Sticking to the plan: A lesson from DAX and FTSE noise

I had a rough patch a few months back, specifically around the time $DAX and $FTSE were seeing that higher volatility from the geopolitical news. My main issue was letting the intraday chop, which was amplified then, pull me into overtrading. My original weekly analysis for both indices had clear levels for potential entries and exits, focusing on the larger swing structure. But seeing those sharp, often baseless, intraday moves, I started chasing. A small dip would look like the start of a breakdown, leading to an early exit, only for price to snap back to my original target. Or, conversely, a quick spike would look like the next leg up, and I'd enter on what ended up being a exhaustion wick. This wasn't about the directionality of my initial read; it was about abandoning the higher timeframe plan for what amounted to noise. Cost me a solid week's worth of gains by just getting chopped up in the middle, purely from abandoning conviction in my own analysis. The lesson, again, was the importance of sticking to the pre-defined levels and not letting the short-term market narrative dictate execution.