Did I think I could resist a trading day? Am I addicted? Maybe? It just seems too easy to sit down at my desk for a few minutes and squeeze a few bucks out of the market. However!!... yesterday I made an imprudent IWM trade. It was nms and it messed my gains. I've been kind of slacking on this in general - hacking at nms. Remember: I can't trade just anything.
I am reinstating a zero-tolerance policy on undisciplined trading. Last night I moved 75% of my cash out of my account to make sure to keep it small for several days. It's Thanksgiving week. We're in a several day market range. This market calls for strict discipline.
Several picks this morning, oddly enough. But anticipating a thin market I need to be selective.
ZM caught my eye early as a big gap down. Opening minute a down bar, but market initially popped. I need a pullback. Then it popped to ndh. Now I want short below vwap. This was trading wild, so I took a starter position. I wanted in, just in case, but wasn't ready for size.
Before I could even enter my stop order, it popped to ndh (would have stopped me). Another volatile bar, and then I put my stop above that new high. Entered the stop for full position size (in advance of building up). When it dropped below vwap and market was also dropping, I got full size. Stop was already in place.
Then something very interesting that I want to look into more. The bracket order. Because ZM options trade wild, I opened my initial starter with a 20% profit bracket on it. As the option crossed the profit target I worried the bracket wasn't going to execute. but it executed WAY better. This also happened a previous time I have used a bracket like this. I wonder how it works, but based on 2 instances, a bracket seems better than my usual limit order. I wonder how it works for stops, but generally I don't use option pricing for my stops so I don't see how I could set that in a brackte.
Back to the trade. After I took off a too-small piece for my pltgt, I tightened tolerances and skimmed off other partials. Another push down gave me a great gainer and final bit out on a stop.
After this glorious trade, I implemented another bit of discipline I'm trying to impose and I quit my platform. No data capture, no recap, no looking around. File-Exit. Came back several minutes later to restart, capture data, and quit again. No messing around! Use strong guardrails to backstop myself.
