Elevator down.

I slept late, but soundly. Missed my 5:30 am alarm, and missed the open by 5 minutes. I found out today is actually Thursday, not Friday as my foggy brain previously thought. Now I seriously wish this was a Saturday.

The good news: I got my first real trade in with IB/BT this morning. The fills in and out were quick and seamless.

The horrendous news: It was a monster loser for -$300. OUCH!

I uninstalled and reinstalled BT last night, thinking I'd be clever and see if a complete reinstall would "trick" it to reset its countdown nag, saving me $100 in registering the damn thing. Well, that didn't work. Today is my final day before some of the features turn off. Anyway, I did a WTF trade just to make sure it was working as before. Why? I don't know. I didn't have my morning coffee yet. I was waiting for my CCI charts to catch-up since I missed 5 minutes at the open. For some reason, I increased stop loss and target to 1 full point (10 ER ticks), remembering the success I had with those settings on AutoTrader yesterday. Then for the grand finale, again for some unknown reason, I set it to 2 contracts instead of 1 just before hitting the SELL button. The short went against me right off the bat. It was about to hit the full stop when I peeked at my IB TWS (Trader Workstation) and realized this was a real fucking trade. The capper on this nightmare was as soon as I (again brainlessly) widened my stop loss another 5 ticks, CNBC comes out with some alert about crude oil going down. The ER zoomed up a bit more and finished me off.

I took a shower. I strapped my son in the baby bjorn and took a walk around the block. I had a cup of yesterday's coffee with a slice of toast. I sat down at the computer again. My thoughts of going hogwild and "getting it all back today" subsided, thankfully. I recalled some advice to get back on the horse after falling off, but do a paper trade immediately after. I did. It was a 7 tick loser. I followed that with a paper scratch. My thinking now is to stay on paper the rest of the day. If netting a $150-$200 profit everyday is my current initial goal, then I definitely need a loss limit to call it a day. I think -$300 is sufficient. More than sufficient, so I won't press my luck. Chalk it up to the neverending cost of a trader's education, right? We'll make it back. Sigh.

The mood in chat is somber. Very quiet for a couple hours now. Right after my fuck-up, Woodie announced that one of the chat members has his 15 year old daughter in the hospital. She has some rare disease and her condition is worsening. Another guy said he lost a child to cancer last year and it was with the positive spirit of Woodie's room that helped him keep going. It's sad news. Prayers and best wishes go out to this girl. Tough to feel sorry for myself now. So I don't.

I'll resume paper trading this afternoon, get some playback time after the close, and go live again tomorrow morning. The anxiousness/nervousness of doing a live trade is no longer there. That's good. It's been a few months, so the cobwebs are cleared. I'm not donning the cape as Superman today. Best to start with a clean slate tomorrow and stick with my trading plan discipline. The damage is already done, and the mood is wrong for today. I'm all right.