Ok since this is my first go at futures I am going to keep things very simple until I get into a groove.
I trade while I am at work during the day. I work in an IT office so interruptions are unavoidable. I will note if any trades are affected by this in my daily journal.

Account: $1,000
Brokerage: TastyWorks
Charting: ThinkOrSwim

Trade Rules:
Product: /MES
Time Frame: Mon - Friday | 9:30am to 11:30am
Intraday trades only, the account will be flat after 11:30 am
Size: 1 Contract (for now)
Entry Rules: TTM_Pivot, TTM_SQZ, $TIKSP
First trades placed after the open auction is completed
Market Guidance: Provided by $TIKSP indicating market extremes, volume profile, and vwap
Exit: 3 Point Stop | Trend Reversal with confirming SQZ

I am looking for feedback to advance my trade plan and ultimately become a well structured trader. I like building systems and I look forward to sharing them with everyone.

Here is today's Journal. I will be on the road tomorrow so my next update will be on Monday the 15th

Lots of Vol in the market today provided a few decent trends. I could have done much better with my entries today. My last exit was spot on, however.

Journal Entry


Chart with Entry and Exit

I'm certainly no market wizard, but your results today look very good! Must be on the right path.

NW Trader 

I'm certainly no market wizard, but your results today look very good! Must be on the right path.

Thanks! I sure hope so.

Sure was a boring day in MES. I was only able to place one trade that met my criteria during my trading hours.

Critiques for Today

• I need to work on how I am going to deal with interruptions and patience while making these trades at work.
• I need to start planning my targets a little better. Since I am only trading 1 lots I don't have the ability to scale out so I need to make every trade count. If I could plan better resting orders I might have a better chance to deal with interruptions and not miss out on the meat of the move. It will also help me with my patience which was an issue today.
• My account can support another 1 lot I may consider adding this after a get more trades in.
• Patience caused me to give up 2pts. I know that the probability of the price retracing to the POC and bouncing down is pretty high yet I pulled the trigger a little early.

P/L Today: $11
Daily Return: 1.13%
P/L YTD: $24
Yearly Return: 1.84%

We opened the day in range and in Chop with low volume.
After watching a few bars I decided that I would skip today and wait for a better setup.

It's about time the market decided to pick a direction and it seems that the market has decided to take a negative outlook to the future rate cuts from the FED. I realized that I could keep taking teaspoons of value from the market but on the flip side I am trying to forward test the strategy live and the more trades I make the better I can gauge my setup.

So I added another 1k so I could comfortable add another contract and start scaling out of trades. My target will be to generate enough $$ to add one more contract so that I can have a runner position. This position would have done quite well today, unfortunately, capital is always a constraint.

Daily Trade Chart


Daily P/L

Best of luck to you! Adhere to the plan and you'll do very well. Seems like a sound system you have developed.

Yikes well, today was a humbling day. I have come off my 4-day winning streak with a loss and a trade I should never have taken.

Trade 1:
I was looking for a short trend down to test the overnight low before bouncing back up to test the overnight high and subsequently try to go long when everyone starts to buy the dip. I was able to enter in at a reasonable price although I could have waited a little longer to take a short closer to the overnight high I grabbed my position a few ticks low.

Trade 2:
This trade should never have happened. I was busy switching screens back to my work screen to take care of people coming into my office as well as phone calls etc. I quickly noticed that my stop had not been breached yet, but we were continuing to test the overnight high, so I made an executive trading decision to add to my short position without checking my indicators or a larger time frame. Bad move only about 5 minutes later was I stopped out of my first position and another ten after that I closed the trade due to the volume of work here in the office.

Lessons Learned

1. If I am committed to trading two contracts I need to trade two contracts consistently.
2. I need to start checking higher time frames to see if my analysis of the market is still valid.
3. No more adding to losing trades
4. If I am getting busy and I can't focus on trading, and my position is underwater but not stopped out I will cut my losses and trade another day.

Chart:


P/L: