Tug of War

Today was another tricky day to trade, as the bulls and bears continue to be near equal in strength for the ES and NQ, resulting in their 2nd daily dojis.  The EUR/USD also exhibited a doji, as the 1.36 level continues to prove widely contested.  Further clues that risk appetite is about to wane include the break of the AUD/JPY uptrend support (from the uptrend that began Feb 10).

As a result of the tighter than average trading range today, P/L was flat by the end of the day.  To ensure that proper income is being generated, funds will be transferred out of my personal trading account after the day's target profit is reached.

More importantly, today marked a continuation of my improvement in following my trading rules.  One way to help remind myself of my trading rules, is by having created calendar alerts (w/i Outlook) every hour.  By having these alerts popup every trading hour, I'm less likely to break my rules until following my rules becomes second nature.

It's quite fascinating how difficult it can be for the typical person to break bad habits.  Traders know this all too well, and I'm guilty of having deferred making the effort in break my own bad trading habits.  This blog along w/ my tweets (http://twitter.com/trader_darren) serve the purpose of keeping me accountable to my trading rules and objectives, along w/ allowing for reflection on trading performance along w/ market activity.

To sum up today, the only rule I broke was not transferring the day's target profits to my personal chequing account, only to see those profits disappear from subsequent trades.  Of course, this rule would've only served me well had I stopped trading after having reached my target profit!

Anyways, enough staring at the monitor for the day.  Tomorrow should see plenty of trading opportunities as economic data releases (http://www.forexfactory.com/index.php?tomorrow=1) will come fast and furious.