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.
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.
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