Quote from austinp:
<i>"I actually made a little money in the afternoon, only to give it back at the close. I knew better than to take a last minute trade, but I was hoping the market would give me a little more.
It was just not a good day for me. I need to be more disciplined and will continue to work on it...
... Normally this works well for me, but for some reason, I could not get the feel for this market today.
While studying my chart after the close, if I would have just bought or sold the S/R lines...
<b>as my problem today was...</b>
... so there was no reason I should not have made money trading today."</i>
Trading the ER or NQ this morning was (relatively) easy money. Trading the ES was brutal. While the other two symbols made smooth swings up & down, the ES pinned to 1300 magnet and chopped both sides.
Yesterday and prior days the ES was (relatively) easy trading. Tomorrow might be the best price action you have ever enjoyed. Today was congested, sideways and choppy. It sucked. Not until 3pm EST did the ES go anywhere at all.
We have to avoid the urge to curve fit our personal approach into every single session... especially the outliers. This was one of those. It was not a normal-range session, at all. Trying to tweak and twist your core approach to suit every wiggle will lead from a methodical approach straight to wild-a** guesswork trying to make a buck. Which is a breakdown in discipline. Which leads to ruin.
Forget about the ES today. Quit before digging any big holes, and go right back to your usual approach tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. No emini trader on earth with zero exceptions makes money every day, period. You won't be the only one who does, so your only focus should be controlled loss during adverse stretches and maximized gains during normal market action