Goals for (the rest of) this week

Well, I think I've collected enough mistakes to see where I need to improve the most.

1. Enter an alert for each position where no hard stop loss point has been entered. The price level for triggering the alert would be a few ticks above the stop loss point.

2. Close out positions if you are going to be away from your desk for more than 5 minutes.

3. Don't expect, guess or predict, but WAIT for the stinkin' chart to show you what it IS doing and react accordingly !!

4. Do not make a trade to break the monotony or because you are bored. If no good setups (ie. with a decent reward to risk ratio) can be seen on the chart, well duh, that means there are no good setups. If I'm really bored, then I should go for a walk.

5. Don't chase a stock. Let it go.

6. Shutdown for the day (no new trades allowed) if any of the above rules are violated.

This last rule is to recognize that I am very skilled at damaging my own equity. My line of thinking about this is summed up pretty effectively here.