The Picture Can Change Quickly

Some days, on the first look at the charts, I am completely bewildered and the voice in my head says ‘ I See NOTHING!’

Today was one of those days.

When I got to the charts this morning nothing was jumping out at me. My bias on pretty much everything has been short of late. This morning Cable had already moved to the upside and EURUSD looked messy.

Just before 0700 the charts started to clear up and the morning trading began.

I placed 13 trades (10 wins – 3 losses) this morning on various currencies for a pip tally of + 193. Not bad for a morning’s work.

But then came along 2 stinkers

EURJPY -41.1

EURUSD -32.3

A great trader once said to me….

Whenever my stop loss gets hit and a trade costs me money – I look on that as me paying the market for information. The question is….’What information did I get & how do I use it?’

Those 2 stop outs cost me almost half my earnings this morning. I’ve paid 73.4 pips for some information. Well I’ve been staring at charts since 0600 and it’s now 1236 and I’m tired. Also I’m starting to think more about how hungry I am than the charts plus I really need to pick up my bicycle from the menders in the next village.

In other words my concentration had gone so time to take a break and regroup to maybe trade the New York session.

Coming back from lunch the afternoon didn’t start much better.

EURJPY -43.5 (short)

AUDJPY -14.0 (long)

EURUSD -23.0 (short)

I got caught short with EJ when all the Yens started to climb. But the trade that really got my goat was the AUDJPY. That’s the trade that I am so MAD with myself about. I pulled it for no reason other than EJ was about to stop me out. AJ had come nowhere near my stoploss and it was setting up perfect. Both AUDJPY and AUDUSD have been behaving very nicely recently by doing exactly what the charts say they are going to do.

My long entry on AUDJPY was 76.03 (just above the figure). I actually got slipped and filled at 75.999 with my emergency stop below the last swing at 75.45 – although I would pull the trade if the price closed below the last moving average – first target 76.50

What happened next will be a lesson to me to follow my rules and stick to the plan. Pulling this trade cost me more than the -14.0 pips debited to my account. AUDJPY went on to hit my target of 76.50. In fact it reached slightly above 77.50. STICK WITH THE TRADE SANDY!!!!!!!!

The afternoon was not all doom and gloom. After the AUDJPY lesson I flipped my EURJPY and the afternoon’s score sheet went like this:

EURJPY +72.6

EURGBP +2.4 (entered this one by mistake was supposed to be EURUSD! Doh!!)

EURUSD +65.7

GBPUSD +30

A nice bit of trading this afternoon. But the lesson for me here is to be aware of my daily/weekly/monthly targets. My pip score at the end of the day was pretty much the same as it was at lunchtime. Gosh I make it hard for myself sometimes!