December 29, 2025 (3 Trades) (-$77.50)
Overall Grade: C-
Day Summary: Wow, first review in almost two weeks and, unsurprisignly, my performance has showed it. Today I came into the day with a good, detached mindset, but I still ended up forcing a no set up trade out of the gate. I then quickly took another loss which, was kinda my set up, but a very subpar form of it, and a set up I knew out of intuition was a low probabilty one, so really I should have skpped it. I then broke my rules and took a 3rd trade after two losses. Breaking my rules is a bad habit, and I really need to get back to implimenting good habits, but I will say that my 3rd trade was at least my set up. So considering I had made some money back and finished strong on a playbooked set up, I decided to shut it down.
DAILY - ES
5 MIN - ES
TRADES
Trade 1 - Short 2 MES @ Intuition + No Set Up
Grade: D
- no set up - bad
- fighting price action during the hold - knew this was likely to be a loosing trade
- do not trade on intuition/discretion alone - it is not repeatable
- tried to stop out right at the break of 6957.00 but TradeStation lagged and I lost an extra 2.5 points
- really, with how I've been trading, I should not be taking a trade withing the first few mins of open - especially if it's not a playbooked set up
Trade 2 - Long 2 MES @ 21 EMA Trap + Fighting Price Action + Early Entry
Grade: C-
- technically a playbooked set up, but very subpar - fighting price action into the set up - bad
- this is a 'AVOID Set Up' - technically a set up but should be avoided out of discretion based on previous history - and I did recognize that before I entered the trade but I was thinking about making back the money from Trade 1
- Going into 2026, I want to remember that I need to do less of the bad vs more of the good - trade a playbooked set up and use discretion to qualify them
- early entry - made this even worse
- almost got stopped out and then had a chance to get out but didn't out of wanting to have a winning trade - even though i knew that was my chance to exit a subpar trade
Trade 3 - Short 2 MES @ 21 EMA Trap + Key Level + Intuition
Grade: B+
- broke my 2 loss and done rule to take this trade - that's a bad habit, and i want to recognize that
- however, this was definitely the best trade I took today. why?? because it was a fucking playbooked set up!! and surprise surprise, it felt easy
- good entry @ a key level - also was the breakdown level from the morning sell off - although I wasn't thinking that in the moment
- took this trade to a new low which is essentially my strategy - good scalp
- had this been my first trade of the day, i think I would have targeted 6945.00 - likely taking it off into wick lows of opening candles
- good intuition that this was a bull trap when I entered