Quote from Matcha:
I think today market offers a few good PA trades. I was punished by not taking profits and breaking rules. So I had a b/e day. Not too happy with my discipline.
Trade 2: reenter. The signal bar is an inside bar. Wasnât a great looking signal bar. But I thought itâs worth a try if the follow through could be good. I tighten stop. But the pattern failed, a H2 long turned to a L2 short. I was stopped out. The trend has reversed. I didnât know whether I should reverse. I got to do more practice and back testing on this type of failed patterns and be ready to reverse. -5pts
Matcha, I think you should make a decision now whether you want to be a big trend trader who is willing to give back profits frequently (taking b/e trades and small losses) in order to capture a trend day (where you hold through retraces and possibly add on pullback entries), or a pure intraday price action trader who looks to catch trends in chunks and take advantage of wide range days where there's good money to be made both ways, which is what I do.
I realized after a lot of heartache that I am much better at snaring many smaller profits each day, even in a strong trend. I had a day recently where I captured more out of a strong trending move than the range of the move itself, because I took profits off pushes in the trend and re-entered at better prices than my exits. This was psychologically easier on me than holding through retraces and possibly giving it all back (I have so "been there, done that" and it sucks).
Once you make that firm decision, you can then focus on creating trade management rules to ensure you get the most out of your trading.
What's happening now is you're seeing big trending days after the fact, where you get little or nothing (most likely a result of bias such as "too high" or "too low" keeping you from trading the trend, or from holding for reasonable profit targets), and you feel silly for not capturing something out of those days. You're then applying psychology from days like that to non-trending days where the price swings back and forth or chops in a smaller range.
On your second trade, consider the fact that price broke the 20-bar EMA and did NOT find support at previous resistance. That's a double whammy for the bulls trading intraday in your time frame. Once that occurs, look for a short setup until bullish price action returns.
You came into the day with a "this could be a real nice trend day" bias and were blinded to what was in front of you.
Heck, I did the same thing in CL this morning. In pre-market I traded long, then short (wide range action). Then after NYMEX open I traded long for the breakout, long again on a pullback entry for the next breakout, then long yet again for a breakout that never transpired. Then I watched a complete reversal ensue, pretty much identical to the action you went long off of with your second trade, and sat on my hands through the whole thing. I let my bias cloud my view of price and I waited over half an hour for another long entry instead of trading a perfectly valid reversal setup to the short side.
...And I thought it could be today....