And, here's the close.

The market closed on the afternoon trend high price for TNA. If I had stayed for the final four minutes of the candle I exited on, I would have met my goal as well as taken another 27 cents of gain. No matter, I had to leave.
I can't begin to write how great I feel right now. I fully embraced failure and it led to success. I am shocked at how little stress I felt the whole day. There were times I wanted to exit with some good gains (see the short orange lines mentioned in prior posts), but other than that, I was quite calm as compared to my history of practice-trading. I intend to continue with this exercise of discipline. I know that there will be days of failure ahead and relapse, but I like the general direction this is traveling.

The second screen shot is of the IB TradeLog, summarizing the days activity.

Now I am going to the basement to exercise... some resistence training then fast-walking on the treadmill.

Can't wait anymore...

I just can't wait another five mins to make my goal of only closing out a trade within the last fifteen mins of the day or stopping out. I have to get to a bathroom now. Too bad, the candle is rising...

I'm happy that my new higher stop has held the market retest of my entry area during the 3:35pm candle.

I closed out the trade with a 37 cent gain that easily offset the other two stop outs from earlier.

still in, but it looks weak...

I'm still in this stock but I have to visit the bathroom so badly that I'm begging for a stop-out. And now it is popping as I write this... damn. I don't want to hold this stock until market close...

Note that I have moved my stop line up from the original spot (where the short red line is).

3 rd trade of the day

Third of the day, here is where my gut tells me to exit... where the candle touches the orange horizontal line, up about 45 cents. Lets see how this plays out...

few mintues later

Here's a screen shot about 15 mins later. I'm stopped out of the trade. Looks like my read of momentum shift was correct. However, as I watch the candles and type this, price has bounced again in the candle following the current one shown that washed me out. The down spike was enough to stop me out but did not reach my original stop (short red line) at approx $62.01. That's interesting.

The orange line would have been the logical spot to take profits and go short.

Today, later...

I have another long trade on after what appeared to be a bottom for the day.

I've had a nice gain at times with my original stop only threatened once (in the candle following my entry).

I had two opportunities to exit over $62.70 so far which would have netted over 42 cents. I haven't exited yet but wanted to post that my gut tells me that the short orange line on the current candle would be a good exit. Consolidation feels like it is stalling and momo might be turning against me. Of course, I intend to hold until stop out or the last 15 mins of the day. The short red line under my entry candle is my original stop. The long red line is where I moved it after price moved up a satisfactory amount.

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.

Yesterday

I picked the right time of the day to work with TNA considering my goal to put up losing trades in order to learn to accept losses . I was attempting to place trades during a tight consolidation range of roughly 35 cents. This range continued for about four hours from 10:15 through 2:15 pm. Oddly, I felt very much at ease when my goal was not to win, but rather to lose. I can't help but wonder if that feeling is because I may have designed an exercise that really didn't test my fear because there was no expectation of winning when I placed the trade. That's how wierd it felt to have a trade on and not feel anxious about the outcome. It bears repeating: I'm not sure if the test was helpful or not because I am not sure I cared enough about trying to win! I have to continue this exercise for a number of days to see if I have found a way to trade without emotional discomfort or if I have set up a test where lack of concern about the eventual goal of winning trades has been abandoned. All I know is that it was a joy to click the mouse , stop out for small losses and react to it with the same concern as putting on a belt or walking through the frozen foods section at the supermarket.

As I write this, I wonder if what I experienced yesterday is analogous to when some beginning traders don't believe they are learning to trade when on a simulated trading platform. I've read often of beginners, or experienced traders refering back to their beginning days, expressing that there is no way to learn without real money on the line because they didn't feel the pressure of trading with real money. Personally, I have always been able to "feel" the anxiety of trading while on a simulator. I experience wins and losses as if real money is on the line. I know this because I traded a number of weeks using high five-figure real money positions and it felt no different to win or lose with them as it does with simulated positions; everyone has a different emotional makeup, I suppose. But back to my point... it was wierd to put on trades yesterday without any stress and I am trying to figure it out.

As to the two winners yesterday that ran counter to my goal of exiting only on stops outs or close of the market: the first one was because of the arrival of our niece after her cross-country drive from Idaho. I exited the trade to welcome her for an hour or so then got back to the computer. Later while I was in a trade, it was decided that we would take our visitor for the traditional rite of arrival in Maine: the lobster dinner! So, that was the reason for an early exit on what turned out to be my last trade of the day. This last trade would have eventually been a stop out, given later price action. I left the market before the best trend of the day, the drop that occured from 2:15 pm through EOD.

Takeaway:

I must continue with this expect-to-lose exercise until I can get my head around the odd (lack of) feelings it generated yesterday. I have to figure out if my lack of concern is a breakthrough as to how to mentally approach live trading or if the absence of anxiety is more about being emotionally removed from the trades I'm placing such that it is only about clicking a mouse and not placing and managing actual risk. I think time will yield the explanation.