Hi there
I have now come up with a schedule and plan for posting. I will post twice a week to report on my trades and psychology for a block of time. Post will be around Tuesday and Friday. I will have a standardized form with a intro at the top, P&L updates in the middle, and best and worst trades at the bottom with some fancy pictures(sometimes). Of course life can and will get in the way but I like plans. This first post will be an update since last post. Thank you for listening, again.

-Since the end of January, I have been doing terrible. I gave up on the MNQ and switched to MES and ES. I guess I don't have the right underpants yet to trade with the big boys. I blame none but myself. In a state of extreme stress and on the verge of a panic attack, I reminded myself that nothing matters, nothing ever matters. And with that I "finished" my scalp strategy in a fury of newfound hope. For me it is hard to ever finish a strategy(except long term ones) but I feel like there are certain parts or characteristics to my strategy that can never change. I gave up on fast moves, slowed myself down, and focused on "gold star" trades only. The feeling that I MUST start making an income was not helping me to align a strategy with what I consider my inner edge. So now I will never make mistakes again and everything will be peaches right? We shall see.

P&L Update(Dates)
1. Since last post=(-964.28) with 41 trades
2. Since Journal Start=(-427.34) with 148 trades
3. Since switching to ES=434.50 with 8 trades(this is included in the total above just thought it showed something)

Best or Worst Trades

-They all sucked(except ES trades. Only half of them sucked). Don't have time for examples this post. See you Tuesday!!!

Hi There,
Great start to the week. I avoided so many bad trades that I would have normally taken. Remember, "passing on a bad trade is a good trade". My investments and automated trades are another story. I shorted AI heavily at the end of last year. I was not trading through the last two bubbles but I do understand con artists very well and "AI" as it exists today , is a con game. But what I failed to understand is how long the game can last or how important this fraud is to our corrupt government. I am hedged and was smart enough to diversify so right now I am break even but it still bothers me. It bothers me because I care about the health of our financial system. How foolish I feel. I watched an interview with Jim Chanos(famed short seller) the other day and was amazed at his level of stoicism. Like a war veteran that has seen all and fears nothing. I will work on becoming like that. Don't pity the fool lest you become one.

P&L Update(Feb 8-10)
1. Since last post=+505 with 10 trades
2. Since Journal Start=+77.66 with 158 trades
*just so ya know commissions are included in all numbers

Best or Worst Trades

Best Trade Feb 08, 2026 20:41 to 20:55
1 ES contract for $233
-After a strong open, sellers were bringing price back to the open and once price broke previous months close at 6965.75, I knew they would make it at least that far. Simple trade in the direction of short term trend



ESH2026_2026-02-11_09-28-46_1a7b7



Worst Trades=Some of the early trades in the above photo as I was having trouble with order entry again on TradingView. I should have used micros to sort it out but was lazy

Thanks for listening

Hi There
Not much of note for the rest of the week. Price action on the ES was a bit much and it seemed like I was always behind so I thought it best if I did not trade too much. I will take that as a victory.

P&L Update(Feb 11-13)
1. Since last post= +220 with 11 trades
2. Since Journal Start=+297.66 with 169 trades

Best or Worst

-Worst Trade-
Thursday Feb 12th at 10:33 EST on ES
(-259)

I tried going long at a second hit on the low at 6961. A foolish loss here when it was clear that sellers were in control. I got thinking again about a big winner as I always do when it seems that price has gone too much in one direction. "Too much" is subjective and I should know this but I just start thinking about those few times when I caught the bottom or top. At least I didn't get stubborn and move my stop.

ESH2026_2026-02-15_19-17-38_3bc46


Thanks again for listening

Hi there
Not much to speak about for the start of the week. Forgot about the holiday but still got it in when I could. I am doing this thing where I get afraid to commit to an entire mini ES contract so I trade MES instead. I really don't know what to think about it. Fear of losing my small advantage I have so far. I will get over this small fear soon even though I am not really sure that downsizing is such a bad thing to do. If I would include my MES trades in this journal(which I will not) I would be up 700$ or so for the week so far. It just feels off that I am losing confidence and running to MES for comfort. Of well small problems.

P&L Update(Feb 15-17)
1. Since last post=+44.50 with 4 trades(I think the tiny profit really shows my fear of commitment)
2. Since Journal Start=342.16 with 173 trades

Best or Worst

Have no examples this time

Thanks for listening

Hi There
A strange week for me as if any of them are normal. But this is why I trade. I will call this week the "weak hands" I was terrified of losing my small lead. The proof is in the other futures trade I made which I would not categorize under this scalp strategy. Those other trades, I had no problem planning them out and executing but all my ES trades were quick profit grabs. Oh well, it is a stupid thing to complain about.

P&L Update(Feb 18-20)
1. Since last post=393.50 with 8 trades
2. Since Journal Start=735.66 with 181 trades

Best or Worst

I'm sorry I don't really have any great or terrible trades to show as almost every single trade could have been 3-5x what it was if I had stuck to the plan or even made a plan. Again this shows promise of my strategy but I fail to get my emotions under control. I am really liking the idea that Miesto put forward about copying my trades and only having a sim account in my view. I tend to think that I will just know that there is real money behind it but I have been fooled my lesser tricks.

Thanks for listening

Hi There
Had a big loser which I will post about below. One of my major issues, which I posted about earlier, is to take profit early on my trades. If this problem was less pronounced then my big loser would not sting so bad. At least I didn't revenge trade, much. You see, just last week I canceled my contractors insurance. I went from not taking on new customers, to turning down all jobs and long time customers. So now, I am taking on the largest trade of my life. I cannot understate the gravity of such an action. To fail and have to go crawling back to my customers or worse, starting another career at 40, would be extremely shameful. But what does it matter anyway, I will die and rot away just like the rest of them. Sometimes i envy the puffy blobs on government benefits that so casually do fuck all every day. To return to a topic less depressing, my terrible trade yesterday was the first time I skipped my tradde-prep since starting this strategy. Do I blame that? Or do i stop worrying about every loser. Mark it down, write about it, and move on. Who isn't going to lose. Anyway, thanks for listening again.

P&L Update(Feb 22-24) ES as always
1. Since last post=(-256) with 18 trades
2. Since Journal Start=+479.66 with 199 trades

Best or Worst

-Worst trade-----Feb 24 at 12:02-12:10 EST
(-279.50)

I wanted to catch a reversal at current day's high which is fine. The ES and NQ have been in a range since Feb 13th and I had watched many similar actions since then. First mistake was my entry. So many chances to get in real close to the high but I got in 3 points below. Also, after more review i shouldn't have even taken the trade in the first place. According to volume, positioning, RSI, and SMI buyers were way too strong. My strategy would only have me enter if price halts at the high and slowly builds evidence of a retracement. This also wasn't a quick 1-2 point scalp which would of had me enter right at the high and already be positioned for a small profit. This was a "pie in the sky" type of trade which I was thinking in the back of my head about how great it would be to catch the high of the day and ride it all the way to the low. But who am I kidding, I would have taken a profit at 100$ anyway. And, the market had clearly seen too much bullish strength for that to happen that day. I didn't have a plan or a goal and was only thinking of profit. No, vocal soliloquy or debate. At least I kept my stop and didn't spend the rest of the day fighting price action. So progress, progress in every loss.


ESH2026_2026-02-24_12-21-15_e42be

hossainanan 

First of all, respect. Living simple and grinding this out for years says more than any PnL screenshot. Your issue isnt strategy. Its scaling. If your edge works, you either: Increase size slowly Increase frequency inside same model Improve execution efficiency Adding footprint and more tools was just mental noise. Sometimes less really is more.

Thank you for your kind words. It is in my plan to increase size slowly but part of the issue for me is proof of edge. For how long must a strategy work, before I can rule out chance or market regime. I know it is silly to think like this but my fear of loss is overwhelming sometimes. I need to set a date for evaluation and size increase. If i do a review of profit every 6 months and can show profit, then I will increase contract size, or something like that. I recently got an important piece of software to help with this. TradingDiary Pro, which will let me view profit for specific periods and products. Thanks again for your suggestions, I will consider them all.

Hi There,
I am a bit late with my update, sorry about that but not much happened in the latter part of last week. I think it was certainly wise to not trade during NVDA's earnings. Again I am having issues with mixing strategies. I will see certain opportunities based around rotation and make those trades using micros. Right now, those types of trades have little structure and no records. And then there is an automated lambda curve strategy that I would consider long term. This also uses futures for the leverage and has not been doing well in this choppy market. So it is difficult to keep all of these separate with individual plans and records. But these are small problems to have and the reason why I work at this every day. In other news, my AI short trade looks to finally be proving itself. I am happy for this from a financial point and also for the overall health of our markets and economy. If they do another bail-out we are all doomed. Thanks for listening

P&L Update(Feb 25-27)
1. Since last post=+213 with 8 trades
2. Since Journal Start=692.66 with 207 trades

Best or Worst

No trade highlights this time

Hi there

For Feb 1st to the 3rd I have zero trades to report for my ES scalping strategy. I didn't feel comfortable scalping in this market environment. I did place a couple rotational type futures trades which were good but that's not what I report here yet. Once I better define that strategy, I will add it to my twice weekly journal report. Thanks for listening

FrankFrankie 

Hi there. ---I have recently become slightly profitable after many years of hard work. Like many traders, I lost a few small accounts in the beginning. Gave "prop" trading a very short try. Some time ago I took a huge step and started treating this as my full time job. I live in a shack, with a dirt floor and a super computer in the corner. I started managing my current account about 2 years ago. I lost about 20k as quickly as I could. It has taken until now but I am currently up ~20k with better than bad risk management. I now have a problem with increasing my profits. Some may call this a good problem to have and they are correct. Here I will attempt to log my journey as I become active in this community again. -About my current trading I use half of my money for longer term swing type trading. And that longer term section is split into several groups. Some is automated, others are hedges. Right now this section is the majority of my profits. But this section is not why I am here today. I do have plans to work on this eventually but I would like to focus on my futures trading The other half is futures trading where I mostly scalp MES, MNQ, M2K, MYM, MGC, and MCL. By scalp I mean trades that are mostly less than 1 minute long. I am not against longer term futures trades I just don't have a valid strategy right now. This is the section of my trading that I want to improve the most. I have a great win rate and I can see much promise in scalping. The problem is that I don't really know where to start in order to increase my profits. Below I go into my latest efforts in this further. -Below will be my first post and I will try to post as often as I can. My first attempt to increase my scalping profits did not work out at all. It would help to describe my current strategy for scalping. I use a 5min candlestick chart. On this chart I plot key areas such as Previous day's OHLC, Previous month's OHLC, ORB, and S/R zones. I also use RSI and a volume indicator that breaks up buyers and sellers on the horizontal. Over a long time I have become very good at understanding price action. I wait for price to reach a key area and profit from the short move that often happens unless price action shows a sweep coming. On pull backs I might extend my profit a bit more but mostly I take 3-20 points on the MNQ. I dont worry about how far or how long price might break away from a key area. I just take the initial move. That is the best thing about scalping. This was working great but I wanted to make more. I had little room to increase the amount of contracts due to margin. I could have watched the markets for 24 hours to get every move but that has limits also. And here is where I went wrong. i thought that if I learned something new and used different charts, that I would just be able to trade more and increase my frequency of trades. I spent a lot of time learning about footprint charts and volume profile with the idea that I would somehow get a clearer view than what I already had. Those are great tools but adding more stuff is never the answer. I am now feeling uncomfortable when I load my charts. I have taken my stress level to the moon and now I feel like shitting down everything, plotting my own charts and picking stocks form the paper. I now sit with the realization that complexity was not the answer. I now will clean up my charts to what I had before adn just tradde until I gain back the little bit I lost. But my problem remains. How to increase profits in day trading? I will now start the project and journal it here. One thing has become clear. Without discussion, I tend to become fixated on the wrong things. I will share what trades I take from here on out adn what mistakes I made or lessons I learned. Eventually, I will work on the million other things I have planned to do. I don't know why it took so long to start a real journal but here I am now. Thanks for listening.

Yes, you can make far more than that like way with FX Derivatives. Like earn 10K p.m. easily.