Well, you say that you "believe that this plan will give me all I want and more if I just trade it as I have written it", but there must be some basis for that belief or you'll never trust the plan, and if you don't trust it, you won't follow it.
That's it. I do trust it - I did the backtest manually over 13 months of data, and on all the parameters you ask about it tested out very strong, with the numbers being very similar to what I have seen you achieve in your "Straight Line Method" threads. So why I was unable to trust it yesterday was and remains a mystery to me.
I did much better today, though a technical glitch prevented it from being as routine as I would have hoped. I lost electricity, internet, and my land line late this morning, leaving me with only my cell phone with which to access my account and manage trades. It quickly became apparent that Scottrade's mobile app was a nightmare, and I just closed my one open position out where it was at the time. I did not get my services restored until after the close, so my trading day was effectively foreshortened to the first two hours.
Trade 1 UGAZ: The first trade I put on was UGAZ. This was a proper instance of the DBP, I entered the order, was filled, set the stop loss, and within minutes the stop loss was triggered for a loss. Grade 3 Points - .26
Trade 2 ALXN: Soon after the UGAZ entry, a DBP higher low set up formed on ALXN. I entered this order and the entry buy stop was triggered and filled. This is about the time things became interesting. No sooner had I been stopped in to this position and stopped out of Trade 1 UGAZ I saw that UGAZ was setting up a second DBP entry. As I was entering a buy stop to take this second trade on UGAZ there was a loud explosion outside and I lost internet, electric, phone. From what the linemen told me later, a squirrel lost a whole lot more than that as it made a bad connection with a transformer (I find it hard to believe a rodent could cause that much damage and disruption, but that was their story).
I was not able to enter the UGAZ order, and I was long ALXN but with no way to monitor it. My computer is on battery back up, as is my modem and router, but this explosion took out the power and the cable company's "box" as well. So, I grabbed my smart phone and logged in to Scottrade. It did not take me long to realize that it is the most counter intuitive trading software "platform" ever devised by human beings. I think I accidentally exited the program about five times before I figured out how to avoid doing that. I then found that the "streaming quotes" were off. I figured out how to turn them on, and then I went to another screen, and the streaming quotes were again off and I was getting delayed data, again.
I was simply flying blind at this point, so after some additional fumbling, I found my way to the order screen, and after still more of me jumping through several hoops where I was forced to cancel my stop loss before I could enter a new order to take me out of the trade at the market, I exited the ALXN position. So ended my trading day.
Here is the ALXN chart:
The exit was not "per plan," as it was really a forced exit due to technical issues on my end. However, now that have experienced this, my trading plan has been revised to call for an immediate exit of all open positions and cancellation of any remaining open orders should I lose connectivity to my broker. I give myself a 2 on this trade - 1 point for correctly identifying the opportunity and executing my entry order, 1 point for predefining my loss point and setting the stop loss order. However, as this was not a per plan exit and as I did not have this situation covered in my plan, I give myself a 0 for properly managing the trade to let my profits run.
For the day, I finish with a grade of 5/6
B- and 1.28 points. For the week I have cumulative 15/21
D, and 2.93 points.
Here is a table of today's trades.
