A flat week

Closing out a flat and rather frustrating week in my account, in which, on a few days I made very nice opening gains and then depleted them. Cut profits short. Let loosers run.

I can say I did trade like clockwork. The lack of discipline was failing to "know when to walk away." I squandered my gains. 

Today's trade was to close overnight TSLA lottos. Closed way too early, but was also distracted. 

Stick to opens!

Past several days have been frustrating. I've had nice opens, but second batch of trades knocks me back.

I had been going on the premise that if I'm doing great in the open, then it's "my" kind of day, or I'm tuned in, or whatever, and I keep going. But the 10:00 trades haven't been working. So stop after Round 1. If I come back, it should be much later, after the 5 min setups settle in.

A nice clockwork day gone bad.

Ahhh. Back to clockwork. Best setups. Best plays. And it worked. Flow day. Everything like clockwork. 9:40am StreetSmart Edge platform crashed (with my orders in, and seemed to execute properly).

So now I need to decide: allocate myself more money/more trades? Or call it a day?

Well...fml...I did not call it a day. Currently all the way back down again with CGC(second try,stopped for major pain) and MRNA(nms?! in too big).

Update: And then all hell broke loose with protesters (rioters!) storming the Capitol Building and utter chaos still unfolding. 

Another frustrading day of hacking

What else can I say here (see previous post). Up was down, down was up. I stopped in the morning for small red day, but came back later to make it worse ugh!

I should quit hacking for no other reason than it's a pain to annotate and it's no joy to journal it. Double punishment for losses.

Contingencies. Agressive vs slower markets. How not to lose my pants.

I know what to do when it goes my way: Take off half at +20%, trail stop on the rest.

I know what to do when it goes instantly against me: Eat it at initial stop. 

What do I do in between? This is I think where I suffer. I skim, I add, I get chopped up. I need to think about how to handle this.

Today another struggle day. Up was down (long setups didn't follow through) and down was up (gappers down were bought hard). Let's think about what that means... profit taking? sustained profit taking? How do I know? How do I trade it? Smaller size? Quicker targets? 

I think the answer here is smaller size and flexible targets.

Smaller gives less emotion. 

If I've lately been going 1.5-2x size for aggressive. Need to drop back to 1x size or smaller.

Watch the volume. Watch the Level 2.

Stick to only the most liquid options so I can hold my levels.

If my trade is stalling at 15%, maybe I should take that vs press for 20% pl tgt, especially in chop. Stops are not a good solution, as I can't always eat the spread. Also psychologically, I don't want to always go out on the worst scenario.

Say something to myself like, this is no longer trending, or, this is not the trend I was looking for. ...and find my way out of the trade. But still, when to give up, and when to hang in? Volume. Level 2. Watch the indexes and other movers.

Lack of aggressive follow through

An interesting thought I heard while watching the videos tonight: trading for an aggressive move, but it doesn't give an aggressive move, means scale back.

My treating technique is rather aggressive. Today the aggressive moves weren't happening. I should have dialed it back.

Losing day to open the year

At the open there were a few good picks. The longs didn't sustain (NIO, FUTU, MT). My only short pick (BABA) was my best trade of the day.  At that point I was down very small on the day. And then I started hacking around... making matters worse. What I did do well, though, was take my stops consistently.

At 2 different points, I realized the market wasn't behaving "my way" and that I should be calling it quits. 

The feeling that the trades I was taking "should have worked". This is the sensation that my techniques aren't winning in this market climate. I need to know to stop pressing. At least step back (paper trade!) while it plays out.

But I didn't want to close red. So I dug the hole deeper. My brain should have listened to my gut! 

As I go back through to annotate charts, it seems so clear that my methods weren't working today. I need to recognize those days. Just paper trade against fomo. 

Small losses are cost of doing business. Big losses end careers.

LESSON: Trust that feeling that the market isn't doing my thing, and take the rest of the day off! When I'm losing, every trade seems like the one that will save me, but in reality I'm off kilter and better to stop the bleed.

29 total exits. 8 wins and 21 losses (28% winners).

Good morning 2021!

First trading day of the new year. Some good picks. StreetSmart Edge crash on the open. 

I didn't want to jump in anyway, so restart/recover.

Good luck!