Yes, that was the first thing I noticed when I opened the charts. I can only trade from 11.30am. I also noticed the downward bias. That was good. But looking/trading on a smaller chart completly blurs my vision.
Let me tell you, you start trading right at the most difficult time of the day, with your enthusiasm all pumped up only to be confronted with chop action, not good (that's not always the case ofc , I'm talking about probabilities).
Always keep an eye on the big picture, an hourly chart with a couple of weeks of data is just fine, draw your major TL, R/S and patterns as it was your base chart, but and this a big butt
don't be overly biased by its look, it only represents the boundaries of your playground, the real game for you is inside, be ready to change playground (break of a major support for istance) if the market dictates it. Start placing your trades later, did you notice the big moves often happens after 14:00 NY time? I'm sure you did. Most pros just trade from
9:30 to 11:30 and from 14 to 16. Less work more profit.
Trading choppiness requires great skills and I prefer to avoid it even though I'm often caught in the same mistake, see yesterday
.
I kept my cool for the most part. But saw to many (bad) opportunities. Most entries needed big stops, and I got chopped up big.
25 trades, so Yes, overtrading! I also lost me nerve after a few hours so a few revenge trades as well.
That's something you'll avoid once you realize internally that there's nothing to revenge for. The mkt doesn't give a rat about you, revenge against who? The mkt is a mirror, you see what you feel, nothing more nothing less.
For now I'm concentrating on entries. Spotting the setups is going fairly well but I have no idea how to interprete T&S. I think this gets me into trades without momentum and into chop.
For instance, I got in after a nice PB, big strong candle, so I take a long. Turns out I bought a DT. Price reverses and stops me out. Second time the DT is broken and liftoff, but I'm not in (fear).
Next time I buy the breakout, turns out to be a fakeout, reverse and stopped.
Problem is a combination of psycho and experience I think. Both should be improve with more screen time. And offcourse looking at the charts posted on the thread, I learn a lot from them.
Today my stops where to small. I try to put them above or below a prev high/low but today that was maybe 10 points. So I tried the prev bar high/low but that was even worse.
You noticed the mkt was spiky, you can clearly see that your risk has increased because the pivots (your logical stops) ar far far away, long bars all the way,what do you do? you are in Sim mode so you practice because money is not on the line, it's like saying I'm training for tennis championship so I screw my training because I'm not playing in Wimbledon right now.(I can see Agassi , kicking your @ass, LOL). No you learn your discipline in Sim mode, you don't trade and you wait for a CLEAR, LOW RISK set up. No set ups today? Fark it , tomorrow I need just 1 big trend to make it up for today.
And, as noted before, how can I know when momentum is in the trade?
I took that move down, and the first move up as well. But only minor wins. Fear kicks in and I take my profit to soon.
Also, I have no idea when a trend is going to end. That sudden reversal on 2036 did not make sense. When you posted that 2036 was big support/resistance it came clear to me.
I'm still a rookie, and papertrading. No man overboard at the moment. But after 2 years of study, losing real money and papertrading you would expect better results.
This week I did great, was about b/e and was determent to make a positive week (maybe the first one ever). So I got overconfident.
I have been reading some books on trading & psychology and I'm working on it. I just had to "spill the bean" as you put it.
After writing this, more things are coming clear to me. So thank you for you response (all of you).
Can't post a chart now, I'm at work 
Keep working on your discipline and listen to what the MKT has to say and you'll see big improvements, and if this makes you feel better, after 10 years sometimes I still have no clue, and I will post my bad days when they'll come.
Almost forgot, Think about implementing a daily and a weekly stop loss, say 1 day you are down 0.5 % of your account you stop right there, you close down the PC , that's not your day. That's it. Respect you stop loss ven though you are in sim mode, train your discipline in sim mode, that's vital.
Nobody is watching you, you are your own boss when trading, be a smart boss or the firm will go pear shaped.
They should invent a trading software just like that, which forces you to close down hehe, Button trader has a similar function I think.
