Post Mortem of today's trade.

It's officiall. I'm NOT liking trading during low VIX. When I logged on this morning it was at 16.7.. it's normally 18+.. I would say anything above 25 is high. Well, what can u do? Not trade? Just wait for vix to return to a normal level? Well, yea, maybe.. That might have saved me some losses and given me a nice 2 weeks of extra ZZzzzzzz's. :)

Maybe I'll learn my lesson and learn when NOT TO TRADE more. I just feel like it's slacking off and that I should be trading. I could jump on papermoney, or just trade, but with less contracts.. hmmmmmmm, I'll think about it some more.

Well, things looked good on the hourly chart this morning..

clearly in a bull trend. The only unusual thing was the rather large drop of price overnight. But that should just bode well for a rise back up, right?

15m showed a small pullback happening, but the trend was UP.

Here on the 5m, things looked good. This is when I would normally enter.. get it on a pullback, which gets me an extra .05, then it's on to profit. Well, maybe that USUALLY works during NORMAL market conditions, but this is the lowest VIX has been all 2023.

I was feeling good about the delta I got in at. I thought low vix was supposed to mean calmer waters, but it's turning out to mean any big fish or two or ten can make waves and throw off the flow with relative ease. (and a lot of money).

Things were going as planned for about 10 minutes, then DROP..!! Even if I had waited for price to move off of the 100ema like I had spotted, I would've entered after it was looking good at 10 minutes in.. maybe wait 20 minutes??

I kept thinking this was just another stop hunt move, and that my stop would save me.. price WANTS to go back up to 100ema.. NOPE.

Price did try and go UP, but the bears dragged it down. Still, I was hopeful for a return to bull action real soon..

Just two minutes later.. stop triggered. I was out.

I waited till end of day to take this snap.. to try and make sense of things.. what could I have done different/better? or maybe it was a sign of when NOT to even trade.

dark brick line shows LOD (previous low of day) and I thought price would respect that, but I guess not. Turns our price ended almost exactly at my strike price, but I tell myself that it could've just as easily pushed down more.. I bet a few accounts were busted by this market fake out today. :(

So, in the future, when in low vix, I will either skip trading and just do papermoney or I'll do my trade with less capital at risk.

Since my last loss I had a few wins, then this loss..

w 4/121 IC 5
f 4/1413 pcs 135
w 4/192 pcs 80
th 4/203 pcs -285

total: 220 - 285 = -65 (see? 1 less contract traded today would've turned this into a winning cycle.. oh well.)

To end on a positive.. it looks like today's crazy drop DID wake up people and get VIX moving back up..