Well, yesterday I pretty much broke down to my core and had a long sleepless night contemplating what im doing with my life and why I chose this as a career path. Throughout those meditations I realized that so long as I care about outcome, trading will never work. I know this and I have been through this scenario so many times but the more I can experience this, the more I will understand its importance. I started microdosing psylocybin this morning to see if that helped me ease the pain of consistent losses and it seemed to work slightly. Other than the slight nausea I definitely felt more of the "this is a game of probabilities." Without constantly telling myself this I will never understand its importance. I contemplated for a long time yesterday if I should take a break from trading and pursue other things but after long deliberations with people I love I know that doing that will really solve nothing. I cant just run away from my problems when they show up, I need to face them head first and see what the true problem is. If I just stop and take a break right now then yeah will I feel "peace" for a few days? Sure. I will also feel FOMO, annoyance, pain, suffering, etc... I need to learn how to solve the problem while its infront of my face, not behind a closed door. Today I took 3 trades. My first trade was my typical Short into the frontside and I surely felt anger again once I lost because I felt the "why are you always fucking with ME" like its the market makers on my shoulder. I need to realize MARKET MAKERS ARE ON MY SHOULDER, When I decide to take a trade i am not the only person seeing that opportunity. Thousands of other people are seeing the exact same opportunity as I am and we cannot all make money so there has to be some tricks to push out people who are too emotional to handle the stress. I need to keep reitering to myself that I AM A PROFESSIONAL (I know im actually not but im trying my best to pursue that level lol) and when I feel fear in a trade I should start to get excited because this is what trading is meant to feel like and I have practiced this many many many many many many times. I will be the person who is calm in a turbulent sea while others panic. That is what makes someone a professional in the first place. I need to start taking those trades that truly do have edge and avoid those macro biased trades that I have been taking so much recently. 

1d:2m Futures

1st: Short, Micro Trend Reversal, Intraday Trend Continuation 

2nd: Long, Micro Trend Continuation, Intraday Trend Reversal

3rd: Short, Micro Trend Reversal, Intraday Trend Reversal (because we broke HOD so intraday is uptrending)

red box: losing trade

green box: winning trade

    - As you can see I really took my time today. I had only 3 trades spread out across the entire session. This is partly due to the fact that I was looking at other strategies I can try to trade but I did to not terrible in terms of P/L after first loss. If you take out the first loss then I had about a 9 point day which is really not bad at all considering the spy just chopped around and did nothing the entire session. My first loss was absolutely warranted because I was shorting into a breakout while MACD was very very bullish. This was a loss I couldve voided a million times over had I just never gone short when MACD is bullish. Not to mention that intraday trend reversal longs work very well when we are in a micro uptrend so when this reversal occurred I shouldve just sat on my hands and waited for the next opportunity. The Second trade was a long continuation when we broke LOD and spiked higher then we dropped and held that low of day as a new higher low formed. I took the pullback looking for a breakout above that previous higher high and thats exactly what happened. MACD was bullish at this point and also again Intraday trend reversal longs in a micro uptrend work well. On my last trade I got somewhat lucky but it still worked out in my favor. So we started rallying at the end of day and we broke above the HOD but once we broke the MACD turned bearish and once we did that I took a short pretty much as a "fuck it lets see if MACD is this good" I set my stops and the trade worked out because I sold at the perfect low. Had I held this trade for more and got greedy then I surely wouldve stopped out on that next spike higher. If I was truly a shortseller though I would have my stop at HOD not where I previously had my stop. IF that was the case then even that large spike would not have stopped me out. Its also not the best idea to try to fade rallies into the close when we clearly reversed long intraday and are still in a micro uptrend. Yes the MACD was bearish and yes we had a massive gap down on the day but we were trying to fill that gap now and shorting that move this late into a long weekend on a friday massive options expiration is just pure gambling. I am happy that god gifted me with a win there but damn that is a sketchy trade that I should never do again. This is the exact reason why trading is so hard. A bad trade can sometimes be rewarded with profits. Without identifying that this was still a bad trade I would take this many more times and be very angry everytime I ended up losing after this one. gotta stay aware of the opportunities that the market bailed you out on compared to the trades that were actually +EV.