January 12, 2023 (6 Trades) ($86.25)
Overall Grade: C-
Day Summary: Today was CPI day, and another choppy, rangy day. I took a bunch of scalps today, all with just 1 contract. Although I thankfully went 6 for 6, most of those trades were unnecesary and exposed me to market risk for essentially no reward. However, the main lesson of the day is that patience is key. I traded from Eury's crib today and we both sat in front of the charts from basically 8:30 am for the CPI report to 3:30pm, with only a short hour break for lunch. This proved to be a great plan as we both stayed disciplined all day (for the most part lol) and both had our best trades of the day around 3pm. I need to remember that trading is like hunting, and sometimes you need to wait all day to strike if there aren't clear opportunities. I also need to get out of my mind that as a trader I should only be in front of the computer between 9:30 and 11. There are potential opportunities all day, every day and the only reason I should be stopping after just a couple hours of trading is if I have a great green day. Otherwise, until I am making substantially more than my expenses on my average green trade, I should not be potentially leaving opportunities on the table.
DAILY - ES Futures (Screenshot during 1hr break)
5 MIN - ES Futures
Trades
Trade 1 - Short 1 Contract (No Set Up)
Grade: D+
- This was not a good trade and I was lucky to get away with some small profits
- Shorting into VWAP and not even waiting for a 5min trend break retest
- My entry and exit were on the same candle which shows I did not have coinviction in this trade
FIX: Avoid This Trade
Trade 2 - Short 1 Contract (No Set UP)
Grade: D
- This also was not a good trade
- Shorting below VWAP helped this trade but because it had recently broke its 2min trend, this was a dangerous trade
FIX: Again, Avoid This Trade
Trade 3 - Long 1 Contract @ Demand Zone (Far Right Trade)
Grade: C-
- At least this trade had a "set up" buying at demand and looking for a breakout of the ranging downtrend
- I should have held this trade a bit mroe because my risk was minimal, and I ended up having less than a 1:1 R because of where I took profits
- This trade was still not really worth the risk
FIX: Hold to a minimal of a 1:1 R
Trade 4 - Long 1 Contract - DownTrend Break Out (Far Right Trade)
Grade: C+
- I see what I was going for here but my entry was not good
- I tried to get filled on the bid on the same candle, but didn't get filled so i bought the ask after it popped up a bit
- Remember that it is significantly easier to manage a trade when you have a good entry and it is usually better to just let it go if you don't get the entry you were planning
- At this point we were well into the range so this trade should mostly be avoided
FIX: Don't chase an entry up unless I am extremely confident it is about to move without me
Trade 5 - Short 1 Contract (No Set Up)
Grade: F
- Personally, i think this was my worst and most risky trade of the day
- No Set Up at all for this, just guessing. Never trade guesses.
- If anything I should have went long on a pullback here as I should have expected it to recover the dip because of the bullish grind we had and because CPI met expectations
- I will say, I'm happy I was smart enough to bail on this trade the second I was in the green because I knew it was a forced trade
FIX: AVOID !!!! DON'T GUESS TRADE !!
Trade 6 - Short 1 Contract @ Supply Zone (15 Min chart *not pictured*)
Grade: B
- This trade was based off the 15min chart so I don't know why I didn't snap a photo of it
- We had hit a supply zone, made a lower high and lower low from the previous candle on the 15 min so I expected to fail the trend reversal on the 2 & 5 min
- Good job holding this trade and sticking to my stop which was above the previous 15 min candle at 4014.50
- I considered adding 1 contract at the top but I wasn't sure and didn't want to risk too much of my daily profits, but I wish I had done in now of course lol
- This was also a trade I could have held for a bigger move but at this point in the day i was ready to finish strong and close the charts
FIX: I could have been a bit more patient for my entry on this trade but I didn't want it to go without me as I felt that this was my best opportunity of the day
Takeaways: Pay-tience always pays. I should be waiting for only the best set ups, and now looking back, most of my trades today were forced with no set up. I was lucky to be green on all of my trades today. but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good!
Easy Money: Intraday Supply & Demand I suppose