Challenging week for me.
Computer downloaded updates overnight that wiped out most of my recent logs and the templates that I had built to record to the journal. I thought I had the updates set to not do anything but notify me when an update was available. This has happened twice before, the other times also wiping out my NT files as that was running at the time. This time, as well as the earlier incidents, had me in a very positive mindset, like I was finally getting somewhere, to find that I had to start over. Interesting.

The 13th was a mental screwup. I let external events set the monkey loose. Should not have traded at all.

On my trade summary sheets, I am writing down the setups I see with timestamps. If I don't take the trade, I am marking that as a mistake.

I lost my trades and execution logs on NT in the update and just have the note logs. I have entered the correct settings now so that won't happen again.

I let the monkey run loose today. Very poor results. The money lost is not bad, but the emotional capital took a hit.
I work nights til 3am and get up around 10 to trade. I had something that I knew I had to do at noon and had just opened up ninja and doing prep work when I was told that the thing had moved to right now. Market had just topped and was about to drop. I was aggravated. The thing we had to do was pick up one of the dogs at the vets from ACL surgery. ACL surgery recovery is pretty involved for the owners, especially when the dog is a big Mastiff with very little discipline. I was allowing the fear of missing out to take over. I finally get back in to my office at 12:40 and promptly screw it all up.

Had one trade on Friday that I found while doing this catchup homework. I went long and made a scalp, 2 points. I was doing other stuff and must have done this unintentionally, thinking it was a sim trade. Not good.

I misunderstood the purpose of a trading journal. I was using it as a diary of sorts. I have recently been asked, in the context of a journal, what is my specific edge? I am working on my trade plan today and then restarting on the journal, with the purpose of the journal to be documenting how well I adhere to the trade plan.

Pocwave 

I misunderstood the purpose of a trading journal. I was using it as a diary of sorts. I have recently been asked, in the context of a journal, what is my specific edge? I am working on my trade plan today and then restarting on the journal, with the purpose of the journal to be documenting how well I adhere to the trade plan.

The journal is for you. If you benefit from it, then nothing else matters. Using it as a diary is fine so long as you review it and learn from it, looking for strengths and weaknesses and then working on them.

Mike

Read and worked on psychology over the holiday time. I am in a shift transition at work. Trading my third day of a TST combine tomorrow. Day one and day two were winners. I am up $700+ on my $1500 target combine.

Spent the morning making up playsheets. Playsheets like a football coach is holding on the sidelines. 2 playsheets, trending and range trading. They are organized for time, pre-open, open and then time slots after that. The playsheets have my trades listed on them, so that I can keep thinking about what is going on. I tend to lose focus during the trading session and just watch price bouncing around.

The purpose of the playsheets is to keep me actively assessing context throughout the day.

I have simplified down. I have 2 monitors with 3 charts up, a 30 minute profile chart, and two short term charts, a 3 minute chart with daily vwap and a 2000 tick chart. The 30 minute profile and 3 min with VWAP are on the left monitor and the 2000 tick chart with the TRO dynamic fib and anaopeningrange is on the right monitor.

Posting game plan in the morning.

I am using a call/context service that has proven helpful so far. Not discussing that in a non-vendor thread.

Pocwave 

Read and worked on psychology over the holiday time. I am in a shift transition at work. Trading my third day of a TST combine tomorrow. Day one and day two were winners. I am up $700+ on my $1500 target combine. Spent the morning making up playsheets. Playsheets like a football coach is holding on the sidelines. 2 playsheets, trending and range trading. They are organized for time, pre-open, open and then time slots after that. The playsheets have my trades listed on them, so that I can keep thinking about what is going on. I tend to lose focus during the trading session and just watch price bouncing around. The purpose of the playsheets is to keep me actively assessing context throughout the day. I have simplified down. I have 2 monitors with 3 charts up, a 30 minute profile chart, and two short term charts, a 3 minute chart with daily vwap and a 2000 tick chart. The 30 minute profile and 3 min with VWAP are on the left monitor and the 2000 tick chart with the TRO dynamic fib and anaopeningrange is on the right monitor. Posting game plan in the morning. I am using a call/context service that has proven helpful so far. Not discussing that in a non-vendor thread.

Sounds like you're doing better.
Would you mind sharing your play sheet?


Edit-
How many trades have you done to get 700/1500?



I'm going to start a combine this month, looking forward to the growth.
Good luck on yours.

OP. You should be aware that the market is designed to take your money.A plethora of vendors (inc topstep) are also there to take your money.Now just suppose you are a market maker in the spoos. Ask yourself what do you need to do to take everyones money. It's fairly simple to collect the retail money all you have to do is move price a few SDs from the VWAP. Retail traders use tight stops. This happens day in day out. Unfortunately there is a common fallacy that going long/short is a 50% shot. Ask yourself if your mathematical chance of a winning 1:1 trade with a tight stop is <40% why would you keep taking shots?

So what's the answer? I am not going to spell it out for obv reasons but some participants are consistently +ev. You want to emulate them as much as possible. Having a fundamental bias, long tf's, large stops and being adequately capitalised are a good place to start. GL