Tandem Trading OLED recognizing a mistake

I  know Tanner@TaoTrading for a quite a long time, great trader, but very secluded and private. It took me a while to convince him to go public on twitter, and to share his great skills in trading particularity day-trading for longer intra-day time frames, and also scalping small caps as well as larger caps while small caps are dead as in this dull period of January and February, of this 2018, the ninth year in a row having the markets grinding higher and higher into all time historic heights.
I myself got on tweeter long tie ago, to share and to find "trading sole-mates". It is unfortunate that after meeting a lot of great people traders , not too many survived this game , and many vanished for good. Sad but true. Trading is a very lonely job, super mental, and can be very frustrating if you trade alone. Having a good knowledgeable trading buddy, who is not only good in reading technical analyses but also being objective, self criticizing, and who can observe realistically the trading situation on minute by minute basis is crucial.While we are  having  a great green streak in February, we do tend to get a bit complacent,   but the good news is when having a trading buddy , one can always remind the other about this dangerous  state of mind COMPLACENCY,
I want to point put my mistake today that even after Tanner@TaoTrading called out loudly the error we were both about to make, we still disobeyed our the read  out of the tape, price action and the volume , that stopped stripped me from making a nice $2,000 green day . So writing publicly about this error,  I find it beneficial not only for myself  but also for those traders who may read this blog post. Since picture is worth million words, without further due here is the picture explaining what happen with OLED the trade of  the day

OLED short failed to take profit on entire position 

at LOD

When you do a good TA read out ACT upon it accordingly, do not wish to happen what you anticipated , such as drop to 125.00 because the market DOES NOT owe you anything that you wish or you want or what  you are anticipating, he cares less for you and your $2,000 !!!

RED DAY is more important to be journaled RGSE LONG LOSER

The Battle For $LTBR

LTBR

FORD

Trading Mind Set Up

My MIND SET UP IN THE PRE-MARKET RIGHT BEFORE the OPENING BELL
Jan  18, 2018 Thursday   5:30  am

One of the greatest enemy in the trading is my own mind set up before the open.
In which state of mind I am, depends mostly on the previous trading day (s)
As of now, I've been having many many green days in a row, and fairly to say,  with almost NONE, or very very few losing trades. Green has been all across the board. With each green day and green trade, the confidence grows at exponential rate This is where the biggest trouble usually begins. Feeling invincible, bulletproof, strong with fat acct, feeling:
I CAN BEAT ANY SYMBOL out there.
WRONG !!!  It is  EXTREMELY DANGEROUS
I learned the lesson the hard way, concluding that :
I MUST BE AWARE of my emotional state of mind prior the open, as more important factor then
doing the technical analyses for the opening gate plays.
Question to ask myself: What do I feel? Fear? Anxiety?
If YES is the answer, counter-intuitive to most of other jobs or business,
my trading day has a great chance to be a pretty good one.This is simply because these feelings will
contribute to be extra careful, executing extremely per trading plan, leaving no room for errors,
no room or  tolerance  for:

• "It is OK ,I can add here I got a lotta cash, I can beat this, I can't lose caus' I've been green 21 days in a row, I am tha' shit in this business..." 

and all that  extremely dangerous thinking that is derivative of the previous green streak (s).
I learned that when those thoughts come across my mind, I need to immediately hit myself in a head,
electroshock me with dog neck electric collar, self-inflict myself with some type of physical injury , so I can face the reality which is : TRADING IS SWIMMING IN A TANK FULL OF SHARKS that requires an INHUMAN SET OF SKILLS, mainly consist of ability of knowing  your risk, control your risk, and most importantly execute your "swimming" with unquestioned discipline, on every single day , on every single trade. Every single time you get out from the shark tank unscratched, know it was you lucky day. It is well known  fact that 95% of day traders end the day in blood. Some get scratches, some get permanently disabled, and unfortunately most  don't even survive. Must keep this fact in your mind at all the times specially before the opening bell. You are entering the gladiator arena or shark tank , use any term that is more scary, and remember, " If I feel great, If I feel positive, If I feel,

• "Yeah I can do this just as I did the past 21 green days , making $30 20,000 each month for several months, ..."  

IF I FEEL THIS, THEN IT IS TIME TO BE REALLY CAREFUL, because that is the day you will be beaten by the shark, or pierced by the spear , which ever feels worst.

The highlight for my behavior today: The very beginning went perfectly all right shorting MARA, the only reason I did small size ( less then 1000 shares ) was exactly the above : I felt very positive, from all prior green days including yesterday's $1,000 green day.

 I noticed that even if I trade the tinniest size, I could  pace easy $10,000 income per month, which translates $120,000 annually.

And it all looked nice and dandy , till my head got full of WANTS and NEEDS for MARA to drop to $3.75 so I can make more money since the original tiny size apparently was "not enough".

MARA

After making "only $230 " I wanted to drop to 3.75 , I added some more during the lul, 

and sure enough poped up and got stopped. Lost all $230 !!! 

But stucked watching the tape, and saw the sellers used this 

pop  to do some real selling, and re-entered  short again, 

with stop just few pennies above, 4.10.   It took an eternity but patience paid off.

The moral of the story here is:

When ever you are wrong KNOW you must take your loss

But also know the trade will probably turn your way 90 % of the times, and be ready to re-enter.

You are taking that stop, without asking any questions weather it may drop back or not.

In fact I ask myself all the time : Is this gonna drop?  My answer is always the same: IT WILL DROP, almost guaranteed, but the REASON I AM TAKING THE STOP is to PROTECT MYSELF FROM THAT ONE TIME WHEN IT SQUEEZES AND SHOTS UP MANY DOLLARS UP WARDS killing every short that is in the way. 

So next time you are in doubt weather you shall take your stop or not : JUST TAKE IT BY KNOWING IT WILL TURN YOUR WAY and BE READY TO RE-ENTER. PERIOD !!!

On long run you will make less gains, but you will protect your account from blowing up.

Have a happy but scary trading :)

Salute

"DaChopa"