4. What I Learned or To Focus More On: Stop trying to catch a reversal, just enter on pullbacks and go with the dominant trend. 5. After Reviewing-My-Video Thoughts: (#:##:## my video location) Price was also at the vwap, which usually is a reliable indicator for a bounce. Not today, because their were more sellers which pushed price past support. I must work on waiting until it looks obvious who is being more aggressive. There's been alot of 'below the bid' orders being hit in the t&s, signaling the trend.
Wednesday Uptrend morning (minus 30 ticks). 1. Pre-Market Outlook: Crude oil report coming out 730pst, no major news. 2. Pre-Market Bias: Range to Downtrend. 3. My Thoughts during Trades (#of Trades: 1): I was looking for a reversal to the downside. The vwap, prev. day's close, and prev. high on 5min chart, all signaled an important resistance area. So I waited for price to get there (a little before 7am), and I entered when I noticed a high sell order on the ask side. I was wrong and price broke through it. Below is the 5min overview of my morning. I even told myself yesterday to stop trying to catch a reversal, and to go with the dominant trend and enter on a pullback. Sure enough, price did exactly that today, and my old habits are hard to break.
Important Note: After reading Al Brooks today, I decided to stop trying to scalp, and to find swing trades instead. I feel like I'm another step closer to making this work. The swing trade is refering to finding the high or low of the day around the first 2 hours of the morning.
Thursday Reversal (minus 15 ticks). 1. Pre-Market Outlook: China wants to work out a deal, futures up. 2. Pre-Market Bias: Uptrend. 3. My Thoughts during Trades (#of Trades: 1): My mind was set on looking for a pullback from the dominant trend. It looked like it was making an uptrend before 7. Once it pulled back, I started looking to enter long, and reminding myself to wait for a follow through signal too. Once the 5min candle closed above it's prev. candle, I waited for the price to move a little lower before entering. This happened right before the Natural Gas report was about to come out at 730. At 740, price tanked down. It seems that even these kind of reports move the market. Once price tanked down, I didn't know if it was going to make a reversal or a pullback and continue down. For now, I think any kind of econ reports are going to move the market. It is walking on broken glass cause of recession fears.
Friday Downtrend morning (minus 41 ticks). 1. Pre-Market Outlook: Expecting an up day. I read that usually that's what happens right before certain holidays. 2. Pre-Market Bias: Uptrend day. 3. My Thoughts during Trades (#of Trades: 5): First Trade: I waited for Chicago PMI to come out, and it was good news. The price started to climb, and it was at vwap, so I was expecting it to bounce up and uptrend it. The sentiment report was going to come out at 7, but I anticipated it to be good news too. It wasn't. I tightened my stoploss before that time. Unfortunately I got stopped out. Second Trade: Price still moved up after the bad sentiment report, and it was at a resistance level. I realized that it might be in a downtrend, and that this most likely is a pullback, so I shorted, and exited once the move down paused at a support area signaled by the long bottom wicks in the previous candles. Third Trade: I decided to re-enter to the long side, where I exited my last trade, thinking that support would be strong enough to move the price up now. Instead, it broke through it, and I exited before it hit my stop loss, saving a few ticks. Fourth Trade: I re-entered the trade to the long side, since price moved back up to where it broke the support. I forgot that support usually becomes resistance once broken, but my uptrend bias blinded me from it. Once price started moving back down, I exited before hitting my stoploss again. Fifth Trade: Once price traded below the prev. day's close, and the $tick indicator was at -900, signaling oversold conditions, I entered the trade once more to the upside. I got stopped out. I broke a few rules of mine, which is to not trade during the last half hour of the European close, how I would stay away from trying to catch a reversal, to wait for a follow through before entering, and stop trading once I lose 30 ticks (today was 41). The end of this month completed 7 months of learning to daytrade the open. I committed $3000 for the MES back in June, and am down $580. That is a 20% loss so far. Clearly I'm not ready yet, but I feel I need a break from this to re-assess everything I've learned. I'm committing the whole month of September to do this. Sometimes a person has to take a step back in order to leap forward.
LoneTrader19, I like this...you gave me an idea! This truly is a skill development Journal. 1. I first draw a path on my chart to pre-plan my entries. If price somewhat follows it, I enter.