Got back on track this morning. I had notes written all over the place to stay focused and really try to do the best I could to ensure that my first trade of the day was a winner. Just like a sports team scoring first gives them a big statistical edge to win the game, my numbers bear out a similar relationship as well. Days when I hit my daily stop limit vs my Net Daily Goal are highly correlated with a losing first play or string of plays early in the morning.

I feel like I picked some good spots today and had hit my goal by 10:00. I wasn’t planning on taking any more plays after 10:30 but when I saw a beautiful 3+ convergence play setting up at 2:20, I couldn’t resist. Its the highlight of today’s R.O.D.

Today could have definitely gone better as I found myself in a couple of trades that I had no legitimate right being in. One of them is highlighted above. I got as close as 1 losing trade away from hitting my daily stop limit but managed to hang in there, find some good trades, and escape with a minor loss on the day of 1 R-Unit.

Unfortunately that ends my 6-day winning streak but it doesn’t really affect my ability to move up to the next level if I am able to trade well in the days/weeks to come. According to my plan, I can still proceed if I hit my target in 16/20 days…right now I’m at 6/7, so not bad.

The other way I could advance would be to go 10/10 days of hitting my target. And while today interupted that path, since my loss was less than 1/2 of my daily stop-limit total, I can still proceed down the 10/10 path upon making back what I lost today…which in effect would mean I’d have to hit my target the next 5 days in a row instead of 4.

Although I didn’t ge the result I wanted for today, I have much to be proud of after going down so much so early in the day. And after an 8 R-Unit winning streak, I can totally handle a 1 R-Unit drawdown…just gotta make sure that it stays at 1 R-Unit tomorrow!

I recently updated my ScalpRate Spreadsheet to output PnL Distributions based on Time of Day and # Converging Factors. Here are my results for this past week:

I made progress on all fronts this past week. I decreased the # of 1-Factor trades from 30% down to 22%, Turned my 2-Factor trades from an average loss of $30/trade to an average gain of $30/trade , and increased my 3+Factor trades from 30% to 42% with Avg PnL from +$58/trade to +$67/trade.

Concerning the Time Distribution table. During the month of October overall, I only have 2 time periods where I have consistently shown a profit, but last week I showed a vast improvement accross all time-periods showing a loss in only 2 of them.

Based on last week’s results, this week I need to focus on:

1.) Continuing to Reduce the # of 1-Factor trades that I make (with the eventual goal of eliminating them all together)
2.) Continue to reduce my lot size & become more selective with the trades that I make prior to 10:00am
3.) Become more vigilant with the types of setups I am taking after 2:15pm and reduce my lot size & risk exposure until i am able to get those numbers consistently positive
4.) Do exactly what I did last week on all other fronts, as it was one of my best weeks ever!