I can't believe how often I do this, typically around ten am. Looks like a breakout and suddenly I'm $400 underwater. My remedy, as yet untried, is to wait fifteen minutes before pulling the trigger. Shit hard to do. My trades yesterday: CPRX +$120 ADP + $104 ULTA - $8 PWR -$19 Minervini trend filters; Marketsmith breakout pivot points; $10,000 each position; trading account $150,000.
Buying highs/strength is something to aim for, rather than worry about. Just based on that , I would think on balance you make money. It are the traders whom try to buy lows & sell highs, that are on balance losing money. The only suggestion might be not to change your entry/position, but rather to take the loss sooner, once you don't see things working out as anticipated.
VWAP gives you an objective way to measure your fills against market participants. Here is a copy of your panel with some VWAP studies. Institutional accounts get their fills done by broker-dealers and they (very often) are filled at VWAP while the broker manages all aggregated execution obligations. If you are trading the issue on a listed market, you are competing against their market execution/liquidity modeling algorithms.
Time of day matters. IMO there are 5 distinct periods. 1) the Open 2) AM session 3) Lunch (before and after) 4) PM Session 5) the Close Consider having an "evaluation" of tactics at the beginning and end of each period. There is no such thing a monolithic strategy that applies to all time periods for a Trader, imo. It is trading and part of that is, on one hand being nimble and flexible, and on the other hand sticking with the overall strategy. All with the goal of making money consistently indefinetly. If the two are not compatible, then you are not doing it right. BTW, in case you have not fully realized, entry is only about 25% of the solution. Best of luck.
If you are buying at the highs and selling at the lows seems like you might need another strategy or tighter stops.
you’re losing money because there is no trade there lol. You’re just gambling and don’t have an actual source of excess returns. Seeing breakouts on charts is not gonna help you lol. If your goal is to capture the return of intraday momentum, then you need to conduct a deeper study of it (hint: it’s not just a chart spiking at a 5min interval lol!). If you’re trying to capture the return of institutional flow then you’d better know how funds are positioned and what their reaction function looks like (hint: it’s fundamental & macro, not the chart). If you don’t have a clear strategy then you won’t be able to draw up tactics for you to trade with. Focus on defining your strategy, your source of return, build out your tactics and continue to learn.