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Troy Kelley wrote:
> I am trading 2 s&p contracts.
>
> I went short at 10:15 today, and the market came up and took out my
> stop, so I did a reversal and I went long at 10:17 and the market
> screamed back the other way against me. I lost 1,500 bucks in about 5
> minutes. That is about one weeks worth of hard earned profits, gone in
> the blink of an eye.
With only having SPX to go by, I'd say that you have to pick your entries
much more carefully. 10:15 looks like it might have been a little early
to enter short - ironically, 10:17 looks to me like the proper area, at
the point where it breaks support. Be careful with the stop and reversals
- if the move that took out your tight stop is simply a momentary rest,
which this was, this sort of thing can happen, where you can get hit with
a double barrel. Try to rationalize each entry separately - simply
because the market is moving one way or another isn't reason itself to
enter. It also may be that you need to loosen up your stops more. and/or
refine your entries to ensure a higher probability of getting into the
black early. There looks to me that there was some real gravy available
on the short side during the second half of the day - which should have
easily wiped out your losses and provided a handy profit to boot. Anyway,
don't let these things affect you at all - except of course in learning
from your mistakes here. What is happening over many trades is what
counts, of course - even though that may be harder to realize when you get
bummed like this. We've all had our string of losers, and a lot longer
than 2 in a row - which isn't unusual at all. However, I'm troubled by
the fact that you can lose a week's worth of profits over a couple of
small moves against you like this - that *is* something to get upset
about, and perhaps you need to re-examine the size of your winners versus
losers, which may need to be increased, keeping you in longer to capture
some of the bigger moves while still keeping your drawdown to a manageable
level.
Good Luck,
A.J.
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