I started making my first move - solo - at 10:25am EST. I wasn't comfortable getting in - simply because I knew that had I been confident enough, I would have gotten in sometime between 9:30 to 10:00. The fact that I couldn't find an entry within that window told me that I had lost half the battle - the psychology part.
I went in, anyhow, and shorted ES just slightly above its support:
And like I've said many times before, ES always does the opposite of what I thought it would do (in future, I'm going to write down my intention ie. to short or go long, then DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE when executing the trade!!). Without exception this time, it rallied right at the point that I entered short (see chart above).
I stubbornly sat through the rally, coz I've seen ES does this too many times (ie. it goes up, hits its resistance, comes back down, and basically trades within a specific range for at least the first half of the trading session), and I expected it to come back down to exactly where I shorted.
True enough, ES went up, then came down, and as I was all set to close my position, a hammer formed so quickly I didn't get a good exit and I got out without breaking-even (refer to chart above to see my exit point).
At this point, D was already seated by my side, and had witnessed the final phase of my fun ride up and down. I wasn't exactly in good spirit, but D was nice about it. He took over right away, and went long:
I made a remark about wash-and-rinse, meaning to warn D that if he meant to scalp (to me, scalping means you don't intend to stay for more than 1 or 2 candles on a 1-min chart), then be prepared for ES to do a slight correction before it goes up (And I figured it should go up coz it had reached it's low - if it tends to range, then the probable scenario would be it going back up, especially when it's supported by a HAMMER).
In retrospect, I was really messing with D's mind. He was totally confused and pissed and got out after making barely half a point.
When ES started to rally after he exited, that was just too much for D and he went out for a smoke, totally enraged.
I stayed with my chart and started to see what it was doing.
When D returned after about 5 minutes, we talked as if nothing had happened and continued to monitor ES' move.
At a certain point, all we saw was that ES was ready to slide.
I stubbornly sat through the rally, coz I've seen ES does this too many times (ie. it goes up, hits its resistance, comes back down, and basically trades within a specific range for at least the first half of the trading session), and I expected it to come back down to exactly where I shorted.
True enough, ES went up, then came down, and as I was all set to close my position, a hammer formed so quickly I didn't get a good exit and I got out without breaking-even (refer to chart above to see my exit point).
At this point, D was already seated by my side, and had witnessed the final phase of my fun ride up and down. I wasn't exactly in good spirit, but D was nice about it. He took over right away, and went long:
I made a remark about wash-and-rinse, meaning to warn D that if he meant to scalp (to me, scalping means you don't intend to stay for more than 1 or 2 candles on a 1-min chart), then be prepared for ES to do a slight correction before it goes up (And I figured it should go up coz it had reached it's low - if it tends to range, then the probable scenario would be it going back up, especially when it's supported by a HAMMER).
In retrospect, I was really messing with D's mind. He was totally confused and pissed and got out after making barely half a point.
When ES started to rally after he exited, that was just too much for D and he went out for a smoke, totally enraged.
I stayed with my chart and started to see what it was doing.
When D returned after about 5 minutes, we talked as if nothing had happened and continued to monitor ES' move.
At a certain point, all we saw was that ES was ready to slide.
Chart showing the point where D was about to make a move:
Then D saw an opportunity to go in (see chart above), which I wasn't aware of coz I was kind of taking a back seat by then. As D was about to make his move (and I had no idea that he was actually all set to go), I blurted out that ES looked like it was getting ready to break UP, NOT down. A few seconds later, I commented that it's going to go sideways for a while.
D was REALLY PISSED by then. He got up from my workstation, and went back to his. I realized what was happening, and shut down IB, passing him the token so he could trade from his workstation.
But D was just too mad to trade. I didn't know what to say (I knew I should have just apologized, as D would have, had he been the one that had messed with my mind, but something caught my tongue and I just couldn't say I was sorry). So I left the token with him and went out for a rather long walk.
When I returned, D was in a better mood. We talked about what happened and concluded that it was a bad idea for both of us to trade together. We are both stubborn and hot-tempered, yet we always take into consideration each other's opinions and views and feelings.
It's just a big mess when the 2 of us come together to do anything coz as a woman, I'm not exactly subservient, and as a man, D is not chauvinistic enough to ask me to shut up. So the outcome is a very frustrated D, and a very screwed up me.
Anyway, D ended up reaping some profits when I decided to go in for a shower. He really does perform a lot better without my being around to influence him.
And I continue to detest ES more than I detest Bush and Cinderella's 2 evil step-sisters.
4 comments:
Hi Jules,
Today I 'trade' one number, 88, I called it lucky number. Sell above, buy below, that it. 'Trade' because I just posted the trade in paltalk room but I didn't turn on the trade platform.
Jules,
There is a great story in Market Wizards when Jack is interviewing the trader that took over for George Soros's fund. The trader was very excellent but he and George were like fire and water. The trader would open up positions just to have George question him or even outright exit the position.
This really messed up this trader's stride. Finally after about 6 months he just told George to back off (yeah it took a lot of guts to tell George Soros to back off), but this was the turning point for that trader and he's been able to manage that fund from that point forward.
There is a new post on my blog where I talk about how my wife is going to start trading with me. However, once she learns the basics and the system, she will have her trading shift and I will have mine. No matter how great I might or might not be it won't help her trading decisions if I constantly butt in.
Hope that helps.
LT
Yes, I saw your interesting post the first thing I got up this morning, LT :-)
D was rushing to work but I managed to get him to read it.
He had this "oh, oh" expression on his face :-) Guess we all know why LOL!!
You totally got what I wanted to say in my blog, LT :-)
The irony is that, it was D who told me time and again to remind him to back off when I trade. But it's difficult for me to ignore D. I totally feel for Jesse Livermore when he said he just couldn't trade properly when he had his million dollar debt bugging him. I feel like I owe D a couple of trillion :-). It's really frustrating. Which was why when I was trading ER2, I would stop whenever I had a profit by lunch. Whenever I had any losing trades before that, I would go in and out of the market to get back what I lost, and more. Whenever the first 3 trades were profitable, I would stop. That was how I maintained a consistent record. I just couldn't afford to have a net loss day.
D is affected by me in a different way. He feels that I know more about trading than him and so whenever I make a remark (which I don't do very often, which makes each remark I make significant), no matter how casually, about what the market's doing and what it seems to want to do, he will act on it, and adjust his entries and exits accordingly. But while I always work with "market" order, D uses "limit" orders and our timings are almost always out of syn. It just drives the 2 of us nuts.
So D told me last night, after he's broken even, that he's now confident enough to trade independent of my opinions and views. After all, I've spent almost 2 months now sharing with him the basics of trading. He's also found something he's very comfortable trading (and consistently profitable too, without my intervention :-D) - ES - and it's time to leave him alone. In fact, he's the pro at ES now, and makes beautiful entries most of the time :-)
Thanks for your sharing, LT. Really appreciate it :-)
Hi Cory, "88" as in 1188? You're not Chinese, are you? :-) Chinese love the number '8'.
By the way, may I have your email address (I won't publish it)? Would like to ask you something in private - something that has been on my mind all morning.
Only if you're comfortable, of course.
Post a Comment