Sorry about that. I didn't want to dig up any negative things for you. My view is that: Without metrics and attribution analysis to see whats going on, we might as well be playing pachinko. I'm sure a lot of people have draw downs from this years early performance. Hope things turn up for you in the back half of the year.
It's not about digging up negative things, it's about fixing your errors and improving your trading... Money is the residue of good trading. I keep another journal of my trading and have a really good understanding of where I'm going wrong.
-860 (3 lot) +1310 (1) -190 (1) -990 (3-6) -1360 (1-5) Of course Tuesday I cherry pick the best trade this damn week to only trade one fucking contract. I could still have that god damn position open. Today is just a god damn nightmare. I skip the early long then take 3 reversals that fail. Then when the real one comes I have to leave. So of course I tell myself I should be done and not take it even though there are so many reasons to. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.. I was so completely frustrated by then I almost just put on 10. I'm psychologically broken and can't seem to do this right anymore... let me just get the fucking knife out and slit my wrist so I bleed out that would be less fucking painful.
Yikes. Relax and step back. Renew yourself over the weekend. A lot of guys have been getting chopped up in futures lately. Check out the ags forum. I got stopped out of a 30 tick excursion in CL for chatting on ET. How's that for a bonehead?
I also had a bad week man. You're not alone. A lot of switch ups and headfucks going on even on seemingly normal trades.
I also see a lot of people getting chopped. summer markets. best not to try for home runs in these conditions. GL
My first twenty years of trading I kept two journals, one for the signals and the other for emotions and what little voice was saying what I should do, but didn't. Eventually I used columns and figured out I had reoccurring emotional thoughts and through time I found that what I saw was over 90 % of the time, I was wrong of what I saw after I was in a trade. I actually thought for a very long time that 'they" would force the market to devise price bars to make me feel in a certain way, LOL. I became very good at "feeling" when it was BMW trade/stay longer or let's end the trade early to save a little. But what I became good at was just keeping journals going and not do what emotions were saying and instead, form rules that I could back test but were based on my emotions. So like on the "runners" when I get the BMW feeling, instead of canceling stops, more prone to get out. When I get the feeling to end trade early-add contracts and risk much smaller. Developed Time stops to get to breakeven plus one tick based on winning trades to get to breakeven. Time stops made a huge difference for me. Those commissions really add up, so getting that plus one or two ticks on breakeven trades cut out the commissions altogether after awhile. I notice on your charts when you enter in "wave 3" of course you do well, but getting in late are losses. I have trouble understanding what you identify trend to be? One thing I discovered long ago was so many ticks beyond recent pivot to be continuation of trend or if less than that "number of ticks" was good possibility of reversion to the mean and trend trades not to be taken.
I'll come back to post monthly updates... I'm doing shift work now so I don't trade every day. It's good like that. I clearly snapped for a while and needed time away. To answer that question above, I have never really identified a 'trend', probably to my own detriment. I have read so much about trading and most good traders never suggest betting counter trend. It's an area I've avoided, because it is dependent on time frame. The 1 min might look up, but the 5 is down etc. I know all that really matters is that you define your trades in your own way, then follow it to the T.