I keep doing it! I keep getting greedy, wanting to get back to winning and keep trading dumb trades.
Even though I believe the set up was defensible, I don't think I was exactly prepared to take it, as it is not my set up exactly.
It's very frustrating calling the levels right but not being able to trade them. The problem is not with this set up exactly though, it's more with the execution. I had a winning trade and increased position size as I had a winner and now I'm back to square one. I'm trying to get all back in 2-3 trades and my head keeps betraying me.
I am not learning my lessons unfortunately, and it's very frustrating. I said I wouldn't trade every day, that I'd wait for my set ups, that I like to trade Tue-Thur, and keep blowing it.
Here's the set up, looking for GBP to expand higher, with USDX confirming it was going lower.
Trading demo is definitely very different from trading live funds, that's for sure. Trading live funds, even at such small blips as I am currently trading, will do crazy things to you. I've been awfully off my game, albeit the difficult markets. I have been exiting out of positions early, taking trades early because I'm greedy, freaking out and closing without touching my stop loss and then see the move pan out. I am not moving my stop to break even soon enough. Basically, I am not following my trading rules.
For the past week, I should have been positive, or at least neutral, instead of down -0.35% as I am for this week and -0.7% for the month. I am overtrading, changing my mind, doing crazy things. I need to settle back to my routine and let that pan out.
I thought NZD would go down to 0.6780 and tried a swing trade, even though I like trading short. I exited out early, then retook the trade, even though I was not close to my stop yet. After that, I trailed my stop too close and never re entered the trade, then it dropped over 100 pips.
I exited out of a Euro trade early, then it moved just fine in my direction. I did not close my Cad long trade when I was up 58 pips looking for 60, even though we'd just taken out a high, and many more.
I took two positions at the same time, even though my mantra is not to do more than one, as I am either long or short dollar.
I have to keep trading with the smallest size until I am back to my original level. I never expected to have such a losing streak, with 8 of the last 10 trades pretty much losers. This portion of my trading needs to be about learning and growing my account little by little. Eventually it'll grow and I'll be doing well, but I don't need to rush these things. My 3% weekly goal is attainable and just fine, no shame in that. I need to go back to that, even though with current trading size I'll be looking for something like 0.5% return per week for the foreseeable future.
I took 6-7 trades this week, while away from my computer, going off my phone, way too many bad things. Really disappointing to be in this funk. Hopefully I'll learn from this, at least I'm getting a bit better from what I was doing last week but still, not in my A game.
I once again let somebody influence my trading and it cost me. I moved to 2 micro lots after making that 0.3% back, and looked to short Euro thinking it'd go lower with a stronger dollar closing their respective gaps.
I was up 20 pips and thought about moving my stop to break even. I had in my head somebody telling me 'it should be okay to run with no problem from here' so I was afraid I'd miss on the move.
I saw the news at 3am and even thought it looked suspicious but went to sleep as not much happened. When I woke up I was down some 20 pips and was hoping it'd continue lower after a retracement.
I was wrong and it moved higher some 100 pips for the day, netting me a loss of 30 pips.
I'm back to 1% gain for the year, which is still better than losing money and the markets have not been all that great, but I need to go back to my bread and butter trading which was working just fine for me and was yielding the results I wanted.
My stop here was way too high for what I like trading, even though the set up still looks good to me, sometimes things can be unexpected.
But I need to more to break even and preserve capital when I want to, and I need to take profits when I feel comfortable too also.
Despite all the set backs, I feel like I'm learning a lot and can see a lot more set ups forming. I'm leaning towards my day trading plus some scalps throughout the day as well if I see something that I really like or something that's tradeable, although I don't want to go crazy with trading all the time.
I also need to be better with my journaling my trade right away, and updating the information afterwards.
I was watching the news event live at 6:45pm for NZD, thinking it'd want to trade higher to close 0.6980. I was hoping to catch a retracement to go long. Price never retraced and shot up to 0.6970 but began to stall. I figured it'd trade lower from here so I took a short at 0.6966 looking for 40 pips.
I did not like the price action so I cut bait at 0.6946 for 20 pips. I've been pretty desperate for a good win, so I should've moved my stop to break even or +5 or something and then let it run.
I'm trading with the smallest size as my trading has been sloppy and I need to make back my returns.
I'm currently at 1.6%+ for the year, which is less than stellar. I closed April (first month) at 1.3% gain.
When I was trading demo I did not let other's opinions influence me, and at first, I started with my real trading the same way, but as soon as I took one loss, I was a deer in the headlights. I've been super sloppy, getting in and out of positions without sound analysis, not trusting what I'd been doing prior, etc.
If I'm day trading, I can just go for 1:1 risk/reward scenarios as I was doing, or even the 1/1.5 that I had gotten comfortable with, usually in the form of 20 pip stop loss, 30 pip objective. I closed this trade too soon instead of moving stop to break even and just seeing what it could do. I could've gotten the 30 pips back from the losing EURUSD trade.
Alas, I was influenced by somebody else's idea of the trade and closed it.
Been trading with the smallest of sizes as my trading has been sloppy, I've been overtrading and I don't have the experience to be doing this in this market environment.
I've also been sloppier about my journaling. I was just plain wrong about the direction of this trade and it cost me.
I'm finding out that when I'm wrong about a trade, I just get the full stop because it's going in the opposite direction, then because I have a tight stop, I can probably play with smaller stops than 35 pips, need to know to trust my levels, and if I'm wrong, just be wrong quickly.
