Monday Wrapup (12/7) - $888 gain

The final tally was a plus, but today's trading mostly horrible.  Don't get me wrong I'm happy with the gain, but I've got to get my head out of my ass.

Also on a little housekeeping, this week I'll be trading with a larger lot size. I'll be trading 6 contracts vs 3.  This may seem like a big jump, but I've traded upwards of 9-12 previously in the past with no ill effects, so I think I can handle the extra leverage. 

Comments from my first trade:

Utterly amazing how badly I screwed up my first trade of the day.  I awoke at 5AM sharp to find futures in a nice pullback after hitting an overnight low of 1098 or so.  Although no lower high had been formed on my 1000 tick chart, I liked the risk/reward and entered a short.  Took a 1.5-2 pt drawdown or so, but that was ok.  My profit targets were spread out further than normal so the risk/reward was still acceptable. Anyways, my 1st target was hit a while after, and we got within 2 ticks or so of my 2nd target before heading higher.  I had set my stop loss above the previous swing high after the 1st target was hit and was content to watch the action.  The futures drove lower again this time stopping a tick higher than before.  Rather than close the trade out for a $450 profit or so, I watched my profits disappear.  What's worse I hung around as the markets turned choppy, and 4 1/2 hrs later at the opening bell removed my stop altogether.  My thinking at the time was that my targets would surely be hit as we chopped around at the open.  We rose from the open and for the next hour or so I watched as the market went against my position.  At the peak I was down 4 pts on 3 contracts.  Not a huge loss by any means, but clearly unacceptable. Fortunately for me I was able to trade around this position during the day session and ultimately realized a nice profit when the markets sold off after lunch.  But I should've been out of the position hours earlier. And things could've been much worse had the market continued to rise.

The trouble with this trade was that I didn't want to admit I had made a mistake.  I had several opps to close the position for a nice profit within an hour or so after entry, but couldn't pull the trigger.  So instead I relied on hope that Mr. Market would give me another exit opportunity.  Today he did, but I won't be so lucky next time. 

Despite this rocky start I did have some positive moments.  Best trade of the day was a countertrend scalp around 1:20PM EST after the lunch false breakout.  Covered my costs early and let the last 2/3rds ride a bit longer than usual.  Ultimately the market broke down about 45 mins later and I was out for a $450 gain while suffering just 1 tick of heat.  Man, I love those kinda trades.

And generally speaking, I did a solid job of honoring my stops and practicing sound risk mgmt.  Today just goes to show that one tiny lapse in judgement has the potential to screw up a whole day's worth of good trading. 

Today feels eerily reminiscent of my horrible trading week a few weeks back.  Going to need to focus extra hard the rest of week because it's clear I'm sharp as a marble today.

Let's get some rest and get back at it tomorrow.