September 8, 2025 (+$70.00) - Tough Hold

Lesson/Review

September 8, 2025 (1 Trade) (+$70.00)

Overall Grade: B+

Day Summary: Man it can be so hard sometimes in trading to know when to exit. It always seems like I cut winners on days when I should hold for continuation (Friday) and hold them when they end up reversing (Today). But that is just trading and I can't complain about that. Overall I am happy with how I managed my trade today and that I gave it two chances to move lower for a bigger win. That is something I always struggled to do in the past (2023 especially) so to see myself making progress on that is awesome. One thing that I could have done better today was my entry. As you'll see below, I entered according to my strategy, but early due to ... you guessed it, FOMO. Overall I mostly stuck to my plan today so I can take that as a win also. I did average down today though, and although it was in a good spot and ultimately worked, I need to remember that as a general rule I should be adding only to winners, not losers.

 

DAILY - ES

5 MIN - ES

TRADES

Trade 1 - Short 3 MES @ 21 EMA Reject + FOMO Entry

Grade: B+

  • early entry - technically not my set up yet
  • had I not given in to FOMO and entered at my set up, I would have had less drawdown on this trade
  • was essentially trading for trend continuation on a range day - look at premarket price action (5 MIN)
  • I did give it a chance to go lower each time we were retesting lows which is good because each time PA was showing that I should, but again, it's important to recognize what kind of day we are having and make decisions accordingly - this is a situation that had happened to me before and I often ended up breakeven those days so at least I was diligent enough to take partials at lows and lock something in
  • note that right before price flipped strong bullish where I stopped out my last contract, we had just sweeped Asia lows (5 MIN - Blue Box), so that was another sign we were going to reverse, especially on a day like today
  • holding 2 contracts back to slightly red on this trade was very mentally painful I will admit, but I stuck to my original planned stop of the highs instead of going BE and that is a good takeaway because the trade plan was still there
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