Weekly Review: 3/6/23 to 3/10/23

 

My Weekly Review Process

OVERVIEW

The week started well, adhering to my goals by focusing on my Intraday System Pattern A-C and working on patience. My main plays were options trading SPY and TSLA with a few stock plays in the big % gainer genre for reaction zone breakouts. 

The most significant deterioration of my mindset and goals arrived on Wednesday when I again relapsed into my old behavior of wanting to increase position size. This has been ongoing ever since last year, where I make consistent gains for most of the week or month, and one day it all goes downhill when I become bold enough to go bigger with position size. It ultimately eliminates my hard work and destroys my confidence. 

I thought I  could stay strong and not fall into the trap because I had analyzed this situation many times before and found a solution.  I concluded that I am already a profitable trader on a constant position size aspect and tend to diverge when I have big relative position sizing. So the solution was to keep doing what I was doing and slowly increase position size.

I thought I could refrain from increasing position size, stay the course and eventually increase position size incrementally but something deep inside me resurfaced. Once again, I had a big red day. I don't lose a significant percentage, but it is a big loss dollar-wise that wipes out all of my small gains consistently when it occurs. Nevertheless, I stayed focused and disciplined to take on other opportunities as the day progressed, which was nice. This led to an epiphany on my last trade that revealed exactly what I needed to focus on moving forward.

This epiphany and the events that led to it have happened many times before and have always been non-relevant and forgotten, but now I can no longer ignore it. Once again, I had a big red day and gave in, but in my last trade, I made a return of 77%, but net profit on the day meant nothing to my bottom line (Wednesday) since it was a tiny position size.

This was the gift that I had been continually neglecting to see all of last year.  The issue didn't lie in increasing position size and taking a significant loss repeatedly but not focusing on more apparent setups that make it easy to earn these returns or be in plays that allow better odds of success. 

In other words, I was trying to minimize the significant losses while completely neglecting better trades/opportunities, but I needed to focus on these better opportunities.

By focusing on better opportunities, I will inherently neglect the unreliable patterns that alter my behavior leading me to take bigger position sizes. Clearly, I no longer had the correct thinking to solve my problems. I needed a new method to find a solution, or, in other words, I desperately needed a paradigm shift. 

This paradigm shift is essential to eliminate extraneous noise and make my processes more straightforward and transparent, so trades like the 77% opportunity are the main focus. The new mindset and goals were implemented on Thursday and Friday and immediately affected my financial and psychological performance.

 Also, I had issues on Friday regarding options level 2 on Fidelity, and I hope this will not be an issue next week as I need this to function correctly to trade. Other than that, I look forward to next week, and even though I am red this week, this week was a pivotal week in propelling me on to become the trader I need to be.

NEW GOALS FOR NEXT WEEK

• Focus on Intraday System Pattern A-C. 
• Pattern A: reaction zone crossovers for an RZ reject or RZ bounce
• Pattern B: key levels for a KL reject or KL bounce.
• Pattern C: RZ breaks (only on clear long-time duration formations)
• Do not trade anything else.
• Keep position size small.
• Plan for the clear setups ONLY!
• Patience is the key to solid entries and to maintaining low-stress levels.
• Fewer trades with more confidence in the trades I act on.
• Focus on SPY and TSLA options ONLY!
• Time to simplify the process and improve/reach the next level.