Well done. Nice couple of days to finish off the week.
Good luck for next week.
JS

Today was quite a bad day. I was very distracted due to some personal things going on in my community and so was not able to give my full attention to the trading day. The best trade came right at the open with a move by traders to push the market down into stops below the overnight low. Once price was pushed low enough stops were elected and the traders wanted to establish long positions were able to begin a buying campaign that last almost all day. The market sold off into the close with the final longs liquidating their positions.

Unfortunately I did not recognize this fully - therefore I did not hold the longs I established near the lows. I was looking for another push down for most of the morning and was shorting the uptrend after my initial longs. Towards the end of the day I thought we would get a final push into the close but this ended up being a sell-off into the close. I was losing all day and as I said above, very distracted. One thing I need to learn to do better is recognize when I don't have an edge and just not trade when this is the case - being distracted and not fully engaged means I am not going to have an edge no matter what the market is doing.

here's my trade report after day 10:

No trades today - still dealing with stuff in my community. At least I learned my lesson from yesterday...

Well I've been very affected by a major disaster that's happened in my area (flooding) and my work has been completely disrupted. I've tried to balance work and efforts to deal with the effects of the flooding but it hasn't worked. I don't want to make excuses but I really should have just taken the week off.

So today went quite bad as well - I was not in tune with the market and fought the market all day. I wasn't able to recognize that we had hit the lower range of a channel or range we were in on the longer timeframe and so didn't get on board the buying that was happening all day. As is often the case, in retrospect the day seems straight forward to read and trade - however I was not in sync with what was going on and was not able to align myself and so continued losing until I finally shut things down.

At this point my goal for this combine is simply to roll-over the deposit and to prevent myself from blowing the max drawdown.

Here is my trade report:

Hi buddy, I did a search for flooding in Denver and I read with dismay that many lives have been lost and much hardship has been caused.
This is a horrible tragedy for those closest to the event, and I send my sympathies to you.
It may take some while for you to accept and come to terms with all this.

By my calculation, you have 30 trading days left of which you need to trade on 9. Maybe you could take some time off to attend to the immediate local needs. It will be hard to concentrate and get in tune with the market if you are preoccupied as obviously you are. You do not have to trade just because the market is open and you know that it will be much harder to get the result you want if your state of mind is not at least GOOD. You probably need to be in EXCELLENT shape to compete.
A short break could give you space to deal this event and maybe give more perspective to what you are trying to achieve in the Combine.
Best of luck.

Well @jmsUK - you were correct for sure. I traded this morning and dipped below my max drawdown and so tried to get back above and blew my daily loss limit. I was fighting the market all the way down. I wasn't able to trade much last week and I've gotten out of the flow of the market. I'm not in touch with what oil is doing. I could tell that we were headed lower and I wanted to get short just after the open. I didn't get my short filled and ended up fighting the market (buying) all the way down. When I finally tried a short trade I got stopped out just below my daily loss limit before the market tested back down.

I wasn't prepared nor did I have the focus required. I am taking a trip to visit some friends at the beginning of next week and wanted to mostly finish my combine prior to leaving. I will need to start another one when I return. Hopefully I will be able to give it the focus it requires.

Here is my trade report for today (the last day of my combine):

A break will be very beneficial for you (and for everyone from time to time). This trading is very intense.
Have a good one and, as we all know, the market is still going to be there and giving amazing opportunities any time you want to get involved.
I think the 20 day Combine is a good length: it gives time to recover from a few bad days, gives TST long enough to see what you are like and allows one to take time and be selective about setups etc.
Anyway, good luck with the restart.