Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Day 2 Botched Like a Bitch

Flat out missed one signal today that would've been a huge winner (at least in my terms). I was in the trade but I didn't follow what the chart said and I got to par too quickly and got taken out right before it popped a good 5-7 points in favor. Unacceptable - period.


The rest of the day came and went with wins, pars, and basically losses. But I have been monitoring a pattern which seems to keep screwing me over and faking me into trades. It did it again today which brings the total tally up to 4 trades in 5 days that all lost because of the underlying chart pattern. I look for H, HH's and L, LL's to get into "trend trades" right? Only problem being the megaphone patterns which is comprised of a L, LL, HH, LH pattern (or the opposite for shorts). This thing shouldn't be regarded as valid as far as i'm concerned because as its proven its not actual trend transition, but just chop in a market place. Lesson learned I suppose, but not after it got me down to -75.00 net on the day.


I'm not beating myself up over the megaphone... that's what I paid up to learn today but I am beating myself up over my mismanagement. You can't be a successful trader and do that crap. And either I get it together now or my accounts going to be gone along with my career by May.

Trade Results:

ES: -75.00

4 comments:

Michael said...

I screwed one up too by missing the only good setup of the day, we'll get it tomorrow.

E-Mini Player said...

Being quick on moving stops to break-even works but you have to be willing to jump back in if the trade premise holds. Whenever you limit risk, you're usually also limiting reward. Slowly but surely man, you're moving in the right direction and best to get these "lessons" out of the way on 1-lot trades now, rather than 10-100 lot trades down the road. Cheap tuition! Keep at it.

Anonymous said...

You situation sounds very similar to mine back in January. I ended up trading on the simulator for a while so I could work out my issues in a safer environment. My account as less than $5K and I didn't have much room for error. This helped me in a huge way. Probably one of the best things I have ever done yet. The experience really helped me trust both my and my plan and it helped me develop the patience and discipline I needed to just follow my plan. It also gave me a chance to really tweak things without having to continue to pay for the lessons with my own cash. Remember that you are trying to make a career out of this - if trading on the sim for a few weeks puts you a bit "behind" it won't make a difference in the long-run and furthermore, I argue it may actually put you ahead. That's been my personal experience at least. Just a thought.

Good luck.
Stan

E-Mini Player said...

Good point Stan. That's why I'm sticking with Sim for the time being and not rushing into it with real $. I've done over 10 lots on real $ before so I know how it is; but for now I'm improving the mechanics on Sim.