Afternoon,

The Russell 2000 e-mini futures open down slightly yesterday and began a slow grind up that lasted the entire day. As I have stated before, day trading requires a lot of patience.  For the first two and a half hours, there was not a valid set-up based on my criteria. There was a very interesting pattern that I would discuss a bit this morning.

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I have discussed the importance of having a game plan to day trade in various articles recently (A Tale Of Two Traders. Trading For A Living and Mind Over Market). Yesterday afternoon, while I was doing my Daily Wrap Up of market commentary, trades of the day, and trading tid bits  (which can be found for FREE on my blog: http://www.futuresinvestingmadeeasy.com) , I typed something to the effect that a certain trade did not fit my trade “guidelines”. I got to thinking after I typed that word. Why did I use the word guideline instead of rule? To me, the word guideline is a looser interpretation of the word rule or rules. If you read my article “A Tale Of Two Traders”,  I explain how integrity plays an important part of MY trading strategy. I think that it is important to be true to your trading strategy and follow your rules to the letter. Therefore, my use of the term guideline was probably not appropriate as that may lead many of the traders reading this article to believe that you can change your rules at a whim, move stops or not adhere to the limit orders you have in place. Now some of you my think that this whole article is a matter of semantics. I don’t agree. If I use the terms interchangeable, my sub conscience mind  might think that it is OK to move stops, or make changes in the way I trade. I work daily on my trading mind set and how I place trades and most importantly, how I manage the trade once I am in that trade. ANY influence that could affect that mind set and cause me to stray from my tried and proven strategies is not acceptable. So, I hope you study your own lexicon and make sure that you are not doing something that will submarine your results.

Here’s to catching a whopper!!

Regards,

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Afternoon,

Another exciting day trading the Russell 2000 e-mini futures. The market opened down and found support around the 699 area. After rallying about 10 points, the market based sideways for an hour. It broke a trendline to the downside and and had two bobber set-ups back to back. Both set-ups made the objective.

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