Bone-Headed Move of the Year So Far

I haven't been blogging lately because I'm been embarrassed by my behavior on this particular trade. This trade occurred on Wednesday, April 8th.

The Prediction

With a 42 pip candle, the 3am GBP Grid predicted that the currency would ultimately reverse direction after passing the BUY or SELL with a 58% probability. This would be a gain of 71 pips.

This isn't a particularly high probability, so I was going have to play things carefully.

The Set-up

The GBP seemed to be moving up nicely, so it didn't seem wise to put a limit-entry at 1.4703. Sure enough, by 8am it had rocketed up to 1.4746, a few pips below where the grid would've declared this a dead trade, 1.4752.

I decided though, once it definitively passed the BUY threshold, to put a stop-entry at 1.4703 in case it missed its target and flew down.

Sure enough, it tripped the entry at 9:17am. Then it promptly flies up 30 pips, stopping me out! I'd meant to have my stop at 40 pips, but for some reason had set it at 27 pips??????

Don't Trade Angry

GRRRR, I was furious with myself. I put ANOTHER stop-entry at 1.4703. IT tripped at 11:57am. It FLEW down 65 pips! Double what I'd lost. YEA!! I'm up. And to top this off, the GBP looked ready to challenge the day's support level. The indicators all had looked oversold, so they seemed poised to break through.

The currency BOUNCED off support and started the Bataan Death March up back to where I had gotten in. I hadn't moved up my stops to at least cover my loss because I reasoned the market owed me the breakthrough.

At this point, you must realize how stupid I was thinking. It only occurred

to me after I went back to ZERO pips.

Conclusion

God. I did so many things wrong, it's taken me a couple of weeks to gather my thoughts. I committed several sins here. First, I was careless. When money's at stake, you need to be careful. Double check your work. Double check your trade settings.

Second, the market doesn't owe you anything. It does what it does. I was up 65 pips for a good five minutes, with plenty of time to close the trade. I figured this was the breakthrough of the month. It wasn't, and I paid dearly for it.

Third, close up those trailing stops. I should've had my stops to cover my losses from the morning. I was blinded by anger and greed.

Gee, I wonder why people hate me sometimes.