Daily Dow / NDX/ SPX
tony,
been reading your (and others) posts for a few weeks, the ups and downs, gains and losses. thought I'd tell you about my experiences over the last few days. some funny, some not so funny.
please bear in mind that my system is totally different to yours.
Friday, had to close out early -130, baby crying, wife dealing with other baby. but had nearly reached my stop loss any way. Came back down stairs to find that if baby had cried two mins later would have been able to close out at -50. ah well.
Check account over weekend, surprised and more than a little concerned to see an open short on the mini DOW. Can't do anything about it as (I think) as customer service aren't back in until 7.30 CST Monday. Put it down to some error.
Call them up Monday to check, sure enough it is still there. a MARCH short too which is unusual as was only trading DEC, but do remember a small problem on Friday in selecting the contract month.................maybe it was my error! for a fleeting moment toy with the idea on retail sales being poor, but then decide that is not within my trading plan so call them up and close it, -85. put down to experience. Would I have done the same had i been up? I like to think so.
Monday evening, looked at the DOW, going up, NDX pattern looks better to me, but for some INEXPLICABLE reason decide that the DOW has spiked to 2.00pm / 7.00pm and is due for a reversal so go short. I have to say that this is TOTALLY the opposite of what I normally do. The normal course of action would be to trade the NDX, as this was the best pattern, the trend being up.
Got stopped out as market continued to rise. ok, fair enough. then BY MISTAKE, instead of closing the position I put another short on. Decide to let it ride for a short time "just to see" (has to be said at this point that i am no longer the 3 c's. and trading a bit on hope rather than experience) of course it coninued to rise, so closed.
All the while the SPX became the best pattern, but did nothing about it. All in all, lost another 305.
Lessons to be learnt for me? (we've heard them all before)
1) Don't be over confident and second guess the system (what makes it worse folks, is that it is a simple, simple system)
2) Never trade against the trend
3) I felt a bit robbed after the -130 and -85 as they could have been prevented and / or minimised, so mentally I didn't feel A1. The error short made this 10x worse and pyscologically i had lost my concentration. - therefore, if you don't feel right do nothing.
4) Most important, don't beat yourself up about it. Forgive yourslef, learn from it, then let it go.
The funny (and interesting thing about it is how a few small mistakes snowballed into something bigger in a very short space of time.
Good luck with it.
D