ES futures prop trading journal

Review in the spirit of Mark Douglasauthor of Trading in the Zone. Written for this entry; not his words.

On what really went wrong

You've named it exactly: the problem wasn't the losses, it was that you couldn't stop. Look at when the day changed. It wasn't the first stop-out. It was the moment you started trading for a number. From then on you weren't asking "what is the market offering me here?" but "what do I need from it?", and the market doesn't know or care what you need. Every trade after that point was an attempt to make the market give back something it never owed you.

On letting winners run

"Let your winners run" is someone else's rule for someone else's method. Your edge, as you've described it many times, is 3 to 5 points on a one-minute chart. When you hold for more, you aren't improving your method; you're trading a different, untested one, in the middle of a live trade, without knowing its odds. A belief you borrowed from a podcast overrode a belief you'd earned from your own trades. The fix is the one you already found for your stop: decide the target before you enter, put it in as an order, and let the platform take the 3 to 5 points for you.

On the moment at −$187

That was the most important moment of the day. You had made most of it back and you knew you should stop. What kept you going wasn't analysis; it was the discomfort of finishing the day red. A trader in the zone accepts a small red day as a normal outcome and walks away, because tomorrow's opportunities are no smaller for it. The next time you're there, don't ask yourself whether to stop. Have a rule that has already decided: a daily loss limit of your own, well inside the firm's, or a fixed number of trades per session. When it triggers, the session is over.

On the reset

Taking a break when you realised you'd lost control was the right instinct, and it's worth more than the money you clawed back. Notice that it worked because it broke the chain of decisions made in a state of mind you didn't choose. Make it a rule, not a rescue: after two losing trades in a row, stand up, step away, and end the session.

On your lessons

All five are right. Two of them can be made mechanical today: no trading in the first two hours of the London session, and no trades until you've written down whether today is a long day, a short day or a stand-aside day. The other three are about accepting that the market owes you nothing. Those don't come from a rule; they come from executing the rules you do have, again and again, until a loss stops feeling like something you need to fix.

Review in the spirit of Mark Douglasauthor of Trading in the Zone. Written for this entry; not his words.

On passing with too much size

You call it luck, and that's the honest word. Four contracts on a $2,000 drawdown means one bad trade of 5 points takes half of your room. You passed because the trades in those four days happened to go your way, not because the risk was right. Be careful with that memory. A result that rewards the wrong behaviour is more dangerous than one that punishes it, because it teaches you that the behaviour works.

On cutting to two contracts

This is the most important thing in the entry. Hitting the daily loss limit did what no amount of reading could: it made the risk real. Notice what changed when you cut the size. The $300 to $500 days came after, not before. Smaller size means each trade matters less, and when each trade matters less you stop needing it to work. That's when you start executing well.

On the $1,500 trade

The tweet wasn't the problem. Something unexpected will always happen; that is the one thing you can count on. The problem was that the risk on that trade hadn't been decided before you entered it, so the market decided it for you. Putting the stop in automatically is exactly the right fix, because it takes the decision away from you at the moment you're least able to make it. Now make sure you never move it further away once you're in.

On not withdrawing

Wanting to be consistent first is sensible. But be honest about the goal behind it. Four 150K accounts is a plan to trade much bigger, and size is exactly what hurt you in the first week. Thirteen days is not yet a track record. Decide now what "consistent" means in numbers, over how many weeks, at what size, and only scale up when the record meets it. Otherwise the payout you're saving will be tested by a bigger account before your discipline is.

Review in the spirit of Mark Douglasauthor of Trading in the Zone. Written for this entry; not his words.

On the compass

This is a good step, and the reason it's good is not that VWAP knows where the market is going. It doesn't. It's good because it removes half of your decisions before the market opens. If the rule says "above VWAP, longs only", you're no longer asking yourself at every line whether this is the one to buy or the one to sell. You have fewer things to be wrong about, and fewer chances to hesitate. That is where conviction really comes from: from a rule you have agreed to follow, not from feeling sure about the next trade.

On the two examples

Be careful with the two charts. You picked them after the fact, because they worked. Your mind is very good at remembering the dip that bounced and forgetting the dip that kept going. Notice too that both trades used the same 7852.40 line, once as support and once as resistance. On another day, the dip to that line would have gone straight through it. If you believe these setups are likely to work, the only way to know how likely is to write down every one you see from now on, the losers included, before you know how it ends.

And decide in advance what the compass does when it isn't pointing anywhere. ES spends part of most days chopping back and forth across VWAP. Is that a no-trade zone? What happens to an open long if ES closes below VWAP? If you don't answer those questions now, you will answer them in the moment, with money on the line, and you will answer them with fear.

On higher conviction

"Higher probability" is still a probability. A setup that works seven times out of ten will still lose three times, and you won't know which three. Conviction doesn't mean believing this trade will work; it means being willing to take it knowing it might not. Define the stop at the line before price arrives, just beyond the demand or supply line where the idea is plainly wrong, take the trade when price gets there, and let the series of trades do the work.

Review in the spirit of Mark Douglasauthor of Trading in the Zone. Written for this entry; not his words.

On hesitating

You have a setup that works, and you hesitate. Waiting for "more confirmation" is your mind trying to get certainty about the next trade, and that certainty doesn't exist. Every extra candle you wait for costs you a better price or the whole trade. Look at the chain you described: hesitate, miss the move, enter late, end up trading into lunch and into the tweet risk. The late trades aren't separate mistakes; they are the price of the hesitation.

The fix isn't more analysis. It's to define the risk before the setup arrives (where you get out if you're wrong, how many points you're after) and accept that this particular trade may lose. When price reaches your level, you're not making a decision any more; you're carrying out one you already made. And 12:00 is a hard stop, not a goal.

On trading during your day

Knowing that the London open doesn't suit you is good self-knowledge; keep it as a firm rule, not a preference. But be honest about why you want this. "Quieter" isn't an edge. If your supply and demand and EMA setups also work at those hours, write that down and trade only those. If the reason is that you want something to do, the market will happily take your money for the entertainment. Cap it at the one or two scalps you named, and stop when you reach them, win or lose.