So, the other day I was thinking about how would I handle specifically this type of scenario. Day starts off with whispaws and no chance to grab profit. So the first loss for -8 where I (according to my rules) couldn't exit sooner. Then -7, -5 and -6.2 for a total of -26.2 net pips. Now that may look awful (and it very well might be
, get's a little bit better later on though) but it's ok, part of my rules were that I would take the trade at the line.
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Anyway, daily range is at 30~ pips right now and it has been above 40 pips 100% of the time for the last 100 days. So that's what I'm looking for now.
I enter long and I'm going after the range. Of course it could be less than that, but if it happens to be 40 or more then it's more likely to be in the direction of the daily candle color (given that I'm already at the US session and otherwise it'd have to go all the way down to today's low and then keep going down).
I'm going to be patient now and wait and not exit at the first sign. Once price gets to the range I'm going for, then I'll exit on a turn trade going down (best case scenario I grab more pips, worst case scenario I exit with a little bit less). I exit for 10.5 pips.
Then 2 quick entries for +4 and +1.5. I exited these because price started wiggling heavily and I just didn't want to have a large red candle and go into the negative again.
It's not that I'm necessarily "breaking" my exit playbook rules, to be honest I'm trying to build one. For example, if I just exit at the turn trades around my entry I will find myself just cutting trades short just to get in again more often than not. I don't want to "curve fit" my exits based just on what happened today, as I don't think there's a "one size fits all" kind of thing, but I don't think the overwhelming
"if this then that but if that then this other thing BUT only..." is the solution either. This obviously needs more work.
So, all in all: -10. There were no aditional trades but I would've probably quit after that last one since I was starting to get a little brain-foggy (realizing that I need to work on the exits, find a sweet-spot between being patient and not stupid
, etc.) . Still, all is well
.
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Some aditional observations:Ranges:- For the daily range looking at the frequency distribution might be more useful to pick the higher % occurence. I'm starting to trust these numbers.
- For H1, probably the most optimal way would be to run the frequency distributions for my session/s (because currently it's factoring the hours from the Sydney / Asian sessions where there's not much movement) but the average would be giving me a good number to work with I think, maybe because the smaller candles even out with the larger ones. I'm seeing that it hovers around or surpasses the average often. I see how I could use the H1 ranges for exits within the first hour but it's less clear later on
if the H1 candles open above / below my zone because I could be having a trigger towards the H1 open when the H1 range still is below the average (I don't know if I'm doing a good job at explaining it lol).
Exits:- I need to give room for price to range, I might be too focused on cutting losers early but I find myself just fighting out price sometimes.
- I find the exit at the turn trade to be alright but only once the ball gets rolling. I don't mind leaving pips on the table but it kinda feels like shooting myself in the foot if I close it with a smaller loss just to re-enter again.
- The reasoning behind starting to look for an exit when (for example) price closes below the Einstein line was: if I'm long and price closed below the line I'm trading away from, therefore price is going down and I should be looking to exit. It could be that I'm overcomplicating it, maybe I should just close it at the other end of the zone or when it closes in that area, but even at 1.5x spread that could very well be the same candle or the next.
Entries:- It can happen that I trade against the H1 candle color if it opens above / blow my zone and a trigger happens before the hour closes. This isn't in my rule but I recall this being said quite often throughout the forum (don't trade against H1). In the first hour I'm always trading with the H1 candle color because it happens to be the same open.
- If there's a clue looking left to avoid a bad entry then I'm not sure what I should be looking at.
- I had checked the D1 and W1 colors in relation to where the zone is and if I recall the weekly open was good to trade away from it. The D1 not so much but maybe because I wasn't taking range into account. Maybe I need a way to easily establish a bias within my plan and trade only in one direction for the day. I was hesitant to do it like that because some days I wouldn't even trade (would've been 2 last week).
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Sorry for the wall of text to whoever is following the thread, just putting the process out there.