Matcha's Dow E-mini Journal

[FreeMarketRider]

Quote from PatientOperator:

Engineers have to work harder in this field.

--po

PO,

So true - engineers love order; markets are dis-order
engineers understand efficiency; markets try to efficient

Best of Luck

Matcha,

I'm not plugged into markets yet, but I caught a bit of premarket chatter on CNBC and thought this would be a great day for you. Your trades today were an impressive show of discipline and restraint. I'm not sure which is more impressive, your instinctive close out of A or your patient entry on B. Both show off your maturity and skills. I like your description of trading as being painless. Trading moves and trading mind in sync with markets is a beautiful thing. WAY TO GO GIRL

 

[Matcha]

Market opened neutral today. Overnight reaction was neutral too. We traded in yesterday’s range. On daily chart, market has been up for 4 days. So I had a bias that today is going to be choppy. But I was wrong.

With my bias and lots of hesitations (from YTD’s little success so don’t want to give back profits) to pull triggers, I missed a lot of great entries. I didn’t want to chase or enter on minor pullback because I kept thinking market isn’t going to trend very well. But today is such a wide range trending type of day that offers nice opportunities.

SOH the whole day. But worked on where I should place realistic target area. Looks like the target area I set today is fairly reasonable.

3 trades are qualified my set ups. I missed 2 of them. I let the short trade pass by because it was during lunch time so time isn’t on my side.

Marked all the entries I missed and the target I set for today. Hopefully next time I can enter them with confidence!

Volume Profile again helped to define entry and exits today. The grey box area is yesterday’s VA.

 

[NoDoji]

Quote from Matcha:

Market opened neutral today. Overnight reaction was neutral too. We traded in yesterday’s range. On daily chart, market has been up for 4 days. So I had a bias that today is going to be choppy. But I was wrong.

With my bias and lots of hesitations (from YTD’s little success so don’t want to give back profits) to pull triggers, I missed a lot of great entries. I didn’t want to chase or enter on minor pullback because I kept thinking market isn’t going to trend very well. But today is such a wide range trending type of day that offers nice opportunities.

SOH the whole day. But worked on where I should place realistic target area. Looks like the target area I set today is fairly reasonable.

Sitting on Hands is the right thing to do when you have a bias and the price action isn't fitting into your bias. The right thing to do as a trader is to have no bias and let price tell you what to do, but I've spent over 2 years trying to work through that one!

If I have a bias, price isn't complying and I don't see a "safe" counter-trend setup to fit my bias, I'll wait it out until a setup appears that's in my comfort zone. I'll whine a lot at the end of the day about how my bias kept me out of great trades, but that sure beats fighting price and sitting on a max loss at the end of the day.

Trading what price is telling you, rather than trading off a bias, is the difference between the pros and us, Matcha, but we will get there

 

[PatientOperator]

Quote from Matcha:



With my bias and lots of hesitations (from YTD’s little success so don’t want to give back profits) to pull triggers, ...........

Hi Matcha,

You did exactly the right thing today. When you have hesitations, it is better to sit out the trades. You have passed the discipline test today!

On Marcel's book pg 227, bullet #7, he said - "it's okay to miss trades."

This is the beauty of being a day trader. There will be an abundant trade setups waiting in the horizon. Tomorrow, all the golden opportunities will be there for you.

--po

 

[tlow]

I had a small laugh at how eerily similar my notes are to your notes on the chart. Pretty interesting, hopefully that is a good thing. I think Im going to start putting more notes on my charts, similar to you..IE the head/shoulders pattern or whatever.

By the way, Im an engineer as well

 

[Matcha]

Quote from tlow:

I had a small laugh at how eerily similar my notes are to your notes on the chart. Pretty interesting, hopefully that is a good thing. I think Im going to start putting more notes on my charts, similar to you..IE the head/shoulders pattern or whatever.

By the way, Im an engineer as well

just left a post on your journal.

LOL. Its the faith. Always run into Engineers. Most of my past dates were engineers... Most of my friends married to engineers too!

Saved us lots of money to hire plumbers, computer repairers, house maitnances... Just j/k

 

[Matcha]

Quote from NoDoji:

Sitting on Hands is the right thing to do when you have a bias and the price action isn't fitting into your bias. The right thing to do as a trader is to have no bias and let price tell you what to do, but I've spent over 2 years trying to work through that one!

If I have a bias, price isn't complying and I don't see a "safe" counter-trend setup to fit my bias, I'll wait it out until a setup appears that's in my comfort zone. I'll whine a lot at the end of the day about how my bias kept me out of great trades, but that sure beats fighting price and sitting on a max loss at the end of the day.

Trading what price is telling you, rather than trading off a bias, is the difference between the pros and us, Matcha, but we will get there

Thank you, Nodoji! It's so hard not to have bias especially the more time spending in the market, the more we see, the more we "think" we "know"....

But like you said, we will get there!

 

[Matcha]

Quote from PatientOperator:

Hi Matcha,

You did exactly the right thing today. When you have hesitations, it is better to sit out the trades. You have passed the discipline test today!

On Marcel's book pg 227, bullet #7, he said - "it's okay to miss trades."

This is the beauty of being a day trader. There will be an abundant trade setups waiting in the horizon. Tomorrow, all the golden opportunities will be there for you.

--po

Tomorrow will be another day! Good luck to your trades! I thought I would forward this to you since you are my great partner! But I am sure you have read this a lot! "NQoops" take on trading just one set up.

http://www.trading-naked.com/Setups.htm

 

[FreeMarketRider]

Quote from NoDoji:

Sitting on Hands is the right thing to do when you have a bias and the price action isn't fitting into your bias. The right thing to do as a trader is to have no bias and let price tell you what to do, but I've spent over 2 years trying to work through that one!

If I have a bias, price isn't complying and I don't see a "safe" counter-trend setup to fit my bias, I'll wait it out until a setup appears that's in my comfort zone. I'll whine a lot at the end of the day about how my bias kept me out of great trades, but that sure beats fighting price and sitting on a max loss at the end of the day.

Trading what price is telling you, rather than trading off a bias, is the difference between the pros and us, Matcha, but we will get there

NoDoji - Great (and no doubt hard won) advice.

Matcha - Great chart analysis - more solid evidence of your growing knowledge. +1 for being able to be SOH v.s. chasing an incorrect bias. You're up to the task for sure

 

[Matcha]

A challenging day for me today. Luckily, I didn’t lose much.

6:55. Missed a double bottom pattern at 10422. Saw it’s developing, but didn’t pull the trigger because the risk seems too large. Then couldn’t find a nice retrace to join the move…
The opening action always happen so quickly and volatile! They hold me back to pull triggers even when I have many great reasons and the most sounding set up to enter…errr…. :-(

First trade is a long, buy at minor pullback, buy at W bottom on 2 min chart. I couldn’t think anything I did wrong for this trade. I was holding the trade for at to reach the VAH. But market tested HOD and then pullback and hit my stop.

2nd trade was a big mistake. Only looked at one corner of the picture. Saw a H-S is like to develop and saw price bounce back from POC. So I basically short at support level which is the Pivot point level…. -9 Pts loss

3nd trade was a long. Not the best set up. But it was a D/B buy at lower channel. Stopped out.

The 4th trade was an emotional impulsive trade. Didn’t re-asset and re-evaluate the situation enough. After a failed Double bottom I flipped to short side and thinking its going to fall. Stopped again for a bigger loss.. -12Pts

TRADE A: short at VAH. Took profit when price formed a D/B at Pivot point.

TRADE B: Long. Buy at minor pullback on 2 min chart. Took profit at the next Resistance level and current VAH, but the market just shoots up without me!!!!

Today’s PnL: -$39, 6Trades, 33% winrate

These 2 emotional mistakes cost me over $100. hmmmm...