Disclaimer: None of this is financial advice. I have no idea what I'm doing. Please do your own research or you will certainly lose money. I'm not a statistician, data scientist, well-seasoned trader, or anything else that would qualify me to make statements such as the below with any weight behind them. Take them for the incoherent ramblings that they are.
TL;DR at the bottom for those not interested in the details.
This is a bit of a novel, sorry about that. It was mostly for getting my own thoughts organized, but if even one person reads the whole thing I will feel incredibly accomplished.

Background

For those of you not familiar, please see the various threads on this trading system here. I can't take credit for this system, all glory goes to ParallaxFX!
I wanted to see how effective this system was at H1 for a couple of reasons: 1) My current broker is TD Ameritrade - their Forex minimum is a mini lot, and I don't feel comfortable enough yet with the risk to trade mini lots on the higher timeframes(i.e. wider pip swings) that ParallaxFX's system uses, so I wanted to see if I could scale it down. 2) I'm fairly impatient, so I don't like to wait days and days with my capital tied up just to see if a trade is going to win or lose.
This does mean it requires more active attention since you are checking for setups once an hour instead of once a day or every 4-6 hours, but the upside is that you trade more often this way so you end up winning or losing faster and moving onto the next trade. Spread does eat more of the trade this way, but I'll cover this in my data below - it ends up not being a problem.
I looked at data from 6/11 to 7/3 on all pairs with a reasonable spread(pairs listed at bottom above the TL;DR). So this represents about 3-4 weeks' worth of trading. I used mark(mid) price charts. Spreadsheet link is below for anyone that's interested.

System Details

I'm pretty much using ParallaxFX's system textbook, but since there are a few options in his writeups, I'll include all the discretionary points here:

• I'm using the stop entry version - so I wait for the price to trade beyond the confirmation candle(in the direction of my trade) before entering. I don't have any data to support this decision, but I've always preferred this method over retracement-limit entries. Maybe I just like the feeling of a higher winrate even though there can be greater R:R using a limit entry. Variety is the spice of life.
• I put my stop loss right at the opposite edge of the confirmation candle. NOT at the edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. I'll get into this more below - not enough trades are saved to justify the wider stops. (Wider stop means less $ per pip won, assuming you still only risk 1%).
• All my profit/loss statistics are based on a 1% risk per trade. Because 1 is real easy to multiply.
• There are definitely some questionable trades in here, but I tried to make it as mechanical as possible for evaluation purposes. They do fit the definitions of the system, which is why I included them. You could probably improve the winrate by being more discretionary about your trades by looking at support/resistance or other techniques.
• I didn't use MBB much for either entering trades, or as support/resistance indicators. Again, trying to be pretty mechanical here just for data collection purposes. Plus, we all make bad trading decisions now and then, so let's call it even.
• As stated in the title, this is for H1 only. These results may very well not play out for other time frames - who knows, it may not even work on H1 starting this Monday. Forex is an unpredictable place.
• I collected data to show efficacy of taking profit at three different levels: -61.8%, -100% and -161.8% fib levels described in the system using the passive trade management method(set it and forget it). I'll have more below about moving up stops and taking off portions of a position.

And now for the fun. Results!

• Total Trades: 241
• Raw Winrates:
  • TP at -61.8%: 177 out of 241: 73.44%
  • TP at -100%: 156 out of 241: 64.73%
  • TP at -161.8%: 121 out of 241: 50.20%
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
  • TP at -61.8%: 5.22%
  • TP at -100%: 23.55%
  • TP at -161.8%: 29.14%

As you can see, a higher target ended up with higher profit despite a much lower winrate. This is partially just how things work out with profit targets in general, but there's an additional point to consider in our case: the spread. Since we are trading on a lower timeframe, there is less overall price movement and thus the spread takes up a much larger percentage of the trade than it would if you were trading H4, Daily or Weekly charts. You can see exactly how much it accounts for each trade in my spreadsheet if you're interested. TDA does not have the best spreads, so you could probably improve these results with another broker.
EDIT: I grabbed typical spreads from other brokers, and turns out while TDA is pretty competitive on majors, their minors/crosses are awful! IG beats them by 20-40% and Oanda beats them 30-60%! Using IG spreads for calculations increased profits considerably (another 5% on top) and Oanda spreads increased profits massively (another 15%!). Definitely going to be considering another broker than TDA for this strategy. Plus that'll allow me to trade micro-lots, so I can be more granular(and thus accurate) with my position sizing and compounding.

A Note on Spread

As you can see in the data, there were scenarios where the spread was 80% of the overall size of the trade(the size of the confirmation candle that you draw your fibonacci retracements over), which would obviously cut heavily into your profits.
Removing any trades where the spread is more than 50% of the trade width improved profits slightly without removing many trades, but this is almost certainly just coincidence on a small sample size. Going below 40% and even down to 30% starts to cut out a lot of trades for the less-common pairs, but doesn't actually change overall profits at all(~1% either way).
However, digging all the way down to 25% starts to really make some movement. Profit at the -161.8% TP level jumps up to 37.94% if you filter out anything with a spread that is more than 25% of the trade width! And this even keeps the sample size fairly large at 187 total trades.
You can get your profits all the way up to 48.43% at the -161.8% TP level if you filter all the way down to only trades where spread is less than 15% of the trade width, however your sample size gets much smaller at that point(108 trades) so I'm not sure I would trust that as being accurate in the long term.
Overall based on this data, I'm going to only take trades where the spread is less than 25% of the trade width. This may bias my trades more towards the majors, which would mean a lot more correlated trades as well(more on correlation below), but I think it is a reasonable precaution regardless.

Time of Day

Time of day had an interesting effect on trades. In a totally predictable fashion, a vast majority of setups occurred during the London and New York sessions: 5am-12pm Eastern. However, there was one outlier where there were many setups on the 11PM bar - and the winrate was about the same as the big hours in the London session. No idea why this hour in particular - anyone have any insight? That's smack in the middle of the Tokyo/Sydney overlap, not at the open or close of either.
On many of the hour slices I have a feeling I'm just dealing with small number statistics here since I didn't have a lot of data when breaking it down by individual hours. But here it is anyway - for all TP levels, these three things showed up(all in Eastern time):

• 7pm-4am: Fewer setups, but winrate high.
• 5am-6am: Lots of setups, but but winrate low.
• 12pm-3pm Medium number of setups, but winrate low.

I don't have any reason to think these timeframes would maintain this behavior over the long term. They're almost certainly meaningless. EDIT: When you de-dup highly correlated trades, the number of trades in these timeframes really drops, so from this data there is no reason to think these timeframes would be any different than any others in terms of winrate.
That being said, these time frames work out for me pretty well because I typically sleep 12am-7am Eastern time. So I automatically avoid the 5am-6am timeframe, and I'm awake for the majority of this system's setups.

Moving stops up to breakeven

This section goes against everything I know and have ever heard about trade management. Please someone find something wrong with my data. I'd love for someone to check my formulas, but I realize that's a pretty insane time commitment to ask of a bunch of strangers.
Anyways. What I found was that for these trades moving stops up...basically at all...actually reduced the overall profitability.
One of the data points I collected while charting was where the price retraced back to after hitting a certain milestone. i.e. once the price hit the -61.8% profit level, how far back did it retrace before hitting the -100% profit level(if at all)? And same goes for the -100% profit level - how far back did it retrace before hitting the -161.8% profit level(if at all)?
Well, some complex excel formulas later and here's what the results appear to be. Emphasis on appears because I honestly don't believe it. I must have done something wrong here, but I've gone over it a hundred times and I can't find anything out of place.

• Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
  • Winrate: 46.4%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 5.36%
• Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
  • Winrate: 65.97%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): -1.01% (yes, a net loss)

Now, you might think exactly what I did when looking at these numbers: oof, the spread killed us there right? Because even when you move your SL to 0%, you still end up paying the spread, so it's not truly "breakeven". And because we are trading on a lower timeframe, the spread can be pretty hefty right?
Well even when I manually modified the data so that the spread wasn't subtracted(i.e. "Breakeven" was truly +/- 0), things don't look a whole lot better, and still way worse than the passive trade management method of leaving your stops in place and letting it run. And that isn't even a realistic scenario because to adjust out the spread you'd have to move your stoploss inside the candle edge by at least the spread amount, meaning it would almost certainly be triggered more often than in the data I collected(which was purely based on the fib levels and mark price). Regardless, here are the numbers for that scenario:

• Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
  • Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 46.4%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 17.97%
• Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
  • Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 65.97%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 11.60%

From a literal standpoint, what I see behind this behavior is that 44 of the 69 breakeven trades(65%!) ended up being profitable to -100% after retracing deeply(but not to the original SL level), which greatly helped offset the purely losing trades better than the partial profit taken at -61.8%. And 36 went all the way back to -161.8% after a deep retracement without hitting the original SL. Anyone have any insight into this? Is this a problem with just not enough data? It seems like enough trades that a pattern should emerge, but again I'm no expert.
I also briefly looked at moving stops to other lower levels (78.6%, 61.8%, 50%, 38.2%, 23.6%), but that didn't improve things any. No hard data to share as I only took a quick look - and I still might have done something wrong overall.
The data is there to infer other strategies if anyone would like to dig in deep(more explanation on the spreadsheet below). I didn't do other combinations because the formulas got pretty complicated and I had already answered all the questions I was looking to answer.

2-Candle vs Confirmation Candle Stops

Another interesting point is that the original system has the SL level(for stop entries) just at the outer edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. Out of pure laziness, I set up my stops just based on the confirmation candle. And as it turns out, that is much a much better way to go about it.
Of the 60 purely losing trades, only 9 of them(15%) would go on to be winners with stops on the 2-candle formation. Certainly not enough to justify the extra loss and/or reduced profits you are exposing yourself to in every single other trade by setting a wider SL.
Oddly, in every single scenario where the wider stop did save the trade, it ended up going all the way to the -161.8% profit level. Still, not nearly worth it.

Correlated Trades

As I've said many times now, I'm really not qualified to be doing an analysis like this. This section in particular.
Looking at shared currency among the pairs traded, 74 of the trades are correlated. Quite a large group, but it makes sense considering the sort of moves we're looking for with this system.
This means you are opening yourself up to more risk if you were to trade on every signal since you are technically trading with the same underlying sentiment on each different pair. For example, GBP/USD and AUD/USD moving together almost certainly means it's due to USD moving both pairs, rather than GBP and AUD both moving the same size and direction coincidentally at the same time. So if you were to trade both signals, you would very likely win or lose both trades - meaning you are actually risking double what you'd normally risk(unless you halve both positions which can be a good option, and is discussed in ParallaxFX's posts and in various other places that go over pair correlation. I won't go into detail about those strategies here).
Interestingly though, 17 of those apparently correlated trades ended up with different wins/losses.
Also, looking only at trades that were correlated, winrate is 83%/70%/55% (for the three TP levels).
Does this give some indication that the same signal on multiple pairs means the signal is stronger? That there's some strong underlying sentiment driving it? Or is it just a matter of too small a sample size? The winrate isn't really much higher than the overall winrates, so that makes me doubt it is statistically significant.
One more funny tidbit: EUCAD netted the lowest overall winrate: 30% to even the -61.8% TP level on 10 trades. Seems like that is just a coincidence and not enough data, but dang that's a sucky losing streak.
EDIT: WOW I spent some time removing correlated trades manually and it changed the results quite a bit. Some thoughts on this below the results. These numbers also include the other "What I will trade" filters. I added a new worksheet to my data to show what I ended up picking.

• Total Trades: 75
• Raw Winrates:
  • TP at -61.8%: 84.00%
  • TP at -100%: 73.33%
  • TP at -161.8%: 60.00%
  • Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 53.33%
  • Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 53.33% (yes, oddly the exact same winrate. but different trades/profits)
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
  • TP at -61.8%: 18.13%
  • TP at -100%: 26.20%
  • TP at -161.8%: 34.01%
  • Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 19.20%
  • Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 17.29%

To do this, I removed correlated trades - typically by choosing those whose spread had a lower % of the trade width since that's objective and something I can see ahead of time. Obviously I'd like to only keep the winning trades, but I won't know that during the trade. This did reduce the overall sample size down to a level that I wouldn't otherwise consider to be big enough, but since the results are generally consistent with the overall dataset, I'm not going to worry about it too much.
I may also use more discretionary methods(support/resistance, quality of indecision/confirmation candles, news/sentiment for the pairs involved, etc) to filter out correlated trades in the future. But as I've said before I'm going for a pretty mechanical system.
This brought the 3 TP levels and even the breakeven strategies much closer together in overall profit. It muted the profit from the high R:R strategies and boosted the profit from the low R:R strategies. This tells me pair correlation was skewing my data quite a bit, so I'm glad I dug in a little deeper. Fortunately my original conclusion to use the -161.8 TP level with static stops is still the winner by a good bit, so it doesn't end up changing my actions.
There were a few times where MANY (6-8) correlated pairs all came up at the same time, so it'd be a crapshoot to an extent. And the data showed this - often then won/lost together, but sometimes they did not. As an arbitrary rule, the more correlations, the more trades I did end up taking(and thus risking). For example if there were 3-5 correlations, I might take the 2 "best" trades given my criteria above. 5+ setups and I might take the best 3 trades, even if the pairs are somewhat correlated.
I have no true data to back this up, but to illustrate using one example: if AUD/JPY, AUD/USD, CAD/JPY, USD/CAD all set up at the same time (as they did, along with a few other pairs on 6/19/20 9:00 AM), can you really say that those are all the same underlying movement? There are correlations between the different correlations, and trying to filter for that seems rough. Although maybe this is a known thing, I'm still pretty green to Forex - someone please enlighten me if so! I might have to look into this more statistically, but it would be pretty complex to analyze quantitatively, so for now I'm going with my gut and just taking a few of the "best" trades out of the handful.
Overall, I'm really glad I went further on this. The boosting of the B/E strategies makes me trust my calculations on those more since they aren't so far from the passive management like they were with the raw data, and that really had me wondering what I did wrong.

What I will trade

Putting all this together, I am going to attempt to trade the following(demo for a bit to make sure I have the hang of it, then for keeps):

• "System Details" I described above.
• TP at -161.8%
• Static SL at opposite side of confirmation candle - I won't move stops up to breakeven.
• Trade only 7am-11am and 4pm-11pm signals.
• Nothing where spread is more than 25% of trade width.

Looking at the data for these rules, test results are:

• Winrate: 58.19%
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%

I'll be sure to let everyone know how it goes!

Other Technical Details

• ATR is only slightly elevated in this date range from historical levels, so this should fairly closely represent reality even after the COVID volatility leaves the scalpers sad and alone.
• The sample size is much too small for anything really meaningful when you slice by hour or pair. I wasn't particularly looking to test a specific pair here - just the system overall as if you were going to trade it on all pairs with a reasonable spread.

Raw Data

Here's the spreadsheet for anyone that'd like it. (EDIT: Updated some of the setups from the last few days that have fully played out now. I also noticed a few typos, but nothing major that would change the overall outcomes. Regardless, I am currently reviewing every trade to ensure they are accurate.UPDATE: Finally all done. Very few corrections, no change to results.)
I have some explanatory notes below to help everyone else understand the spiraled labyrinth of a mind that put the spreadsheet together.

• I'm on the East Coast in the US, so the timestamps are Eastern time.
• Time stamp is from the confirmation candle, not the indecision candle. So 7am would mean the indecision candle was 6:00-6:59 and the confirmation candle is 7:00-7:59 and you'd put in your order at 8:00.
• I found a couple AM/PM typos as I was reviewing the data, so let me know if a trade doesn't make sense and I'll correct it.

Insanely detailed spreadsheet notes

For you real nerds out there. Here's an explanation of what each column means:

• Pair - duh
• Date/Time - Eastern time, confirmation candle as stated above
• Win to -61.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -61.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
• Win to -100%? - whether the trade made it to the -100% TP level before it hit the original SL.
• Win to -161.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -161.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
• Retracement level between -61.8% and -100% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -61.8%, but before hitting -100%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -61.8% to -100%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
• Retracement level between -100% and -161.8% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -100%, but before hitting -161.8%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -100% to -161.8%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
• Trade Width(Pips) - the size of the confirmation candle, and thus the "width" of your trade on which to determine position size, draw fib levels, etc.
• Loser saved by 2 candle stop? - for all losing trades, whether or not the 2-candle stop loss would have saved the trade and how far it ended up getting if so. "No" means it didn't save it, N/A means it wasn't a losing trade so it's not relevant.
• Spread(ThinkorSwim) - these are typical spreads for these pairs on ToS.
• Spread % of Width - How big is the spread compared to the trade width? Not used in any calculations, but interesting nonetheless.
• True Risk(Trade Width + Spread) - I set my SL at the opposite side of the confirmation candle knowing that I'm actually exposing myself to slightly more risk because of the spread(stop order = market order when submitted, so you pay the spread). So this tells you how many pips you are actually risking despite the Trade Width. I prefer this over setting the stop inside from the edge of the candle because some pairs have a wide spread that would mess with the system overall. But also many, many of these trades retraced very nearly to the edge of the confirmation candle, before ending up nicely profitable. If you keep your risk per trade at 1%, you're talking a true risk of, at most, 1.25% (in worst-case scenarios with the spread being 25% of the trade width as I am going with above).
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -61.8% - not going to go into huge detail, see the spreadsheet for calculations if you want. But, in a nutshell, if the trade was a win to 61.8%, it returns a positive # based on 61.8% of the trade width, minus the spread. Otherwise, it returns the True Risk as a negative. Both normalized to the 1% risk you started with.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100% - same as the last, but 100% of Trade Width.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -161.8% - same as the last, but 161.8% of Trade Width.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100%, and move SL to breakeven at 61.8% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then full TP at 100%.
• Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread take off half of position at -61.8%, move SL to breakeven, TP 100% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you took of half the position and moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then TP the remaining half at 100%.
• Overall Growth(-161.8% TP, 1% Risk) - pretty straightforward. Assuming you risked 1% on each trade, what the overall growth level would be chronologically(spreadsheet is sorted by date).

Pairs

1. AUD/CAD
2. AUD/CHF
3. AUD/JPY
4. AUD/NZD
5. AUD/USD
6. CAD/CHF
7. CAD/JPY
8. CHF/JPY
9. EUAUD
10. EUCAD
11. EUCHF
12. EUGBP
13. EUJPY
14. EUNZD
15. EUUSD
16. GBP/AUD
17. GBP/CAD
18. GBP/CHF
19. GBP/JPY
20. GBP/NZD
21. GBP/USD
22. NZD/CAD
23. NZD/CHF
24. NZD/JPY
25. NZD/USD
26. USD/CAD
27. USD/CHF
28. USD/JPY

TL;DR

Based on the reasonable rules I discovered in this backtest:

• Date range: 6/11-7/3
• Winrate: 58.19%
• Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%

Demo Trading Results

Since this post, I started demo trading this system assuming a 5k capital base and risking ~1% per trade. I've added the details to my spreadsheet for anyone interested. The results are pretty similar to the backtest when you consider real-life conditions/timing are a bit different. I missed some trades due to life(work, out of the house, etc), so that brought my total # of trades and thus overall profit down, but the winrate is nearly identical. I also closed a few trades early due to various reasons(not liking the price action, seeing support/resistance emerge, etc).
A quick note is that TD's paper trade system fills at the mid price for both stop and limit orders, so I had to subtract the spread from the raw trade values to get the true profit/loss amount for each trade.
I'm heading out of town next week, then after that it'll be time to take this sucker live!

• 86 Trades
  • Date range: 7/9-7/30
  • Winrate: 52.32%
  • Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 20.73%
    • Starting Balance: $5,000
    • Ending Balance: $6,036.51

Live Trading Results

I started live-trading this system on 8/10, and almost immediately had a string of losses much longer than either my backtest or demo period. Murphy's law huh? Anyways, that has me spooked so I'm doing a longer backtest before I start risking more real money. It's going to take me a little while due to the volume of trades, but I'll likely make a new post once I feel comfortable with that and start live trading again.

Howdy all, I work professionally for a proprietary trading fund, and have worked for quite a few in my time, hope I can offer some insights on trading etc you guys might have.
Bonus for you guys
Here are the columns in my trading journal and various explanations where appropriate:
Trade Number – Simply is this the first trade of the year? The 10th?, The 50th? I count a trade
that you opened and closed just one trade number. For example if you buy EUUSD today and
sell it 50 pips later in the day and close out the trade, then that is just one trade for recording
purposes. I do not create a second trade number to describe the exit. Both the entry and exit are
under the same trade number.
​
​
Ticket Number – This is ticket number / order ID number that your broker gives you for the trade
on your platform.
​
​
Day of the Week – This would be simply the day of the week the trade was initiated
​
​
Financial Instrument / Currency Pair – Whatever Financial Instrument or currency pair you are
trading. If you are trading EUUSD, put EUUSD. If you are trading the EuroFX futures
contract, then put in Euro FX. If you are trading the emini S&P, then put in Emini S&P 500. If
you are trading a stock, put in the ticker symbol. Etc.
​
​
Buy/Sell or Long/Short – Did you buy or sell to open the new trade? If you bought something to
open the trade, then write in either BUY or LONG. If you sold(shorted) something to open a
trade, then write in SOLD, or SHORT. This is a personal preference. Some people like to put in
their journals as BUY/SELL. Other people like to write in Long/Short. My preference is for
writing in long/short, since that is the more professional way to say it. I like to use the lingo
where possible.
​
​
Order Type – Market or Limit – When you entered the trade was it a market order or limit order?
Some people can enter a trade using a combination of market and limit orders. If you enter a
trade for $1 million half of which was market order and the other half was limit order, then you
can write in $500,000 Market, $500,000 Limit as a bullet points.
​
​
Position Size / Units / Contracts / Shares – How big was the total trade you entered? If you
bought 1 standard lot of a currency pair, then write in $100,000 or 1 standard lot. If you bought 5
gold futures contracts, then write in 5 contracts. If you bought 1,000 shares of stock, then write
in 1,000 shares. Etc.
​
​
Entry Price – The entry price you received entering your opening position. If you entered at
multiple prices, then you can either write in all the different fills you got, or specify the average
price received.
​
​
Entry Date – Date that you entered the position. For example January 23, 2012. Or you can
write in 1/23/12
​
.
Entry Time – Time that you opened the position. If it is multiple positions, then you can specify
each time for each various fill, or you can specify the time range. For example if you got
$100,000 worth of EUUSD filled at 3:00 AM EST, and another $100,000 filled at 3:05 and
another $100,000 filled at 3:25, then you can write all those in, or you can specify a range of 3:00
– 3:30 AM EST.
​
​
Entry Spread Cost (in pips) – This is optional if you want to keep track of your spread cost in
pips. If you executed a market order, how many pips did you pay in spread.
​
​
Entry Spread Cost (in dollars) – This is optional if you want to keep track of your spread cost in
dollars. If you executed a market order, how many dollars did you pay in spread.
​
​
Stop Loss Size – How big is your stop loss size? If you are trading a currency pair, then you
write in the pips. If you are trading the S&P futures contract, then write in the number of points.
If you are trading a stock, then write in how many cents or dollars your stop is away from your
entry price.
​
​
% Risk – If you were to get stopped out of the trade, how much % loss of your equity is that?
This is where you input your risk per trade expressed in % terms if you use such a position sizing
method. If you risked 0.50% of your account on the trade, then put in 0.50%
​
​
Risk in dollars – If you were to get stopped out of the trade, how much loss in dollars is that. For
example if you have a $100,000 account and you risked 1% on a trade, then write in $1,000
dollars
​
​
Potential Reward: Risk Ratio – This is a column that I only sometimes fill in. You write in what
the potential reward risk ratio of the trade is. If you are trading using a 100 pip stop and you
expect that the market can reasonably move 300 pips, then you can write in 3:1. Of course this is
an interesting column because you can look at it after the trade is finished and see how close you
were or how far removed from reality your initial projections were.
​
​
Potential Win Rate – This is another column that I only sometimes fill in. You write in what you
believe the potential win rate of this trade is. If you were to place this trade 10 times in a row,
how many times do you think you would win? I write it in as percentage terms. If you believe
the trade has a 50% chance to win, then write in 50%.
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Type of Inefficiency – This is where you write in what type of inefficiency you are looking to
capture. I use the word inefficiency here. I believe it is important to think of trading setups as
inefficiencies. If you think in terms of inefficiencies, then you will think in terms of the market
being mispriced, then you will think about the reasons why the market is mispriced and why such
market expectations for example are out of alignment with reality. In this category I could write
in different types of trades such as fading the stops, different types of news trades, expecting
stops to get tripped, betting on sentiment intensifying, betting on sentiment reversing, etc. I do
not write in all the reasons why I took the trade in this column. I do that in another column. This
column is just to broadly define what type of inefficiency you are looking to capture.
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Chart Time Frame – I do not use this since all my order flow based trades have nothing to do
with what chart time frame I look at. However, if you are a chartist or price action trader, then
you may want to include what chart time frame you found whatever pattern you were looking at.
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Exit Price – When you exit your trade, you enter the price you received here.
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Exit Date – The date you exited your trade.
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Exit Time – The time you exited your trade.
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Trade Duration – In hours, minutes, days or weeks. If the trade lasts less than an hour, I will
usually write in the duration in minutes. Anything in between 1 and 48 hours, I write in the hours
amount. Anything past that and I write it as days or weeks as appropriate, etc.
Pips the trade went against you before turning into a winner – If you have a trade that suffered a
draw down, but did not stop you out and eventually was a winner, then you write it how many
pips the trade went against you before it turned into a profitable trade. The reason you have this
column is to compare it to your stop loss size and see any patterns that emerge. If you notice that
a lot of your winning trades suffer a big draw down and get near your stop loss points but turn out
to be a profitable trade, then you can further refine your entry strategy to get in a better price.
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Slippage on the Exit – If you get stopped out for a loss, then you write in how many pips you
suffered as slippage, if any. For example if you are long EUUSD at 1.2500 and have your stop
loss at 1.2400 and the market drops and you get filled at 1.2398, then you would write in -2 pips
slippage. In other words you lost 2 pips as slippage. This is important for a few different
reasons. Firstly, you want to see if the places you put your stop at suffer from slippage. If they
do, perhaps you can get better stop loss placement, or use it as useful information to find new
inefficiencies. Secondly, you want to see how much slippage your broker is giving you. If you
are trading the same system with different brokers, then you can record the slippage from each
one and see which has the lowest slippage so you can choose them.
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Profit/Loss -You write in the profit and/or loss in pips, cents, points, etc as appropriate. If you
bought EUUSD at 1.2500 and sell it at 1.2550, you made 50 pips, so write in +50 pips. If you
bought a stock at $50 and you sell it at $60, then write in +$10. If you buy the S&P futures at
1,250 and sell them at 1,275, then write in +25 points. If you buy the GBP/USD at 1.5000 and
you sell it at 1.4900, then write in -100 pips. Etc. I color code the box background to green for
profit and red for loss.
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Profit/Loss In Dollars – You write the profit and/or loss in dollars (or euros, or jpy, etc whatever
currency your account is denominated in). If you are long $100,000 of EUUSD at 1.2500 and
sell it at 1.2600, then write in +$1,000. If you are short $100,000 GBP/USD at 1.5900 and it
rises to 1.6000 and you cover, then write in -$1,000. I color code the box background to green
for profit and red for loss.
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Profit/Loss as % of your account – Write in the profit and/or loss as % of your account. If a trade
made you 2% of your account, then write in +2%. If a trade lost 0.50%, then write in -0.50%. I
color code the box background to green for profit and red for loss.
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Reward:Risk Ratio or R multiple: If the trade is a profit, then write in how many times your risk
did it pay off. If you risked 0.50% and you made 1.00%, then write in +2R or 2:1 or 2.0. If you
risked 0.50% and a trade only makes 0.10%, then write in +0.20R or 0.2:1 or 0.2. If a trade went
for a loss that is equal to or less than what you risked, then I do not write in anything. If the loss
is greater than the amount you risked, then I do write it in this column. For example lets say you
risk 0.50% on a stock, but overnight the market gaps and you lose 1.50% on a trade, then I would
write it in as a -3R.
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What Type of trading loss if the trade lost money? – This is where I describe in very general
terms a trade if it lost money. For example, if I lost money on a trade and the reason was because
I was buying in a market that was making fresh lows, but after I bought the market kept on going
lower, then I would write in: “trying to pick a bottom.” If I tried shorting into a rising uptrend
and I take a loss, then I describe it as “trying to pick a top.” If I am buying in an uptrend and buy
on a retracement, but the market makes a deeper retracement or trend change, then I write in
“tried to buy a ret.” And so on and so forth. In very general terms I describe it. The various
ways I use are:
• Trying to pick a bottom
• Trying to pick a top
• Shorting a bottom
• Buying a top
• Shorting a ret and failed
• Wrongly predicted news
• Bought a ret and failed
• Fade a resistance level
• Buy a support level
• Tried to buy a breakout higher
• Tried to short a breakout lower
I find this category very interesting and important because when performing trade journal
analysis, you can notice trends when you have winners or losing trades. For example if I notice a
string of losing trades and I notice that all of them occur in the same market, and all of them have
as a reason: “tried to pick a bottom”, then I know I was dumb for trying to pick a bottom five
times in a row. I was fighting the macro order flow and it was dumb. Or if I notice a string of
losers and see that I tried to buy a breakout and it failed five times in a row, but notice that the
market continued to go higher after I was stopped out, then I realize that I was correct in the
move, but I just applied the wrong entry strategy. I should have bought a retracement, instead of
trying to buy a fresh breakout.
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That Day’s Weaknesses (If any) – This is where I write in if there were any weaknesses or
distractions on the day I placed the trade. For example if you are dead tired and place a trade,
then write in that you were very tired. Or if you place a trade when there were five people
coming and out of your trading office or room in your house, then write that in. If you placed the
trade when the fire alarm was going off then write that in. Or if you place a trade without having
done your daily habits, then write that in. Etc. Whatever you believe was a possible weakness
that threw you off your game.
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That Day’s Strengths (If any) – Here you can write in what strengths you had during the day you
placed your trade. If you had complete peace and quiet, write that in. If you completed all your
daily habits, then write that in. Etc. Whatever you believe was a possible strength during the
day.
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How many Open Positions Total (including the one you just placed) – How many open trades do
you have after placing this one? If you have zero open trades and you just placed one, then the
total number of open positions would be one, so write in “1.” If you have on three open trades,
and you are placing a new current one, then the total number of open positions would be four, so
write in “4.” The reason you have this column in your trading journal is so that you can notice
trends in winning and losing streaks. Do a lot of your losing streaks happen when you have on a
lot of open positions at the same time? Do you have a winning streak when the number of open
positions is kept low? Or can you handle a lot of open positions at the same time?
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Exit Spread Cost (in pips) – This is optional if you want to keep track of your spread cost in pips.
If you executed a market order, how many pips did you pay in spread.
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Exit Spread Cost (in dollars) – This is optional if you want to keep track of your spread cost in
dollars. If you executed a market order, how many dollars did you pay in spread.
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Total Spread Cost (in pips) – You write in the total spread cost of the entry and exit in pips.
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Total Spread Cost (in dollars) – You write in the total spread cost of the entry and exit in dollars.
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Commission Cost – Here you write in the total commission cost that you incurred for getting in
and out of the trade. If you have a forex broker that is commission free and only gets
compensated through the spread, then you do not need this column.
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Starting Balance – The starting account balance that you had prior to the placing of the trade
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Interest/swap – If you hold forex currency pairs past the rollover, then you either get interest or
need to pay out interest depending on the rollover rates. Or if you bought a stock and got a
dividend then write that in. Or if you shorted a stock and you had to pay a dividend, then write
that in.
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Ending Balance – The ending balance of your account after the trade is closed after taking into
account trade P&L, commission cost, and interest/swap.
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Reasons for taking the trade – Here is where you go into much more detail about why you placed
the trade. Write out your thinking. Instead of writing a paragraph or two describing my thinking
behind the trade, I condense the reasons down into bullet points. It can be anywhere from 1-10
bullet points.
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What I Learned – No matter if the trade is a win or loss, write down what you believed you
learned. Again, instead of writing out a paragraph or two, I condense it down into bullet points. it
can be anywhere from 1-10 bullet points. I do this during the day the trade closed as a profit or
loss.
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What I learned after Long Term reflection, several days, weeks, or months – This is the very
interesting column. This is important because after you have a winning or losing trade, you will
not always know the true reasons why it happened. You have your immediate theories and
reasons which you include in the previous column. However, there are times when after several
days, weeks, or months, you find the true reason and proper market belief about why your trade
succeeded or failed. It can take a few days or weeks or months to reach that “aha” moment. I am
not saying that I am thinking about trades I placed ten months ago. I try to forget about them and
focus on the present moment. However, there will be trades where you have these nagging
questions about they failed or succeeded and you will only discover those reasons several days,
weeks, or months later. When you discover the reasons, you write them in this column.