Tuesday Wrapup (12/22) - $0 gain

One word comes to mind today - embarrassed.  Despite only having 2 trades today, one of which is was just about perfect, I closed on bad note.

Slept in this morning so was feeling alert and ready for the day.  But I also had a lot on my to-do list for my other businesses.  So I was only have paying attention to the markets today because I wasn't expecting much movement and I definitely guess right in that regard.

First trade of the day was a short pullback taken after the 10AM econ news.  After the news we initially spiked higher before collapsing lower.  I sold the first pullback after this low formed and had almost a perfect entry.  Scaled out of this trade for a $325 gain and never took more than 2 ticks of heat.  My exit could've been a bit better, as I gave this trade too much room to work on my last 1/3, but ultimately everything worked out well. 

Around noon I took my 2nd trade of the day, also a short pullback.  The setup was perfect, but after entry the trade stalled and went nowhere.  The trade fluctuated within a 3 tick range for the next 10-15 mins or so. It was at this point I know I needed to exit so I moved my target orders up to breakeven levels.  I exited 1/3 for a 1 tick loss, and that's when things went downhill.  A co-worker stopped by my office door with her husband and wanted to chat.  So I was away from my screen for about 5-10 mins with a position on and it was killing me, but it's hard to be rude especially when it's Christmas time.  So with that chat finally done I returned to my screen to find the position still on and now I was in a 1.5 pt drawdown as prices had turned up.  At various points over the next 4 hrs (yes, I held all the way till the close) the position fluctated from being down 2-3 ticks to as much as a 3.5 pt drawdown.  Each time when it got close to my orig breakeven point, which happened at least twice, I kept thinking we'd break lower so I dug my heels in further.  Ultimately I closed the last 4 lots at various prices over the final 5 mins for a $325 loss on the trade, which I consider to be very fortunate.

I want to think I would've made better choices had I not been interrupted during this trade.  But I'm not sure.  This is the first time this has happened to me in weeks, and I've been feeling so dialed in, a trade like this re-introduces a bit of doubt in my abilities.  It's these types of judgment errors which have always been my downfall in the past. 

I guess the positive here is that I knew 10 mins after entry that it was time to exit the trade.  It's not like I was relying on false hope.  I was ready and willing to take a loss, I just wanted to do so at my price.

On another note, I did pass up several decent entries today.  Many of which weren't necessarily one of my core setups.  But I kept hearing myself say go ahead and enter the trade, if it doesn't work out you can exit for a small loss.  They always say the top traders can make money on random entries just do to trade management alone. Not sure I'm ready to take that step. 

Not expecting much for tomorrow, but we'll see what happens.