Today I was on the wrong side of the market and my theory was incorrect. I was anticipating a move up near the open and it never followed through. I basically wanted to fade the news from yesterday for a leg or two and that did not happen. I had one small winner, 3 full losers, and finished down -39 ticks. Was I prepared to trade today? I felt a little out of it today, may have been from the Thanksgiving shenanigans. Ultimately though, I was fine. B- Did I patiently wait for opportunities that follow my entry criteria? I don't feel like I did that great of a job with this today. A couple of my trades seemed a bit impulsive and that is not what I want at all. D Did I trail my stop adequately after entry and play good defense? I only had one opportunity to do this and I felt I did okay. B Did I aggressively press my winners? I was on the wrong side of the fence today and did not have much of a chance to do this. NA Did I appropriately add to my winners? I did not have the opportunity to add today. NA Did I follow my daily money management plan? I did, and if I wouldn't have had my one small winner, I would not have been able to take my last losing trade. I never risk losing more than 30-40 ticks in one day. A Was I in complete control of myself today and did I have a champion's mindset? This was sub-par today in my opinion. Two of my four entries was a little too jumpy for my liking and for this reason, I feel like I did not handle myself in a pro-like manner. D What grade would I give myself today for my overall trading performance? C- So I started to follow Yukoner's advice and grade myself to help measure how I am doing. It will be interesting to see how it goes. This week I had 2 winning days, 1 losing day, and finished +260 ticks or so. Overall, it was a great week. Next week I am going to start my 30k combine and will give an update at the end of each day with my results.
For some reason my results today did not get recorded into my TST trading report. I have sent out an e-mail to TST and I will see what they say. Today I got a quick smack-down on a few shorts after the open. Clearly I was on the wrong side of the fence today. Volatility has been insane the last 3 sessions too. I am going to adjust my charts and potentially my stops a little bit so I don't get chewed up by the noise. Short on time tonight, not going to go into too much details. Hopefully they have my trading report fixed tomorrow and I can post my results.
TST fixed my trading report from yesterday and I will post it below. In my previous post I went into a little detail about the day, now I will go into my thoughts on my performance in this post. Was I prepared to trade today? Overall I felt prepared to trade. I felt good and did my homework. A Did I patiently wait for opportunities that follow my entry criteria? I did wait for my entries, I was just on the wrong side of the market today and I felt that my stops may have been too conservative based off of the current volatility with CL. I may have also been a little too jumpy with it being the first day of the combine, but that may not be completely true either. C Did I trail my stop adequately after entry and play good defense? My trades just did not work on this day and I did not have much of an opportunity to do this. NA Did I aggressively press my winners? No winners today. NA Did I appropriately add to my winners? No winners today. NA Did I follow my daily money management plan? I went 4 ticks over what I normally would call my personal daily loss limit. Technically, I slightly broke this rule, but I was more aggressive because of the extreme volatility as of late. I felt it was warranted since it was only 4 ticks over. C Was I in complete control of myself today and did I have a champion's mindset? I felt I was in decent control yesterday. There was a couple moments that I felt were slightly amateurish, but other than that, I though I did fine. I did not let my losses bother me the rest of the day. B What grade would I give myself today for my trading performance? Even though I was wrong on my trades and lost yesterday, I still feel I did what I was supposed to for the most part. B
Good analysis of yourself trading. With current volatility I would give you an "A" for only going 4 ticks over your personal daily loss limit, and still doing three trades. Well done!
Long story short, I screwed myself today in the combine and miscalculated my max daily loss. I am not too happy with myself for blowing the $150 and being so careless. Embarrassing... The bottom line is my stopping point for the day should not be anywhere near the max daily loss that TST requires. I need to use some common sense and readjust.
Thanks for sharing you made a miscalc... the nice thing is you can restart fresh. When I started, I found it took a bit of time to get used to TST combine rules. Now though, I am really glad I have them. They have saved me a lot of money.