Gm!
Hope everyone had a great weekend.
Three trades to review from last week, all pretty much centred around one thesis that played out in a loss.
Down nearly 3R in total, a little over a 1% loss on my account.
My view at the beginning of last week was that BTC was in the process of flipping previous support into resistance, with targets down into the low 20000's. My first two trades on BTC and ETH were triggered after a strong push into the Daily order block S/R level rejected with a bearish SFP on the hourly.
This initial entry was underwater almost the whole time on BTC, ETH was looking weaker and the trade looked okay.
With price moving against my entry I wasn't to stressed and thought a retest of Monday's high was possible before the actual move down. When BTC swung Mondays high, taking my stop but then quickly started to fall back into Mondays range I re-entered, this move gave me more confidence in at least a move to Mondays lows to take the liquidity there before going higher.
ETH was showing weakness compared to BTC which again made me feel more confident about my short thesis, my initial trade was stopped out on BTC but my ETH trade wasn't.
Both my BTC and ETH trades were looking good throughout Asia and London sessions last Tuesday, as New York opened price started to pump but then pulled back. During this time I was looking to hedge my short in case the market pumped, the 50% of Monday's range seemed logical but I hesitated, convinced price was going to sell straight through it. Because I didn't get an entry close to the ranges 50% I started to over think and worry that if I entered now I would just end up in a loss. The hourly candle closing as a pinbar running the days low could have been a reasonable hedge position, with my stop below the 50% BUT because it closed bearish I decided it wasn't a good enough signal.
And we all know how last week played out, happy to say I was wrong, bummed I missed such a great move 😩
In reflection, firstly I think I didn't give enough weight to the 12HR break in market structure, secondly the deviation of the bottom of the range tapping into the Daily OB below was a higher time frame bullish setup that I should not have ignored.
In hindsight I was surprised at how long the short was taking to play out, I expected a more aggressive sell off and this should have been a good reason to consider taking profits early or moving stops to break even.
Why wasn't I long?
Well I wanted a lower entry to get long, I had expectations of price in the low 20000's, I was too married to being right rather than being flexible and working with new information.
There was definitely a fear of loss and/or being wrong when price bounced at the 50% of Monday's range, this is an ongoing mental block I'm struggling with and has been louder since the whole FTX collapse where I took a huge loss. Although FTX was the catalyst in making this worse it definitely goes deeper than that and it has been with me through my whole journey of learning to trade. I have been working on my self confidence and looking at area's I tend to self sabotage/am out of alignment with myself as this is shining some light on how and why I make or don't make some decisions, like over thinking my hedge position this week. Likely more on this in the future, depends how much I want to share... if people are interested in the shadow work aspect of my development.
What to work on.
I think my targets need to be more conservative, that way I can be happy with the 3 or 4R this short offered. When in doubt take profit or hedge, move stops to break even, all things I didn't do and could have. Definitely need to continue to work on my mindfulness, I've always had a very busy brain and I attach to my thoughts way to easily, especially when under stress.
Feedback welcome and appreciated, would love to know if people find this kind of content interesting or useful.
Onto a new week!