ES Journal - 2021/2022

...I have a rule that I will never let a winner turn into a loser...

People here should read / re-read this line over and over.

Protecting your capital should always take precedent over making money. Not to mention the devastating psych blows you'll take by letting winning trades turn into losers repeatedly. It can send you to some dark places and get some bad habits churning real quick.
 
People here should read / re-read this line over and over.

Protecting your capital should always take precedent over making money. Not to mention the devastating psych blows you'll take by letting winning trades turn into losers repeatedly. It can send you to some dark places and get some bad habits churning real quick.

True.

I also have a rule about never letting a (big) unrealized winner turn into a B/E trade, but it can be tricky to manage as one can often end up trailing out too quickly. That is also one habit which can send you to dark places and make you trade irrationally afterwards wanting to "make it back" as you do indeed lose money when doing this.

Any unrealized profits are money I can put in my pocket whenever I want to. In my view, I'd be a fool to let a 20 point trade go back to B/E because I wanted 25 points.
 
I love to run these once in a while, though. Everything including stop/limit/trailing stop is automated by Ninjatrader after my entry.

I only sit back and wait for the orders to execute and ring the cash register (yes, I actually have that as a sound when take profit orders are filled).

The beautiful thing about scalping is that there's always a trade. And if you have a conservative daily target you can be quickly done.

The negative thing about scalping is that it requires a very high win rate as it's most likely impossible to have a positive R/R ratio scalping ES. It might be possible with other instruments, but ES back-fills so much that it's not really something I see many people (if any) do successfully.

My understanding is that a trader is making a choice between taking frequent small losses, or larger less frequent losses.

Sadly because my bid/ask spread is quite wide I cant scalp. But instead I place lots of tiny positions at reversal points and keep scaling into small losers until the reversal finally materializes.
 
True.

I also have a rule about never letting a (big) unrealized winner turn into a B/E trade, but it can be tricky to manage as one can often end up trailing out too quickly. That is also one habit which can send you to dark places and make you trade irrationally afterwards wanting to "make it back" as you do indeed lose money when doing this.

Any unrealized profits are money I can put in my pocket whenever I want to. In my view, I'd be a fool to let a 20 point trade go back to B/E because I wanted 25 points.
Well, it depends on your goal and how you manage your trades. Your particular style of trading would require absolute focus where you need to micromanage every tick. That can get pretty tiring after a while. Also you will get stopped out with micro movements, potentially giving up on larger moves. Of course, you can always jump back in but since your trading style don't allow for much wiggle room, that's easier said than done.
 
Buy the dip.
Buy the effing dip, bro! :D

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