If this were two years ago, I would have curled up in a ball after an $80K+ loss day. I would have gone back to the charts for hours and tried to figure out what I missed. I would have run a bunch of stock scans looking for new setups and been calculating how many weeks it would take to make back the horrible loss that seemed to bite me every couple of months wiping out weeks and weeks of profits. So what is the difference? My mental game and the simplification to my approach. Today I was able to pull a total of $48K out of the market ($36K in my $1 million challenge account). I am not about to pat myself on the back because I am still down on the week, but it was a good rebound.
I only traded 140 contracts in total to pull out $36K. In contrast, I traded 798 on Tuesday when I lost $86K. The difference? Patience. I waited for my setups. I had seen the afternoon pattern many times before. The DOM helped confirm the trade. While I normally will not trade in the afternoon, especially since I was up almost $6K, it was a setup I was stalking all afternoon. We broke the hourly 50 period MA which is a big deal for me. This signaled the trend of the day was negative. It was heavy all morning and I knew that if we finally tested the 15 minute 21 EMA, it would be the optimal short. I took it big, putting on 60 contracts actross all my accounts. I patiently waited for the test of the 21 EMA and put on the sizeable position. I had a feeling we were going to retest and possibly break the lows. I moved up stops when and peeled off some contracts and was able to nab another $30K in my Tastytrade account and that was it. As luck would have it, I got out at the right time as the market made a swift move back up in the last 30 minutes. I did not anticipate such short covering, but at the end of the month anything can happen.
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