Big range days are very emotional days in nature and that's why they are more difficult to trade. On days like these especially I should wait for the second entry and not jump on board just because there is a green bar.
Another thing I've noticed is that when I read trading commentary real time, I trade much worse. I should stop reading them, but they are like a drug. Overall a terrible day today - instead of trading my setups, I traded my expectations. That must mean that I don't have confidence in my methods and/or high expectations make me irrational
I know that I'm not unique and I'm not asking for pity, I'm just documenting my thought process, trying to deconstruct it and change it. How does one stops greed from taking control? From "the Disciplined trader": In the market environment you have to make the rules to the game and then have the discipline to abide by these rules, even though the market moves in ways that will constantly tempt you into believing you don't need to follow your rules this time.
Big daily ranges are what you want, especially if you limit your participation to intraday only, which it appears you do. What exactly does "very emotional days in nature" mean? Are you saying you get sad/happy/angry/etc. on big range days? Or are you saying the market is emotional? If the latter, you may want to rethink what the role of the market actually is. Today is what I call a "free money" day. Any day the market has a range of 2% or more during RTH is a free money day. Today was literally a give away. If this is something you cannot see, you have some work to do to figure out what is what. Rules are fine to regulate your own role. But be sure your rules do not usurp the market's role in the extraction partnership. This won't make much sense to you if you do not know that you and the market have different roles and that they never overlap. It will be a challenge for you to reconsider the conventional wisdom you are mired in that is your biggest obstacle to obtaining your stated desire to become a better trader.
I wasn't saying that "market is emotional", but the participants, myself including, are. It's more difficult for me to stay focused and not let my emotions take hold of me on days like today. I'll have to keep working on it.
P&L -15 points as I said before, I wasn't following my rules because greed was clouding my judgment. Even though I've realized that in the middle of the day (as per my posts), I wasn't able to change my thinking and kept trying to prove myself right by buying again and again. I couldn't believe the reality that was happing right in front of me. Instead I was thinking that market can't fall as much without a pull back and I just don't want to miss that rally!
Took a day off today - taking a break after a bad day. Reading "The disciplined trader". When you put on a trade, you have some belief about the future, some expectations. You need to learn how to release yourself from the demand that these expectations be fulfilled. This will allow you to perceive whatever opportunities exist in the market now, as if you didn't have a trade on at all.
FEAR To grasp the fundamental nature of your own behavior, you will need to understand all the effects fear has on your perception of environmental information. At the most fundamental level, fear will limit your awareness of market information. How could any deep level of insight into the market's behavior ever develop if you are constantly worried about what the market may do to you and cannot stay focused on the structure of the market itself. The market can't do anything to you if you trust yourself to act appropriately under any market condition. Learning this is the key to gaining the level of confidence every trader needs to be successful. When you understand how fear operates in your trading and have conquered it, you will be able to see how fear operates in the market as a whole and then be able to anticipate the group's reaction to certain kinds of information. If you did not start your trading career with the proper mental perspective or with a disciplined approach, then it is likely you have suffered some degree of psychological damage that has the potential of generating fear. The negative energy stored in these experiences will generate fear. By learning to release yourself from the pain, you will be reducing the fear and automatically opening yourself up to new awarenesses about the nature of the markets. Instead of being focused on pain avoidance, you can be focused on what the markets are telling you.
SELF-ACCEPTANCE Personal transformation, growth, and learning new skills are a function of self-acceptance. The market will make you face what is inside of you on a moment-to-moment basis, it could be confidence or fear, a perception of opportunity or loss, restraint or uncontrollable greed, objectivity or illusion. The market just reflects these mental conditions, it does not create them. Therefore, to grow into a new expression of yourself, you will need to learn how to accept the existence of any of these negative mental conditions and the psychological components that create them. Cultivating a belief in accepting whatever you find inside of yourself will give you the base you need to work from to change these conditions.
MEMORIES Each of our memories makes up a part of our identity, and because they exist as an energy form, they have the potential to act as a force on our behavior. Regardless of whether we are conscious of these specific forces or not they cause us to move through the environment in certain ways corresponding to what we have already experienced to create more experiences and more memories. What this means is that we have to do the necessary mental work to release ourselves from anything within us that would cause us to narrow our focus of attention or specifically block certain categories of information from our awareness.