Today, so far

So far, so good. I am trying to focus hard on entering trades with the intent of winning so to counter my concerns expressed in my last post. I entered long at $64.26 (9:54 am) and waited. Price dipped to within four or five cents of my stop line, then suddenly for a fraction of a second touched my stop line then retreateed just as quickly. I couldn't react fast enough to stop out. From that moment, price climbed in a 10 minute trend to peak at $65.06. Couple things:

One, it is clear that my selected stop area was wrong. I've blogged about this before, but the big market forces (HFT's perhaps?) will drive price to an extreme point in a flash to trip stops and generate the liquidity (and lower price) for them to engage their positions. This was clearly what happened here. They know where unseasoned traders like me put stops and in this case sent price to that area, in literally a fraction of a second. If I had placed an official stop-loss order with my broker, I would have been "punked" out of my well-chosen trade idea by only a few pennies beyond my stop line before reversing. So much of this activity is about "Trading the Trader," to use Quint Tatro's book title and premise. Black boxes and seasoned big players will trade, in part, based on the other players in the market and not only what they believe is a good trade idea. There's nothing wrong with that... if it were easy, everyone would do it and it wouldn't pay for shit. But, I have to pay attention to my stop price selection.

Secondly, I put the orange mark where my impulse would be to sell if I had not placed restrictions on my exit points. I felt great when I was still holding the trade when it rose another 40 cents! I must admit I wished then I could have sold to take an eighty point winner. To my recollection, it would have been my biggest gain ever on a practice trade that didn't involve the dubious practice of averaging a better price by doubling up a losing position. This was a clean trade and the best gain I ever remembered having. But, I remained resolute and stuck to the plan. While writing this post and roughly 20 mins. after taking the screen shot above, price has come back down, as it is want to do, and touched my stop line. I have clicked and exited. The one thing I did do earlier was move my stop line up closer to my entry after the trade was sufficiently in the black. I figured this is what I would normally do if real money were on the line. Correction, I would normally move my stop to breakeven then trail it to preserve a gain, but in this case it would violate my rules of the game. I willingly have taken a small loss.

I really have a good opinion of this exercise for now. I'll continue to look for good entries as I normally would and I'll stick to my training rules. One day at a time, one trade at a time. I may now take an hour to think quietly/meditate over this successful trade, eat lunch, then come back to the screen for the afternoon session.