To answer your question more thoroughly, as I was tired last night and just wanted to push the update, is that my main thrust since getting into equity indices was for swing/position trading. When I have large failures like that (and the plan did not fail, I failed the plan), I revert back to day scalping with stops. I still have not been able to adapt my brain to a market with such huge swings. I learned in a scalper's market back in 2014-2017, and those were the formative years that etched into my brain. The way my brain works is that because of those etchings, I still cannot see days where the NQ moves in hundreds of a point range. All I am expecting is a fairly small rangy day. To compensate I decided to swing with no stops on the long side. I would just ride the noise so I wouldn't have to make decisions in noise. Each time we get these pullbacks they are getting larger and larger. A small pullback becomes a larger one. The large pullback becomes a correction. And with this Q1 deal, the correction became what seemed to be a bear crash. I got out because I thought it was going to keep going down. So there is no point in me risking even further drops. Just get out at my max pain level. As it happens, my max pain level seems to be at the bottoms. Uncanny. So now I look at my scalping performance and go, OK, if I switch to the mini I will be doing OK. Except the last time I did that happened to be the day the Fed went apeshit on some announcement, and the NQ dropped over 100 points in a minute while I was using a mental stop. That scared me away from the minis again. It takes me a long time to lick my wounds, and is a failing of mine. I ain't no robot. I'm just a piker for the time being, and need to get the idea of swinging OUT OF MY HEAD. Doing that (swinging) with rolling CL calendar intraspreads in the very beginning set this all up in the first place in my brain, and it hasn't translated terribly well into equity indices.
Continuing from last week... Only notable shitshow stared after trade 24. Ended the week up to that point at $247.5 Then yesterday I lost the 80 bux, and scrambled my way back up to BE with a whopping $1 in the PnL window at $248.5, lol! After commies it comes to like -9 bux for the day. Meanwhile, I entered 2 MYM longs at 26677 yesterday, looking for 100 ticks. It came close to that on two occasions up until this morning, and then fell away. I was looking at the NQ/ES action thinking the DOW would follow, but nope, earnings has wreaked it's havoc and diverted one of the big three from the other two. This time it was DOW! Unusual. Usually it is NAS. But I feel good about this hold for now. I am the world's hardest breaker of habits. It will be my undoing.
Update since last entry... So the DOW trade closed on Tuesday. Nothing more exciting after that. Just plain ol' scalping. I did enter a long on 2 MYM yesterday at 26585 in anticipation of INTC earnings, but man did that not work out. I'm still holding it because I have a feeling about BA. I sense they are going to get the MAX recertified, as I have heard no negative whispers about the recert tests. We'll see. Summary... P.S. My premise has been, since those huge losses...Just make some green every day. Doesn't matter how much, just try to be green each day, for that is progress. Missing out on these swings is painful though, like Monday's NQ hugeness straight up, and today's wonderful NQ cycling. Massive stuff.
Continuing from previous entry... Still holding onto the MYM long from 26585. No signs yet of a need to dump it. Man, it really sucked missing out on last night's NQ rise. Just incredible. Still walking on eggshells. Onward.
Overnight, You mention the word "scalping" a lot here but then you complain about missing big moves or you trade without stops in the hopes of catching a big move. My question, when you change from scalping to over-night holds (swing trading)...what time frames are you using when scalping versus the time frame you're using in those swing trades (holding over-night). Last question, you mention missing last nights NQ price rise...do you normally trade during that time period of the price move you missed ? For example, I don't trade from 4:15pm until the next day 9:30am est. Thus, I'm not concern about missing any movements in the markets in time periods outside the my trading hours. I've learned in the past when I'm concerned about big moves in hours when I'm not trading... It sets up a psychological problem when I do trade and the markets not making a similar like big price movement. wrbtrader
This is a great question. I respectfully suggest that @ph1l's question is the real question. I would also suggest that keeping a trade open because you "had three months to go until expiration" only works for options trading, not futures. The reason being that when you trade an option, the premium paid is itself a form of stop loss, whereas with futures, as you well know, the potential loss is very much open-ended. I would also suggest that you ingrain the simple elegance of the following statement into your character and into your trading plan. It just might turn things around for you. At the very least, it will stop the bleeding and keep you in the game. And you instinctively know that everything I said is true and that you must make changes in accordance with the sound advice others have here given to you.
That's an issue I have had...One does not have to scalp or swing exclusively. One can do both, or at least I feel they can. It is evident in my journal. But the psychology of it is wreaking me, and has for a long time, because you have to have a split-personality to do it well. To have the mindset of a scalper AND a swing trader on two different instruments at the same time is like trying to have two brains. Rough business. Work in progress.
Based on my reads now over the last 7 years, it is evident that given a long enough time frame, simply rolling from one expiration to the next will lead to profit, albeit in an inefficient manner. My biggest fear through all of this has been the scenario where we have a quarterly roll where we just keep dropping quarter-after-quarter for a few years. So rolling would just compound loss upon loss. In the 6-7years I have been working on this all, that has not happened. By thinking that it has happened in the past, so it must happen in the future, has kept me from just letting the plan play out.