Positive day even though my setups didn't work out as expected. My main objective is staying in the game, so I'm booking a small gain rather than turning it into a loss. Product traded: ES Contracts: 25 Opening balance: 1139 Closing balance: 1261 Net P/L: 122 Discipline: 5
Good job on a choppy day. If you recognized that it would be an inside day and faded the extremes, you are in good shape. Now you need to expect that after 3 days of consolidation, a trend day is going to come soon. Look for a breakout to the upside/downside tomorrow after the employment figures.
At 8:30 AM: Nonfarm payrolls, unemployment rate, hourly earnings, and average workweek. Nonfarm Payrolls will be the most important in my opinion.
Nothing seemed to work today, both premarket and after the open. I'm booking a small loss rather than making it worse. Product traded: ES Contracts: 19 Opening balance: 1261 Closing balance: 1204 Net P/L: -56 Discipline: 5
??????????????????????? You must be trying to trade a flawed intraday strategy, otherwise nothing makes sense. regards f9
Hey man, I wish you all the luck but how do you make 19 trades in the ES and lose $56 dollars? I cant even comprehend how you're doing it? What was your high and low in terms of p/l during the day? Whats your stop? .25 point? Again I wish you the best of luck but I think you might drive yourself crazy trading like that.
Dude, that's the whole premise of the Journal. He's trading a flawed strategy, trading the wrong product, and churning his account.
Keep doing what's right Index Scalper... This thread finally brought me out of lurker status because your entries sound like pages from my own trading diary. Your commitment to improving your trading skills is evident by your willingness to put it all out there on public view. And I must say, certain posters have taken a real interest in helping you succeed. My own humble observation is that "discipline" is mandatory until you have full confidence in your strategy. When that confidence is unshakable, then the trades will be natural and you won't have to fight with yourself. You may not be as inclined to revenge trade or take impulse trades to try to "make up" for days when the setups didn't perform as well, because you'll be confident that your trading strategy really works. That will take a huge weight off your shoulders. The trick is how to gain confidence in your strategy without blowing up first... My own trading turned a corner after I started comparing my real time trades with what the results would have been had I followed my strategy to the tick. It really helped to identify both my performance strengths/weaknesses, as well as strengths/weaknesses of the strategy itself. With a lot of trade by trade comparisons and a little tweaking (e.g. the addition of a trailing stop to let your real winners reveal themselves) you might be pleasantly surprised. One other suggestion is to keep a spreadsheet record of your strategy's performance, independent of your execution. Over time you'll see its true nature, its win rate, expectancy, average drawdown, etc. If it's a great strategy, then these numbers will give you the confidence to trade without the psychological baggage. And since you don't have the time/money cushion for all this forward strategy testing you may benefit from manually backtesting it as much as you can and add those results to your spreadsheet. The more information you compile, the better. And since you have rules about entries, exits and stops, it should be relatively simple to evaluate each of your strategy triggers for its potential gain/loss. (None of this "Oh, I would have stayed in that trade since it was an obvious trend move", etc...). Ok, that's enough spew for a first post. Carry on...