Welcome to my trading and investing blog. This is where I share my analysis of the Forex market before I make moves, and talk through the actual trades that I make. I took the pair Pound-Cad long this morning, read on to see how this trade played out.
GBP/CAD Long
Expected Entry – 1.7035 Stop Level – 1.7005 Target – 1.7098 R:R – 2.1
When I did my analysis this morning, this was one of the pairs I liked. Check that out for a bit more context. I had already ran my numbers, and the next resistance area was too close of a target. I expected this to push through that area and continue it’s uptrend anyway, so I used the Fibonacci retracement levels to pick my target.
It’s been a couple of hours since I set this entry order. Price pulled back and has somewhat started to push back up, and on the longer time frames looks still like a bull pullback. Maybe even a reverse head-and-shoulders. It’s now 3:35, and I’ve changed the stop to a trailing one and am continuing to let it ride. I’m going to check again before bed (if it hasn’t triggered by then) and maybe cancel it, but as of now, I’m letting it go.
Entry – 1.70355
I was working on updating my P/L doc when I got the notification that my trade triggered — around 4:30. Looking at it, the spreads increased dramatically (up to 12+), and the candle that my trade triggered on didn’t even visually get up to my entry level. I don’t love trading around high spreads, but I don’t know what to do right now.
Regardless, I already had this set with a trailing stop, so I’m going to just leave it alone and see what happens. There were a lot of positives before this trade, it’s now just a matter of whether I held on to the idea for too long. We’ll see. I’ll update when the trade closes.
Exit – 1.69925
I went about my day, and shortly before bed it occurred to me that I never got any notification’s about this trade. With a trailing stop, I thought that was a great sign — that price had been pushing up, but maybe stalled recently so it hadn’t quite reached my target, and hadn’t pulled back enough that it stopped me out.
I looked at the chart on my phone and saw that I was way wrong. Price was significantly against me, and was lower than my expected exit. I’m not sure what happened, other than slippage; but price closed 12 pips lower than my stop which is a lot. I know the spread was high, but I baked that in to my stop loss initially. Something must have changed when I changed my stop to a trailing one. I didn’t look closely, I just changed it and set it. So, maybe it was just a lack of paying attention. I don’t know.
I don’t love using trailing stops, so I should get away from using them at all. If I’m thinking about holding overnight, maybe I just resolve to maybe check in the middle of the night? I don’t think that’s something that will make me more successful so I don’t want to do that. At the very least, I should re-analyze the trade, make sure it’s really still viable, and be 100% sure that my numbers are correct before I let things ride.
Conclusion
Honestly, it’s these types of trades that make me want to just completely give up on this — it feels like I can’t win. But that’s not the way to be successful. I’ve got to keep going, keep putting one foot in front of the other. I see a light, I just have to keep working toward it.
A big thing I need to work on is only trading when I plan to trade, and leaving the charts alone when I’m not. I shouldn’t be holding on to trade ideas for hours, through periods of high spreads, and risking holding overnight. That said, I do it because, otherwise, I might not get into trades; and I’m trying to get into more trades, not less.
I need to make sure they’re quality trades, and I’m making sure my risk management is perfect. I think I need to work harder at finding trades each morning, and not clinging to the initial things that I see. I’m not going to lie, that’s easier said than done. But if that’s what it takes, then that’s what I have to do.
Thanks for reading. Let me know in the comments if you have any pieces of advice or words of encouragement. And stay tuned for more analysis and Forex trades.