ForexSpirit

GBP/USD was my bane today, while EUR/USD and EUR/JPY were sweet as pie.

Let’s examine the two dodgy sterling trades. The first one occurred at 11:30 EST when price was retracing the major down move that had taken place over the previous two hours.

I did not have a sell limit order in place to catch the bounce off 1.4800. Instead I noticed that the bounce had occurred a few minutes later. I felt like I had missed out on a prime scalping opportunity and rashly jumped in as price was hovering at around 1.4790.

Price went essentially nowhere for the following few minutes and as I reflected on why I had entered the trade I realised that I had entered for the wrong reason. I had entered due to missing the initial bounce. I was chasing the market not trading it.

After recognising what I was doing and its futility I exited the trade for a 17 pip loss.

The second losing trade I took today was the result of a combination of factors.

I placed a limit sell order at 1.4845 during the lunch hour. It was placed in line with the high reached just after noon. This was an okay resistance point to select but in retrospect only having one data point forming that resistance level did not lend it too much strength.

Sterling’s rise into the week’s close is probably tied to the huge up move experienced in the US equity markets during the same time (which in turn is probably attributed to the announcement of Tim Geithner as Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary).

With so little time left before the close of the markets (and with Oanda’s drastic widening of spreads going into the weekend) it did not seem likely that my entry point, never mind my profit target was going to reached.

I do not want to hold trades over the weekend so I closed out the trade for a 54 pip loss.

Overall it was a good day. Just so close to being a great day.

Total daily pips: 39.7

Total weekly pips: (19.7)

Some much better trading in the second half of the week was almost enough to erase the losses suffered on Monday and Tuesday. If I can just refrain from making those same Mistakes again I think things can only move in the right direction.