Return to Normalcy

My "old school" or "dummy trades" today really helped me get back to the old feelings of unemotional trading. I avoided news, chat rooms, and many other bias-creating forms of information. That helped me focus on 30-minute charts and just a few candidates for trading.

I'll have to admit, I more fun trading today than I have had in over a month. I was even down $600 and it didn't bother me because I was trading what I saw and not what others were seeing.

My best trade today was CASY.
I took the trade after the narrow 10:30 candle on the 30 minute chart setting a protective stop (blue dotted line) right above the candle. The stock trended perfectly the rest of the day as you can see on the 5 minute chart.
I got jumpy as the market moved into positive territory and I sold when price broke the 9 period moving average. As in classic trends, the price bounced off the 20 MA and headed south for another nice drop into the close. I made 2.09R on the trade, but I missed out on another 3R. Part of my nervousness came because the market as a whole wasn't trending down (at the time I sold) and CASY was already down 13%. I thought the chances of it continuing down were slim.

I missed an opportunity on POT as well. Here's the 30 minute.
POT quickly moved in my direction and I moved my stop to break-even. I stopped out soon after and then POT moved down the rest of the day. I missed a perfect bear flag on the 5 minute chart.
I had a couple of long trades today that went against me. Overall, I made .87R on the day--my first positive day since November 19th.