yah, you're right. its completely reactionary right now with only a few basic indicators/variables that I think about consciously
Since you trade with the trend, I was assuming the reason you took a short trade counter-trend was because the previous high of 1333.50 did not break by even a full point, hence the term "failed breakout" (or fbo). One big difference between live trading and sim is that in sim if you have a mental stop and a surprise news announcement runs price against you 20 points or more (I believe a surprise Fed announcement once ran ES 40 points several years ago; there's a scary thread about stuff like that somewhere on this site), your sim account can easily absorb the nasty loss, whereas in your live account, by the time you go to exit your trade at the level of your mental stop, price might be three times farther away and still running.
+1 In times of high pressure and speed, without a stop, you have NO idea what your emotions will make you do if the market runs WAY against you.
yah, it was based on the 1333.50 high. didn't know what fbo was. yah, i understand the risk of not having hard stops. But at this point im really just learning what my own personal threshold is for loss and gain. Im basically trying to learn my own trading psychology, and what makes me feel good and bad during the position, documenting my thought on paper really quickly, and then moving forward. I don't want to arbitrarily set up risk management techniques, because i believe they are different for each individual. Like I said, right now it looks like i'll be placing stops that are at 5% of my total balance. Seems to be keeping my emotions under control when im trading.
for example, right now i have a long postion open at 1327.25 which is giving me a loss of $25 at the moment, and i have limit at 1329.50 which it looks like it slowly going to reach. And it looks to hit within 3-4 hours. I have a hard stop at 1325.25, and ill let it ride. Trading after market hours is hard though as someone pointed out.
its a matter of discipline and understanding emotion. I have two fears when trading: Losing more than I can afford, and exiting early. The greed is incorporated more in the ladder. My job is understanding that everything is mathematical, and not based on fear and greed. If i stick to the system then fear and greed play little to no role.
latter. am in a spelling contest? autocorrect does it on its own, and i dont have the gumption to go back and check evrything.