Journal Entry - 1:20 AM EST
Why did I trade so much today? Glad you asked.
Although I characteristically only take 1 to 3 trades a day on average, today I was trying out a few things. More about that later.
The first trade was a night scalp executed at 3:54 am EST. I had serious insomnia last night. I logged into my IB account to see where the futures were trading. Every so often I do a night scalp or two, taking advantage of the wide spreads in ES during the nighttime session. Yes, I know there is risk involved with doing this since there is very limited liquidity during these hours. However, if you observe a price range that ES keeps bouncing up and down between, such as 919, 919.5, 919, 919.5, etc. for hours on end, then it is not exceptionally hard to buy at the bid at 919 and immediately put your contracts for sale at the ask at 919.5. Thatâs what I did and I was only in for 2 minutes and 13 seconds. Iâve done this kind of trade maybe 10-12 times over the course of the last two months and Iâve only lost money on it once. Now, this is not something I do every night, just sort of something to do for entertainment purposes when I canât sleep. Please realize I that Iâm cognizant of the risk of this kind of trade. Believe me, Iâve seen the futures dip or rise 5 points in 10 seconds flat during the night session. The Nikkei crashes over in Japan, the S&P takes a nosedive, etc, etc.
Of course, in my absolutely perfect 20/20 hindsight, it would have been dandy to have just held onto those 2 contracts all through the night and all through the regular trading session. Hell, I could have put in a simulated stop with my trading software before I went to bed, slept in till noon, and spent all day playing golf, exiting with a MOC order. That would have been a way to do it barring any IB disconnect or my computer crashing. Instead I opted to do things the hard way
Sorry for all the rambling. As Iâm writing this message, Iâm on a prescription sleeping pill called Ambien and it makes me feel kind of goofy. It sort of has a bizzarro psychotropic effect. In addition, itâs late and Iâm really tired.
Anyway, the second trade was an attempt to sell the primary resistance area. I was willing to take a chance on this counter-trend trade, but seeing the strength of the market, I was not willing to give it a long leash. I decided to grant it only a tight 2-point stop, with the additional qualification that I would stop and reverse if my stop was hit and the market broke through the R1 level. Well, my stop was indeed hit. However, right when I was going to establish a long position at 929, my IB market feed went dead. Man was I pissed!! Literally, at the moment I was going to press the buy button, my quotes stopped. At least I was flat when the outage occurred. It would have sucked to have been stuck short when the feed went out.
Well, tell you what, Iâm going to have to continue this tirade tomorrow, as Iâm dog tired and I needs me sleep!!!!!!!!
