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Much lighter schedule at work today. I do have several meetings but they are all conference calls so I can stay in my office and trade. Price action yesterday was a bit more familiar looking so hopefully today there will be some sort of continuation of that. If we get back to the jumpy, whippy stuff again it will be a difficult day for me to make trades. Aside from that type of price action showing itself I am really going to try to get into the trades I should be today. I want to be decisive and focus on my process at all times. It's been hard to do that for about a week now because of various circumstances but I should have the last 2 days of the week to be able to do this, provided the ES is cooperative in terms of how it is moving.
Overnight the Asian session was really flat while the European session opened with some bullishness that has since flattened out. The 8:30 economic reports didn't really offer anything of note either. Price moved in a very start-stop way yesterday so today could be pretty choppy.
End of Day
I have a few things to get done at work and I'm not really that comfortable with where price is and what it's doing here anyway so I'm wrapping up early.
I was a lot more engaged with my trading today and I felt pretty good about what I was seeing. My chart has too many "price ran" comments near potential entry spots again but there's not 1 thing, aside from adjust my criteria, that I can do about that. I am waiting a little longer for what I'd call additional confirmation which is something I am consciously doing to keep me away from chop. I'm aware that by doing this I risk losing entries on trades like today, particularly the long in the 42/43's just prior to 11:30. That's a trade I would have loved to be in as it's exactly the kind of runner that I am trying to catch but I didn't get my limit order filled; I was really about 2 ticks away.
While on one hand it does suck that I missed that trade which went on to just grind higher for much of the day, I understand that this will happen. The alternative would be to limit my confirmation and get involved in more decisions and potentially more trades and reversals. I know that at this point I won't be able to do this and trade consistently all day on certain types of days; I'll just wear down and stop trading and that's not something I want to do.
So I'm sure that today was fantastic for a lot of people in terms of P/L but it wasn't for me. From an efficiency and decision making standpoint, I did well and stuck to my plan. I skipped a few potential trades based on criteria in my plan and entered (and tried to enter) in the places I should have been. In the end price was still a little too jumpy to allow me to capitalize on the opportunities that I saw. This isn't surprising and is something I have seen doing my manual back testing.
The march higher that took up the late morning and early afternoon was far from convincing to me. While it was slow and steady it also appeared to me to be weak and susceptible to reversing. However, the longer it just went, the more I felt that it just might be one of those days.
I did sell after the high/swing high at 58.25 and held that trade for 50 minutes before price came back and tagged my stop which had been moved to break even. I was really trying to get a reversal to a long position lower down but once again, price just ran on me and hit my break even stop before it filled my limit orders.
I am pleased that I applied my process today. I didn't get frustrated or anything about missing the large move higher. I'm paying close attention to my mental state because it's been very negative lately, but I have also been pretty sick during that same time. This trading stuff, it's a lot more stressful that I probably give it credit for. Add that stress to me feeling like crap to the ES acting oddly and being more difficult to read/trade than it has been lately and I guess I get a negative mental state.
I'm glad I'm feeling better, though I'm still not 100%, and I'm glad my mental state is improving and going back to being more positive.
Really narrow range overnight, just nothing going on at all. There are a couple of economic news releases after the open with PMI at 9:45 and Home Sales at 10:00 but it's a light day after that.
From a trading perspective this has been a really off or odd week. The number of potential trade entries is way down versus the average from a weekly perspective. My charts are littered with "price ran" notations and while this is something I've seen in the past and expect in the future the rate of occurrence is much higher this week. It's just not been my week up to this point.
With that being said, I'm not getting killed P/L wise. So that part I'm happy with as I know that there will be a point, maybe very soon, where what I'm looking at and looking for will be in sync with the ES. I'm just going to try as best I can to stay patient, focused and apply my process consistently so that when that time does come I can capitalize on it.
12:20
I think I'm going to be done trading my account today...I'll just paper trade the rest of the day out. I did trade my plan perfectly this morning for a while but I just could not keep up. The ES has been pretty choppy, which is okay, but I don't have the mental energy to really focus today. It's hard for me to really understand why it's so hard for me to just forget about everything else and just trade my plan. I keep running through too many what-if's and that's taking a toll at times. I suppose that at this point I just need to relax a lot more. I'm still too focused on each individual trade and not the bigger picture. I'm also really, really tired today for some reason. I'm going to shut my office door in a bit and close my eyes for a while and take a work nap. Maybe that's got something to do with my focus. Last week I had a lot of physical energy, lifted weights every morning, etc. This week I was getting over being sick and was tired a lot. Maybe that's all there is too it. I've heard people talk about how difficult it is to trade when you are not right physically so maybe that's what my deal is.
Today I had 1 hit, 1 scratch and 1 loss which was not a full stop, it was a reversal from a long position to a short position and just a 3 tick loss. Overall the day was profitable. Overall the week was profitable, if only just.
In looking back and putting things into perspective, this week was a little bit profitable. Last week was a little bit profitable. The week before that, which was on sim, was profitable as was the week before that. I would have been up nicely last week if I also include my sim trades, but I'm just counting the real ones.
So all in all I should be pleased. 4 consecutive weeks of profitability is good. Moving from sim trading to real trading is a step forward. The transition has been more difficult than I anticipated. I'm more nervous at times than I thought I would be. Today I wasn't really nervous or anxious much while I was in those 3 trades but as soon as I tried to get into the 4th one I just froze, then I said I was done. Maybe I just need to get more familiar with those moments and feelings and either work through or around them. I wasn't long ago that I was having a lot of trouble getting into my sim trades, just like I am now with my real trades. I worked through that so I'll use the same approach again here. All in good time I suppose.
I'm not sure what I'll be doing over the weekend. I feel like perhaps manually back testing an older contract just to go thorough and see what I can see. But I did a lot of work last weekend, much more than normal, so maybe I'll just take a break and rest up and be ready to approach Monday not being sick and tired.
Pretty crazy gap up open on the ES...you don't often see those happen, at least not a Globex gap.
Should be an interesting day with the news gap. No economic news today. I'm going to again focus on just following my process and ignoring individual results as much as possible.
15:10
Not a great day in terms of discipline and following my trading plan today. I started off okay but the early chop shook me up and I ended up losing my conviction to trade. The choppy start should not have been that surprising given the size of the gap up; I knew that we could have a gap n' nap sort of day. I took a few paper cuts while price was chopping lower and skipped the 1 entry that ended up running; long from 67.50; a trade that's still working - at least on paper.
My efficiency for today is 62%. There's really no way I can afford to not be at 100% because I could end up missing THE trade that makes the day profitable, or at least less costly from a P/L perspective.
Understanding that trading this morning was not the easiest, and understanding that price was really choppy around the 65's-67's, I get that it's not going to be easy. At the same time, I really need to either make the commitment to myself to do this or I need to take a step back until I can do just that. I was doing really well on sim and making some nice progress, but I've hit some big challenges mentally trading real money.
My P/L isn't taking a hit as I've still managed a couple of profitable weeks but I cannot continue to trade scared, which is what I did today. I am going to take this week and continue what I am doing but if I cannot make some progress in terms of following my trading plan and just following my outlined process and not trading by fear then I am going to go back on sim. I would go back sooner but I want to see if I can at least make some noticeable progress this week. With me starting live trading during the shortened holiday week, and with last Monday being a European bank holiday, I'd like to see one solid week and judge myself from there.
I'm not sure what it is that's causing me to trade scared and where the confidence I had a few weeks ago has gone. It's definitely a lot harder than I anticipated it being.
Feeling scared is often caused by taking too much risk in relation to the account size.
You should not be concerned about your account size when you're in a losing trade. If you are, your emotions start to affect your decision process and you start to do irrational things. Speaking from own experience, he he.
Once there is no more money on the line, the rational mind takes over again.
The human mind is very interesting
Michael Dougles writes about this in his book "Trading in the Zone".
Bullish price action overnight in both the Asian session and European session and the ES is now approaching the 3/17 and 3/21 highs. There's some economic news at 10:00 but I'm not sure how much that will matter either way. It could be another tight day if price is going to grind it's way up.
I'm going to continue focusing my efforts today on just following my process. I feel pretty good now, but the action has yet to begin. I'll try to keep my current state of mind intact for as long as possible today.
10:10
Price is definitely moving up this morning but it also does not have the feeling of strength to me. This isn't to say that the ES won't just continue grinding higher all day, it certainly can, but I also don't see (yet) clear signs of a 1-way trend up day.
12:40
I've made two trades today and I've been pretty comfortable in both. Price has not really been moving at all since the bullish run off the open and it's been quite choppy over the last few hours. Perhaps this afternoon will open up a bit and we will see some movement beyond the IB. I hope I can stay focused and continue to trade my plan and process.
End of Day
I did a lot better today, though I was not profitable. It's as if I have the reverse Midas touch so far this week. I got into the trades I should have today and skipped 1 that I should have. I did skip a short off the the 89.25 high that did fit my plan, though I did paper trade it. Of course, that one hit with an exit on the close for +3.50, which would have made my day profitable. So why did I skip that trade? Because I'd been fading all day and I just didn't feel like continuing to fade - even though I wasn't really getting beat up...I just gave up. I figured that shorting that move would get me stopped out. So again, the trade I skip ends up being the one good one.
In some ways trading was difficult today as price had a pretty narrow range after the opening move higher. In other ways it was easy because there were not an overwhelming amount of trade entries for me to potentially take. Price did chop around for a while but I had a pretty good handle on that.
Despite not hitting all of my entries today I think I did make a little progress. I had some pretty high anxiety in a few of my trades today but I did not deviate from my plan while in the trades even though there was a lot of temptation to do so.
At the same time my methodology is based on getting 1 or 2 "good" trades each day to at least get me to break even and patch all of the paper cuts I will be taking. By skipping the trade that I skipped, I took all of the paper cuts but didn't take the patch. The trade that was profitable wasn't even a big winner, just +14 ticks; but that would have made me net profitable for the day. So here again it's the consistent application where I'm letting myself down. That's what I will work to correct tomorrow.
Really dead overnight, virtually no range at all. There's the EIA report today at 10:30 but that doesn't seem to be a big mover normally despite what Bloomberg says.
Same deal today for me. I'm expecting a lot of chop today, particularly in the morning. I'm thinking through this now and deciding what I will do. Should I just trade through the chop like my plan says to do or should I understand that we're now locked into this tight trading range and just stand aside until there's some resolution of price? My bias is bullish, so should I just look for a long trade to enter and skip the short trades until I see evidence that changes my bias? There are so many days where I would have reason to believe that there would be some good 2 way trading and although there's a period of chop nearly every trading day I wouldn't have reason to believe there would be more than normal. Today is just not one of those days.
So I have a few decisions to make in the next 30-40 minutes. I'm leaning toward sitting out the open and then looking to trade the edges today unless I see something in the opening sequence that would suggest something loosing up today. I think in some ways I could view this as being scared or not trusting my plan/method but I'm more looking at it as considering context and being prudent.
I get e-mail's from time to time that try to sell me systems, chat rooms, etc. I don't go exploring too much these days but early on I was poking my head into just about every rabbit hole and that's resulted in quite a bit of spam that I'm still unsubscribing from. There are some that I keep because there are sometimes valuable insights. This is a copy/paste from one I got this morning that I thought was pretty much spot on, particularly that part that's underlined.
Note: To paraphrase a well known head of state, "Who knew trading was so complicated?" The fact is, that just believing that statement is true demonstrates a complete lack of understand of what trading is all about.
Trading is not complicated. Trading is just a series of either/or propositions.
Either the market will go up or the market will go down.
Either you will enter a trade or you won't enter a trade.
If you enter a trade you will enter either Long or you will enter Short.
As a trade evolves, on each bar, you will decide to remain in the trade or you will decide to exit the trade.
Once you exit the trade you will show a profit or you will show a loss.
That's it!! Trading is not complicated, BUT trading successfully is not easy either. The reason trading is not easy is because market movement is caused by factors beyond our control. Psychological factors, fundamental factors, economic factors and geopolitical factors all combine to effectively randomize much of market movement.
The results of all these factors show up in the price chart, but those who believe some mathematical system can decode future events are fooling themselves,
If multi-billion dollar brokerages that, can afford huge computer mainframes and rooms full of programmers can go belly-up trying to decode the market, how can you believe for a second that some "system" that runs on you home computer is the "Holy Grail."
11:30
I can see now that I made an error in deciding to just sit out the open. Price bounced right off 84.25 which was a support level I had and I got a long entry reversal just after this at 86.0. Either just trading my plan because I really don't know what will happen at any moment, or at least trading with my bias would have been the better option as I did miss a profitable trade that fit my criteria with price now at +8.0 points from my entry. That would have been a nice one to catch, and is really exactly what I'm trading to catch.
I suppose it's just another lesson for me to learn. I tried to outsmart my plan and overthought the situation I suppose. Maybe one day I will learn...
12:25
Odd news whip there on the ES. Things looked like they were flying high before price just crashed. I read something about reports that Trump wanted to withdraw from NAFTA that caused the reaction. Withdrawing from NAFTA is worth about 8 ES handles? Odd stuff.
End of Day
Potentially a really good day for me today but I just got slammed right after 12:30. My daughter texted me from school that she was not feeling well so I went to pick her up and take her home. When I got back I got roped into a few meetings where I had to leave my office. I missed a bit of chop near the close as well as a runner that would have been profitable. I was actually at my desk around 15:20 to paper trade the short there. I had a meeting at 15:30 so I knew I could not actually take the trade but I was able to record it as I was watching the DOM to confirm the price fill.
Just taking my trades to plan today would have been excellent as there were 2 trades that ran for larger profits, the long just after the open and a short just prior to the close. I skipped the long based on what I believed would happen today - perhaps an error, and I skipped the short at the close because I could not stay in my office.
Just seeing these work out will help my confidence level. Seeing that today was very profitable will help my confidence level even though I did not and could not participate. I did enter 1 trade today just a few moments before my daughter texted me. I exited that one where I entered and left...not much I could do about that one.
Maybe tomorrow will be less busy than today and maybe the ES will provide some larger moves like it did today. Today was good to restore a little bit of my confidence, so I'm happy about that. I always seem to question whether what I am wanting to do is actually not suicidal from a P/L perspective. Based on what I have seen it's not, but in the moment it's easy to forget that.
Once again basically zero overnight activity. The ECB rate announcement was this morning and rates are unchanged but that didn't do anything meaningful to price. There was a variety of US economic news at 8:30 and most failed to meet consensus but that's not done anything to price either. There's only pending home sales at 10:00 and EIA gas at 10:30 and those are not really market movers.
I did a lot of thinking last night and this morning about my inability to consistently trade my plan and why that is. I know that it's fear but what I can't rationalize is why I actually care so much. I'm not doing this for a living, even though I'd like to some day. I don't expect to make so much money that I'll retire in 12 months; I realize that's fairy tale kind of stuff. I've got plenty of capital in my trading account and more money outside of that to re-fund it if I grind it down to zero. I want to make progress but what kind of progress am I making by hesitating and finding excuses for not trading certain parts of the day? I am letting my fear guide my decisions which is the biggest impediment to my progress at the moment. It's causing me to lose trust in my plan and when I don't trust my plan I'm not able to apply it with consistency. There's still a lot to ponder, but I'm going to try again today to just focus on the process of entering (or skipping) and exiting each trade based on my plan.
One of my daughters is home sick today and I've already received about 20 text messages in the 30 minutes I've been at work. Apparently the neighbors cows got out and are roaming the streets. I have several meetings this morning so between that, the texts and normal work stuff I'll have plenty to keep my mind occupied.
11:00
This morning was pretty hard to deal with as price was extremely choppy and I got several trade signals to consider. I skipped the first one based on price jumping too far before I could gain entry which is valid per my plan. The second I took (on the chart) and I got stopped out. I wasn't bothered because it was a good trade. I again shorted in the same area after price spiked and just sat in the trade. It looked for a while like price was going to reverse higher which for me may have called for a reversal of the short into a long position. I prepared for that possibility while observing my trade management guidelines.
I was getting a little frustrated in my head because it felt like price was just going to chop around and do nothing. I did realize that at some point today, price would break out of the narrow IB range and that my plan is based around catching these larger moves. So I just distracted myself by doing some other things and walking around a little. Watching price just wash back and forth is not something I was able to handle obviously.
Eventually price started to move my way, to and through my initial target. I did make an adjustment to my trade management criteria not so long ago where I would not simply place a limit order at my target but let price run through if it had momentum. Based on everything I had seen this was an easy way to increase P/L.
I exited the trade on a second failure to push lower for +5.25. Price at that time had moved 8 handles in fairly short order and was not immediately going lower as far as I could see so I thought it was a good spot to exit.
I'm pleased I decided to stick to my plan, even though there was some frustration building. This will hopefully boost my confidence a bit and give me some strength to manage my negative emotions that have been holding me back over the last few weeks.
End of Day
So I had a little better day today. Not too long after the trade above closed out I had a meeting and then went home to tend to my daughter. When I got back to work I got hit with a few things and really could not focus on trading. So from that perspective I did really well during the time that I could trade but I was not able to put myself through the mental grind of an entire day.
I did outperform my "to plan" trades today when considering the entire day as the trades in the afternoon were net negative from a P/L perspective. As I was reviewing after the close, once again I see that if I were to just take the trades available to me that fit into the criteria I'm looking for I would be ahead of where I actually am from a P/L perspective. In fact, there's really never been a period when I could not make this statement; I'm never better than my plan and always worse.
So taking this thought to the next logical point, what is it that I should be fearful of and what am I actually fearful of? I am actually fearful of trading my plan. But clearly this fear is misplaced and illogical because my plan is consistently better than I am. So I really should be fearful of the fear of trading my plan. How do I become fearful of this fear to the point that I'm doing everything I can to act against it? How do I react in the moment when I have this fear of trading my plan and realize that I should be fearful of this fear and how do I put that to use?
These are the things I should be pondering this evening and perhaps over the weekend.
As an aside, I've spent very little time in review this week and last and really didn't do much at all over the weekend. I'm kind of at the point now where I know what I want to do and when I want to do it and how I should be doing it. There's never really a moment when there should be confusion. There of course can and will be times when I'm not 100% sure of the price action or how volume is playing a role in something but these are the exceptions and if I just skip these then it won't really change anything because these times are rare. And these are not things that I've been skipping or hesitating with lately anyway, it's the obvious signals where I get this misplaced fear.
I guess this says that I'm comfortable in my plan and what I should be doing. The real struggle at this point is mental. I would love to be able to post statistics for a series of my trades and the results, whether that be a week's worth or 20, 30, etc. But I cannot do that because I'm making far too many errors still. It's eliminating these errors that I need to be doing.
I remember watching several webinars by Morad (FT71) and he says that eliminating trading errors is a big step in the process of getting to consistent profitability. I've kind of been at this point before, the elimination of trading errors, but that was on sim. This is proving to be a much larger hurdle.
Anyway, I kind of like the "be fearful of the fear" approach; I think I can work with that. I don't have a lot on the docket tomorrow so maybe it will be a little slower at work and I'll see if I can make use of the fearful of the fear approach.
Mixed overnight with Asia down slightly and Europe up and past yesterday's close. From an extended view, we are still locked inside this trading range between 94 and 81 and the ES has developed a very thick composite volume profile here with the VA between 88 and 82. I guess that means that we could chop around a lot as long as the ES is in this area and unless price breaks out on news, fading moves outside this area are probably the smarter ones.
Today I'm going to try to be mindful of my fear and just as mindful that this fear is misplaced; it's really the fear that I should fear. There's nothing to fear but fear itself. If I can convince myself of this, I should be able to trade my plan more effectively today.
As far as the other stuff goes, the kids are in school and my schedule is pretty light today. The schedule has been light for the last couple of days and it just got really busy, but Friday's are usually pretty calm around here so I should be able to put my mind to trading today.
12:10
195 decisions. I really only need to make a decision with my trading every 2-3 minutes at most. On a day like today there was really no decision to be made in the first hour of trading, and every day I will have periods of dead time where I don't need to and can't make a decision.
But, the theoretical maximum number of decisions I could possibly make in 1 day is probably around 195. Looking at yesterday as an example, and considering I just wasn't able to trade the entire session, I see that I had maybe 15-20 possible decision points.
I think that one of the things that is really giving me a hard time is making way too many decisions at times when I don't need to make one. I have not counted them but there's no way I am making less than 195 decisions each day when I trade; I'm probably making 10x that many. As I'm looking to enter a trade, or after I have entered, I have been constantly looking at this and that and considering many possibilities. These are all decisions that are wasting my mental capital.
What I should be doing is making observations when price is around a key area but not making decisions. I should hold off on that until the time comes. When I'm in a trade, I can evaluate what's going on every so often - like every couple of minutes, but it does not need to be second by second. I don't need to monitor things that closely and make all kinds of decisions; I'm not scalping.
I'm not sure why this occurred to me just a bit ago, but it did. I think this constant decision making might be amplifying my anxiety/fear. If I can cut down on the number of decisions I am making during the day, I might be able to mitigate some of that anxiety/fear and I might be able to sustain my trading all the way through a session, rather than just running out of gas part way through.
15:40/End of Day
Today is like a coin, two distinct sides. First, I stuck with my plan 100%. No hesitation, no errors, nothing. I didn't really have any anxiety or fear at all today - that was nice. This is the 1st day that I can say that I have operated at 100% efficiency. I wasn't too busy with work today so I was able to focus enough on the market to trade the entire session.
In terms of the trading itself, what a shit day. A nice drop off the open and right into chop all day...what a pisser. I'm just taking the trades I see so the long term volume profile, trend lines stuff interests me but does not play into my decision-making in terms of trading. However, going into today I would have thought price being around the 78/79 area would cause a reaction. Wrong.
I was short when the ES dropped under 79 to 78.25. I thought that we might be standing at the ledge at that point, ready to slip over...nope. I went long after that (per plan) and we re-tested that area, stopping at 78.75 and I'm thinking "okay, here we go bulls". They got price up to 81.50 and just gave up. At this point (about 15:30) I just decided to call it a day. I wouldn't even call today a tug of war because no one was playing - there was just no volume to be had. I guess people just decided to have a 3-day weekend after the market ran down this morning.
I watched a webinar yesterday from GruttePier, really good stuff there. He said something near the end about not really worrying much about your P/L, just track and worry about your execution (paraphrasing). From an execution standpoint I was spot on today and that's what's most important, perhaps that's the only thing that's important. I did lose 14 ticks today, but considering I was 0/5 on winning trades that's good. Not every day will be crap like this of course. If I can continue to consistently apply my method I know the P/L will take care of itself in a good way.
On another note, it seems to me that the ES since the day before Good Friday has been harder to trade. Price action is choppy a lot more and there have been fewer trades that have run a bit. I'm not sure if that's just me reading it wrong or if it's a thing but my results (to plan, not just trades I've taken) have been much different before and after 4/13.
I'm not going to do much over the weekend. I'm pleased about my execution for today, so I'll just enjoy that. My work schedule looks pretty light next week so that's good. We've got FOMC coming next week so maybe that will get the ES moving again.
Bullish overnight although much of Europe and Asia is celebrating Labor Day and it's a Bank Holiday in the UK. There's ISM at 10:00 and with the holiday it might be a low volume type day. I will be aware of this as it seems like SR areas tend not to be as well respected when volume is very light.
I had a perfect Friday and I did a lot of thinking over the weekend and also played with some numbers a bit just looking at results and things. I didn't do any back testing although I did look back at a few days last week just to go back over the action...not really looking to make adjustments or anything.
I would really like to trade today with my Friday attitude. I was very relaxed on Friday and just traded my plan. There was a trade late in the day that I really didn't want to take, I thought it looked like a bad idea but I took it anyway. That's what I want to do today, if it fits my plan I should just take the trade. I'm not at the point where I should be skipping trades because they look bad.
I believe 2 things were really helpful for me on Friday. First, I realized that the fear of trading is hurting me badly and that I should be much more afraid of the fear of trading than I should be of being afraid to trade my plan. Fear the fear basically. The other thing that I think was helpful was me realizing how many decisions I was making each day and how the vast majority of them were unnecessary. I have been way over managing my trades, micro managing them to an unnecessary degree. I am not scalping but I've been managing them like I am scalping. I realized that this over management is likely contributing to my mental fatigue which has been causing me to shut down part way through the trading day. On Friday I had at most 20 decisions to make, and that's pushing it. And while I made way more than 20 decisions it was way less than most other days.
So today I'm going to focus on those things. Fear the fear, trade my plan and only make decisions when I need to (cut down on the chart watching). I'd like to have another good day in terms of following my process and take a step toward making these things habitual.
10:55
So far 1 for 1 today in terms of execution. I was not anxious or fearful although I nearly missed the entry because I was doing other things. Once I noticed it I did not hesitate. My trade came pretty close to getting stopped out but I didn't really worry about it; I was just focusing on the fact that I was trading my plan.
I do need to pay close attention and be aware of the anxiety of the unknown. This crept in a little bit after the trade started moving for me into profit. It's kind of an anxious excitement sort of thing. It did not cause me to alter my plan today and when I felt it I just got up and took a walk around for a few minutes which helped. I don't mind that feeling but I want to be aware of it so that I can manage it and not do something that would harm my trading. Getting away from my screen for a minute or two helped (it usually does) so I'll continue to use that approach.
12:45
I can't help but wonder if we're not in for another Friday type afternoon; all of the fun in the morning with the drop and bounce and just chop in a narrow range for the rest of the day.
12:53
Of course as soon as I type this price drops 5 points in about 90 seconds...
13:00
I guess it's because Trump is talking and saying a few things that's causing this whip.
13:30
So the ES is basically back to the pre-Trump comment prices. That was a hell of a drop and pop...I wonder how many people got jammed on that one?
End of Day
100% efficiency today. I did make a mistake in setting a stop too tight; I was kind of debating where I should put it when I placed it and I went with the lower value - I kind of know better. But that's basically it...a good day otherwise.
I was getting anxious later in the day but I was able to work through it and place my trade as per plan. I'm not real pleased about the anxiety but I am pleased that I could work through it and execute anyway.
In terms of price action today was again poor. I know it's going to be like this while we are pinned up against the ES ATH and I know that I just need to execute the plan but it still kind of sucks. I was on what ended up being my last week of sim trading when the ES was really moving well and providing very good opportunities. Since that time (the week before Good Friday), it's been mostly crap IMO. Ah well, I know there will be better days ahead as far as that part goes.
The FOMC meeting begins today with the rate announcement tomorrow. Part of me is hopeful for a rate hike to shake us out of this range, but maybe no hike will push the ES to new all time high's. Conventional wisdom is that no hike is already priced in, but is it 100% priced in?
Yesterday I traded well. I made 1 error in a stop placement. Based on price action I had 2 choices and I took the closest one and I got nicked; picking the one a bit further away would have kept me in the trade. I generally should be taking the stop that gives me a little more cushion given that set of circumstances. I've made a mental note of it and I did move on yesterday and kept going and will do the same today.
I want to continue working my mental approach today and I want to continue limiting my analysis and decision making points. I had a little more anxiety than I would have liked late yesterday. I had a profitable day at that point and I was trading money and not the chart. This did not impact my decision making, but it did induce some anxiety. I need to practice keeping my focus in the proper places today.
I don't really have any expectations for today. I've seen very quiet pre-FOMC days and I also have examples of wild ones. I've got my plan and I will attempt to just trade it without hesitation and try to not get stressed about it.
11:10
No trades yet today. I would have liked to short the pop off the open, and I was stalking it but price ran away from me before I could get an entry...not the first time that's happened and it won't be the last. I look for some confirmation and while that saves me from entering trades with poor outcomes a lot there are times that I will miss a runner like this morning. That's a part of the plan and something I have manually back tested and accounted for and I'm fine with it.
I don't really see much on the horizon in terms of good locations for trades. It's also a very slow day at work today so I don't really have anything to do so I'm reading random stuff on Wikipedia while keeping an eye on the ES.
End of Day
I use the opening 40 minutes to measure the initial balance. Today is the first day since mid-December 2016 that my IB was not broken. Maybe after tomorrow things will loosen up some but a 7 point range with no IB extension is not great for trading.
I'm not entirely pleased with my performance today. I did some things well, including passing on a potential trade based on my plan (which would have stopped out) and I got into a trade that fit into my plan; though it was not 100% clear. I pondered the decision to enter the trade for a few minutes then decided to go ahead. Based on what I am looking for it was right on the edge.
So, I shorted the failed push higher just after 12:30 that stalled at 88.0. I held through the re-test which stopped at 87.75 (good news I thought) but exited after it just wasn't going anywhere...I waited around an hour. I knew I needed to be patient on this one but after an hour I just wasn't feeling it so I bailed at break even. This is not a part of my plan.
I did paper trade the rest out and I would have stopped out +1.0 as I moved my stop down near the close based on the price action. Had I held out and not bailed I probably would have taken an exit before this, so there was some profit to be had. I'm more disappointed that I bailed too soon though. I'm going to mark this down as a failed exit and just move on. While I don't think it was exactly stupid to just get out of the trade it certainly wasn't according to my rules so it's an error. I was not nervous or scared or panicked or anything, I just didn't like the idea of sitting in a trade for an hour, it being offside for most of that time and the one push lower being bought back up. Oh well, another lesson to learn.
Tomorrow I will try again. Who knows what will happen pre-FOMC announcement but I suppose narrow and choppy is the best forecast. I will take the same approach as I did today, yesterday and Friday though and trade the plan as best as I can. After the announcement I will wait a while (30 minutes at least) to let the dust settle before I will consider a trade. I'm not too comfortable trading post-FOMC announcement yet but I have done this before, although on sim.
