Results for trading January 31, 2018 (yesterday):

15 total trades, 6 wins, 9 losses, Net loss of <51> pips (-2.57%)

Total for the last week of January: <144> pips (-7.10%)

Total for month of January:

Week 1: <104.6>

Week 2: <92.2>

Week 3: <129.4>

Week 4: <59.8>

Week 5: <144.0>

Total for January: <410.4> (-18.57%)

 

Looking back over my trading logs for the last two years, that is the second worst month in my records.  Interestingly, the worst (<578.8>) was also in a January, of 2017.  And January of 2016 ranks up there in negative months as well.

I was really double-minded in my trading yesterday. I had had losing days on Monday and Tuesday, and was down <93> pips for the week.  My weekly line in the sand is <100> pips – if I end the day down by 100 for the week, I’m done trading for the week.  We had a full day of news yesterday, with ADP, CAD GDP, Oil, and FOMC.  And we have NFP coming up on Friday, which I wanted to be able to trade.  In order to do that, I needed to limit my losses and recoup whatever losses occurred.  So I was trading very conservatively, hesitant to get into a trade, and quick to jump out with whatever profit I could hang on to.  That did not serve me well.

I was down <32> with a couple open trades headed into the oil news at 9:30 CST.  I had an RBO on GBPJPY, and then an RBO hit on AUDJPY.  I checked it and realized it had hit just inside the two-minute period before the candle close. Following my mentor’s advice that if I mistakenly enter a trade, just close it, I punched out of it with a fractional pip gain.  I was frantically trying to set up the CAD charts to trade the oil news, and just felt like everything was happening at once.  I noticed that the GBPJPY trade had run up some, and I just punched out of it to capture the pips that were there (14).  But it turned out, that ended up being a “monster” trade, in Kim’s words. She said that was one of two trades that saved here day (and week).  By punching out of it early, I gave up that gain. I then went on to take a few more trades, some winners, some losers, that were basically flat, and left me down <33> before FOMC.

In order to stay alive and be able to trade Friday’s NFP, I needed to bring my day’s total down to no worse than <7>, or else I would still be over my <100> for the week.  I tried to trades on FOMC, but both of them were pretty quick full stops to end the day <51>.  So I am sidelined until Monday, and I have an appointment Monday morning, so I will not be trading then either.