First trade is in the books: Bought 1 YM 11033 Sold 1 Ym 11044 Net for day +$50 Off to a rather good start..... the position had initially gone against me a good bit and was ALMOST to my stop.... was going to actually pull the trigger.. "i think"......I still am not setting hard stops, but I am putting a MAX cap of 30 pts hard stop... that way if i do violate my "meaningfull stop" i have hard stop in that will take me out for sure to stop me from getting into TOO big of a hole... not perfect but its a start I guess.....
trade #2 is done buy 1 Ym 11042 sold 1 ym 11045 net for day +$60 Wasnt a very good trade, I had a pretty tight stop for that one and saw it drop pretty close to it then rebound back up to 11045 preetty fast so I just dumped it, rather it be small winnign trade than get stoped out.. probalbly shoudlnt have gotton out yet though
30 points, that's a very sizeable stop in my book. I've made 4 trades this morning and been stopped out on all 4. Market can't seem to pick a direction. We've had 4 buy programs already and the DJ is only up 25 points. Will take a break now until around noontime and see if the market can't give me some better trends.
boro, yea 30 pt stop is pretty big.. its a worst case scenario stop.. one that I cant violate. My actual stops are around 10 to 15 depending where a meaningful area is..... Just made another trade, not sure what is wrong with me.. how come I can hold a loosing trade for 2 hours for it to come back.. but cant hold one going my direction for more than 5 minutes?? Bought 1 Ym 11059 Sold 1 Ym 11064 Net for day +$82
Made a 4 more trades in past few minutes mostly around hte 11100 area... some went for +1 or 2 pts to - 1 or 2... but through it all i edged up a few more dollars, now i'm at +$100 for the day, which is my daily goal, and with the lunch break approaching, I think I will TRY to make no more trades until around 12;30 central time.. unless I see a good move comming...
Meanwhile I sat on my hands when I got a long signal at 11040 at 9:31. Would have taken 30 minutes to exit first half at 052 and still long here at 110. Hindsight is 20-20, ain't it? Just need to stay patient and wait for another signal.
ugg.. already violated one of my rules... I just opened a short postion at 11103..... My thinking was, hey its going into lunch time... volume will dry up some, maybe well drift lower for a little while after a runnup... now i'm not so sure on that, may drift higher.... but oh well.. will probalbly set a stop at the current high of the day and see what happens...
Yeah I agree, I struggle with the same kind of thing. One tactic I use is I have an excel sheet I print out with boxes where I write down my entry, my stop, and two price targets, one for a scalp and one based on larger time frames. I make checks if and when these things are hit. This at least forces me to acknowledge if I am breaking my plan. I also make note of all the times I do things from my list of "bad habits" and track them on a weekly and monthly basis. This way I can see how some habits are totally gone but others unchanged. Finally, it seems bad habits for me only go away when they are somehow exhausted or become truly boring. As long as they provoke thought and emotion they stay active. This seems to take a long time of doing stuff over and over again that I KNOW IS WRONG lol.
chris, Thats a good idea, hopefully in a few weeks I can look back at this journal and see how many of my mistakes i'm still making.... If I can just start making 1 or 2 less mistakes a day a few weeks from now I'll be very happy with the progress... Position update: Just exited at 11101, Net for day +$106.... I think the market will drift down over this lunch break and with a pretty strong resistance around the high of the day I could have stayed in this position, but I told myself I wont trade during lunch, so I'm stoping until 12;30 no more trades
Well looks like my lunchtime drift down trade would have worked out nicely, woudl have doubled my profits for the day... oh well..