T/A Trading Journal

One of the more difficult days to read in a while.. Not quite a trend day, Not quite a chop.. a little bit of everything thrown in with slow pace.. Survived it as not a day I could cleanly say not to trade... All that was clear was upper 50's had resistance.

Main error was focusing on 1857 a bit much after it had become not very important as it was criss-crossed routinely.. Most trades were fine.. for a scalper. No doubt key to doing well short of swing trading (better and hopefully will get there) is to limit damage when confused.

Overtraded and moved 1 stop.

-4 for the day
 

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Sold early dip 1854 and refused to take 8 point profit at CLEAR support. Even though range is so clear when each end is reached I begin thinking it will break!.. Nope.. 8 points disappeared to a scratch trade. Then a new Range developed.. 1850 to 1854.. too small to trade but I did.. 5 times and once again tried to forecast the break selling 51's and buying high 53's.. Finally got long 1855.25 (target 1859) but reversed short 1854 and suffered more with the final jam to 1860... The machinations of tick by tick watching will drive a man mad. Also showing a tendency to sit on shorts while taking long profits quickly. Some thinking to do...

-10.75 for day..
 
often when u have a winner, a double ,you wait for a triple or homer and u give a lot back,,its very hard to close at targets, take the profit,u can always get back in, i still do this also
 
Some days I take small profits, build up, leave early... Then greed shows up. There are prices where one simply shouldn't be trading... Ok if you just don't know... but when you do know that's the worst.. Of course sooner or later the market shows you you didn't know after all... :p

TRADE ONLY WHEN THERE IS NEARLY FREE MONEY WAITING TO BE PICKED UP... soooo hard to do..
 
Rashid, nice journal. I found you and I are often doing the same thing. Today I was also waiting for ES to break yesterday's low on that move, and end up giving back profit. I also have a short bias.

I'm not sure it's that bad though, you don't know if it will break. On some days it will go so far that it makes it well worth holding on. The obvious solutions are 1). scaling out. 2). Trailing stop. 3). exit at momentum stall, aim to re-enter.

Anyways index futures are pretty bad this week. For 4 days, ES didn't offer a 10 point range. I'm reminding myself not to be affected by these trades and end up cutting profit short when the range does expand, maybe as early as tomorrow.
 
What made it difficult is I got my exit signal and usually it will spend SOME time backfilling but today I kept moving up my bid up and up and up.... This happens rarely enough it should not be a big deal but my mental state changed noticeably after..

Tomorrow Should be "interesting".. There is no fear in these markets.
 
Quote from Rashid_G.:

If 1830 crossed again, should be a VERY quick trip to 1900.
More...

Always trade the dailies.. even when daytrading.. If this were a stock I would never question the direction. There is a top currently around 1970 for NQ to keep eye on. Will watch to see how long gap lives this morning to decide to get on the train... 1863 area obvious get in price.
 

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