September update and new October goals

One of my primary goals for September was simple -- gain control of my overtrading by minimizing the number of trades per day.  The successful control I had through most of September surprised me (to average about 3 trades/day).  But as we approached the final couple days of the month, I let my overconfidence get the best of me and ended on a bad note. 

I was in "single parent mode" during the final days of September, which usually results in sub-par performance.  Add to that lack of sleep and being under the weather.  These were all major willpower weakeners.  I should have known better.

More significantly, I believe the minimal number of impulsive trades I had for nearly a month made me think I finally overcame my biggest challenge, I became overconfident and started to think the forbidden -- I now deserve to crush it and end this month with big profits.  Yeah, I started thinking about the P&L.

The only thing that got crushed was my psychological capital. 

October goals

In September, I had minimal regards for P&L since the goal was all about minimizing the number of trades per day.  So with the limited number of "bullets" per day, when I finally got into a trade, I found myself swinging for the fences more often than not, getting stopped out at breakeven many times even after being up 2 or 3 points and more.  It was a bit hypocritical, saying P&L was not important and yet still holding on for big moves.

So for October, I'm going to add on another simple goal -- every trade will have a +2.00 ES profit target, no more.  I may exit earlier if conditions warrant, but I will NOT be holding for the big winners.  That will happen in the future once I start scaling out of entries with multiple contracts, and then letting a runner run.

Therefore, I'm going to continue to keep my goals simple and easy to track for compliance: 
     1) Average about 3 trades a day (focus on solid setups)
     2) Profit targets at +2.00 or less (lock in higher probability profit targets)

In the big scheme of things, I feel pretty good that I was able to maintain control for a decent (at least for me) stretch of time.  So now, it's time to just step it up and execute.  Let's do it.