Had a busy few days and once again, still haven't learned my lessons on patience. This is going to be a battle with myself.
So, Wednesday I had my second losing day, down $600. On the strength of longing RBOB Gasoline at what I thought was a breakout but turned into a pullback. Why, because I wasn't patient and failed to wait for candle close confirmation.
Cut the trade at $600 loss but if I only would have zoomed out a little more and saw, it was a clear cup and handle pattern forming and not more than 10 minutes later it exploded for a huge gain right thru it and continued up the rest of the day. That trade would have completed the challenge.
Lesson learned? Wait for confirmation, always.
Yesterday I had a green day up $300 with a few small wins, then today followed with another green day +500, but again my penchant for cutting winning trades early but me in the ass.
Any one of the 3 trades I was in would have completed the challenge as they all ended up being +2000 trades. I shorted copper early this morning at 4.71 and within 30 minutes it reached 4.60. The short was after London swept the liquidity of the Asia high and reversed, a classic NY Reversal inside the London KillZone. I got in the trade about an hour after it started after reaching a high of 4.7455, and then got out before it completed it's move downward. Why? I'm an idiot.
Then I shorted Silver with an entry at 2.875. Why? Because there was a very high confluence of factors going into it...a tweezer top rejection on the H4 chart from a Bearish OB, an Evening Star Doji on the H2 chart, and a Bearish Spinning Top and Gravestone Doji on the H1 chart. Ended up getting down to 28.270...even half of that would have completed the challenge for me.
Then, I saw Copper stop along the support trend line, start moving sideways and then patiently waited to see if we were going to get a breakout, which is what I was expecting, or a breakdown which I felt was unlikely since it just hit a new high. Waited and waited and it broke out of the triangle upward, I got in at 4.6345, and then got out again early, then it got back up to 4.6675, again easily would have completed my challenge.
The good? My chart reading skills and technical analysis continues to be on point. The bad? I continue to bail on winning trades early. No more. Come Monday, I am setting stop losses and take profits prior to the trade and it either hits or gets stopped out. Once it moves up high enough I will likely move my stop to break even tho so I don't take idiotic losses on winning trades tho potentially.
I feel super confident in my charting abilities and chart reading skills, but I refuse to allow them to play out.
Enough is enough.
Either way, it was a good overall week, closing up $1100 and just under +5K. 4 green days and 1 red day. A little under $1100 to go to pass the challenge and my drawdown is still under $50 out of $3000.
Overall, 11 green days to 2 red days so far since the beginning and lots of profit left on the charts.
Got a long weekend of bar replays to go thru on my trades and then setting up my plans for the week ahead. Another week like this one and I will complete the challenge successfully. But I am wanting to take care of that early on...as long as there are opportunities. I will not force them.