Opportunity Wasted

I had the potential for a swell day. My self-doubt got me out of trades too early as the market gave up the ghost. My short trades could have brought in 10R. Here are the two that I could have made a nice return on.

There was really no excuse for my exit on TCO. I got tired of holding on to it after it gyrated for an hour. The market was in a solid downtrend and when I saw TCO touch the 20MA I got rid of it and broke even.

I'm too worried that the market will whipsaw me out of my positions and I've been way too quick to move my stops to break even for fear of losing. I've proven that if I let my trades pan out that I make more than when I monitor them too closely. It's still incredibly hard for me to watch a trade go against me even if it has only made a little bit of cash.
SYK was a little more iffy. I probably would have sold when price broke the 50MA around 3pm so my sell around 1pm netted me a bit more. Of course, in retrospect, holding until the close would have been the smartest move.

I had myself convinced that when the DJI hit 8100, that all sorts of heck would break loose and the market would rocket upward. Obviously, that didn't happen and once again my bias cost me. Van K. Tharp always emphasizes that we don't trade the markets--we trade what we believe about the markets.

I topped my emotional trading today with a ridiculous scalp play on DIA.
I thought when price broke the 50MA average that we were going to shoot upward. The market bounced off the 50 for a half hour and then plummeted. I was away from my computer for 45 minutes after I made the trade and came back to see that my stop had triggered and that the market was free-falling--just the opposite of what I had thought was going to happen. In addition to being humbled by my poor decision-making, I discovered that I had used a position size that was double what I intended. Dumb.

For the day I made a lousy .30R. I guess I shouldn't complain given the markets big declines, but I should have done better.