My losing trades - 22 Jul 2024

My losing trades today consisted of a losing trade on American Airlines on the 2 minute chart. American Airlines is in a downtrend on the higher time frame so my bias is to go short.

When trading on the lower time frames I try to increase my probability of trade success by choosing entries at the right location that are going in the overall direction of the higher time frame trend. This is naturally not a guarantee for success but this is what I did today.

As you can see I had boxed in the prior day activity around one hour before market close. The opening 2 minute candle was a wide range bearish torpedo bar.

The initial open seen the price gap down and the bulls attempted to reverse this but the price was rejected when the prior day close price had been reached.

This was my trigger to enter the market with a short position. The price did move down and put me about 1R in profit. My strategy is to hold the trade until either meeting a profit target or letting it stop out. In this case the price action reversed to the upside and I was accordingly stopped out. It is not shown in the chart above but the price action started making a series of higher highs and lower highs until my stop was triggered.

I am satisfied with this result despite the fact that the trade lost because I had entered the trade when it met my rules and I let the trade play out and do it's thing. Some traders will move stop losses but my approach is not to do this. Why? Well it keeps things nice and simple to do nothing unless I am in a profitable trade and to wait and follow the instructions I have made for myself.

Trade Clearly!