EURUSD Short +12pips

I was up for London session looking for a short on a currency opposite the USDX as I was thinking it still wanted to go higher. My hypothesis for the day was that USDX would drop seeking liquidity and then drive higher as it had been doing for most of the time on up days.

There were some news releases at 3:00am for EUR, as well as 3:30am and 4:30am, so I was focused on that one, although because of EURGBP I was thinking they would hold EUR and drop GBP.

At around 2:45am I wasn't seeing anything on GBP, but EUR looked like it was a trade to go lower, even ahead of the news (which in hindsight might have been a terrible idea) with a tight stop if I was wrong.

I took a short at 1.0633 fill, with stop at 1.0655, which might have been too big, and probably 1.0650 was the right stop in that scenario, looking for liquidity below 1.0585, so a 2.5:1 trade basically.

With USDX having behaved as I was expecting by dropping lower to take out stops and then a move higher.

The news did not move the market a lot, but the trade started going in my direction. The trade size was 1 mini lot, which is the minimum amount I can trade on this platform. After about an hour, the first target was taken out and I would have liked to take some off but I can't with the sizes I'm trading at.

And USDX looking to take out a high:

The trade stalled there for a while, and only moved lower another 5-10 pips on EURUSD, with nothing really happening. I had moved my stop to +3 pips to break out even if it spiked the other way as I did not see it going higher than where it started dropping from.

At 5:00am when London session ended, I decided to go to sleep, I put my stop at +12pips as I did not want to see everything give up while I slept.

EUR went up higher to 1.0637 so it took out my stop and went higher to an H1 -OB, that gave two chances to get short again, but I was sleeping. Ultimately, EURUSD went to my target.

I probably mismanaged the trade but trailing the stop too tightly, it was psychology saying 'hey, you want to get paid something for this effort' which is probably the wrong mindset. It's hard to see your profits evaporate, there's no such thing as a free trade, even if you get out at break-even, at one point you were up. When I went to sleep my risk-reward was probably 1:1 or lower at that time and it's hard to take that trade.

Another thing I learned is that trading London is hard with my schedule. I live on the East Coast and getting up anywhere between 2-4 in the morning is tough, and it's especially hard staying up watching the trade and micromanaging. I'm going to have to learn to trade New York or look for a set up and then go to sleep and trust my analysis and my stop.