Sure. I like to tell it like it is. If you want to succeed in this business you have to be 100% honest with yourself and I have no desire to be a pretender online. Thank you. I would love to know specifically what your good trading friend means by the psychological aspect if you can share that. My simplistic view is that psychology is irrelevant without a system or a method, but once that's in place I think psychology is very important. Especially if you're a discretionary trader. And increasingly so in relation to the leverage employed, i.e., I could have 1 MES in the market without a stop and sleep like a baby for a week, but not with 1 ES. I may write up a separate thread on this, but long story short I had a very good September with few losing days and started October with a large losing day which set the tone for the rest of the month. Funny thing is I was almost back up at equity highs a few days later, a few hundred $ short, but then dipped below that. For the rest of the month I've just been focused on getting back to that equity high QUICKLY and taking larger risks to do so. I suppose I got greedy, overconfident, impatient and complacent - not giving my trading the proper care, analysis and focus which it requires. Just being sloppy. The dangerous part is that I actually had some big wins from this kind of behavior, too. The positive thing is that most of my larger losses came from stupid trades and from trading when I shouldn't be trading like in the middle of the night or when juggling stuff at my day job. If I can discipline myself enough to avoid this, maybe I have a chance. I think I just need to erase that equity high off my mind and pretend like I just funded a completely new account which I'm carefully building up with the same respect and care as when I started out in September when I spoke a lot about building a cushion and playing it safe. I'm still ahead on my account by a bit, but lost more than necessary this month. Like I've said a few times now. Losing money in the market is a choice.
For what it's worth, you might consider trying some mental "cleansing" audio to get a bit of a reset. I had to do that after my September! Part of what I realized in September that I wasn't my best self -- especially in my interactions in here. Best wishes to you. You got this!
It's not just market is low or market is high for a quality trade You have to take into account supply if possible and try to find a way for you to personally identify that. Today there was just no selling supply it was all sucked up. So even if you're shorting near a relative or new high, sure it may be good R/R in terms of pure math in a general sense like 3:1. But it's actually a terrible trade overall, because you can't cover lower without selling supply, obviously.
Just have to determine what the path of least resistance is. Again, this market, outside of some big cap names, has been strong internally since the 2nd week of the month. I follow a lot of breadth indicators and everything was confirming the strength of the market, including RTY, as we discussed.
Fair enough, I get that part. For me today was particularly good because the PA also confirmed and made it very clear that my macro daily read was correct. The size account I personally trade is very small, some people here make in a day more than my entire account size. That's why I focus a lot on Structure, PA and R/R. I mostly trade micro's which gives me a little more flexibility, but if I ever put on a Mini I have about 8-15 points of NQ draw down before I have to get out. So, my margin of error is extremely small. I am building things up to where I can trade larger though and take more advantage of my macro read.
This rally is the elixir of hope that the PCE number, being inline with expectations, means the Fed will show some mercy next week in their number and their guidance. I ain't holding my breath.
Fair enough, that's the advantage of trading though. Don't have to hold overnight. Can come in on Monday and just trade what is there. Nothing really to do with fundamentals, holding breath or what we think is going to happen. This action we had made perfect logical sense and several people here pointed that out prior to action taking place.
Why do you limit yourself to what is already known? Soros, PTJ in his glory years, Larry Williams, etc don’t think that way.
I look at long term internals just to follow what the big boys might be looking at. Has no effect or very little intra-day. Tech leads, all else follows and this year $NDX new 52week Hi/Lo is just about all red. Same with $SPX, $RTY, $NYSE.