3:15pm OK, two steps hardly make a journey, yet yesterday and today were both necessary to restore some personal rhythm, confidence, and most of all -- profits. Of course it never hurts to have the classic morning after trend day where the market once again served up the high probability scenario of price oscillations following Monday's monstah.And as is usually the case, I banked more today than I did yesterday, primarily by buying the opening down move, selling into the retail surge, and then reversing the sequence on the 10am data overshoot. High probability sequences ... gotta love 'em. And while the PM bias remained up, the action was a bit sloppy for me as I simply worked on my discipline.
My goals this week are modest, but necessary: Keep pulling the trigger, re-establish some rhythm & confidence, put the personal issues aside during the day, and begin to put some distance between accumulated earnings and the stop set over the weekend, as well as between the current trading session and last two weeks of May. Hopefully, should performance momentum begin to once again prove itself over the coming weeks, I'll take the training wheels off and get back to being more aggressive.
And while setting the current game stop has generated more discussion and debate than I expected, it was clear that I had to do something to clean the mental slate and gain a longer term perspective after my late May struggles, while at the same time decreasing the self-imposed stress that had been starting to build. You may also notice that for the moment, I'm purposely not referencing the specific daily P&L to regain that longer-term perspective, and so we'll keep it general and update the equity results and chart at week's end.
If all goes according to plan, setting the stop should also put me in a bit of a "free-roll" mentality for June and the rest of the year, and perhaps on December 31 we'll look back and see it did the trick in getting me back on track. As I mentioned over the weekend, I'm certainly not giving up on the 2009 $1M ... yet first things first, and right now I simply need to solidify the footing.
If all goes according to plan, setting the stop should also put me in a bit of a "free-roll" mentality for June and the rest of the year, and perhaps on December 31 we'll look back and see it did the trick in getting me back on track. As I mentioned over the weekend, I'm certainly not giving up on the 2009 $1M ... yet first things first, and right now I simply need to solidify the footing.
One step at a time.
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4 comments:
Mr. Miller
1. When you wake up and trade the us session. What do you look at from the Euro session trading? (High/Low, patterns, if the market was trending in the euro session do you look for it to continue in the us session?)
2. The market gives you every opportunity to doubt yourself, but how do you stay confident in your trading or when your confidence goes down how do you motivate yourself or get your confidence back up?
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions sir.
Don, I can't find the post or comments but I think I remember you saying that ES was the or one of the hardest instruments to trade for the individual trader.
Is that the case?
Yankees -
I'll normally treat each session as its own, and will begin the U.S. session based on whatever likely action would normally occur from the prior day U.S. session.
i.e. Europe may trade the U.S. up overnight into prior day U.S. resistance, and the latter will usually be more relevant for me.
With respect to staying confident, I think the last few days are examples of what I'm doing to restore some temporary personal doubt which has crept in for the first time in a few years.
Once you've proven yourself over many years, you just keep on keeping on, knowing that probability is always on your side.
Don
Mark -
I don't recall ever saying that. I do remember mentioning from time to time that for me, the DAX was far tougher in terms of rhythm, liquidity, etc.
Don
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