Staying Focused!
By Cliff Clark
Do you have trouble staying focused? Many of us do. Trading from home can present many challenges. Your wife wants you to help her find her glasses, the gardener is running the lawn mower outside your window followed by the leaf blower, your two year old wants to be held. It never ends. Then there are the distractions that come with trading itself. You are trying to follow your trading plan, you are trying to focus on the favorites from your gap list. The problem is you are trying to watch the chat and you are listening to the trades the moderator is calling. You hear the moderator make a call and you decide to take it even though it doesn't fit your trading plan. As you are in the trade you notice that the favorite from your watch list just hit and you missed it. The trade you took from the moderator stops you out while your favorite goes on to hit your full target. That can be frustrating.
Has that ever happened to you? If so how often does it happen? I've had two different traders recently tell me that they have started muting the moderator to help cut down on the distractions. They wonder if that is OK or if it will hurt them in the long run. Maybe they think they will miss some of the educational content. I would say if it helps you stay focused then by all means mute the moderator. You can still see the room calls in the chat. If you are worried about missing some of the educational content I don't see that as a major concern. I'd bet most of us do most of our trades in the first thirty minutes of the day. Just mute the moderator while you are most active in the morning. You won't miss much, there is very little educational content discussed during the most active part of the morning. Once things slow down unmute the moderator and you won't have missed much. You might just gain a little confidence knowing that you are doing things on your own.
2 trades for me today with +1.5R total
1st Trade QCOM +2R
148.39/149.97 exit 143.25
12% gap down under pivot support and 50ma after a strong daily double top rejection,. I took it on a congestion breakdown with a fairly wide stop, leaving my 2R target 50c over its ATR, slow but consistent move down with great RW, hit my target on the penny before it bounced.
2nd Trade AQB -0.5R
9.40/9.70 exit 9.56
I rarely trade stocks under $10 and even more rarely short them. I liked this daily chart as it broke its uptrend channel and stayed under a strong 9.50 support line enough room to its daily 50ma. I entered after a pullback with a fairly wide stop but only 1/3 of its ATR used at the time. It failed to break down with the strong market open and stayed in a narrow range.
I actually broke my plan with this trade as I lowered my stop to a pivot where price made a big bounce earlier at 11am with a large seller sitting there. My thought was that if it breaks that level again then it will likely...
1 trade for (-1R)
I took a BD on QCOM. I was worried about the target being close to the daily range, so I took a tighter stop on the 2 min chart. I am looking through PTS right now, most of the examples have 2 options for where to put your stop. It looks to me like one of the stops would be at the bottom of the main consolidation area, and the other at the bottom of where there has been a shakeout or turnaround bar (if there has been one). Due to the daily range I took the tighter one on this. In hindsight it seems obvious to take the wider stop, but in the moment it looked ok.
I was then looking at the 15 min 3BP on QCOM, but the reason I used a tighter stop in the first place was because of the range. The 15 min 3BP would have needed to have gone even further than the wider stop on the 2 min BD, so I didn't take it.
