My losing trades - 22 Jan 2025

Quite a few losing trades to document today. The run of losses continue despite not making too many mistakes. This is day trading for you! See a run through of trades that were closed today.

This trade was opened on the 21 Jan but closed during the 22 Jan. The price action had been hovering around the 200 SMA for a period of time before the price exploded. By the point of the entry the 200 SMA had moved into being horizontal. Typically when the 200 SMA is horizontal, when there is a move then it tends to be more reliable.

At the point of entry I had entered on what had been a significant bullish elephant bar, which had cleared a lot of resistance to the left. Further making me confident to make this entry was the fact that the candle had surged with a volume spike and this had made the potential for follow through more probable.

Subsequent to entry price action moved to around 3 times my original risk at its peak but I had gone to sleep at that point. During the night there had been a significant sell off and I was stopped out. Since my trade was profitable before I slept the mistake I made was to not had adjusted my stop loss to break even. In the future I will not make this same mistake and if this situation arises again I will adjust my stop loss before sleeping.

The next few trades are equities trades.

The white line representing a price level that was acting as support. On market open the price immediately gapped down below the support line but none of the initial candles were closing with full bodies.

About 10 minutes into the session an engulfing candle closed. The price action as you see, based on the moving averages was moving to the downside and at the point of entry the moving averages were in a relatively narrow range.

Subsequent to entry the price moved back to the upside and stopped me out. Later in the trading session the price moved back down through this support line and had I monitored this price I would have had another entry which would have been very profitable because the price had moved strongly to the downside by the end of the session. The learning point is to revisit trades later in the trading session.

This was a classic bearish elephant bar off the 200 SMA. Unfortunately this subsequently got stopped out. On reflection and detailed post trade review I could argue with myself that I should have thought twice before entering this trade.

The reason for considering not entering this trade would be the fact that the price had moved up quite considerably before this bearish price action and this by default would make the probability of this days trading session to have been bearish.

There was no strategy behind this trade. This was a case of frustration of previous trades coming to mind while approaching this trade. The simple analysis here is that this trade should not have been taken. The only good point is that I stopped out of this trade at break even.

There are some positive points on todays trades believe it or not. That is the fact that risk management, position sizing rules etc were followed in all cases.

Trade Clearly!