Thursday, November 5, 2009

6J Trade 11/4 (Wed) - After Action Review & Paul

6J 15min
While I tend to look left, and right, and left again before I cross the road, I had neglected to check for all overhead resistances before I placed a trade that was seemingly valid at first glance.

That's mistake number 1.

Mistake number 2: removing what was there to protect me in the event that I make mistake number 1.

It's like insisting on driving myself to the hospital after being run over by a truck.

The bigger picture that says no go (unless it's a scalp):

6J 240min
What I had yesterday was a 2% drawdown - in a single trade - on what was set aside for scalping/daytrading.

My comfort level is 0.5% per trade for futures.

On most days, it's actually 0.25%!

So, I'm really not too happy with ME now.

I shall have no ice-cream for the rest of the year.

A very sweet Paul has written some thinkscripts for me, and I'm going to be spending the day playing around with the alerts (if I manage to insert the scripts properly). My hormones are still crazy so I'll likely stay on the sideline, or experiment with more ETFs during the US session.

8 comments:

Paul said...

:) glad I could help Jules. Still I think that you should try a platform from the planet earth..tricky thing that TOS

daytrader233 said...

Shake it off Jules. Keep doing what you were doing. But don't move that darn stop! :-)

mvw said...

“Should have bailed if I really love my money”

What a great quote to advertise the importance of a well placed stop loss. “if you love your money, use your stop!” I may have to borrow it sometime. Have a good trading day.

sage08 said...

On the contrary, Jules, i think your trades are well executed. Here's what i admire about you. You never ever keep a bad trade overnight and that takes discipline. If there's anything you can take home from this trade is this:- you got the guts to cut loss when it mattered. That's why Jules will be around for a long time when most traders have quit. Cheers!

Jules said...

Yes, Paul, I shall stop shopping on venus :-)

Jules said...

DT :-) I love stops so much now. They allow me time to think rather than stare nervously at price move up and down LOL!

Jules said...

MVW :-) I thought about it for the longest time - what the hell I was doing throwing money away. Why couldn't I let go and simply wait for a better trade to show up? And then I realize I don't love my money that much and I gotta start loving it! :-)

Jules said...

LOL! Sage, I adore you!! What I have been thinking over and over for the past few days was how I could be so stupid. I still don't understand how "bravery" has anything to do with it. I asked D, and he said that had it happened to him (ie. sitting on a 1k loss trading a leveraged product - D's stop loss is 7 ticks!), he wouldn't cut his loss and would keep the trade until he breaks even - averaging down along the way - or when his account gets wiped out. YIKES!!! And he asked me how I did it. Ha ha.