Welcome to my trading and investing blog. This is where I share the moves that I make in the financial markets, talk through the reasons I make my choices, and occasionally give an overall analysis of what I see in the markets. Today, I took a short trade in the Forex pair Euro-Yen. Read on to see how this trade played out.
First of all, I need to make sure that I’m logged in to Oanda on my phone. I’m doing another manual OCO order, so I’ll to cancel one order when the other triggers, but I’m going out tonight. It’s dangerous, but I’m taking a stab at it.
EUR/JPY
Long Play: Expected Entry – 164.25 Stop Level – 164.04 Target – 164.75 R:R – 2.4
Short Play: Expected Entry – 164.04 Stop Level – 164.25 Target – 163.54 R:R – 2.4
Price looked to be rolling to the upside, but that was after a pretty sharp down-move. Price could be retesting here before it heads to the downside, or it could be regaining the strength it seemed to have for the month prior to the drop. There’s been a pretty tight 4 hour base, so I put both a buy and a sell order around the base; with the long entry being my short stop and vice versa.
Like I said, I’m going to be doing my best to keep a close eye on this one. Maybe I’ll set a recurring timer or something on my watch, something to remind me to check periodically incase the notifications don’t come through. We’ll see. For now, the orders are out and fingers crossed it works out well.
Entry – 164.011
4:22 pm
Freaking slippage. The short order filled, but it filled about 3 pips below where I wanted to; and on top of that, on the chart the candle didn’t even push to that level. Didn’t even do so enough to trigger the alert on the line I drew. And yet, the order still filled. Below that. Oh well, that’s slippage that’s trading. It looks weak; hopefully I made the right call.
After my entry triggered, price did eventually actually push through my entry price, but not very far. About 5 pips of profit is all this got before it started rallying. I kept an eye on my phone throughout the night; ensuing I was ready when/if I needed to make a move, but I never got any notifications.
I checked the chart one more time before I wound down for the night and saw that price was sitting just above my entry. Not great, but still had the potential to push down.
Exit – 164.251
This morning I woke up and didn’t see any notifications, so I was hopeful. I checked the chart to discover that price had in fact pushed decently through my stop loss.
Since I didn’t get the notification, I panicked — wondering if I accidentally cancelled my stop when I canceled the buy order. But that wasn’t the case. My stop was hit normally for a full loss; and I didn’t accidentally lose a lot more than I originally planned.
That was a minor sigh of relief in an overall disappointing trade. I didn’t really have a plan, or really a great outlook. I saw something and thought it had the potential to break in either direction; and it turned out to not break at all. Can’t even say I mistimed this one.
Conclusion
I don’t hate the process I’ve been in of simply looking at charts and putting out orders where I see fit; rather than doing a full pre-trade analysis. I just need to tweak it a little bit. I’m going to start earlier, and I’m going to take a few trades in a practice account.
I don’t start playing basketball without warming up and stretching and I don’t play golf without hitting the range first (or at the very least taking a couple practice swings), and I need to approach trading the same way. Knock the rust off each morning, then proceed once I’m warm and in the zone.
I’m still experimenting with time-frames; and I think if I’m trading before the US market opens and only plan to trade a couple hours into it (and be completely done when I’m done, rather than holding while I do other things and hope) then I think I want to focus on the 5 min. chart. I’ve had some problems with it later in the day, hopefully things work out if I start earlier.
Thanks for reading! Stay tuned to see how my new process plays out, and if I can overcome the struggles I’ve been having for a while. And if you’ve got any advice or words of encouragement, let me know in the comments!