Even if you can manage to wait on a retracement, you are going to take heat. If you are trading a market that is averaging 2 percent daily moves - everything you put on is going to be underwater. Could be for 2 seconds, 2 minutes, 20 minutes, 2 hours, puke and try again... Back a long time ago when I scalped I would almost prefer a fast moving market where I stepped out and hit a bid or lifted an offer. Retracements can be quite painful - and you don't know they're retracements until well after the fact.
Anything that is rare is frustrating because you can't be ready for it. A day like today is rare, the % move AND the tight relentless all day channel bar after bar. The index's and a lot of big caps
Bingo! Vegas needs to look at my journal. Later tonight will post 13 trades I took on retraces towards ma.
This is how I should trade it, simple 6sma High and Low giving the channel and a BB 6sma 3.0Dev for my SL point when broken, does require balls and they where lacking and got distracted today. 13sma channel just for direction confidence boost. Easier after the fact, trusting they won't turn or spike and take out SL needlessly live, scarey!!
I can understand where the OP is coming from. Each pullback begins to look like a possible reversal. But you dont spot the lack of demand until it begins collapsing. But where there is confusion, there is opportunity.... The key on days like this is to watch how the pullbacks react. Are they measured moves up ? Do they all whack a 20ma and then down ? DO they chop around at the peak ? Are they A up then new lows ? ABC pullbacks ? First take a look at the 60 min, make sure you aren't shorting into a reversal. Then scale down to the 5 min.... Throw a 5 min chart on todays action. Historical price behavior (historical meaning earlier in trading day ) often gives u the edge you need. Ok so today, on the 5 min charts. Every pullback was an A up, then collapsed. The first 4 pullbacks after 10:25est were for 10,12,9, and 16 points. ONce they showed weakness they immediately collapsed. You could have seen this in the first few pullbacks. So with measured moves and A up pullbacks, u can generally bring the probabilities in your favor for profits. Long story short, there's opportunity here. Each trading day is different. You need to be adaptive.
At what time of the trading day did you realize it was a strong trend day ? After you realized it was a strong trend day...did you continue trading the way you've been trading prior to realizing it was a strong trend day or did you switch to a trend trading style ? wrbtrader
Around noon, I didn't want to believe the market was going down 6-7% (I mean, when does that happen right??) plus it was breaking a strong multi day up move on the daily, typically I would expect the day to close with a nice "tail" because of that so expecting a bounce, never happened.