The hardest part if figuring out that transition between reversion to breakout. The initial trades were follwoing the momentum, and price kept declining. I lose the most money in market transition.
It looks like the second long entry was because price kept dropping, and just like the third. So the momentum was down, but you were hoping for a reversion. Either way, you're going to get it wrong at least a third if not half the time. I'm actually surprised how lucky you have been so far with your trading. So in a way you expect the high wind rate to continue, no? But maybe over a long enough time frame easily 1/3 of these trades will end up being a loss and one scaled in it's of course a bigger loss than the win. I'm not one to be lecturing of course on proper trading, but it just seems to me like what happened today was something that will happen over and over again. The initial trade doesn't work out and then you have to dig yourself out of a hole. So I think you did amazingly well. But if you beat yourself up for this then I think you're setting yourself up for a fall because there is no way you can maintain a high win rate with just taking one trade a day and getting it right.
I think sticking to this journal would be better rather than starting a new one. This would showcase the journey of my learning process from auto to now manual trading again. Hopefully I can make this manual trading work for more than just couple of months.
That is quite the impressive PnL today, but I can't help but notice that it went against you over 100 points. Can you imagine the damage if the rally continued after the open??? Now once again, who I am to lecture you on anything when your trading is much better than mine, but I just want to point out that you can't come back and complain about having a bad day when you scale in because today you got rewarded for it. Some days, you will get punished for it. And don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of scaling in, but its obvious that even though it solves some problems, it clearly accentuates others.
Scaling in with "oh shit, I need to get out" point. I don't believe in R:R nonsense. If the market condition doesn't change, I'll commit to the position.
I think I've come up with a filter that will avoid fading against a strong momentum. Somewhat strict interpretation of "momentum".
So I decide to start trading from my tablet and I almost fucked up big time, due to damn device going sleep mode and didnt sound the alerts. My device fell asleep and I didn't get an alert (yellow circle) to prepare to reverse (yellow arrow). Price kept going up triggering my limit orders. WHen I woke up I was like a deer in the headlights and just placed my exit at around b/e. My "oh fuck" stop would've been 440.75 Made sure i check "do not sleep while charging".
I think I need to stop trading like a bitch and just forget the reverses. Take the L when the setup fails and move on.
Do you mean take the loss on the first position and not scale in? And when you mention not taking the reverse trade, does this mean that if you're short, but see a long set up, that you wouldn't take it because its technically a reverse and you say you don't want to take the reverse trades? It seems to me like everything you're doing works, sometimes, and sometimes not. And its like this for all of us. Sometimes scaling in to a losing trade means we exit for a tiny profit and not take a loss. Sometimes taking the reversal means we make our loss back and then some profit, but sometimes even the reverse fails. So I'm not sure if there should ever be a rule to not do something. (nor do I think you have the personality to stick to firm rules! LOL) I think what is needed are rules about when to scale in based on how its setting up, and also when to reverse if its obvious that the market is trending in a new direction.