I ended July today with my best trading month since I started to trade full time at the beginning of this year. Here is a snap shot of my performance tracker…
I am proud of this accomplishment. I did not journal my beigest day on the 19th which I regret. Its hard for me to remember some of those details. I will try to be better at that.
What I did right this month: I did well this month keeping my risk under control. I did this by being more patient on adding into parabolic shorts. I would wait for toping action before I added. I also did much better cutting my losses at my max stop loss, though I did have s few stubborn holds. I would also cut my losses when price action showed my trade plan was wrong, instead of just adding to try and be right. I did better at holding a small pieced for further downside. I did well at controlling my emotions on days with big losses buy not revenge trading. All of these things contributed to a great month. Of course I need to continue to hone these things as well. But, most importantly I must continue to avoid having large losses that wipe out weeks of work.
What I did wrong this month: I did have a few stubborn holds that caused me some great headaches. The risk was not worth the reward in all cases even though the worked out. I must realize that it is better to cut the loss and try again, then it is to average up by adding and increasing my risk. There were more times then I care to admit, that I let my P&L convince me when to get out of a trade. What I mean by this is I would cut a position out of fear of losing the unrealized gain instead of price action helping me to make that choice. This resulted in missing out on some big wins.