August 27, 2025 (-$23.75) - Should Have Stopped After PreMarket

Lesson/Review

August 27, 2025 ( 4 Trades) (-$23.75)

Overall Grade: C+

Day Summary: I took a beautiful trade as soon as the intraday margin rate opened at 9am this monring. It was a playbooked set up and I held my winner almost to target. And just like that, I made back my full loss from yesteday on one good trade. That is how trading is supposed to be done. Unfortunately, I then started thinking about to money, about how I was already up $50 in the premarket, so just one or two good trades during the normal trading session and I could have a big day. Well, what happened instead is that I saw a "set up" which turned out just to be an order flow trade, but one big red candle gave me FOMO and then I shorted the bottom and gave it all back. After that I took two forced trades and I could feel myself wanting to do exactly what I did yesterday so I forced myself to do the responsible thing and shut it down. Even though I wanted to keep trading, I still felt much better after shutting it down then I did after to continuing the try it yesterday. I need to remember that. Make the respinsible decision to stop when I have that moment of clarity and logical thinking.

The next thing that absolutely needs to be addressed is my weakness of FOMO. It has been killing me and always causes me to give back unnecessary money to the market. I need to remember that I end up walking away with more money when I don't submit to FOMO and just execute my stategy.

 

DAILY - ES

5 MIN - ES

TRADES

Trade 1 -  - Short 2 MES @ 21 EMA Reject + 4 Targets + Key Level + Intuition

Grade: A

  • Beautiful Trade!
  • playbooked set up - good
  • held winner almost all the way to target - great (would have been an A+ had I held to target 6474.25 which did hit but it was tough to hold this approaching the open)
  • pullback was uncomfortable, I want to recognize that. But I did a good job of having my conviction and allowing it to come back down (even though I ended up getting out at about the same level as the initial drop)
  • good job monitoring and trusting price action
  • should have just one and done it on this trade
  • overall, extremely happy with this trade

 

Trade 2 - Short 2 MES @ Order Flow Trap + FOMO

Grade: C-

  • saw big orders on the DOM come in at yesterday's HOD and thought to short. Then we got a big red candle and I FOMO'd in - 1 contract at first but quickly added the 2nd
  • FOMO - bad - it is killing me
  • ignoring price action - bad
  • became bias for a wedge fakeout with order flow when really I just got baited in
  • I knew pretty quick that I was on the wrong side (during the consolidation) of this trade but didn't get out - could have minimized the damage and I knew that
  • mainly it just was not wise to risk anything on this trade as it was not a playbooked set up and FOMO made me get a worse entry
  • bias played a role

 

Trade 3 - Long 2 MES @ Forced Trade + No set up + Revenge Trading

Grade: D

  • pure revenge trading
  • unnecessary risk exposure
  • no set up
  • all bad

 

Trade 4 - Long 2 MES @ No set up - Revenge Trading - Forced Trade

Grade: D

  • revenge trading - bad
  • no set up - bad
  • emotional af - bad
  • unnecessary risk exposure -bad
  • didn't want to but knew I had to shut it down after this and glad I did!
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