May 17

With about an hour available to paper-trade, I took a short at/near the LOD in RIG in anticipation that it might continue its drop. It didn't, finding nice support at my entry area and reversing. Instead of exiting, I held. Poor choice there. At a point where movement away from my price seemed to slow and in anticipation of a move back toward my entry, I shorted heavily and averaged a much better price. Poor choice number two. While price did spike up against me after that, the area of that multi-position short held up as the "settled price" of the reversal (see the near-doji of the 3:40pm candle). Price then dropped nicely over the next 10-15 minutes and I exited the second time price pushed my position into the money; a $57 dollar paper-gain for each of the nine parts of my position. The exit was 5 cents from the bottom of the move I was playing.

A short time later in the same candle, a reliable exit sign appeared when the candle ended at its low on a volume spike. The smart play would have been to go long for a scalp here in the last minutes of the day.

There is a repetitious theme in my practice trading. An acceptable feel for movement but poor response to what I sense and in some cases, poor execution. There is certainly room for improvement, so I will endeavor to persevere in that direction.