Traded a hell lot on practice today. Since volume was bad again and hardly any orderly trading was expected I was shooting different trade ideas from the hip. 35 trades or so. Some good, some bad and some evil. Obviously down a lot and long series of losing trades. Low volume day obviously exaggerated it a lot, but it is a good thing: too good day may get you into believing that inferior setups work better than their average expectation. Sure, setups did work today too, but generated sequences of losses that would be insane to trade live with even if a good winner would pay off a large chunk of it. Scalping gold with a small stop is not a viable option, something I have proven for myself today. So I can put a stop finally on streaks of trade ideas I am having all the time. For me gold is great to trade with momentum when present, but pretty much nothing else. When gold is not moving fast it is largely chaotic, and while it is still possible to trade it will require a larger stop loss to sustain chaotic ticking up and down. This makes bringing to break even very hard with gold - you get stopped by the weird tick and then it moves away. So the best to trade gold is when it is moving unidirectionally. Then it is most orderly and entries and stops make more sense. Avoid any areas when it stops and just hang in there. Better to bail at BE, it gives opportunities to bail often enough. It should move fast or bail.

So this is something I will practice starting tomorrow:
1. My main setup, look to improve entry and fill given the good order flow, or fade the level if order flow is weak on approaching
2. Mark the key levels, after they worked and price is through, look to fade price action it these points, assuming order flow is not strong on approach, and that level significance is reinforced with mean-reverting pressure, so the best entries are coming from price action spiking through the keltner channel (or BB or something similar, based on statistical distribution)
3. Fade price on VWAP like given that market has a bias and VWAP is skewed from the VPOC, so the volume area is skewed towards market direction, in this case VWAP fade can get me in for the huge ride, check if 10 ticks stop will be better. Risk reward can be 10:1 on a trade like this. Also run few weeks worth of charts checking possible historic VWAP setups and what stops were working. Consider using up to 20 ticks stop for initial entry. Adding to the position can be done at breaking through the key level.

This is 3 simple ideas, I need to work them out to perfection. Rinse and repeat.