It's been 10 days since my last journal log, I have taken a few trades that had pretty much resulted in break-evens: small losers and small winners. In my mind, I was thinking that by doing an in-depth analysis of an account that grew couple of dollars would not be much inspiring.
To recap the past trade ideas:
003-BTCUSD
Plan: Buy after the retracement, close to the supporting uptrendline (red)
Result: Broke above the uptrend line.
Best way to enter in this scenario was to wait until it retested the broken uptrendline (shown in the orange circle)
004-IOTUSD
Plan: Anticipate the break-out of the daily resistance (shown in yellow)
Notes: I gave two Hypothesis. Hypo #1 saw it break to the downside.
Result: I entered long as per plan, but as soon as I saw it bear flagging, I got out of the trade pretty much breaking even.
005-ETHUSD
Plan: Looking to short ETH at the break below 189. The daily chart showed support that was being consistently tested. I saw that as a weakness in the ETH market.
Result: I had been stalking this trade for couple of days. Missed the best entry (break of supporting trendline (red), and waited until I saw it bear flag forming. Played it almost to perfection, scaled in at first, and added as it went my way. A flash cover (long wick candle noted on the chart) unfortunately took me out of the trade, as I had place my stop in a decent area and not too tight. I was not a happy camper..
006-EOSUSD
Plan: Buy EOS when BTC broke out.
Result: As we now know, it took up to 4 attempts for BTC to break out above 2900. Timing wasn't there for this trade so it never panned out.
007-BTCUSD
Plan: Buy BTC at the Break out above 2900
Result:
I entered long a bit earlier than I planned since it was Friday evening when this happened. Saw the strength coming in, and instead of fearing I was going to miss the trade, I went in tiny, hoping after I put my son to bed I could go back and add some more. After I woke up in the middle of the night, BTC was already around 3200. In retrospect I could have placed a Stop to buy a tad above 2900. I held my position until tonight and closed the trade, knowing it will retrace a bit.
Where is my trading account now?
+7.4%
For those who had the patience to read through this journal, I begun this challenge to grow a small $500 account and document it for the new crypto traders as a learning resource from a live trading journal, with an ambitious goal of multiplying the account while doing it in a safe manner. To say the least I have missed some good trades that could have capitalized in higher gains.
In short, I have been disciplined with my trading and am happy about that, as I have kept losses to a minimum. This is important I believe to show that account protection at all times is the single most important trading rule. I will try to step-up my game next week as I need to catch up :)