Tuesday Wrapup (1/5) - $413 gain

12:00PM
Certainly not much to complain about thus far.  Three trades thus far, all countertrend short scalps, all winners with gains totalling an even $1000.  And this comes despite my missing the best trade of the day because I turned my head away from the screen for like 10 secs.  That was a countertrend long at 10AM after a big vol spike down left the shorts hanging.  Not only did I miss the first entry, but I missed the follow-up as well.

First trade was a countertrend short taken just after 8AM EST.  Didn't wait for a confirmation on the 1000 tick chart, and took my entry off the 3 min chart.  Figured the worst I'd do was get out a breakeven.  There was a clear vol spike after the upward move a few mins earlier.  Didn't waste time exiting and after just 1 tick of heat, I scaled out for a $300 over the next 15 mins.


Next trade was even better.  Another CT short taken at 10:45.  Not 1 tick of heat and I scaled out in 5 mins for $350.  Found myself thinking smartly just to get out of this trade and try to nail the first pullback which I did :). 


At 11:13 I took another short off the first mini-pullback of the above setup.  Again no heat and I scaled out over 12 mins for a $400 gain.  Found myself wanting to hold at least a few lots of this one a bit longer than we were setup for a cascading selloff now that the bulls were trapped higher.  But corrected my thoughts and stuck to my usual trading style. 


Nice start to the day.  Let's keep the momentum going this afternoon.  And don't do anything stupid!


4:00PM
Wow today was certainly a tale of two halves.  Should've shut down my machine at lunch.  Ugg.

Here's a summary of my afternoon trades:

Pullback short taken at 12:13 off the 3 min chart.  Another beautiful entry with 1 tick of heat and I scaled out over the next 45 mins for a $363 profit.  At this point I'm up almost $1400 on the day and living large. The things go down hill.

My next trade came at 2:30PM.  Took a pullback short off the 1000 tick chart.  Solid setup, but the trade pretty much went against me from the start.  So I put on my risk mgmt hat and started peeling off contracts.  Whittled down 6 short contracts to 2, but clearly didn't try hard enough on the last 2 contracts.  Took just a $75 loss on 4 contracts and a $425 loss on the remaining 2.  Ouch.  Closed at the EOD. 

Just after 3PM, I took a countertrend short that once again did me in from the start.  And again I whittled the position down to 4 contracts with a minimal loss of $50 or so.  Had multiple chances to get out on last 2 lots at breakeven, but didn't pull the trigger.  Looking at the 5 min chart from 2PM on not one freaking bar penetrated the low of the prior bar.  I kept anticipating a decent size pullback that never happened.  Closed this at the EOD for a $375 loss.  $50 loss on 4 contracts and $325 on last 2.  Ouch.


And finally in a WTF moment, I opened a CT short at 3:55 on a second chance entry.  My thinking was that everyone who had been buying since 2:00PM would want to close their positions before the bell.  Wrong again.  At least this time I managed to lose just $75, though I'm sure it would've been worse had the market continued higher and I sat their froze in time. 


So long story short after being up almost $1400, I closed the day with a measly $413 profit.  Sure it could've been worse, but feeling like my bad habits have crept back in. Need to turn the lights off on those bad boys. But I also have to attribute some of this to the market itself.  I mean how many days does the market go straight up for 2 hrs without nary a pullback even 2 pts or so?  Not many.  Sometimes shit just doesn't go your way!