Trading Report - Week 1

EURGBP

EURGBP made it’s way up to start challenging the top without providing the opportunity for me to get on safely. Even when you have a good idea about where price is going, you always have to wait for a good entry. A good entry means price is close to an area you are happy to hide a stop behind. Typically, evidence of strong buyers or sellers make good structures for hiding stops.

No trade this week here.

GBPUSD

-0.94% banked on this trade. Price dipped a bit then tore through my stop loss order before closing for the week close to my original intended target.
No sweat. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The structure looks like a pretty great place to hide a stop behind. I’ll be looking at it carefully next week (tomorrow).

XAUUSD

I’m currently short gold. Hopefully this trade will conclude profitably next week. We can see buyers gobbling this up when price makes some recent lows, but (so far) they are failing to take out the sellers.

Lower lows and lower highs bodes well, but this is far from in the bag yet. It would be reassuring if we had managed to take out a minor swing low already.

Reflection

This weeks reflection focus is on personal management.

Seriously pursuing a career in trading is not for the faint of heart. The vast majority of traders lose in the long run, and to win in this racket demands high levels of self-knowledge and self-mastery. You need to learn how to exploit your strengths and take control of your weaknesses.

Fighting my own nature is largely a doomed endeavor. It’s far more profitable to manage myself; much like managing a trade.

I love a bit of adventure, but this doesn’t mesh well with what I’ve learned about myself regarding trading. I know that I perform better when I’m relaxed, taking it easy, and living within a stable routine. In fact, the more boring my life the better.

Here I am (behind the camera) riding into Myanmar through the clouds.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about decision making. There are days when I’m in a good place to make decisions, and days when I am not. Days when I am not, are good days to avoid decision making -obviously. Whether I’m distracted by the allure of wild adventuring or ‘just not feeling it’ I think it’s good to take a break, or at least rely on habits/decisions made when my mind was properly in tune with the task at hand.

That’s what I did this week. After writing the Market Highlights post I largely stopped thinking about the markets, instead relying on the thinking I had done previously.