August 26, 2025 (12 Trades) (-$40.00)
Overall Grade: D-
Day Summary: Man today was bad. I totally went off the rails in terms of emotional control. I am very lucky to not have been down big today because I was doing all the wrong things. Fomo entries, forcing trades with no set up, sizing up/averaging down and just being completely reckless out there. I haven't lost control like that in a while, so that is good, but I need to shape up now before I end up giving up weeks/months of hard work that it has taken me to build my account back up. It all started out by missing a short right out of the open that i put an order out for but didn't get filled. Then the fomo kicked in. The first 3 trades were okay, and had a thought process behind them, disregarding the late/fomo entry on Trade 1, but after that it just became an addict gambling and that is unacceptable. I'm going to go through my first 3 trades because those were actually okay trades to take (even though my executions were poor) and after that I'll just post the final screenshot of all my trades today so you can see just how out of control I was (it's embarrasing).
DAILY - ES
5 MIN - ES
TRADES
Trade 1 - Short 2 MES @ FOMO (from open Range Fakeout) + Shorting The Bottom + Gambling
Grade: D+
- missed the fill short around 6455.00 right at the open and then immediately got FOMO on the drop
- shorted the low - bad
- very late & fomo entry - bad
- initial planned risk was a break of the 21 ema which I didn't adhere to - bad
- I knew right before entry and said to myself that if I was wrong I'd be shorting the low, so I recognized that, but didn't have the emotional discipline to wait for a better trade (which came - Trade 2) Next step is recognizing and then having the control not to act on it. Remember, it's just not worth putting on the risk for a subpar set up.
Trade 2 - Short 3 MES @ Range Fakeout / 21 EMA Trap + FOMO
Grade: B
- this is actually a decent hold on this trade and took off partials to be safe after Trade 1 (not ideal because this could have been a big winner) but that is what trading from the red does to you (reason why FOMO from Trade 1 really killed me instead of just waiting for a good set up)
- FOMO entry and no reason to add where I did - should have added after the second red candle after my entry closed
- drawdown was tough on this trade thanks to another FOMO entry - was going to be a fairly large red day if i ate a L on this trade with 3 contracts
- I had also initially planned to get out quickly of the 3rd contract if it didn't work right aay which I didn't follow through with - very bad
- Range Fakeout was the set up this morning
- overall, this was a decent hold of the winner and looking for more - positive takeaway
Trade 3 - Short 2 MES @ Trend Continuation + 21 EMA Reject + Intuition + FOMO Entry
Grade: C
- Early entry - hadn't yet shown a playbooked set up
- entered on intuition which is aggresisive but it wasn't a horrible trade
- good job reading the price action and realizing quickly I was not on the right side of this trade
- happy to have taken off one and put the other to BE because this then popped hard
- sub par set up, but willing to take the risk on this (entry could have been better though had I not had so much FOMO today)
And here is the screenshot of how I finished on the day:
Horrible, horrible emotional control. Completely on tilt. I am literally embarrased to look at that photo because it shows the evidence of a compete lack of emotional control, the most important thing in trading. This happens a lot less than it used to and that is progress, I need to remember that, but I also want to stress how important it is to know when to walk away. There is always a brief moment of clarity before going on tilt like this, and I need to continue to make the responsible decisions as I have the past few months and be better than my emotions.