Last Night's "Premonition"

I've struggled the last two days... six stop outs in eight trades while getting lost/mired in choppy consolidation (see top picture of my results since Wednesday). I am trying to broaden my scope by trading with trend instead of playing for reversals. This is new to me and the unfamiliarity is showing in my performance. Often, I feel like I am part of the market; that I know where it is going before it gets there. But over the past couple days, I have been lost. As if I am just beginning my journey. This is frustrating and I have literally been losing sleep over it. Last night (early this morning) at about 3:00 AM, I was awake and at my computer mapping the SPY, studying the charts to determine key S&R levels then ranking them in order of importance. I began nodding off in my chair around 5:15 AM so I went to bed. When I got up again, I went to the charts to look at what I had done. I couldn't remember much of the work I had done but found these two targeted levels denoted by orange lines on SPY. The market opened with a gap-up but dropped immediately and continued down. Watching CNBC while eating my oatmeal, I heard Cramer say to Melissa Lee and David Faber how he was surprised the markets were so weak with the relatively good data that had been announced (I'm not sure what data it was). But the charts had predicted the weakness and I saw it at about 4:00 this morning. I marked it on the chart. And my lower orange line held as Support for the S&P between 10:00 - 10:15 AM. There has been a nice bounce since then that the above chart only partially shows, since it has been roughly twenty-five minutes since I captured the screen-shot.

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I can't let my frustration and anxiety over personal finances here at home keep me from continuing my trading education. I really believe I am on the right path and that I have an understanding of what the market is doing often enough to make money trading. But I haven't developed a method, an edge, that allows me to consistently and profitably manage what I sense from the charts. And I am prone to lapses in discipline; getting caught up in the knee-jerk trading of a newcomer. This limitation is strictly mental/psychological. I am working on this part as I continue to study charting and momentum of trading.

I exercise, I try to meditate, I read books and blogs about psychology, I am signed up for a yoga class which I haven't yet attended, I watch my sugar intake and manage my diet much better than in the past, I gave up caffeine last November and I have stopped drinking alcohol as of early February 2012. I don't use drugs, prescribed or recreational. I occasionally take advil and when my pollen allergies get unbearable, I take Loratidine (Claritin). Much of this is to instill self-discipline and healthy habit. Physically, I feel better: I have increased my muscle mass and my cardio health. I don't get the spikes and crashes related to caffeine, sugar, or the downer effects from alcohol. Mentally, I am still a work in progress. I have a long way to go to catch up to the gains I've made in physical fitness.

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As I have written in the past. whether I learn to trade for a living or not, I will be a better person through the attempt. Of that, I am certain.