there are 4 types of days, normal up day, normal down day,multiple lead changes in uvol over dvol to dvol over uvol,back and forth(no leaders,chop) and a trend day,either uvol or dvol go flat and the other rises all day, a trend day,if you recognize those, you will only do 4 things, buy,sell, scalp or ride ,the best part of your post is that you blame yourself for being wrong, not the market,surprised at the multitudes that haven.t crossed that bridge(imho) http://i.imgur.com/ogPa2vF.png
As I reminder and to put emphasis on this... You started this thread via stating you're a trend directional trader and I will assume that your trade method is designed for trend directional trading regardless if it works or not. In contrast, you decided to become a trend reversal trader when volatility shows up in the markets. The latter implies you're recognizing its in a trend but you're deciding for whatever reason to become a trend reversal trader. My point, to ensure you understand, these are two different types of traders...trend directional trader versus trend reversal trader. Therefore, you need to revisit your trade method to determine if its designed as a trend directional method or as a trend reversal method to eliminate a poor designed trend directional method as the root of your discipline problems.
I will give you one piece of advice, as someone who is mostly long. What I have found is when the market is volatile ie going down, if you have to put something on you should wait until the end of the day. Many times in a normal bull market the reversals come intraday. When volatility comes to town waiting till the end of the day to put on a position will save you some $$$. It looks like you are down around 4% good luck.
chart of goog from yesterday, there was no good time to buy yesterday, ( trend day down) its easy to say in hindsight that's where watching the tape is helpful.
Well, a suggestion that's a little different from the rest. Careful getting free advice from strangers in a strange forum. Most of the "traders" in this site are pikers, you have considerable amount of money in your account, you sure you want to be taking advice from them? Many seem to be hindsight experts, and a few mean well and might actually give you good advice, but since you are new, how do you know who to listen to and who to ignore? I did not give you trading advice on purpose, would had been a contradiction to the above. Bottomline, do your own diligence and be very careful.
You don't have to be in the markets at all times, pick and choose your trades, give your self a chance to be successful...
What you say you are ("a trend trader, directional trader") and what you actually do seem to be in conflict. Do you know how to trade in the direction of a trend? Using yesterday's action in ES or NQ (pick one) tell us your rules for with-trend entries.
market is a big ship it stops at the next port,know where the ports are,get on and off there,it's much dryer than the spots in between What ever direction its going , the next stop is a nip ledge or cleave,just hit that upper nip, now turned heading for cleave, hit that cleave yesterday,if it does again and it doesnt hold then the nip below http://i.imgur.com/ZJwXl30.png
Exactly! By 9:45 ET yesterday there are only reasons to short. Market's been printing lower highs and lower lows, the pre-market lower trend line breaks with conviction, and there's a nearby "port" at 1761.25. If that breaks nicely, assume we're going lower, with the next "port" at 1754, followed by the long term LTL down in the 1730's.