The Importance of Reviewing Trades: Elevate Your Trading Success

Hi traders!

Last week I outlined my plan for potentially trading Gold on the 4-hour timeframe. That article can be found here, and this chart below is what Gold looked like at the time.

Through the use of:

  • Technical trend analysis (higher highs and higher lows)
  • Price’s relation to the 50sma
  • Fibonacci retracements
  • Support/Resistance levels
  • Trendlines

I identified and area where Gold could most likely retrace to, and where, according to my strategy, I may be able to find and entry.

Here is where Gold is today:

But now, a very important part of the retail trader’s habits and routines comes to the fore.

We must review our trades. We do this, for amongst other reasons:

  • To see if there was a better entry, better stop loss location. This serves to adjust our strategy going forwards.
  • To see how the trade played out.
  • To see if taking partial profits would impact the outcome

NB. Trading is NOT the same as Investing- in trading, we understand that market moves might be short-lived. This is why we take partial-profits and try not to ‘ride’ the market move, falsely believing it will go on forever. Plenty of traders go broke never taking a profit.

In this case, Gold did a measured move up to the recent highs, BUT it stalled, now forming a Double-Top pattern, which could signal a move back down past my entry. Thank goodness my trading plan took that possibility into account!

Reviewing trades can also serve to re-affirm that sticking to our strategy has benefits that don’t always seem obvious in real-time.

Happy Trading!

Adam Harris

FXGlobe Ambassador Adam Harris is based in London, UK. He’s been trading professionally since 2013 and his specialties are technical and trend-based trading.

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