Wow, what a week. Holy shit, I felt great going long on tech, until that story about the anti-trust probe on Tuesday afternoon. So I said to myself, forget tech, long the YM. Well, that did not work out as planned. Good grief. That may look all fine and dandy until you see this shit... Seriously? I'm so tired of going long at near ATH. Oh, sure, it worked this time on NQ and ES, but not the Dow! Oi kvetch! I be thinking now that the YM will never get back to ATH, because AAPL, Chevron and Exxon are all going to SUCK ASS on Monday morning, plus the Trump thrumming. This SUX, why did I not stick with NQ this week! Damned ATH!
In a word...Ugly. Thanx Trump. Yesterday was showing hope for a recovery on that YM long. Then the twit tweeted. Total repeat of May 5th. I am still self-flagellating myself about how I handled the tweet, like that British actor in The DaVinci code movie, doing the Christ Passion thing. I had been prepping my mind for months about this "tariffs on all the remaining China goods" thing and was planning to short the shit out of it when the news broke. But being in that trade and wrangling my hands over it for 9 calendar days, mentally clenching, had me so worn out after Powell's speech Wednesday and then the Glorious People's rise back on Thursday morning, that seeing that Thursday tweet left me shell-shocked. I was in utter bewilderment, stunned into mental shut-down mode that I simply couldn't react in time. I was in another room watching the real-time DOW charts on a website, that I stared at it and stared at it. By the time I got back to my trading machine, I was sitting there thinking this wasn't going to get any worse? I finally closed it. Caved. No, what I SHOULD have done, which I had been mulling over repeatedly for so damned long, was that markets would not like it, and should immediately reverse any longs, and add some more shorts. As you can see, I implemented that idea somewhat after closing the long, but at that point was so exhausted I didn't know which way was up, so cut the final trade off way too early. So today, with a renewed sense of vim and vigor, I went back to sim daytrading mode, some of the results of which I'll post in that old sim thread in a bit. What I was looking for input on was the MAE/MFE, which I included for this reason. The first 3 make sense to me, but the MFE on trade 11 does not. If you look back through the trade's lifetime, there were two points where the trade went into way more profit than 2 ticks. I think on two occasions it reached about $150 profit. (My target was about 80 ticks up, not 30.) But the last trade, number 12 is the real hum dinger. WTF? The YM didn't do that in those 33 seconds. I am sure it is a NT7 glitch, as usual, or am I totally wrong?
In three words, not as ugly...as last update. Held one overnight swing Tuesday evening, but that was it. I am allowing myself that on the micros for now. But basically had to stay conservative due to all this volatility. And if all those MNQ had been NQ trades? Would have made over 4 grand, not just 4 hundred. *sighs* The battle with myself continues. Trade #14 was actually a mistake. I closed it when I realized I was on the mini, not the micro. Always close mistakes! Thankfully it went to profit.
In a word...Whatever. I held a swing Tues-Wed, and then did a dumb thing. I went long right before RTH on Wednesday, when the "yield curve" inversion shit was all over the headlines. I thought, "How bad can it get? We have new hopes on the tariff front!" Well, it got bad. I told myself that I would try averaging into this thing at 100 point increments. So I did, when it dropped 100 points in 2.5 hours, and was averaged in at 7577.xx. Then Thursday happened. I lost the nerve to try to average in again when it dropped another ~200 points from 7577. With the volatility, I forced myself to sit on my hands. No sir, not going to get caught in this possible correction. It can happen, because I am long the market. So it resolved itself today. When I saw the sudden spike around 10:20AM today, I watched it waver a bit, and jumped out for what you can see is a measly 19 points or so. My initial target on the 2 lot position was 50 points. 7627.xx Sure enough, it hit that target and a little beyond. Such is the way. *sighs* But at least I am out, and have a couple of new angles to think about as I glean the movement over the past week.
Go long in the market on a swing idea, use time as the edge, and, well... I'm getting weary of it, hehe. And by weary, I mean going long at 7776 on Wednesday ETH close, and then suffering another giant drop on a trade tweet. So it's another sit on hands moment, maybe have to roll. Too many mistakes, too many missteps. Oi.
Continuing on... In a word, fucktastic. Another long period of swinging and waiting. The market is a she I think, to answer that poll in another thread. Bitch. And yeah, multiply it all by ten for the e-mini numbers. Frak.
A quick shout out to you @Overnight. Thanks to your incessant table pounding extolling the awesomeness of MGC I traded it for the first time today. I've watched it from afar, but today the trigger was pulled. I will be adding it to my intraday instruments when the indexes go into extended lateral snooze formation, which is often. You just never know when or where the next great idea will come from. Thanks.
Been over a week. Quite underwhelming, as I've been taking it slow... Continuing from the Sep 3rd trade... Welp, I tried some averaging down again, and it worked on those days where the market bounced back, like Tuesday and Thursday. Tried it again today, and this is the result... So it is currently down $110. At least it is not the mini, where the overnight margins on a swing get brutal. So yeah, "averaging down" works great on a day markets come back. But sometimes they take quite a long while *cough volpri cough* What a pissah these markets can be!