Scalp journal
I am going to start documenting my scalp trades as much as I possibly can. Scalping results in a significantly increased number of entries and exits as compared to the longer term trading that I am more used to. This means that there is much more activity to document.
I feel it is important to record as much information as possible as this trading approach represents enough of a departure from what I am used to that having a detailed journal will hopefully prove to be very useful over the long term.
I am currently demo trading this method using Oanda and plan to do so for the rest of the month. If things look positive by the end of October I might transition to a very small live account and take it from there.
The format for how I record these scalp trades will most likely change over time but this is how I’m going to start out documenting my efforts:
6 October 2008
Trade 1
Short EUR/USD
Entry: 1.3601
Exit: 1.3591
Pips: +10
Trade 2
Short EUR/JPY
Entry: 140.55
Exit: 140.45
Pips: +10
Trade 3
Short GBP/USD
Entry: 1.7598
Exit: 1.7591
Pips: +7
Trade 4
Short EUR/JPY
Entry: 136.628
Exit: 136.519
Pips: +10.9
Trade 5
Short EUR/USD
Entry: 1.3510
Exit: 1.3505
Pips: +5
Trade 6
Short EUR/JPY
Entry: 136.98
Exit: 136.874
Pips: +10.6
Daily total: +53.5 pips
I know that totaling pips from across three different currency pairs is not especially accurate, even more so if the gearing used on each pair is different, but I’m just looking for a rough ballpark of how I’ve done on a day to day basis. Thus a crude pip total will suffice for now.
Related Posts:
- Scalp journal - 5 November 2008
- Scalp journal - 31 October 2008
- Scalp journal - 7 November 2008
- Scalp journal - 8 October 2008
- Scalp journal - 14 November 2008
Comments
Comment from Colin McGinley
Time 7 October, 2008 at 5:15 pm
The 15 minute charts are just to show where the various trades took place in the context of that day’s movements.
I seem to alternate between the 1 and 5 minute charts for actually deciding on where to place entries.
I know from experience that these screen grabs only present a quick snapshot of the trades in question. In the past I’ve attempted to parse some of my previous trades and there is only so much information that a single chart can impart. In many cases the most useful information on the chart was the date and times of the various trades. I then opened a regular charting application and was then able to better review the circumstances that led up to that point.
I doubt that I’m going to be able to document each trade individually on a low time frame chart due to limited time but I’ll do so where appropriate.
Comment from FX
Time 8 October, 2008 at 2:20 am
I use HandySnap screen capture software, so after the trade I take a capture like hunter after his kill 
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Comment from FX
Time 7 October, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Are those trades based of 15min chart or some other? There can’t be much seen why this trades were taken, I think that for your documenting effort and future reference you have to make it more visually understandable.