a sideways trade longer then 15 minutes.
It finally went up with a nice bull bar, got 3 pips from my target. Then it died. With no follow through, I had to move my stop. I honestly don’t know why I moved my stop to where it was. I think this was poor planning no my part. I ended up with a +5 stop out.
Oh the start of a new month, so nice to get a fresh start. I had some computer issues and had to restart and this caused a minor glitch in the day, more about that in the trade review.
Trade 1 The market had been side ways in the most of the night. Unemployment numbers came out at 6:30, so I wasn’t going to take a trade until after the news. A couple of nice strong bear bars, then a very weak P/B which formed a textbook triangle. I placed my limit order to go short 1 pip below the down bull bar, right before breaking the triangle. Limit order was filled, only problem I was in sim mode. After the restart I forgot to change to real money. So I witched over to real money and took a quick look at how much room to support, I had 11 pips to the S/L and 45 pips to long term support. I took a market order entry and got big time slipage (look at the chart)
The other problem was I set to 1 car not the normal 2 cars. Stupid brain. I moved my target to the last S/L and had my target hit shortly after that.
Grade: D
I am going to add to my morning pretrade check list: “Check to make sure you are on the right account” Don’t ask me why this wasn’t on the checklist already, it should have been.
Today’s total: +8
Week’s Total: -4
I will do my weekly and monthly review tomorrow. Time to go watch some baseball.
I was all fired up to trade today. I spent a bit of time last night studying charts. PA is getting easier to see...not close to a master, but just seeing where trapped traders are and logical S/R is starting to become easier.
So I went to fire up my trading machine today, pushed the on button and nothing. I tride a couple of things and nothing. After about 45 minutes of trying to get it to work, I threw up my hands in frustration and left for the office. I am guessing there is an issue with the power supply. The machine is about 3 months old, I am going to drop it off at the store tomorrow and see what they come up with.
The first PC I ever purchased and well it sucks. I should have held out longer to buy a new Mac Book Pro to replace my current one.
I'm going to install ninjatrader on my wife's windows laptop this weekend, so I have a back up, just incase.
I am guessing that I will not be trading the rest of the week. Oh well, the markets will always be there.
I was really interested to read your journal, you're doing pretty much exactly what I want to do - it looks like you're a few months ahead of me. I like the currencies you like and I like the Price Action stuff you're using, althought I haven't even got my copy of Al Brooks' book yet, it's still on the way from Amazon.
I'm subscribed. Good luck getting the trading machine going again.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.