October 9 2009 Overlay, Trades, Commentary, and Weekly Review

I had a couple breakout long orders at 1062.50 and 1063.25 this morning just after the open. Price came within a couple ticks of filling then pulled back.

After the second pullback I saw a familiar sign of a contracted day and decided to not engage. My day was pretty much over after that.

My read was correct and the initial premise of the trades was accurate and would have worked. This is very common.

However, the max earning potential today was 8 points if I held all day and this just does not interest me because I would have had to bet 6.

I did the right thing.

Weekly Review:

I had a small profit this week on only 6 trades. Two wins, two losses, and two break evens.

I did not make any mistakes and had fantastic reads and preps all week.

Just failed to properly capitalize on my reads. The only exploitable day was Tuesday and I caught 15.75 points but feel in hindsight that I only got 1/2 the available volatility.

This after catching 99% of the AM move up.

Need to note that it is crucial to maximize the days that are going to give up good trades.

The losses on Thursday were acceptable. The trades were a little aggressive but that is just the cost of doing business.

The profits were low this week due to failure to exploit Tuesday only, not losses on Thursday.

I sat Monday and Friday out.

I turns out that everything looked bizarre to me Monday because the CME changed the algorithms for producing tick data.

I was not aware Monday morning but knew my tick charts looked different.

There is no magic time frame but I have a symmetry I like to see in my plotted data.

I have adjusted my 1750 tick prep chart to 2450 ticks and my 610 tick trading chart to 810 ticks. I may end up changing that to 910 ticks.

Personal Review:

I had an angry post yesterday because the week was not going how I wanted it to. It is important to remember the number that matters is the one at the end of the month and year.

It is common for just a few outlier days a month to make or break a trader.

My trading overall has been precise and disciplined and I have made few mistakes. There has been great progress reducing the number of missed opportunities.

There is much room for improvement. There will always be.

The focus in the upcoming weeks need to be on creating multiple OUTLIERS. This means pressing when I am up and exploiting my reads on days the market is cooperating.

This is the #1 goal.

It must be done in conjunction with everything else I have been doing.

I believe accomplishing this over the next couple weeks will help me advance to the next level of trading and be a major milestone in my career.

I think I am ready for the move.