Well, for starters I am not trading today. I am only just catching up on my journal now, as I tried hard over the weekend to not think about trading.
Bad habits die hard. Friday, I went back to bad habits. I was weakened from an overloaded work week, and I recognized it, but because it was non-trading related issues (like being stiffed for $4500 on Monday) I wrongly assumed I would be able to stick to my rules, and especially newer rules. That finally caught up to me on Thursday and Friday.
I need to decide what lane I am in, and stay in that lane. Either I trade for those larger moves, or I stick with the smaller moves. That is my goal to work out, and until that time I don't trade.
YK
In my younger trading days in S&P500, I went for much larger amounts like 2.00 points, back then one point was $500 and traded in nickels, had to call broker who called the floor, once broker felt confident you weren't going to hurt him, he allow trader to call the floor, time is money. One thing I didn't know at the time as I do today, market range extends then contracts(choppy) and if your system can only do well with extension of range, you will continually lose. Your manual back testing may prove different as you brain has trained you to see what it wants you to see, and during real time brain sees something else.
All markets are like this and eventually I went other direction as I found counter-trend to work well in S&P500, but like trend trading, this only works part of the time, I finally was able to find happy medium of blending each for S&P500, it was another three years till I really discovered some markets you do limited counter-trend trades like Crude oil and Russell. As your career goes down path of years, you keep learning and tweaking.
I would go with both and trade two lot or you feel uncomfortable do a large and take 10 ticks and Mini crude and go for the 30 plus trades to get the experience of trading twice as many. Pete Rose was incredible singles/doubles player.
When there is good volume in Crude Oil I trade in groups of 7, I take off 4 lots at 10 ticks, 2 lots at 20 ticks and one lot at 50 ticks. The times I am trading now, most of time slippage would hurt me and why I use limits often depending on where signals occurs into swing of current trend. Early part of trend I use stop/limit to get in, meaning little larger slippage I willing to accept) but deeper into trend no slippage. So depending on where I believe trend possible to reverse I accept perfect entry and often my time stops will shorten, more of a do it now or out at tick profit.
If you have to study whether it is a signal or not, you don't have system down, you have to have a faceslap thought and react, YOU are supposed to be the robot. One of practice sessions I use to do when adding a new market to day trade is to sim and for five days, do as many and as often trades in 3-4 hours to get a feel for that market, I will drop down to 20 second charts which will give me many trades, you have no time to think, you are just reacting. I know many would think this is dumb or impossible to try, but it is funny sometimes that something new can present itself as new ideas or might be a knew ways to trade.
You not being paid to not trade, what you going to do for us tomorrow.
