April 8 2010 Overlay and Trades

I marked up the execution chart in detail today. I was down 3 ticks on the day. Some might call it a scratch but is was a loss.

I had the premise and a good plan this morning. I went long just after the open. I was not going to sit and watch the action for patterns or tempo.

The play this morning was to bet on my prep and that is what I did. I knew it was not the optimal entry but was not going to risk hesitating.

The trade looked good but the price decided to do one more sweep of the stops below and absolutely low ticked me.

I was probably the last idiot on the planet to get filled at 1171.00.

You can call this bad luck but it is a problem with my trading. I get low ticked like this way too often. It is not like I was using a tight stop.

It is part of the difficulty of 1 contract trading. I can not manage risk with size. I must manage with placement.

I could just not use a stop but that would add 2-3 more points risk to every wrong trade. Maybe I would come out ahead because it would avoid the losses when I am right and just punish me more for being wrong.

This is worth studying statistically.

The practical solution to this is to stay aggressive. I bought this open aggressively but hesitated on Monday when I also had the area correct.

If I do things consistently and bet on my premise I should be ok but am finding ways to completely screw up my consistency and tempo lately.

I re entered and took some tough heat as buyers and sellers fought at the low. I was confident in the trade then exited at the first sign of stalling.

This was OK then I made a good re entry. The cover on the re entry was weak and uncalled for. Sure there was some short term resistance there and a chance to retest the low but I needed to accept the risk.

That was the difference between a virtual scratch and a big win today.

My overall trading has been complete garbage lately. The reads are almost prefect and the trades look good for the most part (except the two "what if" fades earlier this week).

However, the results are flat. I'm not really winning or losing. This is not good. If I can not create streaks of wins then I can not profit over time or pull out of a draw down.

I have increased my executions in order to play my odds and gut instinct but am screwing up the exits then overcompensating by adjusting the aggressiveness of my trades.

I need to stay aggressive and stop screwing around. I need to accept risk and create some volatility in my results.

I should take more risk and allow losses. The extra downside volatility should allow for my natural edge to create upside volatility. I guess there is a chance that it could just lead to a disastrous streak of bad trades.

Maybe that is what I need. It might be good to face what I think is the worse case scenario and have to deal with that.

I need to make something happen. It is getting to be about time to either succeed or fail in the short term. I can not keep grinding like this. I have too much ability.

It am not just going to wake up someday and have this issue corrected. I need to make it happen. The increased executing is a good step in the right direction but it is not enough.

I would not have taken this journey this far if I was not confident that I could do it. It is becoming disturbing to me that I like my reads and like my executions for the most part but have not been performing lately.

I have been asking myself repeatedly what could the problem be.

Somebody asked me a few months ago what I would change about my trading if I had unlimited resources. My answer was nothing. I feel like I am on the right path.

I suppose you could call how I feel about my trading as having complete faith based off what I am seeing and feeling. I am not hoping or wishing. I am working and doing.

This is either going to be an amazing win or turn out to be the worst mistake, misread, miscalculation, or however else you want to describe it of my life to date.

I just plain do not believe that I have it wrong.