Long ride

I got myself into position and after it was half an hour in profit I got married for it so I didn't want to let her go. I would stop myself out if top around 930 was broken to the upside. Reversal came and I was sitting tight, but after news I got shaken out and missed the ride toward 800.
All in all this let's say swing trading isn't for me. It's boring and I always get out too soon or too late. It was half size trade and it felt small to take 10-15 profit when I had it in first 10 minutes.
Well I'm better trader for taking just 10 pips than more but I always convince myself otherwise. It's easier for me not to be in the trade, so I can think more clearly. With this position on I was hypnotized for the whole move.

+10 full size pips

Good news and bad news

Bad news is that I lost today, good news is that I was disciplined and trading inside of set rules.

Just when I wrote this I broke my rules by having one more trade in which I get punished very, very fast. Still I'm going to stay with headline and will not kick myself over that. Before that last trade I was -18 full size pips and now -30 full size pips. The thing that I recognize now that it's important to accept the rules and that I broke them but that I'm not going now on revenge mission throwing all away.

OK, I had this triangle drawn, but I have something against TA because when it start to go as it suppose to I don't believe it. So I didn't short the brake, but I said to myself I will short the test of the line. But to get it short price got to go up there, so let's have a long scalp up to that line. Well as you can see my logic doesn't have firm foundation in this case. To make things worse, I lost all perspective of broken triangle and what is going on, I was just reversing my trades as momentum dictated me. But that whipsawed me a lot. Red lines are losing trades and blue is winning.
So that all eur/usd was half size and was in boundaries of my plan with -18.
Than I put momentum long on gbp/usd and got a nice loser very fast. Well I'm glad, because that trade didn't have a room to be put on with 4 pips spread on gbp/usd, I was breaking my trading plan. Better that I got punished than rewarded on that.

The best thing is that I recognize broken rules and will not now make things worse. That is nice rule also.
I kept cool and I like that.

In day like today when I trade really wrong it's great that I have decision of closing all when I lose my 40 half size chips. There is far more probability that I can do bigger damage than remedy things if I keep trading.
Also I can see that I feel pretty ok when I lose small half size trades and that I should go for more opportunities. Not only like today when I got stuck in bad mind frame to trade so much.

Finally some new trading

I had two sets of trades, small loss in eur/usd and nice win with add on trade in eur/jpy.

I get back to trading with half size lot's but got leverage up a bit. Half size because I feel comfortable when I'm losing on half size trade. I can better grasp what is going on and decide do I want to take a loss or leave it some more on. If it's going my way than I can add another trade easily. That's especially handy now with big ranges. Leverage is now around 7 for full size position. As I like structured trading I decided to start a day with 40 half size chips available to spend. It's like going to casino, you can lose as much as you take from home but not more. So I have 40 available pips to lose each day. On the other side I cap my winnings at 80 half size pips. For me it's far more appropriate not to go after more because in my trading history I never really get any big days. But many times I'm trading like I aim for big gain and usually I lose at that time big. That is a range of -1.5% to + 3% a day which is ok with me. I want to feel comfortable losing those 40 pips and want to be safe that when I have nice day like today that I hold to my winnings.

I'm still little afraid of trading and losing because of my last very bad days so lets start slowly.

Today +38 full size pips. I could stay in eur/jpy longer but it gave me just before my exit 25-30 pips in a spike and I was around my daily target so I just took the profit.

October 2008. results

- 280 pips

- 14 %

Trades today II

Add to today -52 pips more, yes I can see that I was shorting strong uptrend. This is not good scalping nor trading. It looks like I'm just testing me in regards stops. I lost near 100 pips today. Maybe I'm trying to convince myself not to have stops and sabotaging myself with awful trading. Whatever.

Or maybe there is no difference how I lose, with averaging or like today, I lose.

I'm not in a mood to think about that all, I'm just documenting how it is.

Trades today

First long I entered because I saw bullish action on 10 sec pushing higher and consolidating before the run up. It didn't happen, I had one more long with very close stop in a case that I was just shaken out.
Gbp short I entered because of that 50 pips drop in 3 minutes, that idea also didn't work.

Bright spot were stops. Pure trading with defined stops. It's hard market to trade especially when it's in rangy mood. It's not so brilliant to learn disciplined trading in such mess of market movements. I don't have an edge and that's why I don't trade this days, today I tried and got burned.

-45 pips

Practice of taking stops

First trade, not so much clever but I used it to follow my emotions. I was feeling bad and wanted to avoid being stopped out. Because of that I didn't want to get out on any price before my max set stop. I was hoping whole time that it will come back. Finally stop took me out and I felt misery. Really funny now when I wright about that. So I was in misery and I had urge to go back in, trade, get the money back. Ugly emotions, luckily I was just noticing them. When I think about it, too bad that I didn't start long before giving attention to those feelings after stop.
I cool down a little and my thoughts were that I got to lose identification with all of that emotional garbage.

I was writing blog entry and market started pushing again so I had second trade which was profitable.

-10 pips for a day

I think that I just get to go in that direction to get rid off bad stuff. Not so much attention at is every trade profitable or not, put emotions under control, especially those regarding stops. Emotions under control is when you have them but don't have to act on them forcefully. So I'm glad that I got stopped out and felt all the bad that I do. If that is the worst thing, it's not so bad and I can get custom to it. I feel little ashamed writing about it now after so many years of trading. It's such basic stuff. You get bad emotions when taking stops. So what, move on.

I will probably now pay less attention am I trading profitably or not overall, but more to execution and all surrounding each trade.