May 6th, 2026

After a disappointing Day 18, I came back into the market today trading the updated rules again. Of course, the session started off brutal. The early morning trades did not follow through at all, and it immediately put me on the defensive. It felt like one of those mornings where every move stalled out just as it looked ready to continue.

Thankfully, the afternoon cleaned up a bit and I was able to claw back a large portion of what I had lost earlier in the day. Still, days like this are incredibly discouraging, especially when trading a smaller account. When you are throwing around losses of $200 to $300, every trade feels amplified, and it becomes difficult mentally to stay aggressive or fully commit to the strategy.

That is one of the biggest realities of trading with a low account balance. Even when the strategy itself may be valid long term, the emotional pressure of drawdowns feels much heavier because the margin for error is so small.

Because of that, I decided I need to scale things back for now. Going forward, until I can build the account back toward the $1,500 to $2,000 range, I will likely stick to trading just one MNQ contract. It is not exactly how the strategy was originally designed, but at this stage survival and consistency matter more than maximizing gains.

For now, the focus is shifting toward simply capturing the larger trend moves cleanly, protecting capital, and slowly rebuilding confidence along the way.

Day 19 Travel Poster

MNQ Chart

If you look at the chart today, like I mentioned earlier, the morning session was extremely rough. The new trading idea I am testing is fairly straightforward. Anytime price is below VWAP, and the rest of my conditions are aligned, I will take the short trade.

The first valid setup came right at 8:05 AM. Price initially moved lower, but then bounced back above VWAP, which caused me to exit the trade for a loss of 19.50 points on each contract.

The next trade came shortly after as price dipped back below VWAP again. I entered another short position and this one nearly reached the target, but ultimately failed to follow through. I actually exited the trade fairly quickly, but had I followed the system exactly, it would have resulted in a loss of around 43 points on each contract.

Then came the difficult part of the session.

At 8:50 AM, I followed the rules again and entered another short trade. Even though SPY and MES were both moving upward, my setup still triggered below VWAP. The trade failed hard and resulted in a brutal loss of 76.75 points. During backtesting, this has been one of the larger losses the strategy can produce, so emotionally this one definitely hurt.

The fourth trade came almost immediately after and once again failed, resulting in another loss of around 64 points. At that point, the session felt awful and mentally exhausting. But in a strange way, this is exactly what the strategy is designed to endure. It takes losses during choppy conditions in order to eventually capture the larger trending moves.

The fifth trade appeared around 9:30 AM. I was honestly nervous taking it after the previous losses, but this time the trade finally worked. The move produced a gain of around 107 points before eventually reversing later on.

After that came another valid setup that I completely skipped. Looking back, I absolutely should have taken it. Price action had been moving strangely all morning and I hesitated instead of trusting the system. Had I taken the trade, it would have produced about a 48 point gain on one contract, and if I had traded two contracts, the total move would have been worth roughly 203 points.

Ironically, despite how terrible the session felt emotionally, the strategy itself still would have made money today if I had simply followed the rules exactly. The same thing happened yesterday as well. Instead, across both days, I am somehow still down around 100 dollars because I hesitated, second guessed the system, and failed to execute consistently.

That is the real lesson right now. The issue is not necessarily the strategy. The issue is my execution, my discipline, and my willingness to trust the process during uncomfortable periods. If I want this to work long term, I need to stop interfering and commit fully to the rules.

Total Profit: $-98.10