Welcome back



Mike

so didya stick to the $100 risk on Monday?

ShruggedAtlas 

Ok I'm back. took a bit longer to get back to trading than I thought. Not a great start to my resumption of trading so far. these last couple of days I have been trading with way too much capital. I'm not sure why but I did take far too much risk these last couple of days. I have been trading SNDK after giving up SPY due to it's higher ATR. SNDK seems to been in a decent price range that allows me to keep my share amount low and the beta is high enough to exploit some good moves on most typical days. But maybe that is why I took on too much risk? I don't know. Impulse i guess...maybe the time off has got me impatient to make some money. I had two days of overnight holds which is against my rules as a day trader. I was fortunate that yesterdays price movement began to move in my favor after a few minutes for 10am. I had placed a long trade near the close three days ago as price had moved steadily down that whole afternoon. I was down about $1,000 a few bars after the open yesterday and fortunately sucked it up and waited for that first bounce. SNDK reversed strongly just before 10am and put me in a winning position. I ended that trade with about a $2,000 gain. What a thrill but the risk was far too great. When I looked back on the trade I saw no good technical reason why I should have done that. It was a complete impulse trade and for that I have to say it was a bad trade even though it was a winner. The next trade I took was again at the end of the day yesterday. Actually, it was a post session short play. What a huge mistake! I shorted 1,000 shares and thought I was a genius when I heard the news about the debt talks stalling yada yada and proceded to kick myself as SNDK took some cocaine and began to fly north instead. Again, thinking i was invincible after the lucky break I got yesterday I preceded to periodically sell short $1,000 share a pop ignoring all common sense and disregarding even the most basic of rules. I pretty much broke every rule EVER! I finally put my last short in near the high of the day at about 43.60. I think the Gods were watching over me because that was in fact the reversal and the stock preceded to move lower for the rest of the day in a fairly orderly manner. I was down several thousand dollars at around 11am when the reversal came. I hung on as the price dropped but almost covered when there was a retracement around 2:30 this afternoon. I held on and covered just as it hovered above my breakeven. My loss for the day was $294 - much of that was commissions. Ironically, had I waited till the end of the day and trusted the sell off I would have done very well. but in the final analysis, it was all just bad trading. I traded like an amateur these last three days and I'm very disappointed. Once again, it's time to get back to basics. Starting Monday, I'm going to stay with a flat $100 risk. I was doing that just great for the longest time...then after I got back from vacation I just became another person! I need to find that discipline again ASAP. Monday I'll post a trade and it will be great! I'll stay with the plan, and risk no more than $100. I won't make much...but it will be a great trade! That's what I need now more than every. I'm looking forward to it.

SA, are you still at it with SD?

No longer trading with strategy desk. Using NT. my journal is called Fresh Start Journal and I've been using tumblr mostly for journaling.


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