Tilt

Going to keep this post short as the title is self-explanatory. I feel like I've struggled a lot more trading this year as opposed to last year. Unlike last year, I haven't had a profitable month so far. This resulted in what occurred at the end of last week - trading on tilt.

I took a short position on the EURJPY pair as price made a sharp move off of a key level and then started drifting higher (pullback).

EURJPY 1-Hour

Over on both the 4-hour and daily timeframes, EURJPY is in a monster uptrend. This should've been my first indication that my position size should've been reduced, even with a strong signal, when taking a short position.

Of course, since I was trading on tilt, this did not happen. I took a much larger position than I should've and I decided to hold it. I don't think there was anything wrong with the entry itself. Price made a strong reaction off of the 132.5 level. As it drifted back up to this level, I entered my position.

The signpost on the bottom indicates where I should've gotten out. Rather than ignoring this trade, I should've observed when the price action was changing. When price failed to make a new low, that would've been an indication of where further upside is to be expected. Instead of getting out with a small profit, my stop loss was hit when price breached the upper boundary completely. Well, that's what happens when you trade on tilt.

Where am I at now? Back to my execution quality post. I'm dropping my size again and, this time, I don't anticipate I'll be trading with 1% risk until I can gain consistency. I'm still having trouble being selective with my trades, which I think is because of the amount of chart time I can get in while maintaining a day job. I have yet to treat trading as putting in two sessions per day (before and after work). 

Until I can work up the ethic of just treating my market reviews as sessions, I'll be dropping my risk down to just under 0.25% per trade. This would mean I'm risking just $25 per trade and then $10 for specific situations (e.g. counter-trend) that require a further reduction in size.