Today's trades and missed opportunities

I tried to concentrate on only one instrument today, Gold, but was unable to do so.  I missed 3  good trades.  The first two was while I was looking for an Oil trade and another one when I was updating a trade onto the PTN site.  These trades were worth over 100 ticks.  Although saying that, both of my winning trades would have got to 100 ticks if I had let them run. I had a 16 tick loser as well. The losing trade was a typical market maker (manipulation) move.  It was at a good supply level, but they pushed price through and then back down again.  Triggering the entries and stopping them out before reversing.  Fortunately I did get a good short after I had seen this, but only took 42 ticks out of a 180 tick move because I was afraid of taking a second loss.

The first trade was a long and I entered virtually to the tick at the bottom of a range. I had 2 lots and was going to take one off at 50 ticks and let the second run to 100 ticks, but I clicked on the close button in error when I was taking off the first position. Price went up 132 ticks from my entry. So good entry, bad trade management.

Price stopped at a supply level from yesterday, but at the time I was looking on the Oil chart and missed it.  Price then moved rapidly down about 160 ticks to a demand zone formed around 11:00 am this morning,  I missed it by a minute, and did not want to chase it, then watched as it moved up 140 ticks.

My second trade was at a good supply level formed on the down moved and we had 2 HVC bars in a small range.  It looked a very good level, so I put a limit order on a long while before price had reached the level. Unfortunately I had to take a toilet break and while I was away the trade triggered and stopped me out soon after.  If I was watching the trade, I would not have taken it as we had basing just below the supply level on the range charts.

Fortunately, I had identified a throwback area above the supply zone and when I saw a RPM 2 bar reverse at the TB area, I took a short straight away and took profit for 42 ticks.  I wanted to hold it to the earlier demand zone, but I closed early because I did not want to have 2 losses.  So once again, a very good entry, taking only 2 ticks of heat, but bad trade management caused by fear of losing.

What today has shown, is that I need to concentrate on only one instrument and not get distracted by other things.  Here are the missed trades.