Welcome to my blog! This is where I share my trading journal — my thoughts on various Forex pairs before I get into the trades, and the analysis of the trades themselves. I’m currently trading directly in the TradingView platform, and there’s no way to set a one-cancels-other order; but it’s something I’ve wanted to implement in my trading.
I decided that I could still put out two separate orders, and then manually cancel one of them when the other triggers. It takes more attention, but it’s more than doable. This is the first trade where I’m implementing this strategy. I also saw a bearish move in Pound-Dollar that I tried to capitalize on. Read on to see how they played out.
I’m having difficulties getting excited about trading and have been slacking off quite a bit. To try to remedy this, I’m just diving in today. I’m not doing any analysis, I’m just looking through charts and putting out orders where I see fit.
AUD/JPY OCO
Long – Expected Entry – 97.725 Stop Level – 97.55 Target – 98.00 R:R – 1.6
Short – Expected Entry – 97.33 Stop Level – 97.55 Target – 96.90 R:R – 1.95
The first place is in AUD/JPY, and originally, I thought to do a manual OCO order. It might be the move, too, since as I’ve been typing this, price has been dropping.
That’s neither here nor there, though. Price hit a low yesterday and has been pushing up this morning. Price stalled for a bit overnight, but pushed up through the resistance area this morning. When I got to the chart, price was pulling back a little and seemingly retesting the resistance area that was just broken.
I put an entry order to go long if this breaks back above the highs before the pullback, with my stop at that resistance/key area. My R:R is only 1.5, but that’s going to have to be okay for today. When I was trading more successfully, I was looking for a 1.5 minimum.. I went away from that because I wanted the bigger wins, but maybe it’s something I think about implementing in my plan. We’ll see how the next few trades go.
I’m considering also putting in a short order here, still. We’ll see. I see a couple areas of support where I could put an entry order — but the “best” one is pretty far below current price. I might just let my current order ride and adjust it if price starts to hover around one of those entry areas. For now, though, we’ll see how the long play works out.
Price was dropping, so I did it. I put out a short order in the same pair. I’m going to keep an eye on them and cancel the one that doesn’t trigger.
Entry – 97.329
As the day went on and I watched this chart move, I remained confident in my plan. Price rallied back up to near my stop level — so if this was bearish, it was forming a head-and-shoulders; and if it was bullish, it was a deeper pullback than I expected. I wasn’t at the charts, so around 8:00pm when it triggered, I saw the notification on my phone.
I opened my laptop to take a look, and price pushed through the support area pretty strong, and was heading down. Pretty quickly, I was in profit a couple of pips. I monitored for a little bit, but when price started to rally a bit (back to my entry), I decided I’d just let it ride and not stress myself over it. I set an alert for 1R and put the computer away.
Exit – 97.55
I was in bed falling asleep when I got the notification that my stop-loss had been triggered. Those couple of pips of profit are the furthest down this pushed — apparently the underlying pressure was bullish not bearish — and from there price ran to the upside.
What’s worse, as of right now (11:20am the next day) price is hovering around what would be 1R if my long trade had been the one that triggered first.
IDK. Should I have left the long trade open? Looking now, there was a huge, outsized spike a couple hours before the trade. Maybe I should’ve paid more attention to that? I feel like every time I do a bit more research and try to learn something new to add to my toolkit, I read things that I already do. It’s gotta be mental. I think about trading the wrong way, and I need something to “click” or have that “a-ha” moment that will bring more consistency.
GBP/USD Short
Expected Entry – 1.2773 Stop Level – 1.2792 Target – 1.274 R:R – 1.7
Glancing through charts on the hourly timeframe, I came across this that looks really good. Price has been pushing down this week, and last night through this morning, price bottomed a bit and rallied. That rally reached a resistance area that was created during this overall drop, and price started to push down from there.
This looks like a great bearish rally/retest pattern to me, so I put in an entry order. The R:R isn’t quite 2, but it’s close, so I’m going to let it ride. Here’s hoping it works out.
Entry – 1.27729
It took a little while — almost an hour exactly — but eventually price pushed down enough to trigger my entry. Now we see how it plays out.
Exit – 1.2792
Price never really did much for me. Almost immediately after hitting my entry, price started to rally. And after another hour-and-a-half, price hit my stop loss. This was a pretty discouraging one, the bear rally looked clean and I thought the target was fully in play. I guess I was just wrong. Even as I type this (around 1:30 the next day) price just hovered around my stop level all night last night and made a small push up this morning.
Like I mentioned, though, I’m trying to change my mindset around trading and I think taking this trade was a good step in that direction. That’s something. This trading competition is helping, too, as I’m able to trade with no risk, but there’s still stakes so I want to do well. I hope to come to some conclusions while doing this that I can take into my every day trading. We’ll see.
Baby steps…. I guess… Feels like it’s been too long for that, but not much more I can do at this juncture. On the bright side, the portfolio continues to grow, and I’m up in this trading competition (even though that’s just from holding Bitcoin… still up). I need better habits, and there’s been some progress with that. Just keep swimming
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Let me know in the comments what you thought about today’s trade and if you were able to capitalize on any Aussie-Yen movement. Any advice you want to leave in the comments might be helpful as well 😅. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more trades and analysis!