Urgent: Think or Swim Database Maintenance

Think or Swim tells me that they will be doing database management this weekend (1/22/11-1/23/11). Because of that, it is advisable to back up your thinkscripts locally on your computer. Just highlight them all in the list and click export and save them to some folder on your computer. Everything should be fine, but they recommend this action just to be safe.

First Trade of the Year: NQ Nasdaq E-mini

I haven’t traded in about 4-5 months. I had been putting it off while I worked on other things. Well, today I decided I needed to get my feet wet again. I watched the NQ open, and noticed that the tick/q was trending down along with price, just under yesterday’s high. I watched the price ladder, and it looked like the downmove was stalling out. On the green candle, with the tick breaking out of the down-channel on the right chart, I went long:

I didn’t look at PnL during the trade, as I usually do. My target was there, but I wasn’t married to it. I just tried to look at the tape and the tick and watch for signs that the upmove was exhausted. I didn’t bail on a retrace back down if the tick was still trending up. I sat on my hands when my fear of loss came up. I wanted to punch out and at least book a profit for psychological reasons. But I made myself wait until the chart said to go. And it didn’t do that until my exit point. The tick uptrend failed, but price was still floating up there. To me, that was weakness, so I got out. +2.75 NQ points.

I traded the tape well. I recognized the trend well. I managed the stop well, and exited in a rational way. And apart from a bit of stress at the beginning, I was pretty calm about it. If I can defeat my own stupid emotions, I think I have the tools and experience to trade profitably. One trade at a time, each one no more important than the last.

I read on Stocktwits that “Successful trading is about changing one’s mind ALL DAY LONG”. How true! And I did just that today. Hope you can do that as well.