Gold CFD Day and Trend Trade Journal [Demo]

Just used last day trade for today to go short as current uptrend was in overbought condition.
Looks like Buying Climax BCLX .
setting up new shorter term TR?
Just got stopped out for BE on bounce off top trend line.
Next Day trades can be taken at 12:01 am.
1 st Week of Demo ends tonight 11:59 pm
Just moved Swing trade S/L to $1326 for Risk = $55 down from $100

1 st weeks account

interesting thanks for sharing.

Forgot to copy detailed report last night before last trade which was stopped out .
Will make next week end later Saturday Morning so Have got all weekend to do diary , stats etc.

So about B/E with Win Rate 31.25%
Pretty sure I can get that to around 50% with a bit more care and a little less fear of losing R.
A couple of those B/E trades were profitable after stopped out . but stops were run too tight too early,
To get trade to B/E so I could not lose.

Good chance to learn how to trade in the trading range at the moment I believe.
I suspect there will be an extended period trading between $1331 and $1345
Mainly at the lower half of the range.
I suspect there will be an extended period of re-accumulation then perhaps a shakeout down to low $1300s and then a spring to jump the $ 1350 mark . May take some effort in the form of Large re-accumulation to soak up enough supply to clear the previous resistance around $1350s and $1370s.
Current 0.10 trade is now at B/E .Entry was at left of chart

Not Sure why my R was $62 for the 0.25 contract trade.should be $50.Stopped out
Need to be careful when moving S/L price on MT4 Chart




Had a couple accidental trades on Monday with the new phone app. no harm done as worked out how to exit pretty quick. another good reason to demo account is to learn how to use all tools with no fear of blowing $ while mistakes are made.
Those trades don't count towards daily trade limit.
Some how put a trade on today while checking trades on phone. did not know until I got on laptop 30mins later!
Just closed day Trade for $50 win .
$62 in profit with 1 trade at B/E
Equity about $2135

Bugger. accidently closed out my swing trade last night while trying to put a trailing stop order on!
I thought a point on GC was $1 turns out a point is 1c . A tick is 10c
So put trailing stop 15c away and could not fix it by the time the stop was filled.
$ 74 profit but should still be in the trade at around $ 100 Unrealised profit.
Also got into a day trade just as I was going to bed at about 1am.
Price dropped hard, possibly a big stop hunt and spring off support.
I have tried to trade these before but keep getting stopped out.
This time I waited till the momentum slowed and entered Long .
But had the stop just a little too tight.
Getting greedy and having a tight stop to maximise position size.
The price then did exactly as I expected ,and increased back to where it was and then some.

So next time will lower position size and increase stop distance as these trades are potential 3-4 x R
Here is the entry below. Larger green arrow shows entry Candle. Smaller green arrow shows Entry Price. Small red arrow shows S/L order.


Then just touched stop as marked by small red arrow.
Had TP order on for about 1.5 x R or $125

Well looks like the bulls have control !! Smashed passed $1350 like it was nothing .
So much for my long re accumulation theory!
Quite frustrated with myself for accidently closing the swing trade with the trailing stop as it would now be about $300 unrealised profit.[entry was $1330 0.10 contract].
Had that on in case the Trading range Broke out ,and it did!!
Back in long at the consolidation at $1359 and climbing.
Seems like the biggest problem at the moment is Me and my MT4 skillz
That's Ok . Best to sort out the problems as much as possible while training.
Here is the re-entry. lets see if it stalls near $1370 or smashes through .
Stop will trail about $10 below.

Everybody makes the occasional mistake with their orders. I resolved very early in my journey to fix every mistake asap. I wouldn't wait to see what happened next. The mistake had to be corrected immediately. I've sold twice (overlooking a sell stop order, making myself short) and paid the extra brokerage/commission to fix the mistake. I've bought instead of sold and paid the extra costs to fix it. I've placed limit orders instead of stop orders. Paid up and took the loss immediately, to fix my mistake.

I've always taken care to understand the contract spec's, especially so with cfds as their spec's can be different than the futures contracts. A mistake with leverage can wipe out a cfd account as soon as the fat finger presses the button.

I assume that your trading plan doesn't have any instructions on what to do when you make a mistake like these.

peter2 said:

I assume that your trading plan doesn't have any instructions on what to do when you make a mistake like these.

Click to expand...

Correct.
I am going to get my A5 notebook and re write my plan in that.[Where the 1st one is]

Much more detailed on entry , money management , errors, and whatever else I think of .
A bit erratic with entry at the moment .
Expect a more detailed plan posted here soon .Feel free to criticise or offer advice.
Thanks

OK.
Thing have been a
bit out of control here.
Trading outside my rules !
Too many trades yesterday . 5 instead of 3
Lost more than my daily Limit chasing losses and did not reduce position size in relation to account size.
Need to set a take profit order at 2XR when away from laptop . keep trying for 3x R and missing the fill,
Trying to get back to even with one trade
Also need to re-write rules a bit more specific on entry and also error correction rules.
Then print a checklist to run through before each trade. Just forgetting to reduce position size has cost
around $50
Here is the chaos on a chart
Large green arrow is entry Long Candle
Small Green arrow is entry price
Small red arrow is Initial SL and then exit price if higher
Large red arrow is exit candle
Still finding my way with chart marking for best revision

Still finding my way with chart marking for best revision

So, have got position sizing back under control.
However have been trying to take long positions during shorter term downtrend . trying to pick the bottom is not a profitable strategy ,at least for me.
Again not following my rule of trading in the direction of the shorter term trend.
Account now down to $1580 .
However 1st Short position taken a few hours ago in trend is already almost at a point where s/l is at B/E
Look at what I was trying to trade against !!!


Still working on revised written trading plan. Trying to simplify it a bit.

Gold is nuts . Crazy way to end a downtrend? Then jump back into longer term TR [red Line] maybe.
At least I got on the breakout with my last trade of the day.currently 2xR profit .
Had to go against the trend . Break out was too big to go against.
This is going to take some real work to be profitable.

So...............
I cracked he S#&s With Gold CFD Demo Last night.
Balance was down to $1450 and equity to $1390 s
after taking more than my 5 allotted trades yesterday and going past my 3% daily loss limit as per new plan.
Put it all on Red or Black for the NFP and lost down to margin call status and about $850 equity.
That's 27.5% loss on account without including equity which makes the loss 30%
before the NFP Punt.
Then down to about $50 margin call with trades still on over the weekend!
The is not how we trade in the real world is it??

Just to get back to even when the equity was down to -30% would require a gain on the $1390 of 44% to get back to $2000.
This Would probably take a good trader 6 -12 months at a guess to recover at minimum .
Clearly I am not a good trader , so not much point going further with this account.
Ring the demo broker to close all trades and send him the margin asap.

The beauty of the Demo account is that we can work on strategies without the pain of losing real $$ during the initial planning and education phase.
This can also be seen as a weakness of the demo acc.
No Skin In= no pressure.
We get to test our strategy against the market in real time, tweak it and try again.
I believe its called "forward testing"?

What did I learn from my first go at Gold CFD

1 . You need to make sure that you calculate profit inside your intended trading range during day trades is more than 2/1 and also allow for the spread and Stop . This should get you to at least B/E with 33%
Win Ratio. I started to measure my TR with the handy Tape measure in MT4

2 . Spread on gold cfds all seem to be about 25c or 25 CFD FX "points"
This means you need to tighten stops outside the TR to sqeeze in a trade.
or Better still trade a wider range [ defined in points in plan] and trades take longer than a couple hours for Day Trades .

3. Learn about the $USD.
As The USD make up the other half of your trade [ and many FX pairs]
I believe at least a basic fundamental understanding of how the $USD moves in FX/ Commodities
Trading would be of benefit. This can at least tell us why our technical near perfectt trade fell apart or possibly allow us to see why all the pairs $USD move and combine that with a correlated T/A trade for a double confirmation of entry . ie some basic $USD Index and other Stats into Entry Plan .

4. May be easier to trade FX/ $USD Pairs day trading due to tighter Spreads.
13points [or pips] or less spread generally. Allowing wider stops outside TR on Similar charts to gold.
The EUR/USD is correlated to Gold as Well as USD/ GBP . AUD , And many other USD Pairs . Save the Gold trading for Longer Trends and the 2000 point Trading range Trade over a week or month.
$ JPY/USD is inversely correlated to Gold and yen Futures are about 90% correlated .
Can also trade NFP and other announcements for the God day trade .

5. Look into arbritrage opportunities against gold charts?

6.Look at indices as well.

I'm Going to start a new Demo trying to trade wider ranges and trend trades in gold and shorter term trades /day trades in Forex USD Pairs.
This may have been suggested to me earlier.











FX pairs

Triple B said:

OK.
Thing(s) have been a
bit out of control here.
Trading outside my rules !

Click to expand...

Yep.

So .....
Im still here.!
I decided to try trading fx and gold with real $$.
Thought it might help with discipline !
Had no real strategy or plan. paid the price. Dropped $850ish in a few weeks!! started with $1270
But, I have learnt a heap about trading and myself in that time .
The good news is I have started to string together a few profitable days.
Also am starting to get into a pattern of sticking to my rules . that's always good.
No longer giving back the profits of the day chasing the big win.
I now have a couple strategies that seem to be consistent enough to see profits .
simple buy stop order breakouts with an ascending triangle pattern an 1x R take profit with high win rate .[ not enough trades yet for decent stats]
and descending triangle pattern onto longer term support for multiple x R breakouts .[Long]
Using Wyckoff to get entry down near support where possible and can really start to see how the traders are battling for the $$
Also learning to use multiple charts for each currency and picking the strongest looking setups.
You can sometime pick the strongest potential breakout by the pattern below Resistance.
Have had a few days in a row of + 3%-7% profits with R of 2%
Still making impulsive trades at times which needs to stop.
Time to write down some more specific rules .
I can also see some other strategies that I will test on Demo,

Now I will start feeding a little $ at a time back into the account .
Will be using daily , weekly ,and monthly Profit and loss targets .
I am also using old school diary to log trades, max 6 in/out per day .
These are short duration trades using Daily , 1 hour 15 min and 5 min , and 1min to watch the action.
anywhere from 10seconds[ had one 1xR today] to several hours.
There may even be some of several days duration if a trend breaks out and Can get stop to +R and leave it when the daily profit is reached .
Might start a new journal once I get a couple grand in the acc.
Bye
Brendan