2023W31 Review

Win rate 82.1%, +102.8 pips, equity gain of 22.8%

All seems very impressive, deserving another A... except it doesn't.

It all started quite well, with 10 consecutive wins. Maybe that's usually a sign of some inevitable losses are just around the corner.

The first full loss of -55 pips came right after that, on the second day of the week. But the real disaster started that afternoon, after a long position went south, and I added 2 more positions to it after that. When the trades closed, it was a totaly of -226 pips and -$1361. It was a real hit in the confidence and mood.

The same night, I entered 4 more long positions after all the falls were settled, and managed to claw back just over $1780 on the next day. It was maybe a very lucky situation, because the positions were still in loss, until it gapped up by nearly 50 pips, giving me a +58 pips return on a 2 lot play. I was aiming for no more than just over 20 pips.

So, while the win rates and pips return were quite well, it was a week characterized by big emotional swings, desperate positions in order to save positions. If not because of the lucky 2 lots and 1.5 lots that gave me around $1400, it would have been a break even week.

Grade: C

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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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2023W24 Review

-145p, -17.8% capital

70.3% win rate

It appears to be a terrible week. But the fact was, although it couldn't be said as a fine week, I didn't feel as bad as it seemed.

There were wins and there were losses, and there were some trades that shouldn't had been taken. There were two bettings, during the Tuesday and Thursday data releases. 

The first one, should have been a win, because I was aiming for 20p, and the price clearly had moved over 60p in my direction, but when my close initiated manually and executed, the price had swung -35p against me. I would call it technical glitch, or latency, or simply this platform isn't meant for such huge volatility trade.

The second one had less excuse... except it was even less ideal to play such trade on the phone. Big loss, and led to two subsequent reckless and mindless trades, that amounted to -290p or nearly -$1800 loss.

While it's not totally fair to exclude such "mistakes" from the counting because there were real emotions involved, which might well affect live trading anyway, other trades in the week were rewarding enough.

This week I started to pay more attention to if I could get more than a standard 10p target in each trade, and dared to take multiple positions from an entry range, usually with later positions taken from better levels.

Also, I used Fib retracement to help my entry and exit, instead of setting a target purely based on wishes.

A mixed bag week... one or two bad calls and bad decisions, but also consistent reward. 

Grade: C+

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2023W21 Review

+$29.50

-91.1pips

81.3% win rate

A strange combination of numbers...

As late as Friday afternoon 3:30pm, the drawdown was more than 15% of the week opening capital. It was deflating and shitty feeling.

There were emotional trades, price chasing, but the biggest failure was still the inability to identify an opposite one-way train.

Managed to save the week into positive with the subsequent 9 positive trades, some with double lot size. In a way, it's a plus in trade/lot management

Grade: C+

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2023W16 Review

Bad week, -119p, with a win rate of 69%

Several times of closing trades too soon due to fear of losing, ended up leaving money on the table.

However, also at least 3 trades that were profitable because I closed early enough, otherwise would have been losses.

Big individual losses are still the culprits, twice hitting SL of over -100p, twice more over -30p.

One -155p here:

It came right after a salvaged trade which saw a floating -100p became a +20p profit, took 7.5 hrs from 1pm to 8:30pm. I had the feeling that after dropping over 100p from the day high, it's a good time to buy. 

It wasn't.

There were also several false hopes along the way, with long pinbars hinting that a bullish reversal might be on the card. It's a bad situation, but it'll be too harsh to say it's a bad trade.

Another -133p here:

Bought at a key level of $2000, with a stop loss that covers the next key level of $1990. Turned out the support was as low as $1980 instead.

In hindsight, even a 200p SL that covers both key levels wouldn't have been sufficient to turn a profit.

Another bad situation.

One lesson learnt:

There might be opportunities to recover losses after a big losing trade, but it's important to keep emotions in check while doing a recovery.

Grade: C

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