Again, no chart today. I'm still working out the kinks on that.

11 paper trades (7-3-1) for +$170 (-52.8 comm)

Doggy woke me again at 4am to pee. Gotta break her of that habit. Anyway I had my Trading Plan thoughts still fresh in mind when I turned on the computer. I wrote "10 TRADES" at the top of my daily trading journal and underlined it twice. The ER gapped up and stayed up for the first hour. I was asleep at the wheel on the only chance to jump in long on a nice ZLR, so I sat on my hands and waited and waited. My first trade was a ghost short. There was a slight hesitation as I saw it setting up since a countertrend short on a strong uptrend morning didn't strike me as the savviest of trends. No one else in chat was mentioning it either. What the hell, though. I saw it and I reacted, getting 4 ticks. By my mid-morning showertime, I had 8 ticks on 3 winning trades and was feeling pretty good about myself. I had a plan and was sticking by it. It was a solid start and I had plenty of bullets left for the rest of the day.

Post-shower and after playing with the baby for a 1/2 hour, I took my 3rd straight ZLR and got another 3 ticks. No mega-winners, but I'm not out there for them at this point. I just want to recognize good set-ups and get my little chunk consistently. I took another ZLR short and bailed quickly when it was having trouble breaking down thru R2 support. Woodie trades without prices, just staring at CCI charts. This is impossible, as far as I'm concerned, and would be like me driving without looking at the road. Woodie's the CCI guru though, and it just might be that his level of trading enlightenment is unattainable by mere mortals, but it's still a worthy goal for me right now. In this case, he was right. The price bars scared me out of the trade, while the CCI alone would have kept me in. I took a 2 tick loss, and the trade went on to go 1.5 points (15 ticks) in my favor. I was happy though. It was a good quick loss on my part. There was tough resistance on an up day, so no use pressing my luck on a countertrend trade and possibly undoing my good start. It was now noon EST, I was 4-1, +$90 with half my trades remaining for the afternoon.

I then proceeded to empty the chamber into my foot (that's a return to the bullets analogy I made earlier). 1) I entered a bad ZLR setup. 2) I chased into it late. The 25 lsma remained green the whole time, warning me this wasn't a short Woodie would take. 3) I didn't take the quick loss. I definitely had that last loss on my mind. It was a loss that turned out to be a big winner. This next trade was 20 minutes after my last exit. I guess I was hoping for a do-over, and this time I'd ride out the downturn. Well, it turned further down and was about to hit my hard stop for a 6 tick loss. This would've flattened my profit for the day. I noticed the 34 ema was approaching overhead and was hoping it would be the ceiling. 4) I added another contract short. It busted thru the 34 and continued climbing. I added another one short. This trade got ridiculously bad in a hurry, and when it was all said and done, I was sitting on 6 contracts short, waiting to get bailed out. I waited for 171 minutes.

So screw the bottomline results of today. The afternoon was a disaster. As the President calls Iraq "a catastrophic success," so was my execution of my trading plan today. It just goes to show you how much focus and discipline counts. Just one bonehead trade can ruin an otherwise solid day. I was down over $400 at the worst point of the trade. That can do more than ruin a day. I need a mouse that gives me a 5000 watt jolt when I try to add to losers.

I do have playbacks with BT/Sierra. I had been doing them religiously every night and on weekends in August. I admit to not doing it as much so far in September. That excitement one feels when starting a new system and switching to a new broker/chart service has definitely died down, and I'm hitting the wall of reality. Eventually, it'll all come down to results. Baby steps can only take me so far. Tomorrow should be a challenge to my patience. I think we have early morning government numbers, plus quad witching tomfoolery to deal with. Probably a good deal of dullness mixed in too. I'm looking to bounce back strong.