My trading journal

Trade 33:
EURAUD long
Entry: 1.55421
SL: 1.54851 (57 pips)
TP: 1.56276 (85.5 pips)

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Closed manually before the weekend. +0.74R / +$144.19

I'll check back later to see if this was the right decision.

The white line is where I got out.

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SL would have been hit within the first minute of market open. Saved 1.74R with that discretionary decision.

Demon finder updated:

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Trade 34:
EURCAD long
Entry: 1.42628
SL: 1.42148 (48 pips)
TP: 1.43348 (72 pips)
SL hit. -1R / $-207.41

Trade 35:
GBPAUD long
Entry: 1.85264
SL: 1.84634 (63 pips)
TP: 1.86209 (94.5 pips)
SL hit. -1R / $-199.50

Trade 36:
EURNZD long
Entry: 1.65889
SL: 1.65289 (60 pips)
TP: 1.66789 (90 pips)
SL hit. -1R / $-204.75

Situation after two months:

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My longest losing streak is still only 3 trades, but my last 15 trades (since the equity peak) look like this:

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Currently at 11.93% drawdown, the worst drawdown so far. If I had stopped trading the moment Russia invaded Ukraine (the last 6 trades), that would have helped, but that's honestly just useless hindsight knowledge. The increased volatility could just as well have been to my benefit.

It would be a typical rookie mistake to give up at the first period of drawdown, so I'm not gonna do that. I already knew the equity curve was gonna be quite volatile (the biggest drawdown in the backtest was 16.63%). I'll continue until at least 50 trades, then I'll reevaluate this strategy based on the results at that point.
 
Trade 37:
EURJPY long
Entry: 127.753
SL: 127.333 (42 pips)
TP: 128.383 (63 pips)

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SL hit. -1R / -$194.60

And there it is, the inevitable 4-trade losing streak. Just hoping the losing streak ends there. Current drawdown at 13.72%.
 
Trade 38:
AUDCHF short
Entry: 0.67090
SL: 0.67540 (45 pips)
TP: 0.66415 (67.5 pips)
SL hit. -1R / -$195.74

Trade 39:
GBPNZD long
Entry: 1.96211
SL: 1.95521 (69 pips)
TP: 1.97246 (103.5 pips)
SL hit. -1R / -$193.21

Drawdown at 17.31% now. I was gonna wait until 50 trades before I made any changes, but I think I need to reevaluate that this weekend.

Simultaneously with this drawdown period on my main account, I've been doing a funded account challenge with the5%ers (their low risk model). I'm trading with a $20k account where the goal is to get to $21,400 in order to be funded with an $80k account, and this is how that's going so far:

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Obviously I'm not trading the same way on this account. I'm using some of the same signals for entries, but I also enter some trades purely based on discretion, and I use a lot more discretion in general; SL placement based on price structure (no strict rules), trailing stops, letting winners run (no predetermined RRR), scaling in to profitable trades, varying the risk per trade...

The max allowed risk per trade on the low risk model is 1.5%, but I often risk less than 0.5%. I'm in and out of trades much faster (average trade length is 4 hours), which allows for a higher trade frequency.

All this together has led to a 5% gain in 8 trading days. If I pass this challenge, I might just withdraw the money left on my main account and just trade with the funded account instead.

However, I fear this discretionary style only works so well now because of the current market conditions, and once the markets return to normal, my edge will disappear again.
 
Ok, so I decided I want to focus on the funded account challenge, so I'm gonna stop trading this strategy on my main account for now. I think it simply doesn't work in these market conditions and trading discretionally (read: shorting the Euro) just works so much better right now. I've already completed one trade this week on the main account, but it has nothing to do with the strategy described in the first post:

EURAUD short
SL: 10 pips
No TP, closed manually at 73.9 pips.

+7.39R / +$862.96

No strategy, just jumped on the trend.

Then I opened a long trade on the US500, with the intention of riding it all the way back up to its ATH. The plan is to not touch this account again for a while, other than to trail the stop on the US500 trade hopefully. We'll see, it could continue crashing and hit my SL too, of course.

As for the funding challenge, I've done one more trade, and I'm now at +$1121.12.
 
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