Review of last week: TFT Royal Pro 25k Phase 1 Review – Week 7
In Week 8, I made 7 trades, focusing on only the following 3 instruments:
- XAUUSD
- GBPUSD
- AUDUSD
I've been keeping an eye on other pairs, but haven't found any good targets or setups that I felt comfortable trading.
No trades on Wednesday because I didn't see any decent trading opportunities all day.
The week concluded with a profit of $71.88 (+0.29%). The 5-day average profit was $16.80, and the average loss was $28.92.
The 5-day win rate was 85.7%, and the cumulative win rate is now 42.7%. The current account drawdown is -1.61%.
Conclusion of Week 9:
Monday: One win. Winning day.
Tuesday: One win. Winning day.
Wednesday: No trades.
Thursday: Two wins, one loss. Winning day.
Friday: Two wins! Winning day.
Review of This Week’s Performance:
Four consecutive winning weeks and a 6-day winning streak! With only one losing trade that hit my stop loss this week, my win rate has climbed to 85%. This level of performance is a first for me in all my years of trading, and it feels like I'm finally making real progress towards my goal: becoming a consistently profitable trader. This is definitely encouraging!
However, I didn't handle that stop-loss trade particularly well. The tendency to hope for the best is still there. That losing trade brought my reward-to-risk ratio below 1.0. Although I still ended up in profit, the data doesn't look as good as it could.
If I had avoided wishful thinking, my loss should have been just $15, instead of the full stop-loss of $28 (around 0.1% risk per trade). In that case, the reward-to-risk ratio would have stayed above 1.0, and things would “look better”.
Journaling: ✅ Completed.
Emotional control: ✅ Achieved.
Eliminating wishful thinking: ❌ On Thursday's three trades, I exhibited wishful thinking twice. This led to reduced profits while 'in profit' and resulted in a Full SL while 'in a losing position'. Unacceptable.
Avoiding adding to losers: ✅ Achieved.
Awareness of High Impact News: ✅ Achieved.
Adherence to Trading Sessions: ✅ Achieved.
Limiting trade frequency: ✅ Achieved.
Following Trading Rules: ✅ Achieved.
Week 8 Goals:
I need to remember the detrimental effects of wishful thinking. My plan is to slowly build the account back up to $24,800 using 0.1% risk per trade, and then consider increasing my position size.
A while back, a friend mentioned getting stopped out quickly after entering with a limit order based on his trading strategy, which prompted me to reread “Phantom of the Pits”.
Comparing it to my own trading strategy, I realized I'm already applying “Rule 1: Assume every trade is wrong until the market proves it right.”.
I haven't gravitated towards using limit orders; I typically enter with stop orders (my strategy isn't a breakout trade), so it seems this concept was already ingrained in my thinking.
Rule 2 in the book is "Pyramid your winners" (add to winning positions). I currently use a fixed position size, so I need to consider whether incorporating the concept of adding to winners would be beneficial.