After another bad day trading, I think it is best I be held accountable for my trades. A knowledgeable audience that can give me constructive feedback will help me be more careful and mindful. My desire of not wanting to lose face in front of people may just be the one thing I need to stop sabotaging myself.
Since March 2020, I've been scalping SPY. I made 10K in a few days due to unprecedented historical volatility. Of course I gave it all back. After the market returned to relatively normal levels, scalping didn't work anymore; commissions cost more than any profit I made. I dabbled in Forex, Options, and studied as many online courses, videos, and articles as I could. I did a lot of paper trading. Finally, I chose ES due to tax advantages, liquidity, and more flexible hours.
Method:
1) Trade ES 30 minutes before close.
2) Watch the chart for 10-15 minutes.
3) One trade per day, win or lose.
4) Long or short, depending on bias, linked 4 point target, 4 point stop loss.
5) Flatten at signs of reversal (i.e. being stuck in a range for several minutes, no momentum in my chosen direction).
6) Transfer profits to bank.
There are many reasons why I came up with this system. When I began trading in the mornings, I lacked the discipline to stop trading and ended up trading all day, either losing profits or compounding losses. The one thing I could not overcome is to accept a loss; I always revenge-traded and you all know how it turns out. Scalping all day manually was taxing me physically, mentally, and emotionally. I learned that a system and discipline in adhering to the system was more important than any other external factor. The 4 point target, 4 point stop loss was an idea I got from Barry Taylor's E-mini Watch website. I was skeptical but when I tested it and traded live, it worked better than anything I could come up with in the past few months.
On July 12, 13, 14, this system worked in my favor. Since March 2020 I was down -5.5%, and last week this system helped me recover up to -3.1%, but then the last few bad days resulted in -7.5% since March 2020.
Then on July 15 till now, I could not recover. I revenge-traded on July 15, 16, and today July 21. On July 17 and 19, I adhered to the system but had no wins.
July 21:
12:31pm (PT) short at 3249, flattened 3246.5 because it refused to hit target for 8 minutes and showed signs of a reversal. Profit. Then I got greedy. I took 3 more trades and they went against me, leading up to a 2% loss. Really upset that I didn't stick to one trade per day.
Let's see how tomorrow goes.
I would be very grateful to receive constructive feedback and to learn from you all. Being held accountable and the fear of losing face in front of people may just make me stick to the system. Thank you everyone.