Trade Review for 9/27/11

Hey Guys & Gals, here is todays trade review:

Trade 1: Long 82.62 (9:01)
Why: No opening drive down (an opening drive down open is where the opening price is the high of the first couple min, & is never to be faded until it proves otherwise aka trading back through the open), so when we traded back through the open I took the long & didnt want to see it back under the open or I would flip short.
Result: We dropped right back through the open where I flipped short as soon as we did taking a 3-4 tick loss in the process

Trade 2: Short 82.58 (9:05)
Why: We couldnt push through the opening swing high (opening swing is the basically the first push down & first push up...some days the opening swing is not clear & never really comes into play, but some days it does) so for today the opening swing low was 82.42, opening swing high was 82.83. So I flipped from long to short when we traded back under the open, I hit the market as soon as we did & got fills at 82.60 & 82.56 got a lil slippage.
Result: We came down to last Thursdays high that I highlighted in the pre-open update as the key # this morning. It ended up holding to the tick at 82.21....we got 1 scale off for +35 ticks & it reversed to stop me out flat on the rest.

Trade 3: Long 82.61 (9:19)
Why: 82.21 held to the tick, & we traded back through the open at 82.61. In the pre-open update I said if price is accepted above 82.21 then this will signal to me that we will likely test higher prices.
Result: Thats exactly what happened & this ended up being our best trade of the day. I got +100 ticks on the best out on this trade, & closed it because the equity markets reacted negativity to the consumer confidence # at 10 & expected oil to follow.

Trade 4: Long 83.69 (10:27)
Why: We pushed through the IB high (IB is high/low of first hour of trading 9-10 est for crude) which really signaled strength to me after a terrible consumer confidence number at 10. I wanted it to go right then & there or I would bail, usually I would flip short in this trade if it dropped back out of the IB, but I didnt for 2 reasons. The first reason was because of the aformentioned strength, & the second was because we made the IB high right at 10 which always makes trading around that level a little trickier & its something I should have considered a little more strongly in the next trades.
Result: It didnt go right away, & we chopped back under the IB high, where I took a 4 tick loss

Trade 5: Basically everything was the same as trade 4

Trade 6: Same as trade 4 & 5...at this point I should have done 1 of 2 things, I either needed to sit back & say "because the market is chopping back & forth on this level it is not as significant as it usually would be" or I should have stepped back, & asked myself the key 3 questions, What have we done? What are we trying to do? How well are we doing it? If the answers were still up, up & up (which they were) I should have just waited for a little better entry & gave it a little more wiggle room.

Trade 7: ( Same as trade 4, 5, 6......I actually caught it right this time, but my darn mouse froze up on me & I had to do a quick reboot, & while I was rebooting, we made the new high & ended up pushing to 84.20....the key thing here is that we had the right idea just poor execution.

Trade 8: Short 83.69 (11:15)
Why: After we got that push up to 84.20 if we were going to continue up I would have thought that we would not return to the IB, but we did so I took the short when we dropped back in.
Result: Got 1 scale at 83.35 which was the former vpoc, & got stopped flat on the rest

Trade 9: Long 83.69 (12:10)
Why: We pushed back up over the IB, so I was stalking a long again, we came back down & tested IB high & got a nice 1 min candle there
Result: Took it off for a tiny gain because of no follow thru

Trade 10: Short 84.24 (2:16)
Why: I saw a huge sell order chasing the bid down, & thought we had a good chance to close the day at the vpoc which was basically the IB high. I dont usually base a trade off this alone, but because it was what happened at the close yday I thought it would increase the chances of it happening today.
Result: Didnt work, took a 6 tick loss.

So this is most important part when I go over my trades everyday, & its focusing on what we did wrong, & what we could have improved on the days trades. The first big thing is that when I saw 82.21 holding to the tick it should have been a HUGE red flag to me that price had no interest in lower prices & should have flipped long there. The second thing is that I should have greatly de-valued the IB high because we made it right at 10, & we chopped all over it. After trade 5 I should have taken a step back, re-assessed, & given the trade room to work.

If you have any questions let me know.