Thread: Trading Journal - Advanced Technical Patterns

So what is your strategy for trade management? What I mean by that is when you put on a trade is there a point at which you move your stop , not necessarily take profits, to BE? Then to you scale out or how do you do that?

Just curious as I trade similarly to you but am having trouble as of late with the "emotional" side .....meaning that I have been letting my stops get hit and taking partial profits to early before they hit my target. Also I usually move stops to BE once I am in profit by a certain % just to keep from turning a winning trade into a loser.

Example , this morning there was either a bearish Gartley or Crab , cannot remember that I took. Once I got into profit by about 10 pips or so I just moved SL to BE. Price came back and took me out later on but I ended up missing a HUGE run down on the pair........

Thanks

Gekko

Do you have a trade plan written out? You should have all those things defined (entry, SL, TP, when to move to BE) in your trading plan before you even start trading.

I have several systems and I manage my trades differently on each one depending on the strategy. In general for harmonic patterns I move to break even at a break & close beyond the 23.6 fib of the AD points. My target 1 comes off at the 38.2 fib AD retracement. And my target 2 comes off at either a 61.8 or 127.0 fib of the AD points. You should test this out before going live with it.

The reason your emotions are taking over is because you do not have a clearly defined system that you have tested and have confidence in. Write your rules out, backtest it, forward test it on a demo, and trade your plan religiously once you finish developing it. Once you have a plan that works you'll have the confidence, once you have the confidence you'll get the discipline, & once you have the discipline you'll make the money.

Hope that helps.

Luzonxzy

EURAUD new ratios beta test #3:

Thanks for the response. I actually do have everything defined before I get into a trade. My problem is that Once I have a few losses when a trade starts going my way I "tend" to want to grab some profits to quickly before it actually gets going only to see it run up to where I thought it would originally. I do notice the 23.6 level and 38.2 is usually my first target also I just get to jumpy sometimes before it gets there I think is my problem.


So lets say you get into a trade and it starts going your way , you notice price getting close to 23.6...... but before it gets there it stalls then reverses..... do you continue to let it play out until it either hits your SL or gets to your target 1 Or do you just get out and look for the next opportunity? I guess my question is how to you determione after a trade is placed whether to "see what happens " or close it out, before it hits your SL , and move on.

BTW I notice you trade different time frames...... do you go any lower than 15 min or is that the lowest you go? What are your fav time frames?

Thanks again.

My favorite time frames are the 15 min & 1 hour. I don't usually look at anything lower then the 15 min TF.

"I guess my question is how to you determione after a trade is placed whether to "see what happens " or close it out, before it hits your SL , and move on."
- I just follow my rules. If I get stopped out then I just get stopped out...Who cares, it's just another trade. As long as I'm not over leveraged then it doesn't matter. Plus I know my system works so I know that if I follow my rules then I make money. When writing & testing my plan I accounted for every situation in the market so I never get caught of guard in a trade (the market only goes up, down or sideways). The only time I exit early is if I made a mistake in my analysis as defined by my trade plan.

Also, I learned to take into account & accept the possibility that I may lose money on each trade BEFORE I place the trade. Loses happen and you have to force yourself to be discipline and trade the plan.....That's assuming the system works long term. Now with all that said......you can only take what you can take. If you can't mentally handle a system that loses 70% of the time but still makes money then you may need to find a slightly more accurate system. But even with a better system you still need to have that discipline. If your going to trade you have to learn how to take the loses and come back to the market.

Here are some vids on trading Psychology from Jason Stapleton. They helped my greatly in helping me managing my trade state:

How's Your Trading Psychology? - YouTube

Prgression of a Day Trade - YouTube

Great ! Thanks for the advice. I think the emotional side gets to me after a string of losses. I have been trading long enough to know that losses happen and that NO system is 100%. I think something that had helped me already is confluence of another indi that I use. I am a scalper by nature ( do not have the patience to hold positions for days or more) so I realized a while ago that my trading will have more risk , emotionally , than someone who hold positions for days or even weeks. Since I scalp I try to keep things as clean as possible , not making my charts look like some kind of schematic to build a high tech machine. I only trade 3 pairs and that is it. The pairs with the lowest spread are what I need in order to be successful.

After watching those vids last night I went back to the charts and started noticing that if I combined my scalping indi to the harmonic charts I look at during the day , it helps quite a bit in confirming if the pattern is valid or not.

Its funny this morning I just took a quick scalp on the EUR/USD , my target was only 14 pips away and once it hit 1/2 my emotions took over and said " move to BE!" I am driving to Vegas next week and have Trading in the Zone on Audio format , think it is time for me to listen to that again on the ride up there

Trade Update.

GBPCAD Cypher Pattern sell target 2 obtained. I'm not sure I'll get to target 3 do to the fact that another cypher pattern is forming in the middle of this one...but you never know:



Pre news trades. Both of these worked out good. But unfortunately I only got the GBPAUD trade (see the above post):

Trade Update on GBPCAD:

Third entry taking out on trail stops. Not a bad trade overall.



@Kor4x, Not to bad ehh. The cypher pattern says to kor4x "A joke am I".....then rolls over 200 pips.