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Was a tough day for sure. I was looking for a few sim trades before I start the real thing Monday, but it wasn't my kind of shape/set-up. You did what you did, hit your limit, got back to base to refuel, reload ready for the next day. That's good approach. Some days aren't so good.
You decided to go for the 20 day (as did I), presumably as you realized that some days wont go quite as expected. It gives you enough time to wait for the kind of set up that you really like, so you can do your thing.
Hard not to come in bullish today. The market looked to be trying to revisit highs from last week. Once we were above 8.80 I was bullish due to the fact that we had got back outside the multi-week bracket from 102 to 109 (ish). Despite my bullishness I tried to short the market at the start of the day. We had an open drive and I think it was just FOMO that caused me to short the initial rally. When we didn't have any continuation I thought we might move down and close the gap. I churned my trades a bit here.
After a few losses I waited for a bit and it was clear we were likely to head higher. I bought a second test down at 9.39 which was based off the .5 deviation of eth vwap and a trendline I had loosely drawn on a tick chart. I failed to hold this trade long enough and took profits with a trailing stop. After this I shorted the top at 10.35 based on exhaustion near a level (10.45) I had identified previously (from aug. 28) but scratched. This was pretty much the theme for the rest of the day - scratching trades.
I struggled to hold onto trades today and I struggled with churning and taking poor entries. I missed a couple really good trades that I had identified due to impatience (not waiting for the entry price I had identified) and that made me skittish. It is impossible to trade well when you are not confident and have conviction in your trades. Developing the patience to wait for the levels I've identified and the conviction to hold trades once I've initiated them is what I will be working on next week. My trades are below:
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. - Frank Herbert
I didn't manage to capture my trade report today before Topstep took the data off their servers and so I'm posting my eth tick chart in lieu of that without the trades marked. I took 13 or so trades today - the report says 16 but some of my trades were 2 contract trades and so the 16 number just represents round turns.
I had a short bias coming into the day but didn't want to trade the open because we were opening in the middle of yesterdays value - right at the POC from yesterday. After we broke below the o/n low I shorted as we came back to the eth vwap low level and held for a new low. Once we had the big move up at 7:25 mst or so I began to look for a long. One of the levels I had marked on my chart was the ledge on the TPO profile from Aug 28. This was a significant day because it was on that trade day we had the spike high to 112 or so. If you look at the profile from that day there is a lower ledge on the profile and I wanted to buy if the market made it down to that level. Because we had made it down there I decided to buy at the daily pivot at 109.70 - I rode this trade up but faltered and closed without taking it all the way to the open.
For the rest of the day I was taking short scalps because the market was not breaking. I expected a break but when you don't get it, you've got to acknowledge that and just accept it and go with it. The break came in the after-hour market and I didn't trade it.
Posted a decent number today so I'm in better shape on reaching the profit goal.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. - Frank Herbert
I got off to a very poor start today. I got sucked into the volatility in the pre-market and began trading without develop a solid plan for the day and evaluating the big picture and possible levels of interest. I didn't have my charts marked up nor did I have a well-developed plan for the open with possible scenarios and my reactions to those scenarios. In short, I did not prepare well enough.
My trades today were mostly impulsive - getting off to a bad start made it more difficult to hold good trades when I did get them. Being in the hole makes me more likely to close a good trade the second it starts going against me. This makes it impossible to get back to positive because I never get the big winners that are necessary to offset all the small losers I'm taking.
It is my goal to get into positions that i can hold for 30m to 90m. To do this I need to have a very high level of conviction to stay in a trade for that long - you cannot count on the market to reinforce your idea, you have to have the conviction, hedge your risk by scaling out or using some means to offset the risk you're taking, and just hold on.
Currently I am trying just to hold a trade for a 30-tick or 50-tick target and hopefully stay in a trade for 15 minutes at least once per day.
Today I came in with a short bias - I expected a test of 107 and then of 6.40 (the low of memorial day). I was not able to get into or stay in trades to catch the moves to these levels. I will continue to work on identifying the major levels of confluence that are references for the market and keep trying to position myself to take advantage of moves to these levels.
My trade report and chart follow:
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. - Frank Herbert
Today was a bit frustrating. I wasn't trading well and fell into bad habits. I was completely thrown off by the spike down after the oil inventories came out and couldn't see that this was just a liquidity vacuum and that buyers came in at 107 (a level that has been very important the last few weeks). I could only see it as a strong move down that would result in another move down so I was selling the major move of the day instead of riding it long.
I then became very defensive and hesitant with my trading and this led to several small losses and small wins which resulted in a long slow bleed of capital from the morning until the close.
I overtraded today by a mile - this happens when I'm trading defensively and without conviction. As I grow more confident in my ability to recognize what is going on and capitalize on it I will be able to hold my trades longer and thus take less trades. In any event I will keep trying to trade less and hold my trades longer - these two go hand in hand and I believe it is through a more thorough analysis that I will become more confident to enter and hold rather than take quick profits.
Finally, I really need to learn to trust my charts and the analysis they represent. I had the important levels marked today but I wasn't able to capitalize on them.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. - Frank Herbert
Today I came in bullish. Yesterday we broke out of a balance day's range at the bottom of the bigger bracket we're in (6.50 to 10.50) - when a market breaks out of balance from the bottom of a bracket like that there is a pretty good chance the market will test the high of the bracket. We also had a gap down from 9.22 or so that we needed to fill.
My first trade was to short the double top at the o/n high. I waited a bit too long to open the short but the market cooperated and quickly moved down. I closed at about 30 ticks which was just me being impatient and not wanting to give back gains. My target was at least 108 if not the vwap low at 7.85 or so.
After that move down I begain shorting any bounces and chopped myself up quite a bit. Finally I did get a winning short but had I just waited for a good reference like vwap or the open I would have been fine. As it was I barely made enough to get me back to even.
Finally I noticed that we put in a higher low and I was not confident enough to buy the 2nd low and as the market started moving up I decided to buy once we broke above the last swing high. I let this trade run for quite some time as I thought it was possible we'd hit 9.30. When we made the 2nd top and couldn't break higher I closed the trade. I was really happy that I held a trade for a long time and was able to capitalize on the continued move higher.
Here are my trades:
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. - Frank Herbert
Today was an ok day. I was not able to enter without hesitation and I was also not able to hold my trades to completion but I did better than I have on average with these things. I began the day bearish and shorted the first move up thinking it was an "open-test-drive" and that we'd test the dval on eth vwap. I closed this trade prematurely when we bounced - this is a knee-jerk reaction that is left over from fading volume spikes on the 1m. Something I need to consciously get rid of.
I then bought for a quick scalp before getting short again. This was OK but I failed to hold the short with confidence and capitulated before the move I was expecting started. I was unable to capitalize on the move down. I then wanted to get long after we tested the LOY. I had a fat-finger error here but mainly was just too chicken to hold the long that I opened. I churned here trying to get into a long I was happy with and finally held a long I opened too far off the bottom.In this case it would have been better for me to just get into that trade at the LOY and walk away until vwap got hit. My final trades were long from the retest of the LOY and o/n low. It took two tries but I got long at 9:45 cst and held but again just didn't hold the trade. I rode my initial entry and then closed and re-opened another trade but just wasn't able to hold the trade once the trading got choppy. I stopped trading once price stalled at 108.
Doing a bit better than previous combines but still have a lot to improve on.
Here's my trade report as of day 8 (yest)
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. - Frank Herbert