040111 Friday's Journal Entry: Hyper-scalping back to flat

Oops I had one of those "falling off the wagon" days again. After 2 weeks straight of solid trading positive days I lost discipline on Friday and took way too many choppy trades. I missed the real moves and my goal deviated from executing good trade setups to staying flat to up. Luckily I was able to get positive for the day but broke rules to get there. So while I am happy that I overcame a loss I am not happy how I got into a hole and then subsequently the method I turned to to climb my way out. Not only did I break discipline but I racked up a ton of commissions and fees over-trading.

One Bad Trade Breeds Another Bad Trade

1. SPY knife catch: When we saw that late day selling come into the market I was licking my chops ready to catch this knife. I waited for the selling to slow to start buying SPY 133.2 with increased tier size but I failed to wait for confirmation (tail wick, candle, being able to get above a certain price, volume change, etc...).  6 home-run swings and misses in less than 30 minutes. Every time I got stopped out I could feel my blood pressure rising and my myopia increasing. I was in the red zone and it's hard to remember exactly what was going through my head but I think I had 2 predominant thoughts. One was that we were "supposed" to fry the shorts into the close so this dip was a shake and we would soon rip to new highs or test that 1338 level. The second was that this was my golden trade ticket. So these 2 biases translated into "get in bigger get in bigger get in bigger" which ultimately resulted in a nice hole for the day.

2. AAPL pin/over-extended trade: Yeah I know there is something not right about AAPL lately: market is ripping and AAPL not participating. A BIG problem I have is that I will turn to AAPL when I need to make "fast" money and get a P&L booster shot. In the past I have traded AAPL Friday pin in a strong tape with pretty good success (probably north of 70% win rate) so you can understand why I turned to this beast to recuperate my P&L. The first set of AAPL trades were somewhat in line with my trading: AAPL had a nice tail wick off 343.3 and the SPY had just tail wicked off 132.80'ish confirmed by the tape. I thought there was a few points in this trade up to yesterday's high or at least a VWAP test. I was willing to give it about 30c to hopefully catch a 1.5+ move. Well AAPL couldn't get above 345 so I figured that this was where the weekly pin action would happen. I noticed that 344 was holding so I got long a few times as momo trades & hit out if the tape slowed. The second series of AAPL trades were penny scalps trying to exploit the push to that level with 20c stops to catch maybe 30-50c. That's not sticking to a 3/1 or 5/1 RR and is breaking discipline to get back my SPY losses. Even though this strategy worked I need to avoid this hyper-scalping/revenge trading situation in the future.

Morale of the story reinforcement: 

1. Breathe and take a step back when you see a sharp sell-off

2. Check multiple time-frames for real support and then confirmation 

3. Don't over-trade into the afternoon

4. Stick to good R/R setups

5. Don't focus on P&L it's about the setups stupid

All the red brackets in the table below are trades where I broke my discipline and trading plan:

Time	Symbol	Side	Market	TIF	Price
9:33:25	EBIX	BOT	INCA	DAY	24.04
9:37:12	EBIX	SLD	INCA	DAY	24.39
9:42:30	NYX	BOT	INCA	DAY	39.05
9:43:17	NYX	SLD	INCA	IOC	38.95
9:44:25	NYX	BOT	INCA	DAY	39.01
9:45:02	NYX	BOT	INCA	DAY	38.97
9:46:48	NYX	SLD	INCA	DAY	38.97
9:49:03	NYX	SLD	INCA	DAY	38.99
9:50:01	NYX	BOT	INCA	DAY	39.05
9:50:23	NYX	SLD	SDOT	DAY	38.98
9:57:56	LVS	BOT	INCA	DAY	44.03
9:58:25	LVS	SLD	INCA	IOC	44.08
9:58:52	LVS	SLD	INCA	IOC	44.05
10:01:01	LVS	BOT	INCA	DAY	44.07
10:02:06	LVS	SLD	INCA	DAY	44.17
10:06:53	LVS	SLD	SDOT	DAY	44.095
10:15:00	NYX	BOT	INCA	IOC	39.14
10:18:32	NYX	SLD	INCA	DAY	39.16
10:22:28	LVS	BOT	INCA	DAY	43.93
10:22:34	LVS	SLD	INCA	DAY	43.89
10:22:48	LVS	BOT	INCA	DAY	43.94
10:23:26	LVS	BOT	INCA	DAY	43.89
10:23:35	LVS	SLD	SDOT	DAY	43.82
10:25:41	NYX	BOT	INCA	DAY	39.24
10:26:47	NYX	BOT	INCA	DAY	39.2
10:29:34	NYX	SLD	INCA	DAY	39.3
10:31:48	NYX	SLD	SDOT	DAY	39.24
10:34:38	LVS	BOT	INCA	DAY	43.56
10:34:56	LVS	SLD	SDOT	DAY	43.41
10:36:04	LVS	BOT	INCA	DAY	43.43
10:36:58	LVS	SLD	INCA	DAY	43.49
10:39:49	LVS	SLD	SDOT	DAY	43.48
10:42:53	LVS	BOT	INCA	DAY	43.6
10:42:58	LVS	BOT	INCA	IOC	43.64
10:45:22	LVS	SLD	SDOT	DAY	43.54
10:47:59	FCX	BOT	INCA	DAY	54.62
11:05:37	X	BOT	INCA	DAY	53.48
11:15:17	X	SLD	INCA	DAY	53.5
11:16:06	FCX	SLD	INCA	DAY	55.09
14:48:42	SPY	BOT	INCA	DAY	133.22
14:49:17	SPY	BOT	INCA	IOC	133.19
14:53:37	SPY	SLD	SDOT	DAY	133.18
14:54:39	SPY	BOT	INCA	DAY	133.21
14:55:53	SPY	SLD	INCA	IOC	133.13
14:56:52	SPY	BOT	INCA	DAY	133.2
14:56:59	SPY	BOT	INCA	IOC	133.21
14:57:50	SPY	SLD	SDOT	DAY	133.11
14:58:45	WYNN	BOT	INCA	DAY	133.22
15:00:47	WYNN	SLD	SDOT	DAY	133.01
15:02:30	SPY	BOT	INCA	DAY	133.1
15:02:33	SPY	BOT	INCA	DAY	133.11
15:04:34	WYNN	BOT	INCA	DAY	133.07
15:04:43	WYNN	BOT	INCA	DAY	133.13
15:05:10	WYNN	SLD	SDOT	DAY	133.0848
15:06:18	WYNN	BOT	INCA	DAY	133.1
15:07:05	WYNN	BOT	INCA	DAY	133.2
15:10:18	WYNN	SLD	SDOT	DAY	132.91
15:12:24	SPY	BOT	INCA	IOC	133.07
15:12:31	SPY	SLD	SDOT	DAY	132.97
15:12:33	LVS	BOT	INCA	DAY	43.39
15:13:02	LVS	SLD	SDOT	DAY	43.29
15:14:56	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	343.73
15:17:21	AAPL	SLD	INCA	IOC	344.3
15:17:27	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	344.3
15:19:28	AAPL	SLD	SDOT	DAY	344.11
15:20:04	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	344.13
15:21:39	AAPL	SLD	INCA	DAY	344.44
15:22:11	AAPL	SSD	INCA	DAY	344.44
15:22:18	AAPL	BOT	INCA	IOC	344.39
15:23:20	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	344.06
15:23:38	AAPL	SLD	INCA	IOC	343.86
15:25:36	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	343.92
15:26:02	AAPL	SLD	INCA	DAY	344.03
15:26:25	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	344.09
15:26:37	AAPL	SLD	INCA	DAY	344.6
15:28:29	AMZN	BOT	INCA	DAY	179.56
15:29:50	AMZN	BOT	INCA	DAY	179.34
15:31:28	AMZN	SLD	INCA	DAY	179.7
15:31:42	AMZN	SLD	INCA	DAY	179.68
15:31:55	AMZN	BOT	INCA	DAY	179.81
15:32:06	AMZN	SLD	INCA	DAY	179.88
15:34:21	BIDU	BOT	INCA	DAY	138.41
15:34:58	BIDU	SLD	SDOT	DAY	138.15
15:36:55	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	344.62
15:37:23	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	344.5
15:40:37	AAPL	SLD	INCA	DAY	344.77
15:47:13	AAPL	SLD	SDOT	DAY	344.365
15:48:15	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	344.38
15:49:08	AAPL	SLD	INCA	DAY	344.49
15:49:13	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	344.44
15:51:31	AAPL	SLD	SDOT	DAY	344.21
15:53:27	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	343.93
15:54:12	TSLA	BOT	INCA	DAY	26.63
15:54:52	TSLA	SLD	INCA	IOC	26.65
15:56:08	AAPL	SLD	INCA	DAY	343.94
15:56:40	AAPL	BOT	INCA	DAY	344
15:59:17	AAPL	SLD	INCA	DAY	344.31