2023W24 Review

Win rate of 76%, +184.8 pips, equity growth of 14.3% in 25 trades.

Seems like another great week... The win rate could have been higher, if I didn't take a few experimental trades, but ok, let's not split hairs, coz I might still count those single digit winning trades as wins anyway...

No full loss this week! The biggest lost was -26.4p

So... I guess, another Grade A+

~~

2023W33 Review

Win rate of 90%, +180 pips, equity growth of 13.8% in 20 trades.

This review was written 3 weeks after the week concluded, so not much were remembered, which means nothing really spectacularly different. Statistically, it looked like a great week, although there's a full loss of over 60 pips. All profitable trades were quite normal, around 15 pips. Two trades that were +8 and +5 pips, could had been a full +15 pips too.

I increased the lot size to 0.7 and then to 0.8, as my account grew to over 7000 and 8000.

So far, so good.

Grade: A+

~~

2023W32 Review

Win rate of 78.2%, +32.7 pips, equity gain of 7.1% in 23 trades.

A rather middle-of-the-road week.

Started the week with a triple position full loss, nearly -$1000 handicap.

However, it's a moderate week from there, with rather good win rates, and only 1 full loss.

An average of +6.5 pips return a day is not great by any measure, but it is realistic, nevertheless.

Grade: B

~~

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

~~

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!

~~

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)

~~

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

~~

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. 

~~

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.

~~

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

~~

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+

~~

2023W23 Review

-18p, -1.6% capital

69% win rate

Sounds like a more realistic but rather frustrating week

Started the week being too cautious, due to the "good result" from last week (good is the enemy of great?). It gave me a strong fear of losing money, to "mess my record". 

Not that I took too early profit, but just feeling "under trade". I overlooked thin S&R lines and only waited for thick ones. It didn't hurt my trade record, but the mentality wasn't completely right.

Was well on Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday was bad, with 3 full losses that translated into about 12% weekly drawdown in a day. It's again deflating...

That's when the voices and thoughts of "face the fact that losses are part of trading" came. It didn't feel so bad if it wasn't for Alex making huge profits. It felt like I had got so much more to catch up, to learn, which means far away from realizing the goal (of being financially independent).

A few wins after that but it felt really small in comparison.

The main reason the week ended with "only" -18p loss was a >40p win from a limit sell placed since a few days before, opened during my whisky tasting session.

Thoughts of the week: I'm not there yet, still making big losses and lucky wins; I'm still emotional, feeling wanna give up after "the record was messed up"; Those losses weren't bad trades, just part of the performance with my current skillset; I'm not there yet, but I'm not totally lost anymore.

Grade: B

~~

2023W22 Review

The best week in trading life so far.

88% win rate in 25 trades

+176.5 pips

20% equity return

Noticeably, there's no big loss this week. In fact, there wasn't a single trade that triggered the SL.

3 losing trades, but 2 were closed manually and pre-maturely (would have been wins), and 1 was experimenting on playing the data, which turned out to be a very weak movement.

No doubt, there were luck factors. Most price movements were favourable, even though they might have moved into floating losses. Most trades hit TP in reasonably short time (all within one hour).

So what are the takeaways?

• I made some distinctions between S&R lines. Thinner line for near-term S&R, e.g. intraday or within a couple of days; thicker line for medium-term, i.e. tested by several day candles over weeks; thick and dark lines for long-term S&R, i.e. monthly candle or Bollinger Band.
• Trust the process more, trust the bounce and reactions at key levels
• Be more cautious with entry, although not saying I was overly cautious. Luck factor also meant that I didn't miss too many entries that I wanted
• When price gaps up or down, it really GAPS even if the candles are not showing it! Pending orders might be a few pips near current price level, but slippage due to data releases can move the entry by 50 pips.
• Come Friday night, I could really feel the fatigue, after being in the game for a week. Trading does take attention, focus and energy.
• Constantly reminded myself not to let arrogance creep in especially after a handful of wins.
• Still missed a few entries because I wasn't monitoring, and a few of those entries might not have turned out well... Luck factor.

Grade: A

This was the first week that I fulfilled the criteria of returning to trading live again. I need at least 3 more weeks like this!

~~

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+

~~

2023W20 Review

It's a week that I lost just over $500 (on demo account), that's about -10%. But still I don't think it's a terrible week... except the last handful of trades

All was quite well, with some small gains and rather big losses, perhaps the expected return with this high hit rate and low return strategy.

Emotion... is still biggest thing, even on a demo account. 

When I was on winning streak of 2, 3, or 4, I was able to stay rational, be patient, stick to the plan, wait for opportunities to show themselves instead of keep looking for one, no FOMO even when price ran away.

But when winning streak got longer, like 4, 5, 6, then complacence and arrogance started to creep in. 轻浮，浮夸，不严谨。

The worst thing, however, was after one or two losses... then I tend to become aggressive, go on offensive and try to regain lost capital,  start to tweak my game plan, which may not be a good thing for an inexperienced trader.

In terms of market movement, biggest killer was still one-way train movement.

I trade on "reactions" and "rebounds", 10p can be obtained, even on a one-way train. But one-way train has another voodoo... which is speed. 10p may be hit in a few seconds, or 1 min, and that is very exciting, tempting me to catch more small profits.... then inevitably, will get trapped before too long.

Grade: B

~~

2023W19 Review

The first week in a long while that I'm fully on a demo account

My strategy is to trade for bounces at key levels, and aim for small tp, typically 10p, or occasionally 20p or a bit more if it's in active US sessions.

After one week, it seems quite workable. While it's not a blanket statement (e.g., if it's a a big move that will easily cover a range of 150p or 200p in 15 minutes), prices tend to react at key levels.

So, provided if there's no FOMO, and wait patiently for entries close to key levels, aiming for 10p of reaction bounces while risking 30 to 60p is usually viable.

Anyway, it's still a negative week, owing in large to the two trades that resulted in -90p. By the way, that's a 200p move in 20 minutes... exactly the kind of move to beware of.

Don't overtrade

Don't chase the action

Be patient

Grade: B

~~

2023W18 Review

Desperation

Petulance

Vengeance

Demotivation

These were among the emotions that drove me this week

No surprise, it's a devastating week, where I lost over 200p, $100, or about 30%

The only surprise was I still have my account

But with just over $100 remaining, it's as good as busted

The 20p challenge didn't work for me, at least not in this state of mind

Was too desperate to prove something

After taking a few days of break, I've reverted to trading demo again

Turned out to be rather positive performance, with less emotional stress and fear

So... how do I know I'm ready for live trading again?

1. When I'm profitable with at least +80p weekly gain for 4 out of 6 profitable weeks
2. When I'm getting Grade B for 4 out of 6 weeks of at least Grade C
3. When I can declare that I'm on top of my emotions while trading a demo account

The last one isn't scientifically measurable, but let's start like this...

Grade: E

~~

2023W17 Review

A -23% week...

All rules went out of the window

Desperate and revenge trades

It's taking a toll on my emotional well-being

To take the 20p challenge?

The idea is good... an I aim 10p at a time... but the problem is with the SL

100p SL? 30p SL?

Maybe I should go back to "square one"... with 100p SL, 1:10 play

Grade: D

~~

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

~~

2023W15 Review

+26.2p in 24 trades

Had it not for that trade that won 99.9p, this would have been another bad week.

Then there are these two trades... 

I shorted near a support level, things were fine until price suddenly dropped aggressively.

FEAR of losing money caused me to cut my loss, and then FEAR of missing out made me chased the price. What might have been a +30 turned out to be a -87.

Trade #1 below was profitable, but was rather lucky to be profitable in short time? Shorted at a key number level of 2000 and took a profit of 18p. Had I aimed for more, might miss it and need to hold for much longer time.

Trade #2, SL was only 13p above a key level of 2005. An easy target for stop hunting. Should have had higher margin above 2005, and it would have been at least a breakeven trade, or a profitable one if I had the gut.

Trade #3, was trading a 3-line strike, but it's not strictly a qualified pattern because the bullish engulfing covered just under 50%. Seemed unlucky to have missed by pips, but it shouldn't have been a trade if I was cautious.

Trade #4 was influenced by Alex, who reminded me that a long was possible on the verge of data release. What a bull!

The next trade was telegram-called.

Trade 5, 6, 7 were plays after data release, capitalising a day support of 2005. Trust the range?

Then, there were a few "mistakes"... including one that clicked on the wrong direction, curious SL that's not big enough... 

Overall, not a terrible trading week because at least I could feel in touch with the market.

I practised more cautions, gave more patience, but still had moments of FOMO.

I was too cautious in setting TPs in some trades, especially US sessions.

55% win rate wasn't bad, but wins were small, and losses were big. Same old problem.

What could have made this week better?

• wait for retest and confirmation
• aim for bigger TP at US sessions

Grade? B-

~~