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Thursday night I made a huge mistake trading. I was tired and trying to multitask and made comedy of errors which led to a 50 tick loss over 3 trades. Its was one of those days I wish I could have back to do over. But whats done is done.
The first trade of the night I chose the wrong ATM strategy. I set it to a overnight trade which has a larger stop loss instead of my intraday strategy. As I said, I was multitasking, so I set up a stop entry and went on with my work. It was not until I was 30 ticks in the hole that I had a panic attack and closed it out. Had I paid attention to where price was I would have noticed it was up against a trend line. Of coursed it reversed at the trend line and went back toward my entry.
I should have stopped at this point but I was determined to get part of my ticks back. Bad idea.. The next two trades ended badly as well. At this point I set my overnight stop entry and went to bed. I managed to get 22 ticks out of the overnight trade. I recognized it was sitting on the 200 MA in the morning and it looked like a bottom was forming. So I exited the trade.
I missed the big entry in the morning session, my one and done trade, and decided not to trade live for the rest of the day. I would have ended up making bad decisions.
I traded in my NT SIM account in the afternoon and made 74 ticks. The day ended good even though it did not go toward my TST account total.
What was the best thing that happened to me today:
I took the day off from trading my TST account
What was the worst thing that happened to me today:
I traded when I was tired and did not stop when I should have. This could have been a lot worse than it turned out.
I see the writing in the top right corner of your screen that list the setups you are trying to target , is that text something you put in manually each day now ? I have been trying to find a indicator that will put things like that on my screen for a while , I keep getting tempted to take setups that are not part of my plan and usually pay for it. I need to make one that flashes or something when i put my limit order in to just remind me LOL.
Have followed your thread and progress for some time and very much enjoy and learn from it. I wondered if you can give me an indication of your risk in ticks vs your returns. For example this week was +169 (well done) but was your aggregate risk half of that, the same, more? Just trying to get a handle of what you are risking for the rewards.
Thanks for the comments! Since I will be participating in the combine the following rules apply: There is a 200 tick loss for the 100K account and 300 tick loss for the 150K account. These are the two account sizes I am shooting for. If either of these limits are hit during the day then I fail the combine. If you hit either of these limits during the week then you are done trading for the week.
With that in mind I have a 3 losses in a row rule which means I quit trading once I lose 3 trades in a row. Worse case in this scenario is 108 tick loss based on my 18 tick trailing stop loss * 2 contracts. Two losses in a row if I am trading 3 contracts. A 100 tick loss is the absolute maximum I can withstand during the day. This is my pain point. This is half of the 100K and a 1/3 of the 150K. However, 75 ticks is where I say should I really be trading? If I had two bad trading days in a row I would either stop trading for the week or move over to SIM or both.
Below is my draw down from Dec 26th to present. Average DD is less than 30 ticks (<$300) with my worse day being 100 ticks ($1000).
There have been a couple of things which have kept my DD under control. One is admitting I am wrong and closing the trade out. This means letting go of hope that you right. The other is following my rules which results in better entries and improved MFE. This gets my trailing stop closer to Break Even and gives me a chance to exit the trade early with a profit or small loss.
The market has changed somewhat and I need to make an adjustment. Trades which were working and producing decent gains over the past couple of weeks are going about 10 ticks and reversing. I was positive on the two small losses but I was trying to let the trade develop and was stopped out. The first trade was a trade I should not have taken. Again, when I dont follow my rules it cost me.
I will start taking smaller gains until the market starts trending again. If tomorrow is a losing day then I will probably go on SIM to have a objective view and work things out. I have no intention of abandoning my setups, instead I will make adjustments on how I manage the trade.
I also inadvertently violated my 3 trade loss rule today. I was lucky the final trade was positive. After I realized what I had done I stopped trading for the day.
What was the best thing that happened to me today:
I kept my losses under control
I realized the market has changed.
What was the worst thing that happened to me today:
I was not paying attention to my trades and racked up 3 losses in a row then took a another trade.