At least is should equal profits.....I was nicely profitable prior to inventory and decided to load up a bit and try to catch some of the wave after the number came out.

So I went flat just prior to the news, noticed prices were trying to go long and waited for a bullish number and a bullish signal. I got both with a 100 tick target. I entered, waited and sure enough prices started going pretty quickly in my favor. I was up 20 ticks and then prices started to stall. I bailed on the trade and sure enough, it was a good call. Problem though was I had put in an order on the new platform and forgot to check a box and while I thought it was a stop order, it was a limit order instead which got filled right away and went for a loss and wiped out the profit I had made for the morning prior to the inventory. So the 20 tick winner just got me back to where I had been prior to the number in stead of doubling my profit. Oh well. Lesson learned. Double check everything.

Then I missed the entire sell off because I thought we would be long after the news and kept waiting for a long signal which never really came. I manufactured a few though just so I could trade and of course was stopped out on each.....FINALLY, a real long signal came and I took it......then managed the trade by going to Barnes and Noble with my kid for coffee. I had my 50 tick target on with the stop a few ticks below the LOD and watched from afar via my iPhone futures app. Monitoring only, no trading possible on this app. After I noticed it had exceeded my target, I went home.

In retrospect, even though I made money today, it was done pretty badly. I let a bias influence my trading direction even though EVERYTHING I look at except the news said to be short. And I mean EVERYTHING.

This hasn't happened this badly in a while. This bias thing. It happened a few days ago and I managed a small profit and again today.

I sat through a webinar last night about trading psychology and discovered I probably have a mild case of adult ADD. This can lead to break even trading which is about where I am currently. One of the symptoms is the constant feeling of "being on the verge of greatness". Apparently this has to do with the natural ability to multi task and over analyze stuff.

The speaker suggested some things to do that would help mitigate the mild ADD and some of them I had been doing already and had slacked off and others were new to me. My losing streak coincided with me not doing some of these things. Are these two things related, maybe, but I'll not know until I get back to doing them consistently.

His suggestions were:
1.Buy a system if you can't stay focused long enough to trade one of your own and just let the machine do the trading. ( I don't think I am this bad)
2. Journal
3. Relax and destress as much as possible including using bio feedback options.
4. Frequent breaks during trading ( I have been doing this anyway, now will build them into my daily routine)
5. Brain food...krill oil, ALC, NAC, SAMe, Ginko Biloba, etc....I have some krill oil and will try this. He said about two weeks before any noticeable benefit is realized.
6. Exercise. I had been doing this but fell of the wagon during the holidays. He recommends strenuous exercise before trading. It increases testosterone levels which help mitigate the ADD. Will begin again this weekend.
7. Feed your brain positive thoughts.
8.Classical or other relaxing music in the back ground. (Been wanting to try this anyway)
9. Keep your space clean....car, closet, trading area, etc. Clutter creates an open loop in our brain and it distracts us from being able to focus on the task at hand which is trading. (I'm pretty good at this already but will strive to improve over time.)

I revised my trading log to include a section at the top to check off if I did my morning routine, how much sleep I got, etc. I think I will include diet as well and whether or not I have some of these ADD aids working or not.

I also think I will step up my journaling here on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT). I've not been including charts for a long time and even though I don't recommend anyone trade the way I trade, I do want to put the trades out there in the public eye. I am also going to publish if I can, my PnL once a week along with my weekly score card that grades the daily activity. No need to publish daily but weekly is ok.

I've started printing each day's chart, marking it with a sharpie and attaching it to my trade log along with some notes about the day and then putting the whole thing in a binder. In time, I'll have some nice notes to refer back to.

So one more day left in the year. I will be trading but lightly of course. I have not made any real New Years Resolutions except to strive to be more disciplined in my trading and to do my best to just go with the flow....being in the zone as our friend @ ZTR was so fond of saying. This trading game is pretty simple I think, we make it so complicated with all our wonderful analysis and indicators. I think its as simple as, when prices are going up, get long, going down, get short.....then hold it as long as you can.....of course its nice to have targets and good entry points but anything more complicated than this is probably to complicated.

My moto for the new year is this. MOTBO.....or Master Of The Bloody Obvious.

If you are interested in the webinar I attended, here is the website: https://daytrading-doc.com/
I am not endorsing it in any way, I just found it interesting.

Try not to beat me up to much on the obvious mistakes today.

AZ,

I do Pandora "Meditation" channel. It works great, and incense and candles aren't a bad idea either.

Good post.

Ugh....nasty day today for me. I started ok, was up a little bit and then kept gave it all back plus a little. I was long most of the morning but kept holding for to large of profit targets. My patience thing back fired today! Instead I should have been taking smaller profit targets. Oh well....

I quit after I reached my daily stop loss. I also made a decision today. I have been a ten tick trader for a long time now. Lately I've been trying to hold for more. Frankly, my system does show me larger targets but I have been unable to hold for them. So back to what got me profitable in the first place, 10 tick targets. Occasionally and only if I am up quite a bit and only if I get a HPO, will I target more and then only 20. The 100 tick targets will have to wait.

Here's hoping tomorrow has a bigger range.

aztrader9 

Ugh....nasty day today for me. I started ok, was up a little bit and then kept gave it all back plus a little. I was long most of the morning but kept holding for to large of profit targets. My patience thing back fired today! Instead I should have been taking smaller profit targets. Oh well.... I quit after I reached my daily stop loss. I also made a decision today. I have been a ten tick trader for a long time now. Lately I've been trying to hold for more. Frankly, my system does show me larger targets but I have been unable to hold for them. So back to what got me profitable in the first place, 10 tick targets. Occasionally and only if I am up quite a bit and only if I get a HPO, will I target more and then only 20. The 100 tick targets will have to wait. Here's hoping tomorrow has a bigger range.

Today would have been a better day for smaller targets for sure. Up until the last 15 minutes of the day the CL only had a 0.55 tick range the whole day with most bars range was very minimum 0.15 tick maximum. In fact I saw nothing worth taking today on my 5min chart. The point being adjust your targets based on how the market is trading. There will be days that you can stretch your targets out for maximum profits. It's important to know what kind of market your in.

Back to being a ten tick trader......on a day when 100 tick targets would have been just fine. Oh well, you take the good with the bad....end the day with 8 winners in a row and one small loser I closed out right away after it started going against me.

I also passed on LOTS of trades today.....no other reason than I could not trade fast enough. I'm also using a method that helps filter chop and of a necessity, it sometimes keeps you out of good trades. No matter. I am happy with today's results.

How can you be happy with all the missed opportunity you ask? Simple, I came into today with a plan to be a ten tick trader and take only the best possible trades. I did that almost perfectly today. I bailed on one trade 7 ticks to early and had the small loser at the end. Otherwise it was a fantastic day. Near perfect execution of my trading plan. That has not happened in a long time.

Til tomorrow......

aztrader9 

Back to being a ten tick trader......on a day when 100 tick targets would have been just fine. Oh well, you take the good with the bad....end the day with 8 winners in a row and one small loser I closed out right away after it started going against me. I also passed on LOTS of trades today.....no other reason than I could not trade fast enough. I'm also using a method that helps filter chop and of a necessity, it sometimes keeps you out of good trades. No matter. I am happy with today's results. How can you be happy with all the missed opportunity you ask? Simple, I came into today with a plan to be a ten tick trader and take only the best possible trades. I did that almost perfectly today. I bailed on one trade 7 ticks to early and had the small loser at the end. Otherwise it was a fantastic day. Near perfect execution of my trading plan. That has not happened in a long time. Til tomorrow......

Share a chart?

bluemele 

Share a chart?

Here you go....marked manually of course as I am only charting on NT.

I was expecting a pretty decent move today after the inventory report. In fact, I told my wife I was planning on trading lightly today until after the report and then trying to get on board for a nice runner.....(counter to my ten tick rule but on report days I think its ok if you get it right). That was yesterday. Today I was up nicely at the report time. I watched it fire across the screen as normal, then took a look at the report number.

It was a major bearish number......or so I thought. I was in a hurry and missed the minus sign in front of the number. How that happened I'll never know but it cost me in lost opportunity. For 30 minutes after the number, CL just chopped around. I kept wondering why it would not break down and run after the report.

And it just kept going up which caused me major confusion. So I quit trading...and called a top with my trading partner. I was still convinced it would test the top range and then collapse......boy was I wrong!.

I was up $790 by this time so it was good day already but I was sure hoping for a short run......of course it never came. So I decided to revisit the report....there it was.....the minus sign....MUCH less inventory....supply and demand in action.....I missed 100% of the run I was looking for because I was trading on faulty information. Oh well, that happens sometimes. On to tomorrow.

No chart today as I traded quite a bit and the chart is messy.....and its hard to mark it in real time and I don't feel like cleaning it up right now.

Cheers

aztrader9 

I was expecting a pretty decent move today after the inventory report. In fact, I told my wife I was planning on trading lightly today until after the report and then trying to get on board for a nice runner.....(counter to my ten tick rule but on report days I think its ok if you get it right). That was yesterday. Today I was up nicely at the report time. I watched it fire across the screen as normal, then took a look at the report number. It was a major bearish number......or so I thought. I was in a hurry and missed the minus sign in front of the number. How that happened I'll never know but it cost me in lost opportunity. For 30 minutes after the number, CL just chopped around. I kept wondering why it would not break down and run after the report. And it just kept going up which caused me major confusion. So I quit trading...and called a top with my trading partner. I was still convinced it would test the top range and then collapse......boy was I wrong!. I was up $790 by this time so it was good day already but I was sure hoping for a short run......of course it never came. So I decided to revisit the report....there it was.....the minus sign....MUCH less inventory....supply and demand in action.....I missed 100% of the run I was looking for because I was trading on faulty information. Oh well, that happens sometimes. On to tomorrow. No chart today as I traded quite a bit and the chart is messy.....and its hard to mark it in real time and I don't feel like cleaning it up right now. Cheers

Awesome! That CL moves so nice doesn't it. Thanks for the chart. That helps me gather my senses as to your trading plan from the past few months.

Oh, I thought the same thing as you.

bluemele 

Awesome! That CL moves so nice doesn't it. Thanks for the chart. That helps me gather my senses as to your trading plan from the past few months. Oh, I thought the same thing as you.

You are welcome.