Trade Journaling On Steroids Introduction

How could this possibly go wrong? This is a question we ask much less frequently than we should before taking the trade. Trading is about understanding the variance of your trade setups. But variance manifests itself at many stages of the trade. We have a variance in the trading setup, access to the trade, trade development, exit, risk we take, etc. Understanding the permutations of your trade setup from bottom to top is the best way to get better in your own trading. Let’s discuss how we can take your current debriefing method and put it on steroids using the scenario-based approach. If you want to see good examples of basic journaling methods, read our Bund and Gold articles.

This article is based on the video down below.

Trade Journaling Basics

Let’s start with a simple truth. If you are not journaling at all, you are running your trading business at least suboptimally. Imagine a business that buys and sells stuff but has no idea what its accounts look like, what its margins look like, where the business can push new products and what product it should probably stop selling. It wouldn’t be a business for long. This applies to trading as well. So goal number one is.

Bookkeeping, Bookkeeping, Bookkeeping

Once you pass this checkpoint, it is all about the quality of your journaling, or the quality of debriefing after each trade. This is a minimum standard you should set for yourself if you are in the early stage of your career:

Now, let’s discuss how we can take your journaling from here to the next level.

Taking Your Journaling To The Next Level

Introduction

So how can you take your journaling to the next level? By adding a different view towards the trade you have taken. Simply put, by asking:

How can I get skrewed in this trade?

It is all about building different scenarios of how trade can develop. Understanding the different variations of the same trade is the bread and butter of a better understanding of the market. So if the trade goes wrong, you simply don’t put it into the category “trade went wrong” and walk away. On the contrary, now the trade should have much more of your attention.

Another way to think about the trade is in form of:

Expectation -> Reality -> Observation -> Improvement

What did you expect, what actually happened, what was the delta (difference) between these two and how can you improve your setup going forward? What have you observed that did not match the expectation vs reality framework? What can you learn from that observation?

Let’s have a look at one trading pattern, that developed differently and what can we learn from this pattern.

Journaling Different Trade Examples

Down below we have three examples of the volume ledge break. In the first example, we can see a ledge break. Once broken, the market rallied strongly. The ledge highlighted by the red line got broken and the market run away.

Down below we have a similar variation of the same pattern. The volume ledge again got broken and the next day we opened with a gap up and market run away. Again, time to think, how could you play the similar pattern, but in a different setup.

Now coming to the third variation we can see that the break was not so straightforward. Now we can zoom in on variation a) and variation b)

Within the first variation a), we have broken strongly by the Jump Trade pattern but immediately failed. You can watch the order-flow pattern directly from the replay here, at 15:07.

Within the second variation b), we have broken strongly again the Jump Trade pattern rejection high and accelerated again. You can watch the order-flow pattern directly from the replay here, at 19:18.

What do these three patterns have in common? They are similar in the way how you identify them but different in the way how you execute them. How different? That is homework for you. Apply the principles we have described and let us know what you have found out.

Key Journaling Takeaway

Debrief your trades. That is where you start, no question about that. Then on top of your trades, add narrative/correlation and volatility observations. Once you have the routine going build that permutation muscle by asking the Expectation vs Reality type of questions. It is in the detail, in the deep understanding of your setup that comes from the familiarity you have built over many many variations of the same pattern. That is how you improve.

If you liked this type of content, you might check these videos as well:

• AXIA Junior Funded Trader Remains Composed After Missing Vaccine comment Live Trading
• AXIA Elite Trader trades Gilts & GBP On Bank of England Rate Decision
• AXIA Elite Trader Attacks 4 Markets On July 19 FOMC Rate Decision And Presser

If you like our content and would like to improve your game, definitely check one of our courses that teach you all the techniques presented by AXIA traders from a market profile, footprint, or order-flow. If you are someone who likes to trade the news, we have a great central bank course. And if you are really serious about your future trading career, consider taking AXIA’s 6-Week Intensive High-Performance Trading Course.

Thanks for reading and until next time, trade well.

JK

How To Do Yearly Trading Review Like A Pro Introduction

Three reviews, three different approaches – that’s what is this “How To Do Yearly Trading Review Like A Pro” blog post all about. We will have a look at three prop traders looking at their year asking the right questions and figuring out what process they can improve going forward. In their review, they have used a broad range of methods from trade performance metrics, well-journaled market observations to behavior analysis of their own trading to set the appropriate process-oriented goals for 2022. Let’s have a look at their analysis in bigger detail.

Yearly Trade Reviews

Trader Harry

In this video, trader Harry breaks down his yearly P&L by:

• Product
• Trade type
• Time of the day
• Holding Time
• Months & Quarters

and compare all these trading metrics against each other. What is interesting is a relative comparison of different periods starting from April 2021 against each other. Also, an interesting composition of the yearly review is the win/loss ratio. Even though Harry had a 22% win ratio (see the blue portion of the pie chart below), his P&L was consistently positive throughout Q2, Q3, and Q4. By eliminating the so called “energy wasting trades”, this percentage should increase and this should have an impact on the overall P&L.

There is one highlight that stood out the most for me in Harry’s analysis and also this was big takeaway for him going into 2022. Going forward, it was the focus on increasing his size in A setups. Harry refers to this as trades where he should “5x his size”. Knowing which trades to press, can dramatically improve his performance in 2022.

Trader Isaac

A yearly performance review should be really about understanding things of the past you can improve going forward. You can either start working on eliminating your weaknesses or improving your strengths. In this yearly trading review, trader Isaac has focused on these 4 loops that previously held him back:

1. Trading Markets Of Poor Participation
2. Choosing Between Multiple Scenarios
3. Days After A Big Winner
4. Planning Being Too Narrow

He has broken down these four loops into problem diagrams (see the video down below) and has defined a circuit breaker for each of them. Highlighting key features of the problem and future development has enabled him a proper goal setting for the year ahead. Let’s have a look at what I mean by that.

Here is one example out of four, that Isaac calls loops. These are behaviors that have certain cues, something that triggers his negative behavior. In the image below, you can see an example where a simple market pattern but without proper market participation triggers him to act. Failure and frustration leads him back to repeat the same poor behavior and occasional success gives him hope to try this strategy again. This creates the endless loop. In this particular case, he has identified a circuit breaker like this: avoid this trade because it is a trap trade with a low success rate. The pattern is not a trade. Avoid the false hope that it provides from time to time when the pattern succeeds and your dopamine center gets rewarded.

Also, have a look at how he tries to use the negative side of this behavior in his favor. In the potential future development, he looks to reverse the trading logic aka, trading against the textbook. In other words: do the opposite then what you doing and you might see dramatic improvement in your own trading.

Trader Tom

“An idea can remain just that without the right participants in the market”.

For this trader, the past year has been a journey to narrow down his trade selection techniques and a battle with his own psychology. The battle of patience, waiting for the right conditions to hit the market. Something what every trader has to face on a regular basis. From a key backbone process to focus on, to specific criteria that turn the idea into an actionable trade. Here is one key slide of the presentation that stood out to me. Why?

I like how it highlights in four steps what this trader wants to see for him to act. The more exact criteria that would narrow down his selection process and enable him to be more patient. The idea is nothing unless he can answer the question:

“Looking at the book do I want to be involved”?

Final thoughts

As you can see, each trader had a slightly different approach to the yearly trading review. It is all about one thing and one thing only: the method of a review must work best for you. From complex to most simplistic, it is all about looking honestly at your errors and limiting behaviours and eliminating them one by one through a diligent and disciplined process.

Here are some final quotes from trader Tom, that might resonate with you.

Thanks for reading and good luck in 2022.

Don’t forget to check out articles you might also like:

• Junior Funded Trader 2020 Performance Review

• Lessons From My Biggest Trading Loss

• Trader Training: How Long Does it Take a Trader to Become Consistent and Profitable | Axia Futures

If you like our content and would like to improve your game, definitely check one of our courses that teach you all the techniques presented by AXIA traders from a market profile, footprint, or order-flow. If you are someone who likes to trade the news, we have a great central bank course. And if you are really serious about your future trading career, consider taking AXIA’s 6-Week Intensive High-Performance Trading Course.

Trade well.

Macro Preparation For The Trading Week Ahead Introduction

In this blog post, we will focus on macro preparation for the trading week ahead. Trading around macro events can be scary and confusing at the beginning. It seems too complicated and complex to make sense of all the relationships and correlations that are unfolding quickly in the markets while the news is being released. But there is one huge benefit to becoming a trader, who has deepened the understanding of the macro events: additional level of an edge (on top of your price-ladder, market profile, and footprint tools) and the ability to obtain favorable access points quickly for vulnerable structures you want to attack. Let’s break down the process of preparation step by step and kick-start your macro event understanding.

Building Macro Themes

Why It Matters?

It is a good practice for every trader to not only do some deep reflections on the past week of trading but also to prepare for the week ahead. Apart from looking at the markets from the technical point of view, it is a good practice to keep deepening your macro themes understanding. Not only in a way what events are coming out (NFP, CPI, etc.), but also documenting larger themes that can potentially unfold. The best days usually come from outliers and those outliers can really elevate your trading and move you from being a 3lot trader to a 300lot trader. Events like this helped our Junior trader Harry make his 50k week and enabled him to step up his game.

How To Build A Macro Theme

There is no secret way. There is just deliberate practice. Coming every weekend and doing the work prepping for the week ahead. How? Start easy by reading the headlines from financial media sites like Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters. Understand at a high level what is going on, what are the financial media talking about and what can potentially develop into a bigger theme. Do not just read what is happening but build scenarios of how it can potentially evolve. That can give you a high-level perspective. Now let’s take a look at how to build a theme.

On the main page of Bloomberg, there is a headline title: “New Astra Vaccine in Development to Fight South Africa Variant“. This can start your thinking process. There is a new strain and pharma is trying to combat it. How effective will be even the current vaccine? What if news of the inability of the current vaccine to fight the new strain slowly spread? What is the tail risk there? What markets will be impacted the most? How can the news evolve and unfold? From here you start building your portfolio of possible themes.

After skimming through the headlines and capturing the themes, you can start reading some of the bank research as well. One of the sites we regularly use is the research published by Danske Bank, specifically the Weekly Focus. By reading the weekly focus you can pick up on additional themes. In our particular case at the time of the recording, a US Spending Bill or Mario Draghi forming an Italian government was a macro theme in development.

Let’s now have a look at how we can define a potential scenario for Mario Draghi forming a government combining technicals and macro events.

Combining Macro Theme And Technical Structure

Now that we have identified our themes, we can focus on building our scenarios. We really want to build the “If->Then” scenarios specifically for those asymmetrical opportunities. What are the asymmetrical opportunities? These are situations when market positioning is skewed towards one side and potentially negative news might trigger a liquidation move. Let’s have a look at how our “Mario Draghi theme” forming a government can provide us with the asymmetrical opportunity.

Above we can see a chart of the Italian BTP (10yr bond that is being traded on the Eurex). We can see that positioning is built towards the upside therefore we must ask ourselves: “what negative news might trigger a potential liquidation move”?. We know that failure to form a government by Mario Draghi might be that tail risk event. The event that might cause the liquidation move. In our debrief we lean on this scenario of our theme and in the technical prep we define at what prices we are willing to hit the markets. What markets we will hit and with what size. Checkout how Axia Junior trader prepared for a similar type of event and made his best week so far by doing exactly what we have described above. Although in many situations the tail risk scenarios won’t materialize, we have done our best to capture them if they come.

It is events like these when opportunity meets preparation. When we can move our trading to the next level and execute a much bigger size with a high level of conviction.

If you liked this type of content, you might check these videos as well:

• AXIA Junior Funded Trader Remains Composed After Missing Vaccine comment Live Trading
• AXIA Elite Trader trades Gilts & GBP On Bank of England Rate Decision
• AXIA Elite Trader Attacks 4 Markets On July 19 FOMC Rate Decision And Presser

If you like our content and would like to improve your game, definitely check one of our courses that teach you all the techniques presented by AXIA traders from a market profile, footprint, or order-flow. If you are someone who likes to trade the news, we have a great central bank course. And if you are really serious about your future trading career, consider taking AXIA’s 6-Week Intensive High-Performance Trading Course.

Thanks for reading and until next time, trade well.

JK

Axia Futures has just had its 1-year anniversary and what a year it has been!

The Birth of Axia Futures and One Year On

The story which I will share in greater detail in the future and will touch upon it briefly in today’s letter is heroic in many ways, given what many of our traders had to encounter at the formation of AxIa Futures. The story is the proverbial rise of the Phoenix and we are blessed to be given the opportunity to share our story and what has made our traders successful with the broader trading community.

As a company, group of friends and teammates we are beyond ourselves of where we have come in such a short period of time. From the onset, regardless of all the obstacles we faced, we always held onto our core vision and mission whilst practising humility to guide us in becoming powerful world class performers in the global futures market.

Our Growth, Our Partners and Our World Class Trading Team

From the original team of seven traders, the group has grown to 40 traders. This group of traders are all cleared and risk managed by FCT group of Companies (FCA regulated and Mifid2 compliant) the most reputable futures Broking firm in the industry that has been around since 1984. It has been a critical partner to the success of Axia Futures and we are very fortunate to call FCT our partner. After what happened to our traders at the previous firm we had to find a highly credible, professional and well capitalised firm. FCT ticked all the boxes. FCT has helped Axia Futures grow organically and provided the infrastructure for our trading group to be out-performers in the futures industry on a global scale. Along with our partner and the pioneering AXIA Futures educational trading framework for trader development, we have built some of the most successful futures day traders in Europe in a very short period of time.

What makes Axia Futures’ educational team truly unique in the industry is that all our training material, proprietary drills, Flagship 8-week Intensive Career Training, our daily Live streams and market analysis are all delivered and developed by live account traders. Furthermore, our learning framework is built upon the success of not only our most profitable traders but also some of the largest day traders in the futures markets space. This is unique and pioneering in the trading education industry. We are a group of traders in the first instance that have now designed training skills material for new entrants into our industry. This benchmarks best practices for new traders to have a higher level of approach and strategy development in the markets.

How It All Started

Some background before the launch of Axia Futures education in June 2017.

In June 2016, one year before the official launch of Axia Futures, was the birth of the proprietary trading team. This team started trading the week before the infamous Brexit and then on the day of Brexit essentially the volatility opportunity of a lifetime was gifted to this group of young, ambitious and hardworking traders. The original trading team of seven traders had to start their trading accounts from zero after their previous trading accounts disappeared overnight from a trading firm that mismanaged clients funds. In fact, some of the original group had lost trading accounts in excess of seven figures. Although they lost large amounts of trading funds overnight what they did not lose was their skill in extracting consistent profits from the markets. They did not lose their ability to fish opportunity from the global financial futures market. They just needed to start over with a hunger and desire for continuous improvement and to be the very best they can be! Every one of the original group went on to having their best year and trading their biggest size and that’s after starting from ground zero. This is testament to not only their well tuned skill set in the art of speculation but the deep resilience each and every one of them possessed. This kind of resilience is one of the fundamental prerequisites to becoming a world class consistently profitable trader. I personally salute everyone of them as I know where they all came from and how they faced their darkest hours after they lost everything from no fault of their own in their previous trading accounts.

Our Dynamic Culture

Another part of our rapid growth in our trading team is the core culture we have worked incredibly hard to develop and keep on innovating so that the collective group has a positive effect on each individual trader’s unique identity. We have discovered that a great culture is infectious and this I assume is why so many great traders have wanted to join our team and we feel honoured that this cultural framework has attracted so many. We have also ensured we don’t let any of our trading floors grow above a certain amount that sacrifices the dynamic communication edge within the floor that we have cultivated. We don’t believe in those industrial size-led trading floors where it becomes impersonal and void of personality.

Our strong and dynamic culture requires certain personality profiles on our London Trading floor and hence why there is a stringent selection process so as to ensure every team selection adds value to the greater group. This ensures we stay relevant, dynamic and most importantly we continue to grow and be world class performing athletes in the financial coliseum of opportunity. As we know, this really is the greatest game on earth. This game tests every ounce of your skill and resolve and you can never ever be complacent and this is why we all love it so much.

Pioneering Trader Education

Our world class training and development is always evolving and continues to set the industry standard for rapidly progressing not only for trainee traders to enhance their pattern recognition skills but also how to build a fundamental narrative that has market influence and how to deploy both defensive and attacking trading strategies in both Central Banking and Geopolitical events that are renowned for excess volatility. We are also glad to announce the world’s first Central Bank and Geopolitical online trading programme within the next couple of weeks. This course captures the approach of our entire trading team from preparation to execution and these events are sometimes responsible for some 90% trading profits within a calendar month.

Those who have participated in our 8-week intensive Career Trader Training programme have all learnt the approach, methodology, framework and how to optimally design strategies as well as what is required to be a professional futures trader. Furthermore, they have not only done the training but also many have continued their professional career with Axia Futures in some form.

Cultivating New Trading Careers

We have launched multiple trading careers in the past year and we have provided the opportunity for many young traders to be financially backed in one of two ways:

1) Through our partner company FCT Group of companies by way of recommendation from the AXIA training team to the FCT global risk and clearing team as part of our young trader high performance programme.

2) If a trainee shows strong aptitude on the training programme and is invited for a performance review on the trading floor, then there is another opportunity to be both mentored and financially backed by one of our elite traders.

There are also traders who after completing our Career and high performance trading programme have gone to open live trading accounts within our group whilst pushing their development and understanding of the market further.

On Demand and Live Streaming Trader Training

For many not able to attend our in-house 8-week Trader Training programme we have developed on-demand Edge courses which include all the methods and approaches of how we contextualise and execute in the markets. For more details on all our on-demand training please click here.

We have also equipped our training room with state-of-the-art camera equipment so we can live stream all the 8-week training to our online training portal for  those unable to develop and learn on our London Trading Floor.

We shall continue to produce world class trader training and we hope our entire community continue to strive to be consistently profitable traders as they grow alongside us.

May you all be the best traders you can be and continue along this great journey of trading in the Global Financial Markets.

Yours sincerely,

Alex Haywood
Co-Founder, Head of Strategy

If you want to learn to trade futures and develop your career elite trader then check out full range of Trader ​Training courses and consider joining our flagship 8 Week Career Trading Course. This intensive programme can be attended live on our London Trading Floor or virtually from home as an online trading course. We offer the most comprehensive training programmes in the proprietary​ ​futures​ ​trading industry which are based​ ​upon years of successful in-house skill​s ​development​.