Getting Chopped Up

Sure the focus should be on shorting due to:

- Price below all MA's

- Price broke down from wedge consolidation on huge volume

- Next support is multiple dollars away

However, the only short trade should have been in the morning when price broke the morning uptrend. and held it or held partially until the downtrend is broken or at vwap.

Since I wasn't in the office during this move, I had tried to scale into another position to short as price approached the initial break down area. However, this is something I need to minimize for the following reasons:

- Price remains above vwap

- This retracement is has retraced to no-man's land...see higher timeframes, therefore there's a ways either way that price will move before moving lower. See 30min timeframe: price may retrace all the way back up to descending trendline before moving lower, therefore the better short would have been as close to the down trend line as possible. Only short if price shows very clear patterns of weakness that it's going to break before reaching as far out.

- Price has been making higher high/higher lows after the initial down move. 

- A trend break doesn't mean that it'll go down. It could go sideways, or back up as it the market wishes. 

- The short at 44 has lower probability because price is being supported by buyer at 43.78 (where morning downtrend move ended) and vwap. What's the risk/reward here?? If I entered at 44, i'm looking at around 20 cents of downside, vs 20 cents of upside. That's not a poor risk/reward trade.

Which conditions should be met before shorting?

- price dips below vwap

- price takes out buyer at 43.78 and showing weakness at this level

- price showing weakness around morning low of 43.59/ breaks this level

- I should only short on retracements, never chase which puts me in a position of strength.

The only thing I did right was to control risk by going in 1/2 lots.