Waaaah! Trading dilemma – Daytrading the S&P
When I got back home, the market was slowly dying a death.. the market was heading lower and lower. The stochastics charts were flatlined at the lower end and not moving much at all in both the 5 and 15 minute charts.
I went short and tried to hold it as long as I could from 132275.. it managed to get as low as 132050 before it headed higher and hit my stop for -3 (it would have been lower but I learnt my lesson from yesterday and that’s to move the stop down as the price moves beyond each level you have). At the back of my mind, I remembered what happened yesterday when I took profit early to find the the market went way beyond where I had closed it causing me to leave vast amounts of profit behind. I was anticipating lower prices, a break below 132000 and beyond…
However, the market bounced up hit my stop and then it looked as though it was going to go up. This dead donkey was already in oversold territory, was this the move up? I went long thinking so at 132350. This went two prices my direction, got close to the 5 day MA and tanked… arrgh, this was my original short trade!!! I lost out for -8 here.
Now, there was a base at 132050 and I had a short entry at 131975. My original target was 131600 but I figured that if the market falls through here, we may see more than just a few prices…. I took out the 131600 target as the market fell and activated my short at 131975. The market fell like a stone and hit 131575 and bounce back up.
Now, at this stage I was thinking to myself as the price action was moving up.. I had an opportunity to limit my previous losses of the last two trades by closing out… each nanosecond the market edged up, what a dilemma and finally at 131750 I closed it for +9. The market did indeed go higher from here.. to 132025 and as I am writing, falling again towards the days lows.
The moral of the story is that you don’t know if the market will move beyond your limit order once you’ve entered. Yesterday, we saw that the market moved in excess of 20 prices beyond my target. I tried to adapt my strategy today to ride for more profit but it didn’t work today. If I had stuck to my limit orders I would have been about 20 prices up today. You just don’t know what the market will do but the market always seems to be one step ahead of me.. it knows if I have limit orders.. if so, it will go beyond my limit and make me feel lousy. If I haven’t set my target limits, it reaches the area where I would have had a limit order and then reverses and makes me feel lousy again!
Anyway, I am happy with -2… it’s not a big loss! Next week as the clocks change, I’ll go back to getting an extra hours trading
