After a decent rally over the past couple of trading days I suppose a choppy sideways day was to be expected. Was able to clearly define my risk on the trades I did take. Had quite a few stopped out and had a good runner to make up for the stops. Basically did a little better than break even, +$18.

Traded from 9:30am until about 12:30pm. Didn’t trade horribly in the MES but should have caught a bigger piece of the big sell off and took profits way too early. Then tried to catch the falling knife and buy the bottom and lost most of my gains. Ended the day flat with the MES. It was oil that really crushed me. Once again took profits too early on the big move up in oil off the bottom. Then tried counter trend trades and ended down -$98 for my daily loss.
Definitely considering just focusing on the MES just because I trade it better. Been getting crushed by oil the last couple of weeks. Plus oil only moved from like 9am to 11 so limited opportunities to make money.

Yesterday down -$18. My performance is currently hitting a plateau. This is expected and can't expect to make money every day.
Price action in the MES yesterday before FOMC was choppy and I did my best not to lose my shirt in the chop. Always hard not to trade when there no direction in the market. It was kind of an 20 handle range in the morning yesterday. So I will see what today brings.

This week I had tried something new and the losses mounted, especially Friday with a loss of -$180. I started the week with a plan to hold my winners for a 20-30 MES point winners. This was quite different from taking my usual 3-6 point wins. All the while I kept the same stop loss in general. Well I only scored maybe three big winners all week and the losses far outweighed these. Needless to say I am going back to taking smaller profits and getting back on the profit train.

The trading veterans have said you need and an edge in the markets to consistently make money and that money management alone doesn’t cut it. I believe them from my 16 years of experience trading.
Today was a great day but not for my pnl. Down -$78 for the day. I was short a market that was grinding higher. When I finally got long around mid day I had to eat a 10 handle pull back so it just wasn’t my day.
Not going to trade for the rest of the week I am going to be busy.

I haven’t been trading but still watching and studying the market. Amazing that with all the selling pressure in the past month and half that the ES is only about 100 points from all time highs.
Days like the last three days are hard to get a read on the market for me. I don’t want to buy the highs yet I don’t want to miss out on the up momentum. I really have no directional bias for the ES and it’s probably a good thing that I’m not trading. I mean I really thing there are scenarios for the ES to go higher and lower. About a 50/50 shot for predicting a direction in my mind.

The ES rallied to daily highs after the 9:30 open. New was set to come out at 10am. My plan was to go short one contract of the MES around 9:50am and I executed the plan. I went short at 5262. News came out and the market sank about 8 handles and the short was looking good. Between 10:10am and 10:45 the market made a few lurches lower. I was going to hold this short all day but other parties convinced me to exit my short at 5244, so I netted 18 handles on the trade. Looking back I am really happy I closed the trade because I was able to get in the win column for the day after a terrible week of trading last week and that felt good. The MES ended up closing the day at about 5241 so I really would not have gained too much from holding until EOD.

Result for the day +$86

So the ES rallied into the open during premarket to a high of 5264 I believe. That was the time to go short because it was all down from there for the next hour. So I missed the big chunk of the move down and had to jump in late. It was very tempting to go short premarket as the ES flirted with Friday high but price could have rocketed 5-10 handles higher and through the Friday high so it was probably right to stay out even though I missed the big move down.

I actually traded oil half way decent this morning. After a couple of stop outs from the short side as the price went higher I got a good one worth 30 ticks.

Not a bad day, up +$42

Places I could improve is hold my winners longer and try to go for a 2:1 reward to risk ratio at least. I think I did the right thing and did not take unnecessary risks today especially as the ES hit Friday high where the market could have exploded higher. Other than that try to wait for a good place to go to battle in the markets.

Pretty volatile morning for the MES. After the 8:30 news and sell off the market rallied for the next 2 hours into 10:30 and the volatility returned with a few back to back 10 handle moves. I caught 2 of those moves and was on the right side of both. Was in front of the screen for only about 30 minutes but made my money and walked away. Didn't touch oil today.

Up for the day, +$82.

Things to focus on for me:
1. pick a spot to do battle and retreat when I am wrong - i have found that trading is a battle when in a position
2. winners should be at least twice the size of losses
3. don't take unnecessary risk, its okay to miss out on a move - fomo is definitly real and i am working to be okay with missing a move
4. walk away early, there's always tomorrow - a lot of times i will be up in the morning and i should walk away at that point but end up trading all day and losing the morning profits/hard work.

I only had time for one trade. It was a short in the MES. I chose a spot to do battle and closed the trade for minimal gain, only +$7 for the day. Hey it was better than being down $7. I did not follow my rule of making my profit target at least twice as large as my stop loss, so I could have done better there.