Week reflection, 13th to 17th October 2008

Last week I did about 150pips. I have more losses but my wins were much bigger. It's an awesome feeling. I think it's also my first time getting so many pips as well.

A month ago I'll be jumping for joy had I get such results but I was not happy on Friday. It wasn't that I was greedy. I just felt I could have traded better. There were trades that I felt I still exited early and some that I got in way too early.

It certainly felt like I had a change in my mindset. I really want to take trades that are good. I truly truly truly believe that if I traded well, the pips will come.

A scalped that went terribly wrong....

Here I was thinking of a quick scalp. 1 minute in it I thought to myself that I shouldn't be trading like that! It's bad habit so I quickly exited with +1 maybe +2 pips. A couple of hours later, here's what it looks like.

Now I wonder what I was thinking...

What Trend line?

Yesterday we were looking at the EU pair and while market is all over the place the TL held nicely. Jinhar also taught me that if a TL has too steep an angle, usually, they won't hold.



The following chart was taken before the move down in the evening. Have a look at it yourself, this was taken maybe 3,4 hours before the move down. Wife got 150pips later on.

My best trade ever!

This is my best trade ever. Not because I entered correctly. Not because I got stopped out at Break even.

Because I analysed the trade and stuck to it without chickening out. I stood firm on my position and not take out prematurely. When I was sure it wasn't going my way, I took it out at BE.

Had I held all my positions this way I would be in some serious pip showers :)

You must be wondering why did I hold it? Because clearly I could have gotten a nice 20pips in this one.

But that's clearly outcome bias and recentcy bias. Take a look at these trades I made today as well.


Because I chicken out, I missed out on a lot more pips. Repeatedly, had I held it to target I would gain more pips. Lesson is to hold on to your target and trust my trend lines, because that line measure the psychology of the market.

Later on I did another short beyond this picture which yielded 40pips.

Too fast too furios too overtrading

My second post for the day :) I promised jinhar to go for 2 good trades a day that will yield 50pips. Although I've achieved that in the afternoon today I thought I do a little bit more! So here I was trigger happy almost immediately when I sat down in front of the pc after I got back from gym.

Had I think properly, I could have taken a nice long. But I had 3 bad entries. which cost 38pips (average 13) . The good one is worth 25pips. Not bad risk/reward but I could have waited.

The first target is where I took profit. I thought it will head to the 50% fib but that fast? And while price crosses the 21ma, 30tf stochs crossed down.

What is greed?

Update on trade measurement

Yesterday, wife took a look at my previous post and told me that some of the measurement don't make sense. (The main purpose of the measurements is to chart down the effects of FEAR and GREED manifested in the different areas of trading and work on them consciously.)

The exit. The purpose of measuring the exit was to see how many times I chicken out of a trade without a valid signal. However the way I measure it, it penalize the price hitting the SL (a good thing) more than me chickening out (a bad thing).

There's still a few bug on this so I guess this will be a constant work in progress. For now I'll change the measurement to be as follows:

• Analysis (Right or wrong?)
  
• Timing (-XXX for candles early +XXX for candles too late and +0 for exact candle, I try to get +0)
  
• Risk/Reward (At least 1:2)
  
• Percentage of the move I caught
  
• Exit (-1 for trades that are exited (both in loss or profit) without a valid signal, +1 for trades that exited with a valid signal (SL hit, TP hit, signal change) )

I also added taking my heart rate before I start trading. I think that as I get more nervous, or scared, the heart rate will go up, which is a sign to tell me that I will not be thinking as clearly as before.

*************
After a week on using this system, I'm changing the exit measurement to be similiar to my timing. E+0 for perfect exit, E+1 for 1 candle too late, and E-1 for candle too early.

• Analysis (Right or wrong?)
  
• Timing (-XXX for candles early +XXX for candles too late and +0 for exact candle, I try to get +0)
  
• Risk/Reward (At least 1:2)
  
• Percentage of the move I caught
  
• Exit （-XXX for candles early +XXX for candles too late and +0 for exact candle)