20140630
Short 1 NQ 3836.25, -1.5
Short 2 YM 16740, 16738, +7, +10
Long 1 YM 16719, +12
Short 1 TF 1184.0, +1.0
Long 2 TF 1182.7, 1182.8, -0.5, +0.5
Short 1 NQ 3843.5, -1.0
Short 1 TF 1184.9, -0.3
Short 1 TF 1185.1, +1.3
Long 1 TF 1183.6, -0.7
Long 2 TF 1182.9, 1183.2, -0.5, +0.7
Long 1 TF 1182.2, -0.6
Long 3 TF 1181.4, 1181.4, 1184.5, +0.7, +0.5, +0.9
Total NQ -2.5
Total YM +29
Total TF +3.0
There's a good question to ask yourself when reviewing the days trades and market action. What were you thinking at the turns? ...or put another way, what were your prejudices at the places that turned out just minutes later to have been the better market opportunities of the day? That's why writing a journal immediately after your trading is better than waiting even an hour, let alone a whole day. .....because you can't remember emotional states that well. They don't linger on, and they are supplanted by the next one erasing the previous one. But if the opportunities in question arrives within the scope and entry models of your trade plan, then something must have kept you out of the trade. What was that thing..? ...that impression? .....that prejudice?
For those of us who have at least conquered some of those prejudices, and have learned to take the trades from our trade plan as they appear at the right edge of the video screen, that important self-improvement question can use a little tweaking. What were you thinking at the places where a runner should have been established instead of exiting with such a nominal profit at the junctures that ended up producing the most important excursions of the frame? And if you are at this point in your trading, you may be able to find the door to the next level of profits you seek to ascend from nominal but already consistent profits to highly rewarding and outstanding daily returns. Let's repeat that question more often during the day. Let's review the day with that question in mind after the end of the first frame has revealed the real excursions from those that were only nominal blips. Let's write that question down on a yellow sticky and put it up on the monitor. And after a few days, let's rewrite it on a blue or pink or any other color sticky so as to keep that consideration freshly before us at all times. Improvement never comes easy. It usually must be goaded along in drips and stumbles. Get focused on it. ...and if it turns out that the best excursions in the day are appearing without triggering a solid resemblance to entry models in your plan, then you need a new Trade Plan, or at least an aptly improved one.
