Trading Results for Thursday

made +1.50pts today.


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Trade1: short 1475.75, 1pt. loss
Trade2

Trade1 was a pre-market play of the gap fill that I had described yesterday. ES filled the gap according to my expectations. Unfortunately, I traded with bigger size in my first trade, and was unprepared to take the heat of a 1.5point retrace. I was so sure of the gap being filled that I put on large size which made me lose my objectivity. I got scared out of my position.

After losing that point in the pre-market session, I scalped my way back to breakeven with some uninteresting 2-tick and 3-tick plays with a single contract.

The yellow arrows highlight setups for trades that I was not able to spot in time.
The orange arrow highlights the setup for a trade that I did spot in real-time, but at that moment the phone rang, and that caused me to hesitate long enough for the window of opportunity to pass.

Trade2 was a play of reversal at the mini-intraday resistance @1467. That subsequent drop down to 1460 came out of nowhere. The only warning was highlighted by the third yellow candle. The window of opportunity lasted only a few seconds, and by the time I said, "Whoosh!", ES whooshed down 3pts.

I'm not sure if the additional size that I put on my trades today made me more risk averse than before, but I certainly did not feel as aggressive as previous sessions. This is good in the sense that I don't force things, but bad in the sense that it causes me to miss out on good setups. It could be just me, or it could be that today's low volume session was uninspiring to make any trades.
One thing that I did notice with today's session was that the price action spiked more than before. The price spikes were unusual, and it never retraced those price spikes far enough to put on a trade in the direction of the trend.

Things I did right today:
- sat on my rump roast, and did not force any trades, even after I missed out on my setups.
- waited. And waited. And then waited some more.

Room for Improvement:
- mentally prepare myself before trading bigger size.