Today was not awful. We had massive volatility which made trading very scary because normal risk is around $25 but today it was nearly $50 on every single trade. I personally didnt think that it was a good idea to really be pushing trades considering CPI is tomorrow even though the macro was pretty clear today.
30d:30m Micro Downtrend
- Downtrend because Lower Highs Lower Lows
1d:2m Intraday Downtrend
- Downtrend because we have a high in premarket that was never broken so technically all the highs on the day are Lower Highs. Albeit we did not get lower lows really at all until later in the session which we still did not break the premarket low. Technically after the open we created a range where we stayed below premarket high and above premarket low.
1d:2m Futures
1d:2m Futures
1st Trade: Micro Reversal Intraday Reversal
- Once we held the premarket low on this drop at the open I thought that we would make a higher low. If you look at the red candles before the spike you can see that sellers are obviously getting very exhausted. I took the break to the upside for an entry which felt sketchy in the moment because if sellers did win then this was going to get flushed very hard. I was in about $40 of drawdown but since we held the previous lower low I held the trade. I sold on the breakout for about 10 points which is pretty nice for me. The price action got very choppy after my exit so I am happy I got out and reassessed the situation.
1d:2m Futures
2nd and 3rd Trade: Micro Continuation Intraday Continuation
- So once we had this breakout and immediately flushed straight through, I thought that we would move short. I got in and stopped out pretty fast because I was nervous of another spike through the high. Again I shouldve probably just risked the actual high and not stopped out because I lost about $25 on that trade. I reentered immediately after and basically risked my days profits to see if I could get a nice drop here. I overmanaged this trade yet again and took a loss that I didnt need to take. Had I properly managed this trade I wouldve made $100 today. Either way I dont really love any of these trades because they were pretty scalpy. The first trade is much better than my second and third ones but I am happy I got back in and properly managed the risk the second time around.
Takeaways:
I need to learn how to stop overmanaging my trades. Take the trade, hold to risk, let it go. I am not sure why I get so scalpy and scared to hold to risk. If I start trading based off of only price action and not the PnL then I think I would really be a lot better. I constantly am taking losses that I dont need to take because I am too scared to risk the true amount because I calculate it in PnL terms. The first trade was somewhat of a continuation trade long simply because we didnt break the premarket low. Taking long breakouts in micro downtrend is scary as hell but I am happy with the execution of that trade. The 2nd and 3rd were somewhat of a reversal simply because we had been trending higher thoughout the day so far BUT we did not break the premarket high or fridays high so It was not truly a Long momentum continuation day. In a true long momentum continuation we should be above premarket high prettty fast in the session. This whole days price action was a range really and I think I played the range somewhat well. Tomorrow is CPI so I am going to be very very careful and only take something if its absolutely beautiful.
