Well, I certainly learned some valuable lessons today!!
Today ended up being a breakout day to the upside. Not overly surprising considering the narrow-range day yesterday. However, I didnât capitalize on todayâs bullish move because I was mentally biased toward choppiness, as weâve been seeing a lot of this kind of action lately. As a result, I elected not to take this morningâs 30-minute range breakout, which would have put me long at 899. Later on, I contemplated buying the breakout above the 905 level, but again my bias stopped me from taking action. I ended up trying to fight the trend today and Iâm lucky I didnât get burned.
Here are todayâs trades:
11:00 EST SLD @ 903.5
11:26 EST BOT @ 902.25 +1.25
12:35 EST SLD @ 909.75
12:48 EST BOT @ 909.5 +0.25
I was feeling out of synch with the market today after the second trade, so I decided it would be best both for me and my account equity to step away from the market for a while. I returned to my trading desk at 1:30 EST. I noticed that we had even broken above the R2 level. At this point I decided that it was too late to try to go long (the two plays of the day really were the 30m breakout and the breakout above 905). I missed both, so I felt that I should not try to make something out of nothing. Also, I wasnât willing to try to fade the trend anymore, so I called it a day.
Todayâs lessons:
1. Itâs good to clear your mind of biases while you are trading. Trade what is actually happening instead of what you think should happen.
2. It is not a bad idea to step away from the market for a few hours if you feel frustrated or if you just feel out of synch with the market.
3. Itâs helpful to remind yourself that you only really need to take 2 points a day on average to make a living. Getting upset over missing a 10- or 15-point move doesnât do you any good. Learn and move on. If youâve netted 10 points at the end of the week, youâre doing fine. Anything you grab beyond that is just gravy!
Daily Summary:
2 RTs
P&L: +1.5 pts