Okay, today is day #1 with real money... stayed out of the chop, sat out for the crazy swing with the Oil report at 9:30 CST one little Long at 11:22 PST... 9 tick profit today was a great start, sitting on my hands is a really important skill I have worked hard on
seriously! keeping my hand off the mouse and resisting the urge to trade, when I know it is only a marginal setup, is the most valuable but hardest skill I have had to get wired down. When I started trading futures about 6 years ago, it was not unusual for me to hit 12-18 trades per day.... then I got that down to about 7 trades,,,, now it is like 1 or 2 per day,,,,much more relaxed and calm...
My biggest problem is waiting for the setup to complete I anticipate it and screw myself. More often then not if I would have waited I would have never made the trade and if I stuck with my rules all the time I would be at least 50% more profitable I have been doing this long enough to know better but I am a slow learner. Congrats on a good start keep it up TRADE LESS MAKE MORE
Don't feel bad. It has taken me a long time and cost me a lot of money to learn that exact lesson. I'm hitting one or two trades per day. As I said previously when I started I was doing up to 15 or more trades per day trading NQ 6 years ago Just today Alone I had three instances where I sat aside instead of taking marginal entries where there were too wide of stops. It would've cost me 60 ticks negative ouch. That's a lot saved.
I don't feel bad at all I've been doing this crazy thing since the 90s I just hope one day I learn to only take the correct trades . I would say its maybe 10% of my trades that I know I shouldn't take but I am a thick headed old man and I do it anyway because I want to be ahead on this trade and get the whole move
Okay time to post today's results: 2 short trades for a loss of -16 ticks.... can't say I made any mistakes, they just didn't work out.... lot's of just watching the chart and avoiding false entries... very similar to yesterday, except I made a profit.