Did anyone get chewed up today? The crazy sell off on ES got me bad. My eval account definitely not looking good. On the flip side, a small profit on my personal account. Like they say, “the trend is your friend” Ps. Do not chase the market!

I feel like this post might be helpful to a lot of newbies. Quick recap: I started here about two months ago, really started getting into it fully about a month ago. Practiced for 2 weeks and was doing great, despite not knowing much about market dynamics or technical analysis whatsoever, so I bought an EA account. To my great surprise, I passed, mostly due to a glitch where my TP disappeared and I won a $2,100 trade. Then I got my PA account and things were still going great, but I was starting to take some pretty heavy losses because when I lost, I went on tilt pretty easily. So I figured, if things are this easy now, imagine if I actually knew what I was doing? So I immersed myself in technical analysis and strategy and this indicator and that indicator. Experienced traders know where this is going. I lost about $6,000 between the end of last week and Monday/Tuesday of this week. My PA was blown. My next EA was blown within a day. Suddenly I was so overloaded with information and indicators, I was paralyzed with indecision. And when I finally did decide on something, I was doing everything out of fear, either cutting my winners short because I was afraid of losing them, or holding on to my losers becuase I was afraid of missing out on a big winner. All of that ease and confidence I was trading with in the beginning was gone, and I had no idea how to get it back. Thankfully, last weekend I also started listening to Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas, and man I cannot recommend that book enough. Also, thank you to whomever recommended it in here a while back. It perfectly encapsulated what was happening to me, as it happens to a lot of new traders. We are in the "zone" without knowing what the zone is because we have yet to experience the pain of loss. Once we lose, we start looking for new strategies and indicators, not to learn more about the market, but to avoid that pain of loss we felt. In short, we do it for the wrong reasons. The most important thing you can have as a trader isn't strategy, experience, analaysis; it's the right psychology. I'd take a trader who's a bad analyst with a subpar trading system but has the right temperment over a trader who can't handle his emotions but has the best trading strategy on the planet.

If you'll remember, last week, I caught this 33 point millisecond move (due to the Fed rate cut) on the very bottom tick (1st pic) to ultimately pass my EA account. Since then, I've won some, lost some, and last night was sitting at about 49.7k after a pretty bad day. At 11o' clock last night ES was getting close to my Superman entry, but it was past my bedtime and I was too tired, so I set up my ATM and figured, what the hell, either I'm right or I wake up and only lost $350. I woke up and checked Trading View and sure enough, my trade stopped out. Before I left for a doctor's appointment, I decided to check Ninja Trader where, to my ultimate suprise, I found I was still in the trade, and that I was 10 points up! I'm not at all certain what happened, but if I had to venture to guess, when my computer went to sleep, it allowed the trade to trigger but not the ATM. I closed the trade for a $2,200 gain; my Take Profit was $700. I know, I know: this could have gone absolutely horribly and I could very well be sitting in the corner of my room despondent to the world, but it didn't, and I know now never to set and forget a trade, or at least use my sim account to find the issue and rectify it (although quite honestly I'll probably just stick to the former). I'm now past the trailing drawdown I believe (it stops following at 51.2k right?), which is great because it was affecting my trading. I think I want to build about another $1,000 cushion before I take my first payout. Is that about the right size cushion, in everyone's opinion? Also, for anyone who looks at this and thinks I've only made it this far into a PA due entirely to luck, you're technically right, but only insofar as the amount of time it took to get this far. My backtesting and replay testing have shown a win rate that would make me profitable, albeit at a slower pace. So I'm lucky to be here this quickly, but I would be here in any case.

Check this out :)

Everytime I think I have Superman down pat, it turns out I don't. In the example below, am I correct in my analysis that my first two entries were too soon because I had yet to close below a fractal? I believe my thinking in the moment was that I had a red candle that closed above the previous red candle, so I was good to set my Superman entry. Looking back, I realize that candle isn't a fractal and I probably pushed the gun. Secondly, is my final entry okay or has price gone too high at this point? Or has price gone in and out of my supply zone too many times by now? Should I still attempt this trade if price comes back to my entry or just live to fight another day?