Tag: chart screenshot

USDTRY

Get To Know Your Charts

sfl Leave a comment
3 min read

I often get questions from traders to check a chart they took a screenshot from. The first thing I do is look up the same currency pair in my own charting platform. Why do you think this is?

 

As a discretionary trader, I value my chart layout as much as the chart patterns I look for. For many traders, chart-based discretionary trading means finding things like support and resistance, candlestick patterns and trend lines. You discover patterns in how the price behaves. This is the basis of price action theory.

 

chart 1

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Trading chartbook

A chartbook can make or break your trading

sfl 1 Comment
5 min read

Keeping a chartbook of trades you have taken might seem like such a random thing to do. A nice to have, for traders feeling nostalgic about past trades, maybe. You might’ve heard people talking about it, but I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t think twice of it and just went on with whatever you were doing.

 

I’m here to say that such a collection of trade screenshots (sometimes called a playbook or chartbook) is much less trivial. It might even be crucial to your success as a trader.

 

Let’s try this experiment: do you keep a trading journal? If you answered “yes” here: well done! Now pick a trade from 3 months ago and look at just the numbers. From that data, you can probably see it was a winner of a loser, your R-multiple, stop loss and take profit placement, MFE and MAE and so on.

 

But without a chart screenshot,

  • can you tell what you could’ve done better on this particular trade?
  • if you could’ve entered at a better price point?
  • exited with more profit?
  • if there were chart patterns you missed?
  • if that new strategy idea you have would’ve worked out here?

 

No? That’s where a chartbook comes in. And it’s not even the only benefit of keeping track with chart screenshots.

 

Since keeping a chartbook, I found it much easier to stick to the good setups and avoid less than optimal setups. I know what to look for, but that visual double check using screenshots of past setups makes all the difference. But let’s first take a step back. What exactly is it?

 

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