Flash Thought : Plan The Trade

Maybe some of you have already know about planning the trade. Here's what I was thinking about planning the trade.

I only trade wedge breakout, but from this single strategy, there're dozens of rules.
I planned like this:
What is the entry point:
- Wedge breakout, but the market was weak so I only trade if it failed once.

What happened if it's failed?
- I'll do the re-entry on the same pattern

What happened if it still failed?
- I'll wait for next setup or other currencies

Where is your Stop Loss?
- Maximum 10 pips or previous candle. If previous candle before breakout is more than 10 pips, then I will entry at better price

How much your losing streak?
- I'll stop after losing $500, hope not happened since it need more than 7 consequtive losses. If I was disciplined, the chance of busting $500 will be very rare since I trade 6 currencies at the same time. Some of them must move. If not, the market will ceased to vanish.

What is your profit target?
- Minimum 10 pips, depending market condition.

How is the review of your system?
- No single losing day if applied in last 10 days!!! That's how powerful my system is!! I was confidence with currency market since it's very dynamic. Don't really care about arbitrage.

What will you do if you still lose?
- I'll reviewed my trade diligently. Most of the time it's because disciplinary problem. I didn't see hole in my trading system.

How about CL and TF?
-I trade CL very careful and TF still miss a lot of trade. Not trade the TF before 10.00 am and for CL, have to be patient with unfilled order.

What is your confidence level now?
- Extremely high but in the right state. I have confidence in my system, not in my single trade. I have premium system, small stop loss, and great mental state. Just doing the plan, everything will be just fine :)

Wednesday Result : Back in Shape

Small gain, very disciplined result. Never before I had this state of mind. My last trade from CL absolutely calm and confidence. Exit just 6 ticks from PT was very nice. The only thing I regret was I didn't scaling up which was an easy one.

Currency also have a small result. A little screwed up from JPY, but nothing fatal.
Next day: solid system + solid execution + solid mental preparation = GREAT TRADES :)

October won't be worse than September, I am ready now.

Tuesday Result - Devil Revisited

I was up $300 before the TF trade ruined everything. This time is worse. I was burnt to pieces. My mistakes was chopped out crazy by TF. That's when my evil me came out. I kept shorted and shorted until I lost big money!!!

I am an amateur today. I SWEAR I WON"T DO THIS MISTAKE AGAIN FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!!!

I realized that I am not a big gun swinger. I was a small chunk-trader. I should happy with $300 up result.

Today's mistake:
Playing TF before news. I was angry with TF movement. It's like Fed Rate announcement Skipped very violently. After stopped out couple times. I was cooling myself and Long the signal, stopped out, sell another stopped out. This time I was angry. I shorted the TF all the way up and get burnt. Oh My GOD!!! What am I thinking? I was doing so nice until today!!!

Today will be a new day. Fix it, I will become a small chunk trader. I won't catch the losses I made. It's big. This month won't be a great month for me. But I will survive, like always.

From now on, I will become a small chunk trader for the rest of my life. I only added size if my capital doubled. I will do my old trade, no more discretion, no more evil in me.

Fiuh... that's better :)

Down $2400 this month, still survive. No more busted.

Monday Result - Updated

After I bragged about my 'profesional-wannabe' style at my previous post, I became the amateur myself. Long TF and averaging down, just exactly what I hate. I mean, 15pts TF intraday, even before lunch break is too much. Sadly, my cut loss habit still intact. So I just got out if the loss is very small. This type of habit may kill me next time. Sooner or later...

Monday Result

My Plan worked well on Currency, except operator error and missed entry. My biggest profit today came from TF. This buggers did slam and v-raised again like usual. But instead going in based on signal, I used discretionary entry with usual Stop Loss. Stopped Out twice (should be only one since I was greedy) and finally profit @ 1.5pts and 6.0pts. I was lucky today. Buy 2 contract near peak, sell all of them before v-raised. I'll tell you little story about V slam and raise. This type of pattern is not a pure price action. Common price action will be at least one movement to the last extreme, could be same, higher or lower. But it's close enough. While today's V-Slam absoultely not made by human's operator. It's Robot in Action, and it's hard fighting the robot.

Lesson learned :
Focus on Currency, very profitable.
Dump the TF until further sign of life.

For those of you who like averaging down (especially long) well congratulations :)
You may get profit every day. This type of market give amateur and beginners a very good result. Every sin at trading were legal for the past 2 months (US Futures only) the sin like: Profit Taking Early, Averaging Down, and No Stop Loss is served. While Cut Loss early, Let Profit Run, and adding position when right were punished.

But behold, for amateur and beginner, there'll be a time when every profit from this market will be wiped out in 1 day. Flash Crash on May 2010 surely will happened again, and I bet it's worse than before.

It's so hard not to become a bear in this type of market, while I was also very bearish on Dollar. The not very manipulated market right now is Currency and Commodity (except Market Index like ES,NQ,TF) Others are zombies waiting to be slaughtered.

Weekly Thought: Plan for October

Started the October with -$1790 was not a nice things. I screwed up this trade and accept the whole faulty. I finished backtesting currency for last 10 days with old-but-modified method and it's good. Except for JPY coz I don't even bother to backtested it.

Now, here's the important thing I want to share. The primary focus is not how much I made from the historical, but how much I may stopped out. The method's like this.
1. Identified the entry point
2. Analyzing the best stop-loss placement
3. Adjust the entry based on my maximum Stop-Loss
Funny that my entry based on how much I can afford to lose per trade. I set my max SL is 10 ticks per trade. The longer I trade, the more sensitive I think about Stop Losses. I don't really care about the profit. As long as it's bigger than my losses I'll be fine.

I found out the best placement of stop loss is 1 tick above/below high/low candles before the breakout. Old trick right? But the old trick seemed very profitable.

Here's the currency from best to worst best on winning percentage:
1. AUD
2. CAD
3. EUR
4. GBP (almost tie with No.3)
5. JPY (why even bother?)

If I made position sizing like 2:1, I'll be rich in no time. But I don't have the guts and my capital won't allow me to do that. The ideal capital amount for position sizing is 10 contracts max. My max contract will be 3 :(

Friday Result : Oops...

It's all my fault, my early entry were good before news come. I ride the down, up and slammed another bottom. I attempted to exit on $61.42, but the price kept going down. And worst thing I did, I loosed the Stop Loss. Down $1794 :(

No more spirit to trade, not the worst day of my life. But still pissed off.