Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Winding down for the holiday week

Between the construction workers finally banging away and fixing our basement due to the hurricane Irene floods (how long ago was that already??), preparing for family visiting tomorrow, as well as endless other circumstances of life that popping up, it makes focusing on trading very challenging. 

Yesterday - Botched SIM again
However, I did do some trades yesterday (Monday, Nov 21), but then ran into the TradeStation SIM confirmation delays once again.  This threw me off track.  By nature, when I see a problem, I try and isolate it and determine the root cause or at least better understand what's going on. 

So I began finding excuses to put on trades just to try and make it "break" and replicate the problem.  It's OK to do in SIM, but it's not OK with a live account.  Needless to say, I ended up straying far from the trading plan and it's not even worth posting the performance.

Overnight trading and the "one trade" today
Last night, I decided to give overnight trading a shot, and I ended up fighting the trend, and shot myself.  And before I had to head out this morning for a doctors checkup, I shorted the ES at 1198 during the pre-market session. 

The trade gained as much as +18.75 on one contract, before it hit the bottom before lunch (where Renato made a Diamond Setups call at 10:57 AM to buy at 1182-80!) and it then shot up due to the IMF news about the liquidity line.

Since I was in and out all day today, I held on and it got within 3 points of my breakeven stop.  I thought it would be "tragic" if I got stopped out at breakeven, but hey, it would be a lesson learned.  Luck was on my side, and the ES drifted back down.  And then right around the close, more news.  New stress tests for banks.  It ended up closing +16 in profits, and I will hold it into the overnight session.

By the way, this trade won't count on the "official" performance report, either, regardless of whether it closes with big profits or b/e.  It's more of a rogue experimental trade that I had a "hunch" about.

The bigger picture
Looking back on the past few weeks, it's clear there's a big gap between my desire to go for profit targets of +2s vs. runners that go +10s and beyond.  It's not necessarily mutually exclusive, but it is much more difficult to do both when trading only 1 contract, so I'll need to work on a plan to get up to 4 contracts as soon as possible.  Lots of planning and goal setting work for me to do.

Well, time has run out and more non-trading duties call, but best wishes to all for a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving holiday break!

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