2023W30 Review

Win rate 79.3%, -144.6 pips, -9.34% equity loss in 29 trades.

A losing week after 4 weeks. A reality check? Down back to earth?

In a way, it makes everything more "real", at least for me. In my current perspective and understanding, it's rather unrealistic to be profitable every single week. Of course, there are a number of people who claim / reported to be like that. But at least for me, I don't consider myself near those levels yet.

Thursday night was key. GDP data was good, pointing to a bearish Gold. When I watched it, it was swinging, and was probably showing some bullish candles, which compelled me to enter a long. Lesson learnt is, with ONE position opened, then I will always be biased to winning / saving that trade, that's why I ended up with 3 positions, risking nearly 30% of my capital.

In fact, in one of the 3 positions, I could have closed a win, if I hadn't aimed for 20 or 30 pips. Recalling the live trading time, when I was aiming for 30 or 50 pips... that's when the win rate crashed and equity depleted.

Grade: C

One bad night was enough to ruin a week. If it was 2 bad nights? Disaster!

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4 hours before the FOMC rate decision, where will XAUUSD go ?

With 96.5% chance that the Fed will raise rate by 0.25% (I remember it was over 98% just a few days ago), the market is ready for the hike. But the Fed can still move XAUUSD price drastically if they hike more than expected (which is very unusual given the recent trend), or pause the hike. Perhaps what's more likely is the expected 25bps hike being doled out, and followed by a hawkish statement.

In this H4 chart, the "death cross" from the twin tunnels was formed around 20 June, after Gold fell steadily from the historical high on 4 May 2023. As of today, it's on the verge of forming the "golden cross" which might signal a bullish extension. However if the golden cross failed, it's effectively a death cross, which might see God drop further to 1900 level.

Likewise on the D1 chart, SMA20 crossed below SMA50 on 30 May, and is looking to cross above it again, forming a golden cross of its own. A failed cross will again point to 1900 level. It's worth noting that recent bull run from 1900 appears to be a retracement which topped at Fib61.8, adding another reason to expect seeing an immediate downward rally

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2023W29 Review

Win rate of 82.9%, +270.7 pips, equity gain of 30.9% in 41 trades.

It feels like a repetition in terms of my analyses and execution, i.e. no new elements added or significantly changed. So the fact that it still gives a decent return is actually a good news, indicating the strategy and the method is serving me well. One change is, I started trading 0.6 lot instead of 0.5 from Tuesday evening, in view of my account size that's now over $6200, to me that's quite remarkable considering it was as low as 2200 just 4 weeks ago. 

I stick to the approach of aiming for 15p as standard, it worked perfectly fine, at least in this week. ALL the winning trades I took there were less than 15p (because I closed them early due to fear) would have become full 15p wins, although there was at least one that I cashed out near the max, like this one on Friday afternoon. With my current ability, it's good err on the side of caution.

Quite a lot of range plays this week, and did give me quite a few quick and repeated returns like this one below on Tuesday night. I shorted 4 times with profit around 1970 major resistance level. What I didn't realize was, the fact that I was shorting at higher and higher levels (and higher lows) might have been a signal of bullish build up, so I ended up with a full loss after that.

Luck was certainly a factor. Right after the loss above, I entered a short again, thinking the market had moved over 220p, above the ATR. However the trade wasn't smooth. With a 1.2 lots position, I eventually moved my SL to just over 100p, some sense of gambling there! It turned out to be a win overnight, after nearly 12 hours. The positive short swap added to the profit, but it was a big risk taking. The trade was nearly -80p at the worst point.

Overall, a very good week, with some good learnings.

Grade: A- (the minus was for the mindset instability)

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2023W28 Review

Win rate 81.25%, +31p and 16.6% equity growth in 32 trades.

Felt more like a "normal" performance.

With 5 full losses of -50p or more, it's quite a respectable outcome to be still in positive. A main reason was the double-sized trades.

Another adjustment this week was I set a standard TP to 15p from 10p. This was after reviewing past trades, realising that more often than not, winning trades of +10p would also achieve +15p. This helped to build up better equity to cushion any potential loss.

Of those 5 full losses, was there anything I could do to avoid them? Maybe, but I wouldn't call them bad trades because they were executed after the usual analyses.

Grade: B

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2023W27 Review

Win rate of 91.30%, +191pips and 39% of equity growth in 23 trades.

The good results from last week extended into this week.

There's only 1 double-lot trade this week, which made the result even better, and also explained why higher pips return resulted in relatively lower equity return.

One remark, though, is that I have been remaining on 0.5 lot per trade as the standard even though my account size were down to 2.2kUSD. It's a good way to recover fast, but also means higher % of risk per trade!

Grade: A

Second week in a row meeting the criterions of going live. 

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2023W26 Review

Win rate 80%, +128pips, and equity gain of 49% in only 15 trades.

A huge contrast from last week.

There was a lack of focus last week, and arguably also this week. The difference is maybe I am more selective and less involved, which led to "only" 15 trades. There was nearly no big loss, except for one -33p trade.

The equity growth was also helped by increased (or doubled) lot size which brought in more wins. This should be applied very cautiously though, as it's obviously a double-edged sword.

Grade: A

Another week that I fulfilled the criteria of going back to live of +80p a week with good grade.

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2023W25 Review

61% win rate, -235 pips, nearly -47% of drawdown.

One of the worst week, if not the worst, in my trading journey so far.

61% win rate didn't sound too bad, but losing 270pips on the final trading day and ended with half the account size, was definitely awful.

One key factor was FOCUS.

With a job interview / technical test of the following week in mind, it was hard to keep mind free and clear at all times.

Things really got rough on Friday, when petulance and recklessness got the better of me, and I played with double lot size, raking up 5 losses in a row, that was about -170 pips. 

自暴自弃，报复心态，totally messed up emotionally.

Grade: E

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