Well, the good news is you are still darn good at reading a chart. You have recognized the value of the days initial run when all are looking for the same thing.
Chasing a move is a bad strategy as you recognize. So far so good. Now your mission is to capitalize on the situation. OK, you get a signal but you hesitate. now lets say you missed a signal and price runs away and you wish you were in, thats normal.
Think of each trade as just that, a single trade that will not make you or break you. (I know you read this also somewhere before but worth repeating) Trading is a PROCESS, it is a whole shitload of trades. Maybe today is 1 to 5 trades and maybe tomorrow is a single trade, then maybe 10 that 3rd day. But what you do know for sure is your risk management will not allow a single trade to hurt your capital for the entire process, so a single trade is just that.
You know you will get out quick enough if the trade is a dud, thats the easy part...........so why worry? Here is what you need to do. You need to be picky and have patience to wait for a good setup, yes sometimes like today you get an outside bar at the 0940 bar, where the high was 1005.75 (RTH) which turned out to be the high of the day in retrospect, and dropped down and closed at that bars low of 1002.00. = OUTSIDE KEY reversal, that confirmed the drop from the pre-open high of 107,ish.
The opening can be wicked, but in a way we must just deal with that and place our bets. How you as an individual use your tactics to do that is your choice..........BUT, in order to perfect a tactic it must be worked, messaged and tweaked to your liking. There is no other way to get comfy with your signals.
Here is a suggestion to try: Tell yourself you will every single day capture 3 handles from the big dogs each and every day. Tell yourself you will cheat and settle for 2 handles profit if it just feels good. Anything over 3 just consider yourself lucky because that is not your goal until later. When you get a new job in any profession they do not pay partner wages up front.
Try to get your 3 handles before noon in attempt to put a little pressure on self.
That goal is rather small in dollar amount but big in the learning curve. You just trade a single car until you get consistent, until you feel the odds are in your favor for your SELECT FEW signals. You might even consider even a single type of setup-signal combo. Many big dogs are actually one-trick ponies. Kind of like a dog and pony show combined...
CONFIDENCE, work on that.
Chasing is bad because about the time we jump in after missing the start of a good move we manage to get filled just before the run starts to reverse enough to force us out. Damn that was aggravating before i understood how to read retraces as normal and relative to the previous legs size. So the answer of how to jump in the fray when we missed the start is to wait until the NORMAL retrace shows up and then we get in with the original direction on the possible continuation of the run for another leg. (read watch pivot points as a clue for where the next leg might be targeted)
Think: mkts run, mkts rest, mkts continue on, rest, maybe continue on for another leg or maybe reverse. A good one-way day will usually have 3 legs to ride.
PS: i just now read john (whatever his handle is, good advice. Nod.you are close
PSS: Ok, jim something, ha
PSSS: remember, the faster, the further the "RUN" the less retrace...........great runs have smaller retraces. Well that is hard to say actually,
