I had a great first half of October and a bad second half.
I was on track for my best month ever and then erased all my profits ending up with zero. I barely payed for commish.
Like I always do, I blame myself for the bad 2nd half of October.
I lost discipline and started to be sloppy with my trading, neglecting key rules of my trading plan and eventually getting burned.
I've never traded such a volatile market before, it's the first time for me.
Something I noticed is this:
1) Technical patterns tend to appear less and fail more often.
2) The market seems eager to swing from one extreme to another, crushing anything in between. I guess this is typical of panicking markets where sentiment tends to shift from extremely bearish to extremely bullish in a matter of minutes or hours.
3) Price action moves fast, really fast. Key price areas aren't tested for long, they either hold or get crushed. This takes away precious time for decision making. I remember one trade I took 2 weeks ago when I had a runner left for a nice short - I trade YM - was over 200pts in the money, went to take a piss and by the time I was back, my breakeven trailing stop got hit.
4) Patience and discipline is required more now than ever before. This market doesn't take any prisoners, if you make a mistake you pay dearly for it. It's not like the 2006 market where you could afford to make a mistake and with the market not really going anywhere, even getting away with a small loss or small profit.
5) Intraday price action is really stressful, I feel extremely burned out at the end of the day. YM average daily range today equals its average monthly range in 2006. Basically, every day I am trading a whole 2006 month move!!!
6) I don't want to sound repetitive, but patience - pick your spots and be selective - and discipline are key in this market.
Good weekend all.