October 8 2009 Overlay, Trades, and Commentary

Positive thinking gets you nowhere in trading. Tearing down and rebuilding mentally (not strategy) helps.

You need to have a low before you can make a new high. You need to hit a new low in life before you can be the trader you want to be.

I was not too irritated after today's 2 unit loss until I reflected on today's trades and realized that I have put myself in the same Thursday position as I was in last week.

It is late in the week and I have not performed at the level that I know I can.

I did not do anything wrong today. The trades were OK. They were mediocre setups on slightly stretched legs down but had to be executed in case this market sold off today.

What is irritating is after this morning's stop out and break even after a 3.5 point excursion, I felt the good trading was up. But executed anyway this afternoon.

Partially because I was thinking at lunch that I can not just hit a morning setup and sit out the rest of the day. This is flawed. I know when the action is not it my favor. Why make bets in ugly action for the sake of being active?

Also, this crap action in the afternoon is exactly what I feared there would be if I attempted to start shorting on Tuesday when I had a 15 point run earlier that day. The trade would have performed on Tuesday and created an outlier day.

Afternoon Trade:

This was a decent area to short after a failed extension of 1064.00. They only thing that could make this trade fail was a higher low (afternoon inside support) in the middle of nowhere. That's what we got.

There was an obvious inverted pump fake warning of this inside support holding around 1060.50 that formed. What am I supposed to do? Bail on the trade after taking all the heat.

The nature of the entry left no way to reasonably exit the trade. ANY exit could have resulted in the trade working and a premature exit which is worse that a stop out.

No excuses:

This may be an over reaction to a day where the chips just did not fall in my favor. I do not care.

This type of performance is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE and needs to stop right now.

I have been sitting on a new equity high and range bound for about 2 weeks now. This is weak. I need to produce outliers and advance forward in order to hit my goals (in order to survive for that matter).

For someone who spends every waking moment focusing on trading the .75 unit that I am up this week is PATHETIC.

I read the market too well to accept this.

I need to step up and find it within myself to push myself to the next level. Whatever it takes I need to find it and it needs to get done NOW.