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After the first trade I didn't see anything that I thought was good value until the last hour. Got long twice after a pullback. Trade 2 was a bad trade because the order flow on the ES was clearly bearish but I got long anyway. Trade 3 was decent but it just wasn't ready to break out to the upside yet. Stopped for the day after the third loser in a row. If I had skipped the second trade I may have kept trading and caught the move when the market did eventually run up into the close.
Hi Mecb, nice work on the journal. You put most of us to shame. If you don't mind the intrusion I thought I'd provide a couple of thoughts/ideas.
1. Today
I think your idea of waiting the 1st 15 minutes is a good one unless you understand the volatility of the NQ in the first hour after opening. Within the 1st 15 minutes I have usually a fair idea of what sort of day we are facing by just watching the NYSE tick. I used to watch all of them ADVN, trin, vix, etc etc, sector strength and weakness but I've found the NYSE tick or Nasdaq tick in your case is the best leading indicator. Today within the 15 minutes it was fairly clear we were in for a trend up day. I've put some more notes on market structure in this post:
-Playing the Balance area on TF from 1st of June (Blue line).
-Broke out of Balance today with value rising. No return into value area invalidated shorts under any circumstances.
-Early indicator of trend day and high …
2. Planning
It is unclear whether you are following any set plan each day as you seem to be placing trades purely on developing action.
As I've researched the qualities of master traders and strive to become one myself, the common factor I've found is they all have a very specific plan of where they intend to do business, a risk analysis and what they expect to get out of the trade.
To emulate their success I'm now following a similar process. For example every night I study the charts of 7 instruments looking at potential trades and $risk/reward opporunties. Of those 7 instruments I know which ones are trending and which ones are balanced. Before the day even starts I know which instruments I'm trading (if at all), what type of strategy I will employ, my target and stop. I'm waiting fo the market to come to me and then based on the events that have unfolded since open make a final decision to enter the trade if price comes to my entry area. This has helped me become a better trader in so many ways and would encourage anybody to at least consider the idea. It also makes trading very relaxed.
This is not to say I won't do unstructured trades during the day but these make up 20% and are based on very strict entry criteria and analysis.
3 Trades, 3 good entries. Picked good spots today but trade management definitely needs some work. I'm considering going to an all-in-all out for the two contracts and add a second target when I add a third contract.
Also, I'm reconsidering changing the way I use my S&P chart. I never include in it my screenshots but I use a .75 Renko chart with CDV and up/down tick to confirm my entries. On my second trade today part of the reason I got jumpy and flattened way too soon was that the S&P was still trapped in consolidation while the NQ had already broken out. I'm considering using only my NQ charts for structure and just use the ES order flow as confirmation and ignore the price.
Here are my trades. individual break downs will come saturday or sunday.
Haven't traded much the last couple weeks due to my work schedule but had 1 winner today.
Just after 10 EST the NQ retested the consolidation area formed between the end of session yesterday and the overnight globex session.
I've decided to go all-in all-out through at least the end of July because I haven't had great results managing the second contract on a larger profit target.