12pm– I’m sitting here, watching the market (FTSE 100, today) and missed two great opportunities to trade early in the day. Since then, the market has pretty much stalled out and nothing there are no clear entry indicators, based on the rules I’m following.
I’m really appreciating the amount the patience required to develop my spread betting abilities and the amount of discipline I’m exercising to stop myself jumping in the market because I’m getting bored.
Hopefully the market will pick up when the US opens around 2pm.
2.30pm
Had a quick check in on the FTSE and was looking to place a sell order (short) at 5300 but as soon as the US market opened, the price shot straight through 5300 and ended up at the 5320 mark. I had to step away for an hour, and didn’t miss much action.
4pm
I returned to find the market heading back down to the 5300 mark for the second time and was very tempted to go long (buy order). At the time I thought it was a gut feeling, but in hindsight it did match one of my trading strategies. I could have taken a pretty clean 10 pips and been done for the day.
Lessons for the day
1. Patience is clearly a virtue, even though it may be very tempting to get into the market, you have to be careful and make sure you’re not making up reasons to get in the market.
2.The early bird catches the worm. I missed two good setups in the morning, and had I not arranged to have furniture delivered first thing I may have got in on the action today.
On the plus side, I’ve spent the day (on and off) watching the market, learning how it moves and identifying clear entry indicators, without losing any money!
Hopefully tomorrow will be a different story.