IDK what I’ve been thinking or why I haven’t been on top of journaling my trades. Especially when I’ve taken 3 in a day. I need to get better.. I will be.
Anyway. Looking at this trade in hindsight, it looks like I won a trade in Pound-Kiwi earlier in the day and tried to capitalize on continued movement, which never came to fruition. I remember coaches in the past talking about how the big money was made by riding waves and adding to your winning trades. But every time I do that, I end up giving back more than I won in the initial trade, seemingly.
Maybe that was before, when conditions were a lot better, and not this new post-Covid world full of uncertainty. I just need to be patient, and make sure that all of the parameters line up, and almost look, more, for reasons not to trade, than to.
I’ve got things to work on in the days going forward, but as long as I’m journaling everything I do and learning from my mistakes, the success will continue. On to today’s trades.
First GBP/NZD Long Trade Entry
Price had been strong for several months, and over the last few days broke out of some pretty major consolidation. Price was pushing up and didn’t look extended, though the RSI was creeping into overbought territory.
It’s hard to tell where my mind was here. Price peaked the day before, overnight had made a fairly sharp drop, then pushed back up to the prior highs. The pullback was quite deep, and doesn’t really look like a clean pattern.
I could maybe argue a cup-and-handle now, but I’m not sure I saw the cup-and-handle in the moment. Price made a short stall at those aforementioned highs, which is where I put in my orders.
Prior to reaching those highs from the day, price stalled out briefly. I used the FIB, with the lows being that level, to find my target. My R:R was close to 2 — 1.5 — so I set the entry order. I’m guessing in the moment, the break of that resistance area looked too good.
Exit
Price pushed up strong and reached 1R within the hour, and almost hit my target. Price started to base from there, and since it got within 1 pip of my target, I got aggressive with my stop. I dropped down to the 5 min. chart, and put my stop at a SAR level that was also just below a support level that was created during the sideways move. It was at that level that price hit to trigger my exit for a small win.
Honestly, I’m not sure what I could’ve done better with this trade. Sure, I wish the movement prior to the break of the high was a bit more clean, but it was an all time-high that was being broken. Price ended up continuing up and pushing well through my target, so I’m trying to figure out what I could have done to capture more profits.
The only thing I can think is that, since this was a longer-term swing-trade, I shouldn’t have dropped so far in time-frames to find a new spot for my SAR. Hindsight being what it is, I see that I could’ve captured more pips in this trade. But overall, not even taking this result into consideration, I think I should give trades a bit more room on longer-term positions.
Patience patience patience.
AUD/USD – Short
Looking at the daily chart, this has been pushing down hard since Mid-July. It had recently broken some support from late May, and was continuing down from there. Dropping down to the hourly chart, price made a short stall which is what I shorted in to. And I can’t see how I picked a target for this trade.
Exit
Price pushed down enough to trigger me in to the trade, but fairly quickly pushed back up and hit my stop-loss. The pattern looked clean, even in hindsight, but it still didn’t work out. Some wild swings came in to the pair which shook me out.
Shortly after triggering my exit, price made another push down and got near my target. Stalled between my entry and target and then made another strong push down. This looks to me like I simply mistimed this. I had the pattern correct, a wild swing came in — one without a discernible pattern — and then price pushed in my favor.
Sometimes, the patterns don’t work out. That’s trading. I just need to brush this one off and keep moving forward.
Second GBP/NZD Long Trade
In my first trade, when price pushed down and stopped me out, it did so within the confines of a nice high-base. Unfortunately I didn’t trade that base; I was looking elsewhere as it was forming (I assume).
When I did come back to this chart, though, price had broken out of that high base pretty convincingly, pulled back some and was retesting the highs of the base. It looked like a clean bullish retest to me, so I set an entry order on the break of the highs that were made prior to the retest with my exit at the key area that was being tested.
It took close to an hour after setting my entry order for this trade to trigger, but eventually price did rally again, hit my buy stop and entered me in to the trade. That was the highest this got, though, before pulling back again and triggering my exit for a full loss.
The pattern and direction were both good here, so no glaring mistakes that I can see, even in hindsight. I could argue, maybe, that the move was exhausted. But other than the RSI having dipped into overbought territory, there’s not much else that suggests that, in my opinion.
In fact, looking today, price did make a pretty significant push in my direction and hovered there for a while before making a strong push back down. The move that price made to stop me out was the lowest it got before making that up-move. So, really, I was again correct about the move; I just mistimed it again.
I think my biggest takeaway from this trade is that I need to continue to trade with confidence, and to take as many trades (with great setups) as I can. I expect to lose 50+% of my trades, actually, with the income coming from having outsized returns when I am correct. So losses like these are well within my trading parameters.
Today resulted in a -.5R day on 3 trades; and given my recent history, I call that a success. All I can do now is to continue moving forward, continue finding great setups, and to continue to learn as I go.
Thanks for reading! This business is tough, but not impossible, and I’m getting better every day. Let me know in the comments how your trades are coming along and if you’ve had any similar experiences taking multiple shots at the same security.