Trading Recap: January 2021

With the transition into 2021, I will be focusing more on accountability. As I tighten up my risk metrics to take higher quality setups, this needs to be reflected in my trading performance. In addition to publishing post-trade analysis and other developments, there will be performance recaps once a month.

January has been a rough month. Before we go any further, here is my performance as recorded by EdgeWonk.

EdgeWonk

I use EdgeWonk because my broker, CMC Markets, doesn't readily link to any performance tracking platforms. EdgeWonk provides a more granular look on trade by trade basis. I also manually upload my daily account values to FundSeeder for performance tracking as well. However, the performance graphs don't deviate too much from one another so I'll be sticking with EdgeWonk for these posts.

In the month of January, I executed 51 trades. Since EdgeWonk tracks performance by trades rather than time-series, the blue line represents the cutoff. You can see that the first few trades that I took didn't pan out. I don't think there was anything wrong as I had a string of three 1R losses. 

Just about all of my trades have factored in macro-economic fundamentals and key technical setups. This has been reflected as most of the pairs traded weren't against the US dollar. With every major central bank avoiding decisions to increase interest rates and to roll out some kind of stimulus, the dollar index was largely ranging. In fact, most pairs were.

This probably led to more trades not working out or scratching around even. Likewise, my best trade for this month only generated 4.41R. Despite barely squeezing out a gain at the end of this month, I don't think this affected me mentally. I didn't force any trades and most entries were optimal. There were a few moments where I was a bit too early and jumped in on a pull back rather than waiting for price to stall.

My plan is to stay consistent for February. Currencies have not enjoyed the same moment as with US equities or futures. However, it's important not to let FOMO set in as I'm sure I'll be a more active participant in other markets in the future.

The monthly recap post is a bit more experimental right now, but I do hope to use it to keep my performance accountable. Whether I am profitable or not, it documents my progression. Ideally, more details will come in future posts.