A Clean Winner Narrated Decision by Decision
This is a session that went the way the rules intended, described in the order the information actually arrived. It is included not because winners are instructive in themselves but because it establishes the sequence that the other two accounts depart from.
Before the Open
The first decision was made before any price existed. The economic calendar showed nothing significant scheduled inside the first hour, which meant the range about to form would be the product of ordinary participation rather than a reaction to an event. Had a release been due, this session would have been skipped or the measurement window shifted, and neither of those is a judgement call once the rule has been written down.
The second pre session step was to recall where the instrument's recent opening ranges had been sitting in height. Not a calculation, just a rough memory of the last several sessions, so that whatever formed could be described as narrow, normal or wide rather than simply as a pair of numbers with no context attached.
The Range Completes
The period ran and the range came out close to typical height, marginally under it. That passed the width filter immediately, and passing it mattered more than it might appear. A normal width range means the stop at the far edge is a normal distance away, which means position size is the usual size, and it means the distance available beyond the break has not already been spent producing the range.
The shape was closer to balanced than one sided. Price had touched both edges more than once and finished somewhere around the middle. Both extremes had been reached and rejected, so both were levels somebody had defended, and the far edge was therefore a defensible place to hold a stop rather than an arbitrary point price happened to reach once on a single shallow dip.
Placing the Order
With the range acceptable, the entry was a resting stop order placed a small distance beyond the upper edge rather than exactly on it. The offset exists to filter the single tick probe, and it is a fixed part of the rule rather than something judged fresh each morning.
Size followed from the stop, not the other way around. The stop went at the opposite edge, the distance between the entry and that edge converted into money at risk per unit, and the position was whatever number of units held the total at the predetermined figure, rounded down. On this session that produced a slightly smaller position than usual, because the entry offset had lengthened the stop distance a little. That is the arithmetic working correctly, not a problem in need of a fix.
The Break and What Followed
Price approached the upper edge, hesitated below it for a few minutes, then traded through. The order filled a little worse than the trigger, which is the ordinary cost of transacting at that instant and was expected rather than noted with any surprise.
What made this session clean was what happened next. Price did not return to the level. It extended away from the range and held its distance from the edge, which is the behaviour the strategy is paid for and the behaviour that is absent on most days. There was no decision to make during that stretch, and making one would only have been a way of interfering with something that was working.
Managing and Exiting
Part of the position came off at a distance related to the range height, which is a mechanical target rather than a judgement about where the move ought to end. The remainder was held with the stop moved to the entry price, so the trade could no longer produce a loss whatever happened afterwards.
That remainder eventually exited on the trailing arrangement rather than at a chosen price, giving back some of the best level the move reached. Giving something back is a feature of any trailing exit and it is the price of leaving a longer move possible. Complaining about it afterwards amounts to saying the trade should have been closed at the high, which was not knowable at the time and will not be knowable next time either. The session finishes without a verdict, because one winner says almost nothing about a strategy and the reason for writing it down was the order of the steps rather than the number at the end of them.