Daily Report Card 04232020

My week­ly goal

Only take trades when there are at least 3 con­flu­ences. Trade loca­tion. Mar­ket Pro­file. Price action confirmation. 

Com­bined Score 87

Process Report Card (10 each)       

10 Pre-mar­ket routines 

7 Ses­sion PECS 

10 Trad­ing the process 

0 Dai­ly review 

10 Progress toward Week­ly goal 

37 Total

Per­for­mance Report Card (10 each)

10 Hypos

10 Real-time analysis

10 Trade selection

10 Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.

10 Risk Adjust­ed Returns

50 Total

How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket context?

SPX500

Hypo3 played out — 100%. I stuck to my hypos and saw that price didn’t want to break IB range and I just sat here observing.

Gold

Hypo3 played out — 100%. When Gold broke out from the pre­vi­ous day high I wait­ed for a pull­back to go long that nev­er came. There was no set­up in my play­book to go long so I stayed out. Then there was a con­sol­i­da­tion and I switched to poten­tial­ly look­ing for a Swing Rever­sal set up if we had a strong fin­ish­er out of con­sol­i­da­tion. This nev­er came, Instead there was a weak break to the upside and slow­ly trad­ing up until the US open. So no trades today. 

How well did I fol­low my process?

I feel I did real­ly well today stick­ing to try­ing to deci­pher the mar­ket nar­ra­tive. Which I was accu­rate­ly able to do. Then wait for the mar­ket nar­ra­tive to align with my set­up which didn’t come. All good. There will be more chances. 

One thing I didn’t do, because of lack of time due to work, is do my dai­ly review of yesterday’s ses­sion. Writ­ing a play­book set­up and such. I will do this tomorrow. 

How well did I man­age my phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and cog­ni­tive states?

I did OK. ALthough I had a slight­ly too big of a meal and there­fore felt a lit­tle tired through the lat­ter part of the ses­sion. I will stay dis­ci­plined in either ‘lighter’ food. 

What’s one thing you learned today?

It’s OK to not trade. Trad­ing is not about trad­ing. It is about fol­low­ing your process that has an edge. The rest will follow. 

What’s one thing I need to do more often?

Be like a sci­en­tist gath­er­ing data and mak­ing edu­cat­ed deci­sions based on that data. Just fol­low my process and this will take care of itself.

What’s one thing I need to do less often?

Eat­ing heavy so that I get a bit of a dip through­out the ses­sion. Order from a set list that I will pre­pare tomor­row. Task made. 

For my trade plan(s) on this par­tic­u­lar day with com­ments below, go here: