(BLOG) One of the Toughest Trades to Take

Despite going 0 for 2 (with 1 breakeven) in my swing trading today, I was able to nail both of the trades taken during Tuesday’s Live Trading Room session. It also just so happened that both of the trades taken were on the same pair and occurred right after each other. This doesn’t happen on a regular basis, but often enough for me to understand exactly how to handle the situation when it does. Here’s the trick…Just follow the plan and do what you’re supposed to do. Unfortunately to many traders this is easier said than done.

I believe that taking back-to-back patterns is one of the hardest feats to overcome in trading. Let’s think about this for a minute. You’ve just taken a bullish gartley pattern, dealt with a little bit of pain as the market churned for a while only come out the other side with profit. Typically at this moment a trader would like to sit back, relax, let out a sigh of relief and maybe tap themselves on the back for following there plan and reaping the benefits. Let’s admit it, we trade in the toughest market out there and winning is a very difficult thing to do. However, instead of getting time to celebrate and refocus another opportunity appears going the exact opposite direction of your initial trade and the first thing that comes to mind is what? “______”

“No way is the market going to reverse again already. I should just skip this trade so I don’t give back any profit.” Obviously, sometimes this will work in your favor but remember our job as pattern traders isn’t to guess which will be successful and which will not, our job is to execute every valid pattern that we see even if it’s very difficult to do mentally. However if you can pull it off it’s a great reminder of why we have rules and how the markets reward those who follow them

This particular trade yielded close to 200pips total to a trader using 2 positions on multiple targets. Yup almost 200pips total on a 15 minute chart. I tell the clients I work with all of the time, “if you’re going to be a day trader stick to watching 4 pairs. Maybe 6 max.” Many think that it’s impossible to be profitable without a massive portfolio. Hopefully scenarios like this will provide a great example of how it’s not about the quantity of pairs you watch it’s the quality of how you can trade the ones that you do that matter most.

Akil Stokes
Chief Currency Analyst at www.TradeEmpowered.com
Akil@Tradeempowered.com /@AkilStokesRTM /
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