Archive for December 19th, 2006

12-19-2006 Daily Trading Lesson

My Embarassing Trade in All of its Glory

The 55-tick trend, 610-tick trend & 15-minute trend were all rising. The NYSE-TICK was rising. Hell, the TRIX on the 2-minute chart had just turned green on increasing volume and I choose these circumstances to go short! It was pure speculation with all remenants of a strategy or plan being thrown out of the window.

I was alert and traded well for most of the day today. Just goes to show you that 90% won’t cut it in this business. Lapses in judgement cost real $…Well, that is the one good news…that at least I was in simulated mode today. Hard to say whether I’d have made the same mistake in live mode…I’d like to hope not but have to assume that i would as that’s the whole purpose of the simulator. If you can’t control my impulses & emotions here, it only gets harder once I go 100% live.

12-19-2006 Trading Review & Analysis

Today eneded with a complete mental breakdown. This morning I felt very aware and patient. I made a couple of mistakes but I was able to keep them small. Subsequently, by mid-day I was within $10 of my daily goal and only needed 1 successful trade to push me over the edge. I waited for hours for something to come up.

The market moved, yes indeed, but I didn’t see anything that really was screaming at me. Then around 3:00 E.S.T. I saw a little trade that I thought might do it. In hindsight, the trade was OK at best and soon after I entered the TRIX reversed on me which should have been the sign for me to cut my losses, keep them small, and wait for the next setup. Instead, I stubbornly held on until my original 1 point stop was hit and in an instant erased an entire days worth of profits.

Oh but I didn’t stop there. Still steaming from the loss, I then proceeded to jump right on into a trade 5 minutes later without ANY of the factors firing off that would have made it even an OK trade. It was simply a pure gamble and within another couple minutes I had taken my second full stop of the day and turned a +1.10 R-unit returning day into a -2.20 R-unit loss. There was just not excuse for that last trade, and I am embarassed to have made it.

Consecutive Days Hitting Net Daily Goal: 0
# Days Hitting Goal out of Last 20 (with goal of 16/20) : 3/6
Weekly PnL (Stop = -6.66) : -1.10 R-Units
Total PnL this Level (Stop = -10.00) : -3.54 R-Units

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