Moron Trader
I traded like a complete idiot today. The lessons of Monday's lunacy didn't stick apparently. I think I was emboldened by my quick profits in my scalp trades yesterday, and I tried to duplicate my success with awful results.
I won't even post charts of the stocks I traded because none of them had any sort of setup. I kept trying to catch moves up or down but the indexes couldn't make up their mind which way they wanted to go and so my stocks duplicated the uncertainty.
My first trade lost nearly 2R from the get go. I couldn't believe how fast that much money disappeared from my account. I didn't even have time to set up a decent stop and in a panic, I sold the stock as it raced down.
I should have quit there, but I assumed that the trade was an anomaly. I quickly discovered that it wasn't and I was down another 1.50R. Ouch. I took a couple of more trades that were up nearly enough to make back my losses, but I only broke even after I moved my stop up to my buying price. I ended up the day with a 4.42R loss. Just dumb.
I need to get back to the trades that worked over the past three months and quit trying to get fancy with new trading setups (or lack thereof). I need to follow my rule of quitting after 2R in losses in a day as well.
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2 comments:
You were more systematic as a screen trader. There must be some way to create a daily watch list that you trade from and block out everything else. Your set ups need to be more objective.
Day trading and screen trading can be very emotional and the emotional control you had while screen trading seems to be not with you while day trading. At least, you know what your problem is.
You should define a good day as a day you follow your system.
You are completely right. I have objective setups, but this last week I chose to ignore them. There are days where I have the control that I had while screening. At the end of those days I feel good no matter what the outcome happens to be.
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