Tues. 5/31

2:05pm CDT - Left the screens off most of weekend but did analyze my ZS discretionary trades. The answer to my trading woes, to the casual outsider looking in, is to just stop for the day when I hit a certain limit. If I stop on the upside after $750, why not stop trading if I hit –$750 on downside? That would avoid the –$2500 hits I have had recently right? Yes, but it does not help the overall results. There were many days where I would be below a downside limit but would rally back and end up on the plus side. In analyzing my trades over past 5 weeks, my net P/L would be ~15% lower if I had always stopped after my daily P/L hit an upside OR downside limit. As usual, trading is never as black and white as one might hope.

The past 5 weeks have been eye opening in one respect, I still suck at discretionary trading. Sure I had some nice streaks, but giving it all back is not acceptable. I need firm rules to cover all scenarios and for that reason I will return to mechanical system trading starting tomorrow. I hope to develop my recent methodology into a system to supplement my original ZS system that I stopped trading twice over the past year right at the bottom of drawdowns!

Since I stopped trading my old ZS system around April 7, it has done very well capturing more than 60 cents total and trading 10 lots would have hypothetically netted over $23k (taking slippage and commissions into account). I'll post an updated system P/L curve soon.

Net breakdown (contracts traded):
ZS -$2367(30)

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	30
Net $P/L:	-2367
Wins:	3
Losses:	3
Win%:	50
Avg$Win:	147
Avg$Loss:	-936