A two-trade day, one win and one loss.

Hindsight in trading is my worst enemy and my best friend. I get to see my errors in hindsight, which is how I learn. But I also get to see my winners and just how good they could have been. Scalping for just a few ticks, to see that actually there were 100’s of ticks to take. But I am a scalper. So we move on…

Today, my first trade was a loser. One that at the time (of course), I thought was an amazing trade. But when I look back, there was just so much wrong with it. Whilst I am annoyed with myself for taking it, and seeing the negative value on my account. It actually taught me two things. 1) Stop chasing price, and 2) stop risking so much!

When I opened the charts today, I had noticed a strong downtrend and what I thought was a breakout attempt of that trend. As I waited, I expected the price to break out and then create a significant low, resuming the downtrend.

Looking at the image below (ignoring the price after my order), it seemed as though it had had a failed two-legged move. I began marking a first entry short, followed by a large bearish candle for a second entry short, which closed strongly underneath the EMA.

Now here comes lesson 1) STOP CHASING PRICE. After such a large candle, I couldn’t wait to be in this trade. I tried to catch a limit order, but it didn’t fill. So I figured I’d take a huge risk because I am right, right? Wrong!

I chased the price with a stop order, and now I can see that I actually sold at the bottom, which is something I could only see in hindsight. I was trapped, and price quickly began moving towards my HUGE stop loss. I closed this trade for a loss of -10 ticks.

Here’s a slightly zoomed-in image. One thing I noticed after the review was that the price on the higher time frame was in an uptrend. It seemed that I was trying to sell at the bottom of the higher timeframe pullback.

Here Comes To Winner – Why Can’t They All Be Like This

My next trade was based on the fact that I now realised that today’s price was bullish.

I extended the bull trend lines and watched the price move higher and higher, relieved that I closed my earlier position rather than allowing the ridiculous stop loss to get hit.

Now on this trade, I took what I believe to be a higher low. My mentor had taken this trade on the second entry long. But I didn’t know that until after I had reviewed my own trading. One thing you may have picked up is that I tend to check what my mentor has done AFTER my trades. If I do this during my trading, it affects my results in a bad way.

I’m always pleased when I see that my charts are marked similarly to my mentor and that we’ve taken trades at the same time or near to it.

Here is the zoomed-out version of the chart. You’ll see the clear up-trend, as well as my marked-up entry for the higher-low (HL). Also, you’ll see just how far the price moved higher (in fact, it’s at 6749.75 as I write this)

As you can see, I entered off the higher low, expecting the price to gravitate back towards the top of the trading range, which it did.

This was a buy stop order, and at the time, the ATR was less than 2. Therefore, my take-profit was just 6 ticks. This is filled, but as you see, I could have got a few more.

In the future, when I trade more contracts, I’ll implement a runner into my trades. But for now, it’s better to take my money and get out. It isn’t every day you get nice trends like we saw today.

So I ended the day with -4 ticks. But I learned a lot about price and its movement. I think that although the value of $ is down, it’s a day when the education is up. Meaning that eventually, I’ll make back those 4 ticks… I hope.