When Nothing Goes Your Way

Do you ever go through a period where nothing goes right? I seem to be in this phase. While I haven't overtraded, the limit orders that I placed for profitable trades didn't get executed while the losers did.

This is largely a trade review of a recent "flip" I did when I changed my directional bias. Theoretically, there wasn't anything wrong with this. My planned R-multiple allows me to take on more than one loser before being net profitable. However, that's only if I get filled.

There were a couple of recent trades that stood out in my mind. The first was attempting to reverse direction on EURAUD.

EURAUD 1-Hour

I originally sold this pair, which was highlighted by the red arrow, as a breakout failure play. The 1.6344 level struggled to hold this pair resisted. However, price lost momentum after it hovered above this level. As a result, I shorted. I ended up scratching this trade after seeing price not slowing down at all when it re-tested this level.

After getting out, I started looking to flip my directional bias. Shortly after scratching my trade, I placed a limit buy order. Unfortunately, this never got filled. Now that the outcome is known, it worked in my favor to sit out. However, I can't think like that. I can't associate a positive outcome as a good decision. Without knowing the outcome at the time, it was in my interest to get filled on this trade as price failed to breach lower.

The second limit buy order wasn't a flip. Instead, I wanted to get filled on a more aggressive pullback. Unfortunately, this didn't occur. 

AUDNZD 1-Hour

It was entirely possible for me to enter a market order rather than a limit. What motivated me to use a limit order was this idea of maximizing my planned R-multiple. If I entered right away, I essentially would've reduced my R-multiple. In turn, this forces me to have a higher win-rate.

I did nothing wrong here as optimizing my trade entry is a necessity. However, I may have been a bit too aggressive here, which resulted in not getting filled at all.

As December volatility winds down, I'll continue to be keeping an eye on all pairs. However, it's likely that I'll be looking to reduce my position size as we experience more noise.