Trading 4ensics (Pocket Science)

This would be about my flaws of thinking and actions on Friday. Promisory note: a lot to learn from this one.

One of my biggest mistakes is getting out of the positions too early. When there is a lot of back and forth before getting a move going, it is possible to make good money this way, however, just as the example of Friday shows, when I ended up closing out 35 different orders, if I only held into near the close, I could had made $1-200 more by closing out the 8 positions I already had at the open.

Coming ito the habit of repeating the same steps mindlessly, without re-elaluating the situation is never the best policy.

I got out of the initial 8 holdings (1.6 lots) at very near the low of the first swing.

These orders were auto targeted to the 60-min 30 sample BB @ 1.0958 at the given hour, but I just could not wait it out & closed them a few pips shy. The 6.3 stop loss is the code that adjusts the target real time if my EA is running.

I knew there would be another one coming from at / just beyond the 8 EMO & so I scaled back in.

Here you can see freshly opened shorts, as high as 1.09835.

I got all the fills, but then I deviated on two points. One is that for some reason I started leaning towards having to see a 30-minute close beyond the 8 EMO (which ultimately isn’t a must) disregarding that a 2-pip move beyond is satisfactory for the swing high-staring point and two: I was going to hold at least 1/2 for the second move down, but whenever I saw some profits, I kept on closing out to get the stats up and make the $500 daily which left me with no holdings for the transpired.

I also engaged in some boredom scraps doing some roll ins and outs, which can also deviate the mind from concentrating on the master plan, and trigger that closing out loop – cycle.

The last thing was the sizing. I was fully hedged coming in, but since I knew the likely course of the events, I should had increased the short holdings by 2. At times I had 0.3 lots extra in shorts, but until the 2nd cancellation would get printed, shorts would have to be equal or more than the longs.

I have yet to come up with a name for the swing point at the end of the first cancellation and start making projections based on the known statistics. 29, 36, 45 pips are recurring numbers with an occassional outlier of 58.

Cover some at 29, more at 36 and hold back a bit for possibly a bit more.

Counter directional volatility is present, but the virgin level(s) have not been hit yet. Could see a small gap down / first move down to cancel these levels.

It would had made sense not to sell anything at all on Friday, but opening at the close of the day would had been closer to a dice roll: for intance a 10-pip move lower from here with a 20-pip increased spread around the open may never come into money.

All in all I made purely unnecessary steps on Friday and in exchange for good looking stats on paper, I left my flank open by holding 1.6 lots more longs than shorts at the end.

Rolling in and out was not an entirely bad idea, with the second set of holdings into the close I could had made an extra $600 even without increasing the size – an extra $500 gain of rope (equity) was not collected on; actually that gain was my teporarily.

On the plus side I got myself to look back the projection stats for spike 2, which is a very useful thing to be aware of for future trading. Marking up and keeping count of cancellations is a habit to make. Marking up virgin levels is essential.