July 2011. results

-94 pips
-30%

Experimenting with rules

Maybe I'm simply not good enough at scalping. Today I traded inside borders that I decided in advance. Take profit was set at +6 pips. Even though for some trades it did good job it doesn't suit me so much. Reason why I put it in is because I was gunning only for big gains lately and making bunch of stops in between. Maybe whole my trading now isn't so realistic because of extra small size (feels like demo) and trading for entertainment value while having free time between meals and beach.
Every day I sit in optimistic with some changes implemented and result is poor. I must say that today I knew my limits were +- 20 pips (or so depending on last trade) and I don't feel that frustrated now like other days this week. I did in advance put in rules and everything was by the book.
-25 pips

Failed mission of catching up to feel good

I'm on vacation and it looks to me that I'm trying really hard to succeed in trading really quick so I can feel good about myself. I'm tying to catch up or just to have some success to have god feeling about it. Well it's not going that way. I see now that I shouldn't be trading at all because instead of good feelings I get more and more frustration.
Well it's fair enough to feel frustrated over trading and to feel it intensified after years of trading and nothing to show for it.
-52 pips

I'm frustrating myself

I refuse smaller profit and wait for bigger one, messing it all up in process. As more degrees of freedom I give to myself as worst outcome come out of it. I'm thinking that maybe I should go back to exercise I had with s/l -6 pips (as is now) and t/p fixed at +6 pips. Maybe with that I could still not miss out on runs by taking next trade after first is closed at tp. On situations where there are no runs of price but just small move I will bank on them without thinking what should I do.

-8 pips

Stress on vacation

-70 pips

Mixed direction

It felt like lot's was going on so it wasn't easy to get direction and have simple trades. After few losses I noticed that I want to make it up with big reversal trade. So I asked myself why not instead to make it up with scalps? Somehow I felt laziness, no not scalping (work). It was quite surprise how I consider scalping as work (that I'm sometimes lazy to do) and looking for reversal trade that I will hold as shortcut to avoid work.

In gbp/usd it was close to break of yesterday's low. I was very fortunate to not get stopped on third trade so I covered my previous losses. It was close to break down but it didn't so I closed in profit after giving it chance for downside.

+10 pips

Smarter trading

Today I tried just to take high probability tiny scalps. Not much drama, it's going my way or not immediately. Grab few pips and get out without much consideration what will happen next. I imagine that's the way A pip throwing party is trading, thanks to Harvey over at Trading is Fun for introduction to that blog.

+11 pips

Two sessions

In the morning I jumped in unprepared and unbalanced. I was boasting with my discipline last few days, well today I wasn't so proud on how I traded. On good note I never moved my stop today, so that is great if in low discipline day I don't move stops. In first session 22 trades of which only 5 profitable.
My p&l in pips moved -43 +34 -28 +28 finishing first part of a day at -9 pips.

Second part of trading was more reasonable. I caught move after news time but later missed trades at the top and the bottom part of the range which I was looking to enter. I didn't really wanted to trade any more, but somehow I entered and after one loss there was battlefield again. +23-24+29, so +19 at the end of a day.

On an interesting note I can add that full margin trading on day like today means from equity low to high +24% swing. Will see how it will be handleable with more money in account.


+19 pips

Catching the move

Lot's of bearish market chatter so I was looking for short. I wasn't trying to scalp really but to catch the move on time and hold it a little. Many stops taken until I finally caught it. You just don't know when will it start and if you are not in you are late. After that push down I perforemed poorly on next three trades losing majority of gain. Poorly is too strong word, I just didn't have much of gain because I had to cover previous stop loss trades. Those trades were legitimate trials. Last trade retrieved lost on them.

+16 pips

Two scalps

+11 pips

Playing contrarian

No breach of discipline, great. I must admit that I got very angry after my third trade played out as I was hoping, expecting it but without me. I got shaken out just before the move. You try to save few pips and not get full stop and you miss the move because of it. So my trades after were entered in angry state of mind. Luckily I held my last trade and didn't make same mistake.
Today it was kind of tricky to trade so I chose path of pretty much contrarian trades to my usual ones. I was playing range and gunning for fast reaction in opposite direction of immediate trend.

+11 pips

Evening trading

I'm very pleased how I traded this evening. It was mostly negative, but no breach of discipline at all. Even my emotions stayed cool. As far as trading opportunity I would take all of those trades again.
It's interesting to trade without stop loss red line on my chart, so no easy way to widen the stop loss. Brain quickly adapts to new reality and it's as it was never there. So now it's kind of awkward situation when it looks like something is working that I could set up years ago.

-10 pips

Night trade

-7 pips