Weekly Review 10/11-10/15

Like the prior week, the System identified very few entry possibilities, and of those virtually all resulted in scratches. The perception of an extended lack of opportunities can make us stretch for results, and falling prey to this impatience is an open invitation to disaster -- this week being a perfect example. As with any System which remains a work in progress, experiencing a dry spell of unprecendented length can slowly eat away at one's belief in the System's ultimate merit; by Friday I had already exectued several trades outside its parameters, and came into that morning with overnight baggage. Having stops secured at breakeven on each of them, I felt confident that I would be able to manage my holdings and still objectively focus on the any forthcoming System signals.

Not! By the end of the day, in addition to missing 2 exceptional setups which would have more than made up for the meager harvest of the last few weeks, I managed to press onto my prior night's holdings out of frustration, which conveniently allowed me to cancel my preset stops for "recalculation". . . need I continue? Let's just say I notched a new high on the vomit bucket for a single day's retchings. Those open profits I carried into the morning not only gave me a false sense of security, the positions behind them provided that fraction-of-a-second hesitation en route to a "statistical catastrophe" (Slansky again), and left me flailing. All in all, a pathetic way to end the week.