Indeed, this sounds so familar. I was uber-bearish this summer, but I was wrong. Then in early September, the last short finally covered and we FINALLY went down...especially NQ. So with that bearish bias in the summer, I made little to no profits.....naturally. From you what you said, it appears you are trading with a bullish bias. I know, I know....getting rid of the bias is tough.
You guys sounded like a version of mine many years ago. I researched and used many market sentiment indicators like $TICK, $VIX, $CPC, Smart v.s. Dumb money and etc... to gauge big pictures before I made a trade. What I witnessed for so many times over those years is that no matter how bearish these indicators were market continued to surprise you with its strength. The only way to stop yourself from speculating this and that or getting biased is to build your own trading system without any of above mentioned stuff. Take your time, in my case it took longer than 3-year of solid work just to observe your system to see if you can find any edge and if you do, build your stats on it; hence you are just like a machine to trade without any emotion or biased feeling. Simple as that. The rest is risk mgmt stuff like how to scale up once certain profits made.
The quick hits have served me well. And the injunction to honor the stops is ALWAYS welcome. It is so vital.
New Scalping plan, real simple 1, on the same poor to millionaire trip in min time Thinking 10% per day, go hard then go harder
I traded today. I correctly surmised that because the chaos is tomorrow that today would be mostly rangebound (NQ excepted). And I love to scalp... So I had one of my best days so far on this small account with about $250 net gain. I did it with one micro per position and had a max of two open at any one time across all 4 micro indices. I have a great sense of foreboding about tomorrow and Wednesday, regardless of who wins the election. I have never felt this way before. The USA seems to have fundamentally changed for the worse. I am not happy about it, but feel so powerless. People can't just talk about ideas any more without carrying a baseball bat and spewing epithets and pejoratives. I may still trade both days, but will trade a max on 1 micro. To all reading this I recommend that you "stay away" the next two days or at least "Go small." Stay alive. Don't get too eager to get the next $100 or $1000 (or more).
Staying out till after the election and last few days of freedom before lockdown no.2, not that I'll pay much attention to that, but gym shut Cool on profits
Monday was great at $217 net, but election day and yesterday were the pits for me at-$93 and $32. I kept the position sizes small, and that was a really good thing because of election volatility. But it wasn't just rapid movement, it was incomprehensible (to me) bullishness. Yep, in the last 3 days, the S&P popped 200 points and the NQ ran up 1,000 points. Insane. Indeed, the bulls came out in force which is odd to me because, as of this writing, the winner of the presidential race is STILL being decided. Wow. I thought indecision was bearish. Maybe everyone is just happy that either candidate will be printing money for the next 4 years. FREE MONEY! As a consequence, the dollar is weaker and weaker and buying good companies is one of the few great ways preserve wealth. Despite the incredible advances in the market, it is actually amazing that I am still alive. Why? Because I am usually a contrarian and didn't hop on the bull train unfortunately. Yep, I expected it to reverse at any moment for 3 whole days. Fortunately, I didn't just go short either. I have finally gotten much better and I don't fade everything that moves. I am willing to let the market do what it is going to do - which is absolutely crazy sometimes.