Morning perspective

Delaying the morning trading with a follow up from yesterday.

I thought about the day a lot last night, and I realized a few things.

I was trading paper money yesterday. Despite being paper money, the positive direction and retrace for the stop had a real impact on my trading. And this even when I was preparing myself for it to happen.

I am not sure that preparing myself for the stop was a good thing to do. I just sat and watched it happen.

Also - I think it is clear that the frustration was not about the money. It was more about being right, substantially right, and letting that 'rightness' turn into a wrong. Looking back over the last couple of weeks, I think this is a common theme - and a source of the most frustration.

The way I see it, there are only a couple of options:

1. Call the situation out of my control and accept this as part of the market randomness.
2. Not let it happen.

I have tried the first option and it doesn't seem to be working that well.

I think an attempt at the second option is in order: take the profits, at the risk of missing out on a big move. 

The problem is, missing out on a big move could have negative impacts as well. I have no way of knowing this yet, but there is no question concerning the impact of the retraces.

So, a little modification to the trading plan: I think a retrace on anything less than 25 ticks is psychologically manageable for me personally. I am going to modify the ATM strategy to bump the stop up to 15 ticks above break even at the 25 tick profit mark. Then bump it up another 15 for every 25 ticks unrealized.

Another thing - yesterday I had several stops beyond my comfort zone, the price moved faster than I could move the stop. To avoid this I am going to move the stop loss down to 15 ticks default. I would rather err on the conservative side.

Trade well!