That ends my day with a net total of +4.8 pips.
Pros:
It really looked like the day would be over with about 2 hours worth of work. About 7 hours later, I was still sitting at the computer. Not scratching my head, but realizing once again the tendency of the market to sometimes surprise you with something you did not count on. Once I ran into those consecutive smaller harmonic patterns that were in opposition to my Long position, I knew it would be a long day to break-even.
Most of the harmonics worked out, but because I do things on the 1 minute chart and was stuck in a Long position that I could not unwind for so long, I could take advantage of most harmonics that showed up today, without breaking protocol. I rarely break protocol. Ended up netting out a tiny gain, which for all practical purposes was nothing more than a break even day. Still good, because I don't make a habit of losing capital net/net.
Got a good workout on my tactical break even skills today, which is something that I had not needed to use in quite a few days.
Cons:
Got behind the power curve on my timing, too many times and it cost me both pips and opportunities to net out my 40 pips for the day. More than the 40 pips were on the table, but my timing on exits was too off. Also, I allowed slightly more emotion to get the better of me at the start, which only compounded exit errors and made things worse than they really had to be. The moral of that story is to remove the emotion from trading at all times.
This is not an emotional business (at least it is not supposed to be for the trader) and once I got that in check and simply executed my trades, I felt slightly more sync'd up with the market. Most all of the volatility that I had for my session was pretty much consumed by horizontal hourly moves. A difficult environment in which to trade that way I do. Overall, not a good trading day.
Summary:
Less emotion, more focus and and simply let the trades come as they wish. The market will always produce opportunity, you just need to remain unaffected until such opportunity presents itself.
Traders get paid to wait, not to trade. I was a bit too impatient today. In the final analysis, I did not lose any capital and that allows me to stay on track.
