Trading is about PATIENCE

In today's blog I am going to talk about one of the most important factors in trading success and one I am doing my best to develop. PATIENCE. I have lost count of the times I have a plan in the morning for a certain set up, the bell sounds and I start to feel some anxiety. That anxiety is telling me to enter a trade. Come on! just do something. Hit that buy or short button but don't sit on your hands and do nothing! Stop being so lazy. That is exactly what that brain chatter feels like. If you are not careful you give in to that temptation and before you know it you are in a less than ideal set up just because you HAD to be in something. This is usually when the shit hits the fan and you eventually find yourself regretting that entry. I am going to describe an example from today that led me into a loss due to that very issue. 

X was the ticker. My plan for today was based on 3 days down as of yesterday and an approaching support level which you will see on the daily chart below 

As you can very well spot on the chart there is a clear support level on the daily. My idea was that the price would either gap down to that area today or at least pull back to that area in early morning action. Let's see what happened at an intraday level

Ok so as you can see in the chart above we start to push higher over a resistance level. This to me looks like a strong move and I wait for the pullback to get in. The pullback happens soon enough and I am in for the long. After the pullback I believe I have a great entry and the stock will shoot up to around 36 which is the next area of resistance. What I didn't do was have PATIENCE! I didn't wait for the move back to the stronger support. Of course the stock could have gone higher from here but that wasnt the ideal set up. It didnt have as much an edge as if the price would have pulled back to support. At this point I realized this but the voices in my head said...you're ok...the stock is clearly gonna go higher and its good you are in ...stay in. So I did just that I stayed in and waited. Even though I saw signs of tiredness in the price action (too many red candles too soon for a strong reversal) I decided to stay in. When the double top intraday was made and the stock started to move back down I finally jumped out at a small loss realizing what the stock was doing. It was going to go lower. Would I choose to get in and short...Well a part of me wanted to but then i had to forcefully tell myself stay out this is day 4 down and at this point it would be risky. Eventually as seen in the price action the stock retraced perfectly back to the daily suppport level and from that zone it made its monster move higher as per the plan ! This is patience at its best. This is sticking to your plan. If I had waited patiently for the ideal super move from support the trade would have been amazing. Instead I was left with a loss and a good blog idea to write lol