You may want to try scaling out. Often it is the best answer because it helps balance the struggle between taking profits and letting winners run.
covered 1@ 33.25 for +1, stop moved to b/e for the second and stopped out. NQ is struggling @ 2400 the bad thing is I was trigger happy, impatient, didn't wait for a proper long set up the good is that at least I didn't try to short and chase and still took my correct long set up.
Your stops are to tight. Even with dead on entries, .75 is noise in ES. There is no reason to keep throwing .75 stops out that get hit. Would be better to make 1/3 of the trades using a 2.25 stop. Rerun your trades for today with a wider stop and what is the result ?
stopeed out again down $425 for the day, nearing my 600 limit... I got stuck with my long bias because I missed a long in the morning and didn't change my mind on time even though I should have. Plus the blogs that I've been reading reinforced my mind not to short. Do I want to prove myself right? no, but my subconscious clearly does. this is what I get for being biased - missed a great move ;( I"m so pissed off now, I better walk away. there will be many others, but trading right now will be revenge trading, so no trading for me now until I feel better.
How many contracts are you trading for the $600 limit ? For intraday It is a good idea to not trade a long if there is a gap underneath from the previous day. Vice versa for a short trade. Not 100% perfect but those simple rules will save you more in the long run then chasing price on gap days. Now walk away and read it again http://prismintraday.com/readings/Disciplined_Trader.pdf
It was a good idea to walk away from trading and I'm glad I did it. when I came back I was able to make calm rational decisions. long 2@31.5 a while back, didn't have time to post 1-2-3 buy of R2 out 1 +1 out 1 +2
but from 3pm till close I've done 12 trades trying to short 34.5 -35 area. Again, I didn't have time to post them, if I did, I probably would have done so many. of course I only realized how many trades I've made after the fact So I get C- for today's discipline. Horrible day for me today, very tradable, but I blew it. I need to learn from my mistakes. Hesitated to take the first long, then didnt' take my short signal because of the long bias Then got pissed off and walked away, it was good to walk away but I've missed my long signal because of that. When I came back I took my long trade, which I exited too early And then got chopped in the closing hour chop because I didn't want to miss another trade, got impatient instead of waiting for a good price and didn't want to go home with a loss for the day. So I know all the mistakes I make, but I still make them and trade what I think instead of what I see. I guess I still have a very hard time accepting a losing day. I can accept losing trades, but not losing days I feel stupid losing money on the day that I should have made money, so I was trying to prove to myself that I'm not stupid. And obviously failed. The goal of my trading now should be to stay disciplined, not to prove anything.
P&L for today loss -$786. still within my 600 loss parameters because it was before fees, so it was -$638, the rest is fees.
So knowing that in advance didn't help. my goal for today failed because I made making money higher priority then being disciplined