Consecutive Blowups
I didn't write a post on Wednesday because it was just a bad day. In fact, it was worse than bad. I didn't just have one blowup, but three. I think I've cooled off enough to talk about it.
I started this week down and that definitely affected my mentality. On Tuesday, there was a bit of "desperation" and loss of hope. When I traded on Wednesday, it was almost as if I was admitting defeat. Just admitting that I'm going to perform a reset because my loss limit was under $1K.Since I already admitted defeat, I let losses ride and just blew up. And so, I performed my first reset. Rather than waiting for the right structures and then trying to fade the pullback on an impulse move, I sorta just gambled. I traded for the sake of trying to "recover" the progress that I had lost with my reset. In fact, I tried to recover and get in the green so hard that I had to reset two more times because I started using two contracts without a profit cushion at all.
In some ways, the impulsiveness of my trades to performing resets makes me wonder if I would even be ready for a funded account. Or if I can even make a funded account last. I feel like I do have a strategy, but it really needs to be optimized so that I can survive consecutive losing trades.
On my final reset, I took one trade on MNQ. The sole purpose of this trade was to have one out of the ten required trading days recorded. After that, I just had to walk away.
So where am I at now?
 |
| TSTrader Account Graph |
On Thursday and Friday, I put on the brakes. I traded much more cautiously, which led to two consecutive days of being profitable. In order to improve my win rate, I added a tick stream to my layout. Furthermore, I reduced the number of indices to watch to one. Previously, I would watch NQ, ES, MNQ, and MES. Now, I only watch NQ.
More specifically, the tick stream I added is intended to help me cut my losses faster. Here's how I've been making it work over the past two days.
 |
| TSTrader Layout |
- Identify key intraday levels and structures using the 3,000-contract volume chart.
- Establish a directional bias. This means looking at a pullback following a dominant bar.
- Let's say if there is a really bullish bar and the bar following that is pulling back. In this case, my directional bias is "up" or bullish.
- Now that I have established my directional bias, I need to analyze the downticks and wait for that to stabilize. If I sense weakness in the selling pressure, I would enter my bid.
- My bracket has a stop loss of 10 points. This is a hard stop to prevent me from wiping out in case there's a sudden spike in undesired volatility. However, I've started practicing exiting when positions go against me by three points. It's really just a matter of keeping losses small so that consecutive losses don't wipe me out monetarily and mentally.