Today was one of the choppiest days ive seen in the stock market in my entire career. The vwap was perfectly flat throughout the entire session and there were continuation traps to the upside and the downside many many times throughout the entire session.
1d:2m
- VWAP is flat LOL
1d:2m Futures Trades:
1st: Trend Continuation Short
2nd: Trend Continuation Short (completely butchered my execution and missed the best move of the entire day)
3rd: Trend Continuation Short
4th: Trend Continuation Short
- I am not unhappy with my trading but I am also not happy with it. I managed to make back my losses and end the day green after being down about $20 so technically that is still a 10 point move of profits that I caught AFTER my first 2 losses. I am okay with that but I really shouldve made about anywhere from 7 to 10 points on my 2nd trade. As you can see I took a short right when we failed to move higher after a large gap down on the day (thats why its trend continuation short trading). I got in right as the MACD crossed and it was a perfect entry but for some reason I stopped out for a 2 point loss right before a 10 point move to the downside. I cant believe I did that. Lets go over it.
1d:2m MACD
- This is exactly where I entered my short trade. We broke below vwap and the 13ema and the MACD crossed AND it was about 10:00 so more continuation should be expected. I got in and was very nervous that we were going to fake out short and rip higher since we did that already 4 times beforehand. I understand why i stopped out fast since that was the scenario and I didnt want to get stuck in a spike but once we broke back below that low I dont think it wouldve been a bad idea to chase it slightly with the same idea for a stop. If it spiked 2 points again Id just get out but I need to realize that If I am not aggressive on this strategy I simply will never make any money.
1d:2m 3rd and 4th trades cont. with MACD
- The first short I took was the cross of the MACD to the downside. The reason I took this with confidence is because we are still in a gap down day and we didnt get even close to PDC so once we fail we should "technically" move lower since gaps that dont fill tend to move in the direction of the gap. The first trade was a clean 3 point trade. It felt like a lot more in the moment. The second trade was a continuation of the momentum to the downside. I wanted to take the break of the small uptrend that is a pullup in a backside move and enter once we broke with a stop at the 50ema. We immedately broke lower and I was in the green pretty fast. I set my brackets and just let the trade go and I made about 4.5 points on that trade. I reallly like how I took the ATTEMPT at a new lower low instead of looking for continuation. I knew better than to trust this day to have clear direction because considering the morning price action I was not gonna bet a single dollar on this shit moving above or below the HOD or LOD. I think that I recovered well after my first 2 losses and held my winners longer than my losers and also took about 2x my losses in terms of Points per trade.
Overall not a terrible day but also not a great one. I am going to just go ahead and say that this is mostly the markets fault for not picking a direction early on and sticking with it. When the vwap is flat like that and we are moving less than 2 total points before 10 then you can usually be pretty certain that the day will be shit. It is suspicious that we are down here though because clearly bulls are holding onto this market with everything they have. Back in 2022 when we had big breakdowns on the daily chart we just flew lower with zero support. The day would start with a 3-5 point gap down and within the first 30m we would already be below pm low with zero chances of even attempting to fill the gap to PDC. This time its much different. We do have a lot more room lower before we truly break the uptrend but it is quite unique that we havent just crashed lower immediately like last year.
