The Day I Kept Trading a Chart I Didn’t Trust

I spent an hour telling the room not to trade this chart. Then, at 10:42 (all times Eastern), I took one contract into a fair value gap because I liked a wick.

"I'm gonna take one contract to this fair value gap. Just a small little scalp. I really like that wick."

I was out inside a minute. Not because it went against me, but because I'd misread the candle.

"For whatever reason, when this went lower, I thought it closed. And then when it turned green, I'm like, what the heck am I seeing?"

That's the whole morning in one trade. The chart gave me nothing worth having, and I went looking anyway.

What Wednesday looked like

Tuesday was an inside day, and it was irritating: we didn't hit our target on the downside and we didn't hit it on the upside either. Coming into Wednesday there was a four-hour fair value gap sitting in the middle of the range and an hourly above midnight open and London high that looked like the most attractive draw.

The calendar was empty. I checked it out loud: nothing Wednesday, nothing Thursday, Flash PMI on Friday.

"There's no news at all this week. Wow. That could be a culprit for more of a consolidation week."

It was. We opened into a discount opening range gap and then spent two hours going back and forth inside the same range.

The trade I'd defend: a one-candle retag, and a stop

At 9:48 I said exactly what I wanted before it existed: if price didn't pump straight into the level, I'd take a one-candle retag of it.

It printed. I got filled long at 9:49 with a partial target at London and midnight open. For a few minutes it looked right. We closed above 9:30 twice and I said out loud that I loved it. Then the wicks got large, the structure stopped holding, and by 9:54 I was watching it come back for the low.

"What looked like to be a beautiful trade turned into a loss. That's okay."

That one doesn't bother me, and here's why. The entry was my model. It did exactly what it's supposed to do, and it lost.

"I saw my model in here for sure. Absolutely saw my model. So I took the trade. I just wasn't willing to lose any more."

The trade I'd also defend: fifty points, taken on conviction

At 10:07 I went the other way, a short off the breaker. Everything was there:

"It's a valid trade. Sweep of liquidity, fair value gaps, imbalances tagged."

And then I closed it by hand at fifty points while it was still going my way.

"That's 50 points right there. I'm going to secure that. Fifty points. I'm fine with it. I'm not convinced on direction."

It kept going. It would have paid more. I'm fine with that too.

"I took the trade and the profit based on my conviction, and 50 points is still good."

Conviction isn't a feeling you add on top of a setup. On a day with no news and no direction, it's part of the setup. I had every ingredient but one, so I took the trade that the missing ingredient allows: a scalp, not a runner. Learning to spot which ingredient is missing, in the moment, is a lot of what we work on inside the PDT Academy.

The rule I broke anyway

Twice before that last scalp I told the room what I wasn't going to do. At 9:46 there was a technically valid inversion sitting right there:

"Do you want to do that inversion? I don't. I'm not even gonna do a maybe. No maybes. No maybes."

At 10:42, a breaker to the downside that looked better than anything else on the screen:

"I'm not going to take it, because I think we're still in consolidation, and what looks like a breaker could just be consolidation. Consolidation can ruin your models."

Less than a minute later I took the scalp anyway. I know why: the same reason everyone does. The screen had been open for an hour and a half and I wanted something to show for it.

Ending early

At 10:47 I said what I should have said forty minutes earlier.

"I think we need to end. I think we need to just stop. Look at this chart. That last trade, I shouldn't have taken it. I got in too early. Thankfully, I'm still green."

And a few minutes later I shut it down:

"I think it's better to just get out. To walk away, look at the chart, and be like, I want nothing to do with this."

Green on the day. Not because of the last trade, but in spite of it.

The prayer I prayed before any of it

We pray at the opening bell every morning. Wednesday's had a line in it I couldn't have known would describe the whole session:

"Father, we thank you that your mercies are new every morning. We pray that we would be in our right minds. That we would not be manipulated by candles."

“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22–23

That's the part I lean on hardest after a day like this one. The mercy isn't that the trade worked. It's that tomorrow is a new session and I don't have to carry today's chop into it.

Not manipulated by candles. I asked for that out loud before the bell, and an hour later I let a wick talk me into a trade. That's not a failure of strategy. It's a failure of patience, and it's the one I keep bringing back to Him.