Self awareness
Bad day. Really bad day. You reach for the trading journal. Open to a clean page. Write the date. Twirl the pen. Then write: Poor discipline today. Overtraded. Need to follow the plan better. Except your pen is still in your hand. Because that's not quite what happened.
Risk Management
March 23, 2020. The market is moving fast. Really fast. COVID has turned normal trading days into something else. You're watching ESM20. And you're watching one level in particular. 2175.
Risk Management
You flip back through the notebook. Three months. Six months. A year. Charts glued to pages with a glue stick you swiped from your 4-year-old. Then you stop. There's an entry you don't remember writing. Good day. Stayed with the plan. Huh.
Risk Management
Fifteen minutes before the close. You're down $50. One quick scalp. ES is moving. You don't need much. One point. Two contracts. Make back the fifty. Shut it down. Finish the day flat.
Risk Management
The trade moves against you. Closer to your stop. Your hand moves toward the mouse. Click. You move the stop. Just a little. You've done this before. But maybe you don't remember where it started.
Self awareness
Friday afternoon. Best week you've had in months. +$1,840. Your wife walks by. Good week? Yeah. Pretty good. And it was. That's one scoreboard. But later that evening something about the week is still bothering you.
Self awareness
The note is taped to the top of your monitor. You wrote it yourself. NO TRADES FIRST 15 MINUTES. It's 9:37. Eight minutes to go. Then something starts moving.
Self awareness
Sunday night. You open your notebook. Fresh page. At the top you write: Goal: $300. Nothing crazy. Sixty dollars a day. Five days. You close the notebook. Friday afternoon you look at the number. +$75. And somehow that becomes a good week.
Self awareness
You're sitting at dinner. Someone asks how the trading is going. You keep cutting your food. It's fine. Making any money? You shrug. Some. Then you change the subject. A few hours later the house is quiet and your notebook is open beside the keyboard.
Trading Psychology
Your stop was hit. The platform made its little chime. The position disappeared. You pushed your chair back. Walked into the kitchen. Life was supposed to continue. An hour later you opened the chart again.