RSI Divergence Again...

Absolutely crushed this one. Knocked it out of the park. Perfect RSI divergence set up off the daily chart 38.2% fib. Couldn't be any happier the way this trade worked out.

RSI Divergence Is Back...

This market has been a real bear with tight ranges and volatility that borders on insane some times. It's these times when it's good to be familiar with more than one solid setup. I've used this in the past. It's the RSI divergence set up on the 5m chart. The trick is to use this only at S/R levels from the higher time frames(daily, 4-hr and 60m). It can provide a nice tight entry with limited risk. If you look, you'll find several setups across the major pairs every day.

AUD/USD Asian Session Trade

Nice AUD/USD trade to start the day. Same formula as usual.

Cable to the Rescue...

During an incredibly slow Asian session I was fortunate enough to find this little nugget. A nice short entry off a lower high at the weekly high. Inside bar on the 5m chart was my signal. Price sat there not moving for nearly three minutes then dropped very quickly.

Eur/Jpy Winner Again...

The change of hours to the Asian session has worked out well so far. This trade was initiated just minutes after the Asian open. To be honest, when the large drop happened just prior to the open I was a bit dismayed thinking I may have missed the start of the next leg down. But then price found a bit of support. I looked for another test of the now previous day's low, found it and along with extra confidence from the divergence on the 5-min RSI, the trade was entered into. It traveled nicely up to the daily pivot at 127.20 and then a bit past it.

Eur/Jpy Winner

Fairly simple trade. Waited for Japan to come online, bringing with it better liquidity and lower spreads. 129.00 was busted and re-tested on a pullback which is where I jumped in with a short entry at 128.95. Price moved quickly in my favor. I did leave about 20 pips on the table, but price was in RSI oversold zone when the 5-min inside bar formed near 128.50. Exited the position for +45.

Tough Time Lately...

I've been having a tough go at trading as of late and by this I mean the two weeks have been break even trading. Up,down, down, up, down, up, etc. No gain at all.

What to do about it? Review the trade logs and daily journal. What's changed? Is it me? Has the market subtly shifted away from my strategy?

The one thing that sticks out is a progressing lack of sleep during the week. The pattern is something like this: I arrive the screens on Sunday evening totally refreshed from two days of rest and a good eight hours of sleep each night. I work late into the evening, maybe 2:00am trading as much of the London session as possible for me. I get about 6-7 hours of sleep. Monday I trade from 6:00pm until 1:00am and I'm zonked. I get about 5-1/2 to 6 hours of sleep. At this point on Tuesday I'm really tired and make sure to take a nap in the afternoon. The nap lasts about an hour. I start trading at 6:30pm and finish at 12:30am when I am whooped. I notice that even though I take the nap, the refreshing attributes of it last about 2-3 hours. I also notice I'm missing entry signals now and not as decisive as I was on Sunday/Monday. Poor trading ensues. This continues into Wednesday and Thursday. I'm able to sleep as late as I would like to make up the sleep deficit but it seems my body clock wants me to wake by 7:30am.

My solution to this is to shift hours to where I'm fully refreshed. This will mean starting at 1:00pm(pre-Asian open) and trading until 10:00pm. Fortunately, the Asian session has been serving up a lot of opportunities via eur/usd, eur/jpy, usd/chf and gbp/usd. I'm not sure if the Asian session will continue to be a decent range. In years past, certainly before China became a player, the Asian session was a small range most days.

This exercise in finding flaws in my trading style by reviewing my journal and trade logs has been invaluable to me. I'll be posting more during this next week as trading progresses.