Trading Notes

This is a great place to post setups that you've seen during the day. It doesn't matter if you took them or not.

two setups on the ZB:

1. pre-market, trading up through POC, heading (in my estimation) for VAH and possibly previous HOD. for a minute or so i was in the queue at 16 14, but chickened out. little by little, with negligible retracement, it made it to VAH and 1-tick away from PDH (previous day high). the main things that made it appear viable and low-risk:
* upward momentum and POC follow through
* ascending volume
* comfortable distance away from current LOD and VAL

main points of hesitation:
* still very new to actively trading/monitoring bonds, notes, etc.
* pre-market can be a little 'off' (exciting, stomach-churning, and so on)

2. long off VAH (16 16) - did take it, but when it retraced back to POC, i showed my weak hand. patience and experience may have kept me in, while patience, experience, and confidence may have prompted me to McG into an add at POC. why? i think it was roughly 60-90 minutes later the ZB was trading at 16 26 (or 25 or 27, don't recall).

my main thought behind exiting with a manageable loss was that it may have been losing upward momentum and possible trading down through POC and heading for VAL. it faked me out. during RTH it traded up very near PDH (just like in pre-market) and came back down through VAH. with such a tiny IB and minimal fluctuation, i didn't want to be on the wrong side of a swift move.

this early experience with the ZB leaves me wondering if it is prone to behave as the indices behave - using overnight extremes for RTH guides. commonly, an index will trade between the overnight extremes, often within a couple of ticks on either side. sometimes, one extreme will hold as the boundary and the other will be handily taken out. i guess it almost functions as a pre-IB or secondary VA. anyway, nothing scientific, just repetitive observations.

take care -

omni

Interesting that you exhibit some of the symtoms of bar-story-trader. Makes a good story at the bar after trading but you wish you'd stuck with it.

The start of a trade is always very difficult because you've got the chance and opportunity to get out with no or very small loss. That's extremely tempting especially if you've recently had a couple of losing trades. So while you're sitting there watching the trade vacilate around the breakeven area you keep on thinking "Won't cost me anything to get out now" etc...

Requires amazing mental toughness to hold through the embryo stage of the trade.