Good morning everyone! This is the second entry of the Trading Journal section. Friday the 6th of March started off very well. I was patient, waiting for an opportunity to present itself in the futures market. Although I ended the day green I gave back almost half of my earnings towards the end of the day.
I will review a couple of my trades and talk in detail about what was going on.
This was my very first trade of the day! It was a successful long scalp off of a strong support level. As you can see I entered the trade @ 2944.25 long one contract. ***Once the trade went into the profit I manually move my stop into the profit by 2-3 ticks to break even if the price rejects back below my entry***. I closed this trade @ 2957.50. This trade was an overall profit of 3.25 points. That is $16.25 of profit for one micro contract and $162.50 on a single E mini SP contract. I traded the micro.
This Trade was similar but in reverse as I shorted this pullback. I know the chart is different but I actually use three different candlestick charts on my screens, a 5 tick range chart, a 10 tick range chart, and a 2 min candlestick chart. This trade worked out really well. The ES was really choppy, as you can see on the top portion of the chart. Once we broke down below the support, I waited for a pullback to the support and then got in short. I exited the trade at 2.50 points.
I could have done better here! This is why trading review is important! Looking back at this trade I could have been a bit more patient with my exit. My initial target is 10 ticks = 2.50 points, but in this, and most trading instances I will close my target (in most cases not all) and move my stop loss into the profit 2-3 ticks. In this trade I moved my stop along with the price action and was stopped out early on the trend. I don’t chase so I couldn’t re-enter the trend. I should have posted my initial stop 2-3 tick into the profit and allowed the trade to continue and pull profits when it looked like the tide was changing.
The image above shows a small scalp I made towards the end of the day! I made many like this but are not specific to any of my strategies. This is where I ended up giving back some of my profits. I continued to scalp throughout this huge volatility and wiped out a couple of trade (stopped out at loss almost immediately).
Moving forward I need to stick to what I know, and stay clear of what I dont. I did not plan any of these trades and jumped in blindly on bullish volatility. (don’t do that). I know I made a mistake and will not do it again.
In the end I finished the day with 4.25 points in the profit. I should not be trading the whole session either, that’s one thing I need to realize. I can also switch to the Sim to continue to work on trade ideas if I feel the need to trade later on in the session!!