Trading the S&P – same old, same old!
I have not traded since last Tuesday due to birthdays and some evenings with friends. I was doing quite well with my last couple of trading sessions… I’m still on the live account the last few trading days have not been too bad.
I was dead eager to get back in again but being eager could also be a bad thing as you may just get in for the sake of it. The markets are not very forgiving places for you to gamble so you have to be disciplined and have strong trading psychology.
My trading seems to be getting better also which is great, I’m not so prone to jump in as I was before and am prepared to wait for confirmation before I take a punt.
Today, I entered at 138175 as you can see from the red arrow. The 15 min stochastics had well and truly turned and the 5 mins were sitting in oversold territory meaning that they could turn up any time. However, the 5 min stochastics can stay oversold or overbought for a while whilst the market continues to move in it’s chosen direction.
My short was a good one and I expected the first target would be around 138000. I watched the market plummet through this level and I closed smugly at 137950. When it hits a major level (or round number), the price action can penetrade a few prices before moving the other way. I took 9 prices which was great.
However, the market continued to drift lower and lower. The next obvious target was 137600 which was hit earlier in the trading session. The market fell through this and bounced up.. it moved up for about 20 mins and then dropped like a stone to 137125. The reason I write ‘same old same old’ is because I frequently find that I close out too early. If I had taken profit at 137125, that would have been over 40 prices!! Realistically, I should have taken profit at the 137600 level would have been a nice 27 prices!
