ES Journal - 2023/2024

But did you really hold during that serious drop? You even mentioned that you scaled in higher. Then you say you use small stops. That huge drop must have been a fairly deep drawdown on your multiple lots.

Nope.

Went flat on overnight longs on the Open around 73 ES giving back a lot of unrealized gains. Not sure where I stopped out on NQ, but it was above breakeven. Also giving back a lot of unrealized gains.

I considered taking profits pre-market, but since I'm uncertain about how the gyrations will play out and honestly expected a rally on the Open, I decided to hold.

Took a few stabs on the way down on small size until my final entry around 55 ES which I kept adding to on the way up.

Took on new NQ longs in the same area. I don't normally trade NQ, but I believe strongly in a rally today, so I wanted to have a small position on the strongest one.

It may not be the monster day I was hoping for, but it should be a green day at least.

ES is struggling a bit here, so prepared to kill any longs around 78. Higher avg. price on ES since I added a bit more there.

PS: If I went all-in on that morning drop, I could easily have been crushed. But since I'm dipping my toes in with small size my losses are small.

upload_2024-8-12_16-54-5.png


upload_2024-8-12_16-55-50.png
 
PPS: I was losing faith on that morning drop, but my data very strongly suggested a rally today. Also, I figured the 50 area was a potential pullback low. We overshot it quite a bit, so I did start having doubts...

But I still had enough faith that it was worth a small size. I then only added as the market started moving my way.
 
Nope.

Went flat on overnight longs on the Open around 73 ES giving back a lot of unrealized gains. Not sure where I stopped out on NQ, but it was above breakeven. Also giving back a lot of unrealized gains.

I considered taking profits pre-market, but since I'm uncertain about how the gyrations will play out and honestly expected a rally on the Open, I decided to hold.

Took a few stabs on the way down on small size until my final entry around 55 ES which I kept adding to on the way up.

Took on new NQ longs in the same area. I don't normally trade NQ, but I believe strongly in a rally today, so I wanted to have a small position on the strongest one.

It may not be the monster day I was hoping for, but it should be a green day at least.

ES is struggling a bit here, so prepared to kill any longs around 78. Higher avg. price on ES since I added a bit more there.

PS: If I went all-in on that morning drop, I could easily have been crushed. But since I'm dipping my toes in with small size my losses are small.

View attachment 346334

View attachment 346335
Good trade as always. It seems to work for you, but I just don't understand why you average up once the trade goes your way, your BE price becomes worst and more chance of taking heat. For me I want to take risk off when I get my 1st target instead of adding risk.
 
Nope.
Thanks for the thorough explanation. Your posts though made it seem like you were still holding, and this is much different. You're of course allowed to post as much or as little as you want, but from what I gather, you just like to post the good stuff, and of course who doesn't. But in my opinion, this actually causes issues because now you're almost on the hook for having to do well. When you cherry pick the trades you show, you force yourself to only post the ones that are working, which we see. You only show when you are nicely ahead and your stop is well above your entry. But you also never show the other trades on the chart that got to this point, which today you say was a bunch of stabs at it on the way down.

I think that by getting into the habit of only showing the good stuff, but never the bad stuff, this will put pressure on you. I kind of see it in the way you write, and also when you go quiet. When losses pile up, I think it makes you feel that you did something wrong, and hence are hiding. But all of this is just re-enforcing bad habits. There should be nothing wrong with showing losing trades. But when you don't want to show them, you put pressure on yourself to do well. I get the feeling from your writing that if a trade ends up being a loss, you feel that you did poorly and don't want to show your mistake. Its clearly not a mistake to have a losing trade, and taking a small loss is actually the win vs. holding it. Perhaps you don't want to show all the trades because there is some revenge trading going on there, but if this is what it takes to finally get into a good trade, then I'm not sure why all the secrecy.

Anyway... just some random thoughts that don't have much meaning.
 
Good trade as always. It seems to work for you, but I just don't understand why you average up once the trade goes your way, your BE price becomes worst and more chance of taking heat. For me I want to take risk off in this when I get my 1st target instead of adding risk.

Well, if today didn't drop on the Open but continued, I would have ended up with a monster position and a stop very well in the money below the assumed LOD for a potential monster gain.

Just see my current NQ position which also had adds after the initial rise.

Adding to a position works very well when it's a strong move. Done properly, you keep your risk very small and your gains very big. Of course, your win rate will drop a bit, but I'm happy with that.

For me, it's been a game changer at least.
 
If you're an expert/intermediate trader who's crushing it feel free to tell me to f**k off (or maybe tell me to f**k off anyway), but I think you're doing it the wrong way around.

My entries aren't always good either, so what I do is to take small losses on initial entries and then I will add to the positions only if the market proves me right.

So, in your case with the short if you sincerely believe a big sell is coming, you would sell each swing high on the way up on small size and take small stops on each new high. Then, finally, when it hits 5432 for the ultimate swing high and starts dropping (hypothetically), you'll start adding and getting bigger.

When you average down you will invariably end up taking those relatively outsized losses now and then. And the problem with this approach is that it can work for a long period of time before that one day or week where it blows up and you give back half your account.

As for last week, who the hell knows what happened then. It definitely felt like something changed in the markets, but so did the end of last week with the VIX getting crushed and the indices reversing the entire drop.

Appreciate the feedback. :)
 
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