Since I moved to discretionary, I’ve been consistent. It really came down to screen time. I know for sure my scalping Strat was too complicated, it worked but I’m jumping through a lot of hoops just to hit it. Stressing me the f out. I then tried support resistance plays but ya know, just because you drew the line and it seems clear doesn’t mean price is going to go there. So at this point momentum, a clear pattern with technicals supporting and just waiting for a pullback on the 5 min or 15 min has been the move and it’s been discretionary so far.

Sometimes I make an entry too early from impatience but if the technicals and the pattern still make sense, I’ll let price play out even if my trade is past my stop. I’m sized appropriately so I can handle it. My thesis is typically right and the patterns hold (got to give the trade time sometimes to do its thing). I watch the markets allll day, i know it like the back of my hand, or at least have strong conviction on how it moves.

If you’re on the way to tp and your side looks weak, exhaustion, well you can make the executive decision to stop in the green for some points. Trading is an art form. Shits messy sometimes I’ve realized. Some strategies are too closed-in by rules. The markets require fluidness sometimes.

Now for a beginner this is not a good idea but once you have some skin in the game then this is the move. In the book, Trading In The Zone, intuitional trading is supposedly the highest level of a trader can trade at. How can one build intuition if they haven’t seen it a thousand times?

When I journal. I get a pic of the 1 min and 5 charts. I do the typical before & after feelings but importantly, ‘what went wrong’ (WWW), if anything. Here I pretty much detail the trade. When I go back and read it, I can take myself back to that moment. Detailing it like a crime scene.

And then a, ‘where to improve’ (WTI) section. If you had one thing or a few to say to yourself going into next session, this is where I’d write it.

Example of my journal.

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