Step 2 Small Start

Fridays are generally rather tricky to trade. Today was no exception. However, I was surprised to observe that the market was slower today compared to last Friday where I secured a $1K day.

Nevertheless, any up day is a good day. With the additional rules in Step 2, I did find myself treading cautiously around my setups. There was one mistake that I made where I simply expected price to pull back and hold an arbitrary level.

TSTrader Performance Center

My key stats are consistent. My AWT is slightly lower than my ALT, but my win rate is 68%. This was sufficient to generate a positive expectancy.

I think the two graphs are a bit more interesting. Starting with the non-cumulative P&L graph, you can see that my performance was quite choppy. I would win a couple of trades and then return the profit in the next trade. This continued throughout the day where I took a loss with my second last trade and then a profit with my last trade.

There are two possible explanations for this and it could even be a combination of the two. The first is that today was simply a rough day to generate signals and the ones I identified just weren't as reliable as they otherwise would be. The second explanation is that my mentality was affected by the additional rules such as the weekly loss limit, not trading one minute before and after economic events, and ensuring 50% of my trades are over 20 seconds. This may have led me to close trades a bit too quickly without giving them a chance to breathe. In any case, I think the open next week will be a true test to see which is it.

While I can't show my fills because I took the screenshots after the session ended, I did manage to preserve the levels I had plotted as I watched ES and NQ throughout the trading day.

TSTrader NQZ1

Quite choppy in the morning. I didn't really see any clear signals to trade in that band. I did catch be breaks in the afternoon to a much smaller extent. Given that I was quick to return back my profits, this did affect my ability to let the trades I took in the afternoon rise.

TSTrader ESZ1

ES was a bit worse in my opinion. There was a much larger range that I was monitoring. I either took losses or very small profits on those breakouts, which turned out to have failed. In any case, taking a small win without breakout any Step 2 rules is a good way to end the week.