September 9th, 2022

    Im doing this review the day after I took all of these trades because I was busy but in the future I think its probably almost always bad to make the review the day after just because I dont remember a lot of the rationales I took taking each of these trades. I started the day off with a decent loss which was of my own doing from fucking up my target price. Then I made back the loss in a decent trade, then I took 1 last trade and came out in the green. Overall I am very happy that I started red and found a way to get green even when I fucked up the first trade and shouldve made money on it but instead I lost. 

1yr:4h

1d:5m

1d:2m

1st Trade: Short BEMS

This was my typical Bearish Engulfing Momentum Shift trade that I created this week hahah. So on this setup we have to have a few things occur. Firstly, I want to see the buyers start to slow in momentum. If you look to the left of the first chart (1d:2m) you can see how the green bodies started getting smaller and smaller, then a red candle formed but was succumbed by more buyers until another bearish engulfing candle occured. That first trade I thankfull skipped because I didnt trust the sellers to take over yet. Then when I saw the green candle form and engulf the last candle I thought that we would break highs. Once we attempted the break of highs then failed immediately I knew that this was my chance to get in for a super fast scalp. I entered on the spike back up which is essential for this setup. If you have any type of entry where you are chasing you are surely to lose on this setup. The entry is everything. Sadly I was trading a contract that was a delta of 37 and my stop was about 20 cents with my target being 23 cents. This means that my target price was about 75 cents rather than my normal 50 cents. I didnt realize this until It was too late and my exit was missed by 1 single cent. I was up 36 on this trade which was almost a full dollar/share but since I thought I was trading a delta 45+ contract I just screwed it up. Then we spiked and it stopped me out as it broke highs. This was pretty depressing because I just really did this out of pure error and the trade itself shoudlve worked. AT least now I know that if I am doing this I need to be very careful and know exactly how much the delta is before I take the trade so I can adjust my stops accordingly.

2nd Trade: Short BEMS

Yet again I was taking a bearish engulfing momentum shift trade here which im finding out is probably my favorite 2 minute scalping strategy. Again I know this is somewhat of a risky setup unless you are very patient and have absolutely perfect entries. The entry is so important in this setup. Again we have a big red candle that shifted the momentum of the buyers so when we spiked back up I took the entry right in the center-ish of the engulfing candle. I set my stops and let the trade play out. As unlucky as I was in my first trade (missed exit by 1 cent) I got that luck back in this trade. My stop was right above the previous high and I swear this one yet again missed my stop by 1 cent. If I was stopped out of this trade I wouldve lost another 46 ontop of the 36 i lost in the first trade and it wouldve been very difficult to recover from 2 losses like that. Luckily I made back exactly what I lost on the first trade and was back to break even after this mini win. 

3rd Trade: Short Trend Reversal

Oh man grab some screenshots cuz this is a PERFECT trend reversal scalp setup. Let me be clear, when I am taking these trade I am still only looking for a quick scalp because they can easily move higher and when we are in strong uptrends like we have been for the past few sessions I expect the macro trend to continue in the upwards direction always. So when I took this I knew that taking 50 cents would make me more than happy. So this setup occurs when we have a clean 5 minute trend in upwards or downwards direction. Then once the trend is broken you have to wait and be very patient. NEVER take the initial break of the trend because your R is very low and you run the risk of being stopped out when the trend is retested. See the oval I drew to the right of where the trend break occurred? That is where you are looking for entries for the 50 cent scalp. I took the trade labeled (3) and almost immediately I was in the green and my profit target was hit. This put me up on the day about 38 bucks which is nothing crazy but the way I achieved this makes me extremely happy.

Takeaways:

This session makes me very happy even though the P/L doesnt reflect the amount of joy I recieved from these 3 trades. Firstly, holy shit how long have I been wanting to take fewer trades and increase my win %? I mean its been so many months in the making that I have wanted to achieve this and I am finally doing it on a consistent basis. I love my patience anymore, its really starting to become one of my strengths whereas before it was one of my biggest weaknesses. I used to short every frontside move 20 times before catching that big reversal late in the day. I would always be down on the day anyway from taking so many papercuts so finally being able to reduce those paper cuts and still have great entries makes me very happy. I do want to contribute that mostly to my learning. I have spent way more time than I ever have going over every single decision I make intraday in a very intricate way and doing this will change the game for me. Secondly, I just want to congratulate myself for taking that 2nd and 3rd trade with high conviction and not being scared to be down on the day. I know that one of my biggest flaws recently is that I take a loss and it kinda shuts off my brain from trading more whereas that is the opposite of what I should do. I understand taking 2 or 3 losses in a row I probably should just hang it up and relax but not after the first loss. This is even more relevant for this particular session because that first loss shouldve really been a win if I wasnt a bozo and didnt mess up my target prices. I think its been really helpful for me recently to just accept every flaw and fault I make on the day. When this happened I was not angry I was more disappointed and willing to accept the fact that it was 100% my fault and 100% my doing that caused this slip up. There wasnt some "market makers" fucking up that trade. It was me and me alone. Taking responsibilty and staying accountable is something I really want to be aware of as I grow in trading. Anything other than accountability will lead me down a road of sorrow and anger. Thirdly, I really like how I am very willing to take setups and be aggressive on them when I see them occur. I used to see tons of setups and never take them then I would get annoyed cuz I couldve taken a bunch of winning trades and skipped out on them then I end up taking a shittier setup late in the day from fomo. I want to make sure that I reduce that to a bare minimum so that I never have that late day urge to take a shitty setup. On this session I took only the most high probability trades and did not hesitate one bit on my entries. I think these things; 1. taking fewer trades, 2. taking high conviction trades with no second guessing, 3. being aggressive. are some of the most important aspects of my trading right now and something I have worked on very hard to achieve and to see some slight success at doing those 3 things makes me very happy on where I started and where I am today. 

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES: (labeled as X)

So I saw this and slightly hesitated on it and im not really sure why I hesitated but I am happy that I did. I think that the best explaination is the fact that we had a nice run up in the morning and a breakout of the consolidation pattern (see chart at top of post) so I really didnt think we would find sellers immediately and create that nice little engulfing flush out that would give me a 50 cent move. If I took this trade I surely wouldve lost money on it unless I fucked up my targets like the first trade I took. That spike back up through highs wouldve most likely stopped me out and I wouldve taken a decent loss. Even though this was a missed trade from hesitation perhaps it was more of an instinctual hesitation rather than a fear of losing. 

This was another opportunity that I missed on which I really think I didnt take it just because I had just gone from red to green on the previous trade and I wanted to protect my miniscule profits. I think this was probably the best setup of the day in terms of short patterns. I definitely hesitated out of fear rather than any other factor so in the future if I can scalp the first 5 minute trend reversal horizontal retest and then there is another one that happens only a few minutes later I should definitely take it again. If I am scared to lose money then jsut size down 1 contract and dont risk the entire profit of the last move.