Anxiety

Anxiety is a funny thing. Just when you feel you have it nipped in the bud it sometimes rears its ugly head and comes out of nowhere. Yesterday I watched as some of my newer shorts ran against me and many sub-par long side setups ran higher. As the hours went on rather than getting up and walking away from the screen I sat at the computer sifting through charts and asking myself the simple, but very wrong question ‘what am I missing?’

As I sifted through charts the process remained the same. I would find one of interest based on the daily chart, then quickly flip to the weekly for a glance at the bigger picture. Yuck, I would say as the two patterns conflicted greatly with the former rather bullish and the later quite bearish. For most of the day I held off, curbing my anxiety with chart work until it finally happened. I came across CLF and saw the 50 day recapture. I was fascinated with the strength in commodities despite the dollar ramp and thought maybe a starter was worth my time. I flipped to the weekly and saw nothing but a monster bearish wedge under a significantly eroding moving average and multi-month supply. “Blah,” I said, “…maybe it continues higher?”

Before today, CLF was not on my radar (mistake #1) and I only found the setup when I was out searching for something long (mistake #2). I decided to enter with a starter position due to my lack of conviction (mistake #3) and was immediately shown a loss. In fact I think I top ticked the trade and felt the word SUCKER tattooed on my head.

A funny thing happened the moment I entered that trade. Sure, it curbed my anxiety over being out of the market on the long side, but it was quickly replaced with a feeling of remorse as I knew it was the wrong trade to make. It’s at this point I actually avoided what could have been mistake #4 which would have been to hold and hope it worked out but rather reversed the position, accepted my miniscule loss and stepped away from the computers.

You see, it makes no difference if we’ve started a huge bull run and are now off to the races or if we’re a day away from an epic crash. Discipline is the name of the game and executing on proper setups, found with no emotion, no anxiety and AFTER market hours is how I will be successful.

Today I am coming into the gap down net short and will honor stops and profit targets alike.