Tagging trades you took against your own bias

[Fairman]

Tagging trades you took against your own bias

Most of us start the day with some kind of bias. Bullish EURUSD because of the higher timeframe, bearish gold after yesterday's move, whatever. Then during the session, a setup appears in the other direction, and sometimes you take it.

I started tagging those trades in the journal. A simple column: with bias, against bias, or no bias.

The point is to see whether counter-bias trades do better or worse than the others. There are a few possible results. If they're clearly worse, your bias is useful and you should probably stop trading against it. If they're similar, the bias isn't adding much and might not need as much weight. If they're better, which does happen, your bias might be systematically wrong, or the counter trades are catching reversals your bias doesn't see.

It also shows how often you trade against your own view. If it's frequent, maybe the bias isn't as strong as you think, or you're not committing to it.

To keep it honest, the bias has to be written before the session. If you decide the bias after the trade, it'll conveniently match.

It's one more column, but it answers a question that's otherwise just a feeling: does my morning read actually help?

[Fairman]

Defining bias consistently matters. If the bias is a vague feeling one day and a clear rule the next, the tag won't mean much. A simple rule, like price above or below the previous day's midpoint at the London open, or the direction of the last H4 swing, makes the bias objective. You can still have a discretionary view, but recording the rule based bias alongside it gives a cleaner comparison over time. Both views can live in the same row, so there's no extra work beyond one more column.

[Fairman]

Some traders find their counter-bias trades are mostly impulse trades, taken because something moved fast in the other direction. Adding a note on why you took a counter-bias trade, even a word or two, can show that. If most of them say something like 'fast drop, chased', the issue isn't the bias but the impulse. If they say 'clean setup at a major level', they might be legitimate trades that just happen to oppose the morning view. The note is what separates a deliberate trade from a reaction. Two words is usually enough.

[FXS Prop Desk]

The tagged results can show whether your bias is useful or whether trades against it perform just as well.

If trades against the bias consistently lose, the bias is adding value, and a rule to avoid them makes sense. If they perform similarly, the bias may not be as important as it feels, and you could trade both directions more freely.

[Fairman]

Recording the bias before the session starts is what makes this work. If the bias is written down at 07:30 and a counter-bias trade happens at 10:00, the tag is objective. If you decide the bias after the trade, it's easy to adjust it to fit. A single line at the top of the session notes, like 'bias: short below 1.0850', is enough. Then every trade can be compared with it at the end of the day, with no room for reinterpretation. It also makes you form a view before the session, which helps with planning anyway.

[Fairman]

What if the counter-bias trades turn out to be profitable? That would suggest either the bias method isn't adding much, or you have good reasons in the moment to go against it. Both deserve a look. Looking at what those trades had in common, like a specific setup or time of day, could show a situation where the bias tends to be wrong. That might lead to a rule like 'ignore the bias after a big data release'. The tag is useful precisely because it lets the data argue with your assumptions about how you trade.

[GrahamW1972]

Looking at what those trades had in common, like a specific setup or time of day, could show a situation where the bias tends to be wrong.

fairman yeah this is the bit that surprised me when i did something similar... mine were mostly profitable and it turned out nearly all of them were after the london open had already swept the overnight high or low. so the morning bias was fine, it just had a shelf life, and i was bloody stubborn about keeping it past about 9. now i write a second line in the journal, "bias expires if X happens", and it stops me arguing with myself later. definately worth looking at sample size first though, ten or fifteen trades and youre just reading tea leaves, i reckon you want thirty plus before you change any rules.

[Fairman]

The "bias expires if X happens" line is a good idea, and I'm stealing it. Most of my own journal entries only say what I expected, never what would make me wrong, so I end up defending a view long after the market has moved on. Your London sweep example fits what I see too. Once the overnight high has been taken and price rejects, the morning read has done its job.

On sample size I'm with you, but I'd add that thirty trades split across three different setups is really ten each, so it won't tell you much. I'd tag by one thing at a time. For example, 32 counter-bias trades at 0.5 lots, 8 pip risk, all taken after 9:00 London. If they average +0.4R against -0.1R for the rest, that's worth acting on. If it's 0.1R apart, I'd leave the rules alone.

What exactly do you write for X? A price level, a time, or something like a failed retest? And do you review the expiry notes weekly or just as they come up?