FWIW, I second guess myself every second of every minute while in a trade. I'm always looking for reasons that invalidate my trade. I play the devil's advocate, and the interesting thing is I can ALWAYS find reasons I should have the opposite position on, or no position. But if they are NOT more compelling than the reasons I entered, I stay with the trade. So, in this context I don't necessarily think second guessing oneself is always bad.
Inks2002, A couple of things from a non-pro: 1. If you are looking for a short in a strong uptrending morning, time of day is very, very important. You have to wait for the lunch time period due to the lower volume. 2. Whenever you look to enter, always look to buy into selling and sell into buying. This is called entering at wholesale. The market pulled back from the high of 67.5 at 7 pacific time and continued to sell off for about 30 mins. And you sold the market after it had sold off a bunch already (~8pts). Now I'm not saying that I knew that 69 was the bottom of the retracement, but if it sells off that much already in a still intact uptrend, I'm not touching that short. Think wholesale. At that point I'm thinking I have already missed the short. It always seems risky to buy into selling and sell into buying because in the back of your mind you think you'll just get ran over, but it's actually a lot less riskier if you know of good prices to enter. 3. You knew coming in that 1200 ES was a critical level. Now we saw that ES broke above 1200 and then it broke below. To me that means sellers were waiting for stops to be taken out before they entered. This is very common for professional money, because remember they always want to enter at wholesale. Now when the sellers took it below 1200, notice how they couldn't flip 1200. Instead what happened? Price broke back above 1200. That told me that sellers are weak and there is further upside. 4. Last point, whenever you look at key levels such as 1200 ES, they are just that - levels. And it is very common for levels to be poked and prodded before we can know if that level holds or not. Especially with ES, this is standard operating procedure. So your comment earlier regarding ES having a hard time staying above 1200 is I think premature.
Thank you very much for that, I appreciate it. You are right I really should not have put such a mental line in the sand at 1200, it really is just a level. I got it stuck in my mind that if 1200 was having a hard time it was downhill after that. when you said 69 was the bottom in part two above you mean 60 right? I like the wholesale idea thinking as well, thank you.
yes typo, I meant to say 59 (58.75 was the low tick) i've seen your past trades and your entries are pretty good. But this time the fact that you were already in Short, perhaps it influenced you to thinking in one direction. The direction of your trade.