Forex Trading Review – Week 33

This week was another trading grind and a break-even outcome. I took 5 trades which is a little less than my average quantity, but the markets were acting a little weird this week so I’m ok with that outcome considering.

Anyway… this is going to be a short journal entry, so let’s get straight into it!

12th August – 16th August

Trade #160

Reflection:

My first trade for the week was an intraday trade on USD/CAD 15M. Price had just reacted bullishly from the previous resistance-in-trend on the Daily chart (the blue line).

When price put in a 1-2-3 move from this zone that reclaimed the 50-EMA and I got a valid engulfing candle entry according to my rules, I went long and caught a nice 1.45R winner. Price did come close to stopping me out, but it ain’t over til the fat lady sings as they say – so I stayed in the trade and waited it out.

This is a difficult habit for new traders to develop, but through practice it becomes easy. I have become so accustomed to seeing trades almost get stopped out and then go on to win that I rarely get anxious anymore whenever I see price come close to my stop.

The trade will either win or it will lose, and if it meets your rules then you’ve done your job and all that is left to do is sit on your hands and let the markets play out.

Trade #161

Reflection:

This trade was a typical pullback entry. The daily chart (and this timeframe) were in an established down-trend at the time, so when I got a valid aggressive pullback entry I went short.

Price did not cooperate and instead ended up reversing trend from here (on this timeframe), making this a losing trade but a Good Trade nonetheless.

Trade #162

Reflection:

This trade was another friendly reminder for why traders use stop losses.

This was a good trade that met my rules and has an edge, yet look what happened. If I had not used a stop loss then I would have decimated my account on this trade.

So I took another 1% hit on this position, but that’s no big deal and I will survive to trade another day.

Trade #163

Reflection:

EUR/JPY behaved strangely this week (in fact all the JPY pairs did) as a result of the trade war developments. One day things are looking better, the next day we’re on the verge of a recession, and then the day after that things are looking better again.

This is why I don’t trade the news or market sentiment. It’s a joke, really, and no one knows what to make of it.

In any case, when I got a valid bearish pullback setup on this timeframe after that wild bout of volatility I decided to take it given the Daily trend was bearish too which gave me more confidence in the probabilities of this setup playing out profitably.

Unfortunately price whipped around some more and stopped me out for break-even.

I also took one final trade on GBP/USD, but it has not concluded yet so I will leave that review for next week’s journal:

Trade #164

Weekly Reflection

Annual Return: +12.54% | Drawdown: -12.48%

Last Week’s Goal: Execute my plan flawlessly.

Overall Grade: A

The past few weeks have been a frustrating experience but it’s all part of trading, and eventually my strategy will begin catching big moves again, so I must remain patient and disciplined.

Until I begin winning again all I can do is continue to trade consistently and monitor my statistics for potential improvements, which I am currently in the long process of doing.

This week’s journal entry is going to be a short one as I don’t have much else to say. I have a busy schedule this week so I’m not sure if I’ll get much time to wrap up the first phase of backtesting my potential improvements to my strategies, but one week soon I will have news regarding that.

Although my strategies are profitable, I feel that there are many ways I could improve them to reduce the length of their drawdowns (and therefore potentially make more money on an annual basis).

The problem is that I can’t implement them all at once or it will destabilize my trading, so I need to meticulously test them one by one until I find the optimal combination of rules that improves my return while reducing my drawdown.

Anyway… back to work. I’ll speak to you all soon, and I hope you have a great week in the markets!

Next Week’s Goal

Execute my plan flawlessly.

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