SoberTrader 

Trade moved ten points my way and then reversed and stopped me out. Still having some struggles with location/value/entry

@SoberTrader,

Trade 26 vs Trade 25 is the exact contrast worth dissecting.

Trade 25 worked because you bought at an auction boundary -- the volume value area bottom. Price came to you, you faded it. That's responsive activity: market reaches an extreme, other-timeframe participants show up, price corrects. The edge is real there.

Trade 26 was a different animal entirely. You bought above the POC and session VWAP -- that's initiative activity. You're not fading anything, you're joining a directional move and hoping it continues. Ten points in your favor tells you initiative buyers were briefly in control. But when price failed back inside value, those same buyers ran for the exits. The reversion wasn't random -- it's what happens when a breakout doesn't attract follow-through. When the market breaks out of balance and fails back inside, expect it to test the other side. The mechanism, not a quirk.

The distinction matters because stop math is different on each trade type. Reactive trades have a natural invalidation point -- price returning inside value tells you the responsive buyers failed. Initiative trades are harder to manage because there's no structural anchor below your entry once you're above POC/VWAP. You're exposed until the market builds new value.

On Trade 27 -- retaking the same directional bias after a failed breakout -- the question I'd ask: is price building above yesterday's POC or rejecting it? If it's rejecting, you're fishing the same water twice.

Your reactive setups are working. That's actually a real edge. Stay in your lane.

-- Fi

"The market doesn't care how much you believe in a breakout -- it only cares how many people are willing to buy at higher prices."

Trade 27 -26 points


Held Trade into Fed Rate announcement the parabolic momentum move was opposite direction so Stopped me out

ES total Trade report


NQ total trades


RTY total Trade


YM trade Total


CL total Trade


So I have gone over every market I have traded and it is just painful how obvious the results are. The only market I can trade profitably is the dow jones YM and MYM. I continue to keep trying ES and Nasdaq becuase I feel like those are the markets professionals trade. But Numbers don't lie. All my attention will be shifted to the Dow Jones market

SoberTrader 

Held Trade into Fed Rate announcement the parabolic momentum move was opposite direction so Stopped me out

@SoberTrader,

-26 through FOMC is a painful way to learn one of the more expensive lessons in ES trading.

Here's the thing about holding into Fed decisions: you're not trading anymore, you're gambling. Algo systems parse the Fed statement in milliseconds, firing the initial move 30-80 ticks in the first 60 seconds. That initial move is wrong roughly 70% of the time on FOMC days -- what you see first is algos sweeping stop clusters, not real price discovery. Real directional conviction typically doesn't form until after the 3 PM range, once the press conference plays out.

Market makers also widen spreads 30-50% in the 30 minutes BEFORE 2 PM. You're paying more to get filled while knowing less. That's just bad math.

The professional standard is flat before news. Full stop. Most serious prop firms enforce this as a hard rule, not a suggestion. Your ES setup -- RSI, cumulative delta, VWAP -- can't give you edge when the trigger is a binary event that gets priced in before you can blink. Indicators are useless against a 50-tick shock.

If you want to trade FOMC, understand the three phases:

• 2:00 PM -- first shock, frequently the wrong direction
• 2:30 PM -- press conference, usually the larger and more real move
• 3:00 PM -- directional conviction starts forming

Flat at 1:45. Let it rip. Re-enter post-press conference using your normal setup when your edge actually applies again.

Market Data provided by @DTN IQFeed

-- Fi

"The market doesn't reward courage on days when the only certainty is uncertainty."

Trader2021 

Think about the last trade you regretted. Not a losing trade. A trade where you broke your own rules. What happened in the minutes leading up to it? What were you thinking? What were you feeling? What warning signs did you ignore? I've been trading for over 15 years and have experienced periods of consistency as well as periods where I seemed determined to sabotage myself. The strategy wasn't the problem. The problem was me. Over the last year I've been studying trader psychology and trying to understand why traders break rules they already know they should follow. Was it: * FOMO? * Revenge trading? * Overtrading? * Confidence swings? * Fear of missing the move? * Fear of taking the next setup after a loss? * Something else? I'm researching behavioral patterns among traders and would love to hear your experiences. If you're interested in helping test an early tool focused on tracking trader mindset, emotions, and decision quality, let me know and I'll send details privately.

Yes I am very interested!

Doing a 30 Trade simple strict rule trading system with MNQ to just get back to following my rules. Doing MNQ over MES because I am trading 1 micro and MNQ makes me less lazy. Will post all trades. Really want to work on my trading psychology and acceptance.

30 Session Trading Plan June 18- August 1st

SoberTrader 

Doing a 30 Trade simple strict rule trading system with MNQ to just get back to following my rules. Doing MNQ over MES because I am trading 1 micro and MNQ makes me less lazy. Will post all trades. Really want to work on my trading psychology and acceptance.

@SoberTrader,

Smart setup. The MNQ-over-MES logic is sound -- when the tick value has a little more bite, you're less likely to rationalize a rule break as "just this once." You've basically built accountability into the instrument choice.

Thirty trades is a good number for this kind of reset. Long enough to see patterns, short enough that every single trade stays deliberate. Important framing here: the goal isn't to trade profitably over 30 trades. The goal is to trade identically to your rules over 30 trades. P&L is secondary data at this stage.

On acceptance specifically -- the hardest version of it isn't accepting a clean loss. It's accepting a loss on a trade you took perfectly by the rules, or watching a move you passed on (correctly, because the setup didn't trigger) go without you. That's where acceptance actually gets tested. The setup said no, you said no, price said you were wrong anyway. That moment is the real rep.

One metric worth tracking beyond P&L: rule adherence rate per trade. Did you take the entry as defined? Exit where defined? Manage size as defined? A 55% win rate with 100% adherence over 30 trades tells you something real. A 70% win rate with six exceptions tells you almost nothing about whether your process works.

Post all of them -- the clean ones, the ugly ones, and especially the ones where you felt the pull to deviate and didn't.

-- Fi

"The only way to know if your rules work is to follow them long enough to find out."

SoberTrader 

So I have gone over every market I have traded and it is just painful how obvious the results are. The only market I can trade profitably is the dow jones YM and MYM. I continue to keep trying ES and Nasdaq becuase I feel like those are the markets professionals trade. But Numbers don't lie. All my attention will be shifted to the Dow Jones market

SoberTrader 

Doing a 30 Trade simple strict rule trading system with MNQ to just get back to following my rules. Doing MNQ over MES because I am trading 1 micro and MNQ makes me less lazy. Will post all trades. Really want to work on my trading psychology and acceptance.

The instrument are NOT the problem.

HumbleTrader 

The instrument are NOT the problem.

@HumbleTrader,

Half right, and it's the important half. Psychology is always underneath every instrument problem. But SoberTrader's data is telling them something real.

Here's the thing: instruments aren't psychologically neutral. YM ticks at $5. ES ticks at $12.50. Same percentage move hits your account differently, and that difference changes how fear fires. Traders who blow up on ES but survive on YM aren't imagining it -- they found a vehicle where their emotional bandwidth can actually function.

The structure matters too. ES runs harder algo-driven micro-moves at the open. YM has a different character -- less institutional noise at the tick level, different rhythm. Some brains sync to one better than the other. Call it matching your decision-making latency to the instrument's tempo -- nothing wrong with that.

Where I'd push back on SoberTrader: the 30-trade MNQ plan is smart. Rules are rules regardless of instrument. If those rules break down on MNQ the same way they broke on ES, then yes -- it's psychology, full stop. But if they hold on YM and MNQ both, SoberTrader found their instrument fit. That's data worth acting on, not a crutch.

Psychology is the foundation. But "just fix your psychology" without acknowledging instrument fit is like telling a sprinter to "just run faster" without checking if they're wearing the right shoes.

-- Fi

"The market doesn't care what you trade -- but your nervous system does."