I usually don't post on my personal trading, but I wanted to try something new to see if it helps. At the end of each week I usually try to sit down and reflect on the week that was. I thought that writing it out may help me a little bit and maybe help anybody that reads this since I've received some comments saying that people are often dealing with the same issues.

This past week was a pretty good week of trading. Not a whole lot of action as far as finding new trades, but I did have the opportunity to work on my trade management skills.  The previous week I was involved in two trades (Short EURUSD & Short CADCHF).  Both hit target 1 and because I don't have second targets in my trading plan, I simply trail stops. To some trailing stops may simply mean moving their stop/loss to break even, or a random number above price action. Me (like many others), I like to use structure and harmonics to trail my stops. So instead of randomly moving it down, I try to predict the next retracement and make sure I'm in a safe enough area to withstand that and take advantage of the next extension. I didn't always trade like this, as the temptation to take money, or rather the fear of losing money that we "think" is profit is often great.  However after making and learning from a few trading mistakes in the past, I have a good clue, and even better the confidence, to trail it this way without getting nervous. So this week I got some practice doing this and it worked perfectly. Price action seemed to retrace exactly where I predicted, only to extend down and create new lows. I'm still involved in both trades and will continue to manage them until I'm stopped out.

I would say that I had a pretty good week execution wise with the exception of one trade.  There was one trade opportunity that I missed (GBPUSD), because I hesitate when trying to decided whether to enter aggressively or not. By the time I ran through my trading plan and saw what was the correct answer I missed the entry. Price action just nipped my would be entry point and retraced so I'm not sure if I would have actually gotten filled, but I do count it as a missed opportunity. What did I learn from this. I learned that I have to put my orders on the actually chart in advance. I had the pair marked down on my whiteboard as something I was watching. I even had the entry zone market on my chart, I just didn't have the actual limits set. So next time I need to find out what type of entry I'm taking well in advance and set the orders.

Other than that not much is going on. I'm working on a post for Wednesday since it will be my One-Year Anniversary of being a full-time trader. I don't have anything written yet but it'll probably be some type of reflection on the struggles I faced.

Thanks

Akil L. Stokes

Sign Up For the Forex Bootcamp 2.0 "This was the course that changed my trading career"

http://www.triplethreattrading.com/2011_live/?ref=464

Picture



Leave a Reply.