My Trading Journal
May 2026 Journal Entries
back to today's entry
Saturday May 30 2026 - weekends pump me up
during the week i don't always have time to slow down and think more macro in terms of life goals and my vision board and put things into perspective. typically on the weekends i do a lot of this type of mindfulness thinking and recalibrating my life goals. i zoom out and zoom back in several times just to zoom out again. today i marked out 3 months worth of historic candles on mnq to prepare that chart for me to observe over the next several weeks. i changed an execution friction - i put hot buttons of buy/sell back onto my charts. i previously had taken these off before when i was trading EURUSD exclusively - back then i didnt have my edge figured out yet so i was way too trigger happy to press the buttons. what i experienced the past couple days i feel like was actually the opposite - i was waiting for the perfect entries and could not edit my limit orders or market order in fast enough and it just felt clumsy. so, the hot buttons are added back in for this upcoming week. switching instruments, and switching brokers changes execution so so much. for forex on mt5, different orders dont really consolidate into one and each position needs to be individually managed, but for mes on interactive brokers, each order consolidates or averages together. i also cant have a long position and a short position at the same time - one closes the other. huge differences that you can easily take for granted when switching, and this is the type of friction that once eliminated i think will show much improved performance. another thing i was able to do yesterday was figure out how to make my charts even MORE naked, i completely took off the position labels (price/ticks/%) so its a clean price line. i hid extra numerical columns on my trading panel. SO much less anxious and prone to looking at the p&l. got my 10k steps in today. not a gym day. rest. reorganized my upcoming travel itinerary. trump tweeting a million things. so bullish for monday.
Friday May 29 2026 - falling knives, rising flames
in the same way as i tend to catch falling knives, i got caught in a rising flame! i exited my long position too soon (as a result of prolonged exposure to the trade, breakdown of mental fortitude as a result and getting out for fear of losing that green bit of profit), and immediately entered a short without waiting for confirmation. meanwhile that resistance level was becoming a new floor, a new support level. i quickly became aware i had fallen into this trap and chuckled at myself, but only half seriously. i stayed in the trade. overnight. again. i exited just now at a loss after having recovered it yesterday. it happens - if i try to get away with something, it comes back biting me in the behind. i can't escape my lapses in judgement, i must pay for them financially. now i am reset. now i can wait for my setups. the amazing thing is i definitely get clarify immediately after i exit a trade. now we wait.
Thursday May 28th 2026 - another new high; largest drawdown yet
That was scary. I did not manage my risk well.. i went in yesterday near the highs and it swept it but drew down down down. held overnight. i think i went in with the mindset of a swing trade but without true heart behind it. So it was a number of drawdown that i was psychologically NOT prepared for.. it went down 10% of my account at the worst! This morning it recovered and I took some profits with the new highs, thankfully (i count it as a breakeven trade even though its green) but that is NOT promised!! If anything i think this allowed me to get some exposure to a higher number (win or loss, this should help with being able to take more profit as well and dynamically sizing up when i see a great setup).. but i really didnt sleep well and found myself scratching my face from the feeling of unrest the past couple of days as it drew down and down to around 10% maximally.. even I was logging out to not see the number but just knowing that the levels were not good.. was not good for my psyche. i'm not sure i can do actual swing trading in the future, my comfort lies in less exposure to risk on the markets and even undershooting my tp levels and being so tight with stops in terms of putting it to breakeven as soon as possible. it will cancel a lot of trades but also just make me have more peace of mind. actually i say that but that's not true. sometimes i dont put my stops immediately because liquidity is so stop hunty! i wait until the move is taking place - i dont think we're supposed to do that!! but honestly that gives me more peace of mind because i know how irrate ill be if i get stopped out in a trade that just needs room to breathe and i tend to over manage the trade. anyway, i think i always want to be IN A TRADE despite the market direction or the move not being at the right entry points, so if im going to be like that, i need to size down drastically. eventually i hope to be able to not be in the game as much when it gets more boring and repetitive.
Wednesday May 27th 2026 - re-approaching highs
it's premarket session right now, but I feel like that was enough of a pullback the past couple days for this to continue to soar upwards. I was afraid it might have had to dip lower but this morning it is re approaching the highs. according to some analysts i've heard of targets up and over 8000. we are at 7561 currently and last week high was at 7570. and it makes sense on a macro level. it would be SO easy for me to say and think 'if only i held another day'. that 4% would have recovered and turned into profit by now. however, i know this is the wrong way to think. i know in my personal trading that when i let myself get away with breaking my rules, i pay for it later on in some way or other. this part of trading is so fascinating because it's truly revealing of your bad behaviours. it's so dangerous to be rewarded to bad behaviour too, because its cyclically reinforcing. so far my mental is great this morning and im so bullish on the market for now. as gold and bitcoin is absorbing the world's macroeconomics first, spy looks like it's on a runaway train. and the war will need to continue also unfortunately. i wish i had more capital to deploy... 'dry powder' as they say. it's so thrilling to see another market cycle so quickly after covid. the money printer prints, and the money system is doing summersaults before our eyes. wary of digital currency system being institutionally mandated soon.
Tuesday May 26th 2026 - large loss day
today i closed a way larger loss than i anticipated and ever wanted.. about 4% of my account. this loss was a loss of yesterday that i held overnight and ended up losing 6x larger than what could have been. just at a time when i've been consistently green for 2 weeks and finally getting some traction to start eating my losses back up to breakeven. there are so many things that happened here and i'll break it down. this tends to happen after a big day (aka may 22), because of overconfidence. my nervous system was not properly reset. and i traded the holiday yesterday and wasn't keeping track of market closure hours on memorial day (1pm). all of these are excuses to be honest because there were so many possible exits i could have taken that i just didn't. i acknowledge i have issues taking large losses, but the even bigger issue is i'll allow my drawdowns to go much larger than where my risk is supposed to be at. it's funny how everything is justifiable in the moment of the trade, all bias is out the window and only my trade is ABSOLUTELY correct. what i'm learning more and more is my nervous system suffers more than anything else, more than the actual number lost on the P&L and the effects of euphoria and disappointment from loss alike roll into the next trading days. i'm also not a swing trader. why was i getting confused on my bias for the day on mes? even though i do think levels are not at peak before an impending future crash, im a DAY TRADER. it's not my job to hold positions that are past my risk allowance and stop losses, whether i have the margin or not!! i can't say i'm defeated nor disheartened as before when i've suffered such a loss - because i understand all the points where the errors were made this time around. because i actually have an edge now that im following. and that is closer to me changing the patterns. no one is immune to human psychology. gotta stay in the game.
Friday May 22nd 2026 - record highs today
today i actually experienced, and still am as i'm writing this - fear of the market and of human psychology. I netted 2% today but the story of how that unfolded was i was up 3% with the best trades tight stops and low risk, and then i gave back 1% on poorer setups. I did not even FEEL any risk signals in my brain firing because the dopamine was way too strong. i'm finally at a point where i'm consistently pulling green days and approaching my breakeven target as a novice trader (it's my 6 month trading anniversary today!! third overall attempt at trading, first was in 2020 second was in 2023) but today i actually felt the fear. i recognize in my heart that this is a dangerous game. a worthwhile endeavour but a dangerous one. if i am not able to instill the level of discipline it takes to walk away when the setup is gone, and to materialize those gains into the capital pool.. everything just hovers and floats otherwise. its not real. the dopamine and adrenaline is still coursing through me and i've left my home desk and am trying to go to the gym but somehow ended at my office desk LOL. only to write this. i swear, there is no brokerage platform on this cpu. but this energy.. ive got to shake it. and i will for monday. all record highs today. oil maintaining. vix low. things need to crash soon. i'm here for it. so grateful for my journey.
