Tagging this under "basics" because there isnt a specific "price action" catagory that really applies. Nobody else but me will probably end up reading this, and Im doing it more as an exercise in learning..but here goes.

 Even as new as I am to this game, I had a terrible trade yesterday. EBIO was breaking out. I caught wind of it late, missed the big spike. Didnt buy immediately since it appeared to stall just under 2$. I figured if it pushed past 2, id buy in and see if it could test multi month resistance at 2.24 ish. Long story short, it made 2.10 and then faded down to 1.88 which is when I decided to get out. WAY too late. I was hemming and hawing over losing a "precious" day trade...let that make me hesitate and stayed in to long. Also my position size was too large given my tiny account. I kind of got caught up in the frenzy and got too emotional.

 It did end up rallying today, so an overnight hold would have been nice, but given how much it was down when I exited, I just could not see a reason to hold.

Another issue I had yesterday was that I had my own watchlist of about 10 tickers. Then I tuned into the chat and got very distracted with all the additional tickers being talked about there. My concentration got way too extended. My span of control had been exceeded, making me feel flustered, bouncing back and forth from one chart to another, to another and back again. I think this lack of focus also contributed to my poor judgement. So the lesson there is to STAY FOCUSED on one or two plays. If they work out great. If not, thats OK...nothing lost.

 

 At any rate, with funds still settling and only a day trade to burn I decided to just concentrate on learning today. I google price action and found an interesting and simple article explaining how to read it. I hope its OK to post the link here, because I really thing it might help others with similar experience levels.

https://www.dailyfx.com/forex/education/trading_tips/daily_trading_lesson/2013/10/04/Four_Simple_Ways_to_Price_Action.html

Thats the article and the link to the short Price Action video is here:

http://www.brainshark.com/fxcm/jspriceaction

 

So after watching and re-watching it a couple times, I decided to open up my TOS and just WATCH the candlesticks on EBIO. JUST EBIO, so as to practice the FOCUS that I mentioned earlier. So thats what I did...for almost the entire last three hours until market close. I was attempting to gauge support and resistance levels...predict price action based on pins, dojis and enveloping candles. By the last hour or so of the day, I was actually getting pretty good at seeing trending market directions and forecasting where and when they would happen based on the support and resistance levels I had identified. I papertraded in my mind and actually would have had a couple of decent gains off of a couple dip-buy bounces that I actually saw coming. Additionally , I was hyper-aware of sudden downtrends once key support levels were breached, and so, would I have actually been live trading, I would have immediately exited the position. Not doing so quick enough was the cause of my excessive losses yesterday.

 So all in all, even though I was not able to trade today, I made productive use of my time and it took the sting out of my bumbling trade yesterday. Today was a good day!