This market continues top provide lots of opportunities and everyday just proves how much more there is to learn and how I don’t have as much discipline as I’d like to lead people (including myself) to think. While today was basically a wash day for me due to a goof up on a trade I did have 2 pretty decent epiphanies today that made it ALL worth it.
Today for me actually started yesterday when my lovely wife told me around 6pm “I think I have a mild fever, I need some soup”. For those that don’t know my wife is 1st gen Jamaican-American, so those that have some experience with Caribbean’s know how serious tings fi get wen di Tea an Soup bust out. Well fast forward to this morning and she woke up sounding like she smoked 50 packs of Kool cigarettes (we don’t smoke) in 15 minutes…lol.
Needless to say I was on duty for all things kid related, which included me taking Olivia at 4:30am (I made it pass by working on porting my volume forecast script into tradingview) as well as getting the boys dressed, together (have MERCY lord) and to school. Initially I was kind of frustrated because man I was going to miss the open, but I continued my prep as usual. Got my reads, set some game plans, and setup my charts. I might not have gotten to trade today, but I wasn’t going to waste the morning.
While driving on 355 it hit me that I’ve been talking about all this patience stuff and trying to trade the open is the opposite of that and typically the setups that I want come around 9:45-10am anyways, so no big deal. What it did do was force me to not push any buttons by simply not being at the desk, which is something I never really considered before. If you have your reads ahead of time and you have a specific setup you don’t HAVE to be at your desk every waking moment.
I’m not sure how effective I will be only looking at the platform after 9:40, but man it definitely MADE me be (somewhat) patient and I can appreciate that.
Well I made it back home around 9:43 market time and sure enough the world hadn’t fallen apart and the setups that I like were still forming. My mind was kind of (oddly) blown.
Anyhoo what I found was that I still have a pretty good read on the things that I’m good at, and that it’s just a matter of execution.
Overall my plans were solid, but I had one moment where I didn’t execute well on SYTA. I’ll get into into some more detail on SYTA situation below and I’m excited about what I learned trading ENSC today.
Trades
$SYTA
Man I hate to look at this one. It did exactly what I wanted to see it do, but I still found myself hitting my max ticker per loss on this one. The main problem was that I didn’t enter with my stop losses in place (I know, i was just fussing at myself about not doing this yesterday, but here we are again…the struggle can be REAL at times..smh). The first two entries were partial size and I was thinking to myself “it feels good, I don’t need to be so tight”. Then I realized that my daughter needed to be changed and my wife asked me to bring her upstairs, so I looked at the position and said “it should be fine” and then went and got her and took her upstairs….well as I came down she was on the move and if I were properly positioned with my stops I would’ve still been in the game to catch the MAJOR capitulation, but I wasn’t and added another partial bit without thinking about what/where I was in regards to relation to my ticker max loss (which is pretty aggressively tight) and BAM….stopped out by broker right near level where I should’ve been getting really involved.
The point here is that had I done what my rules say I should’ve done I would’ve been good and caught this this for an amazing trade, but I didn’t and here I am complaining about it on my blog about trading.
I could try to say my wife this, or my kid that, but the fact is I didn’t do what I needed to do and there’s’ no escaping that. Got to own up to your junk and fix it…so let’s do just that!
$ENSC
Pretty happy with this trade given I wasn’t at the desk off the open. The 6 push would’ve been the ideal entry, but given the tape I felt comfortable taking it where I did. I tried to let it work and then when it felt like it was basing and soaking a little bit too much I took off half and lock some in and ended up taking the other half off for break even.
After this I was so frustrated by the SYTA situation that I told @Tik4Tat I might just be done and then I had to look at myself and say stop being a pansy. Stuff happens, get over it you clown
So after feeling sorry formyself fo stupid stuff that I did I got back in the zone and looked for the proper setup. I was looking for a re-entry and a BRICK wall showed up at 5.20, so I jumped in and unfortunately got shaken out twice, giving back what I made off that first trade. At that point I was about to say screw it and then I thought about what I had been talking about with getting involved in longs. I knew that it would be a nice long setup, so instead of talking about it I particpated it. The first long got shaken out, but when that 5.30 level held the second time I got back in and knew that if I were short it creeping up on low volume towards that 5.80 level would make me antsy and that should send it for a HOD clearout and that’s what I traded for.
After we go to the 6.20 retest I saw there were still some stuck shorts until the 5.80’s failed again, so I added on the dip and moved my stop into ITM to let it work. If it would ciruict good, but I really had gotten what I came for, so I wasn’t trying to force something.
After that long I then was ready to leave it, but then I looked at the volume and was like “man there’s no follow through, this should be a good short, so I said I was looking for pops to short and that’s what I did. The volume forecast was stiull in range, so I told @Tik4Tat I was holding until the close and that’s what I did. I was hoping for 4.30’s, but settled for the 70s and 80s. Overall very nice trade.
The big takeaway that I got here is that I usually approach a name with a specific setup in mind (usually) and it hit me that if the setup looks a certain way the times where it’s not a good short should make it a good long ,so why not trade BOTH!!!!
Like seriously if I know that I want to see it push and it bases and starts to push why not take advatage of that on the long side and flip short where it makes sense. This turns a setup that might have 2 solid setups into one with possibly 4.
Maybe it’s just me and I’m slow or have baby brain, but yooo! I literally just need 2 good setups a day and there’s’ TON of opportunities to zone in and focus on those two. I’m geeked!!!!
$ACAD
I shouldn’t have taken this trade, but it was on my alerts from prior moves and it looked like it was going to go, so I put a tiny position on ( like 1/4R) and when it didn’t work I moved on.
Missed Trades
It setup while I was driving, so not much to really say here except I want to track it because it was almost too pretty to not mention
Given the volume forecast that I got I should’ve traded this one and had a good read, but boy would this have kept me busy, so maybe it’s better that I didn’t touch it.