Lately..

I wasn't posting lately, so I just wanted to write my 50 cent for the last few trading days and post some charts..

So what did I have, a very bad time during december, I lost some money, but still lost about 50-100$ a trading day, so it's in the borders of logic, thursday was a great day for me, I made 178.5$ and returned the confidence to me, it was after some time which I didn't trade since I had to rest from trading for a while..

Today I had a bad day, lost 128$, at one point I was -205$, but I recovered from it a bit, anyways I know what my problem was, I didn't put auto stop loss, so I've lost a lot in the first trade, and then I had to "recover" so I lost more, anyways, next time I just need to remember to put stop loss each time I trade, I used to do it automatically.

One last thing, in addition to what is taped to my screen, I'll be taping "always take the first 40$ out fast", since I think it will help me, I see that many trades I take come 40 dollars up, and then lose, but if I'll start positive, I think I'll have better chance to end the day positive.

Here are some trades:

Struggle..

December isn't going so well, and I keep figuring out the hard way, stuff I already figured out in the past.

For example in the last trading day I've had an impulsive rush to just buy something, I didn't wait for a clear long term nice signal, I've just traded by the 5min chart only, without confirmation from the 15 min chart, I think that I'm doing bad lately because I'm kind of in a rush to trade, whenever I'm not in a rush to trade I either earn money, or just fall asleep, waking up to see that my signal could have been a 100$+ winner(on 1 contract).

On the positive side, didn't have days where I lost more than I allow myelf lately, no blowup days, so I think that I'm in the right way, I just need to tape to my screen : "Only take trades with sound signal that you had to wait for".

Trading stocks is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, and I hope for it to also be the most rewarding thing I'll ever do.

Some thoughts..

This was supposed to go as a comment reply to my good friend Asaf (StockHunter), which is doing so well lately, but I decided to write it as an entire post:

It is so god damn hard!! sometimes I get such a frustrations like when I get out of trade that minute later is going my way HARD!

I think that I understand now how trading is gonna be like, I used to imagine it as a fast phase action that last the whole day, but then I realized that it's too stupid to "trade on instincts" , so I set myself the rule of not trading before 11am (so I could see nice setup intraday), and then the rule of trading at home so I could be more focused.

Now I see that I just need to wait, most of the day, for those 3-4 setups that we are so familiar with, and only when they come I should take them, not before, trading impulsively = big losses, trading like an experienced poker player is what I should do, "Fold" most of the day, not being fooled by the market noise, and just wait for clear justification that the trade that I took should work, and take it, get the profits fast, and wait again.

About last month, November, I finished it down, it was a -563$, I've had 8 down days, and 7 up days, but my down days were uncontrolled so I lost more than the 100$ which is my daily stop loss in some of them, it was a month that gave me a wake up call, after being +451$ in October, which was a great month, I felt in god mode, and just ruined the beginning of November, which made it hard for me to recover from the losses, I was actually at -620$ one point in November.

Let's hope December will be better, goal for this month is modest, only 400$, nothing more, little by little, after few up months, I'll higher my contracts size which is 1 right now, I just need the confidence first.

Yesterday -94$ today +37$

Well, today I wasn't such a nice day, but it ended up positive, which is better than negative, I had 1 missed opportunity that could have given me +100$, I was already in the trade, but 20 seconds before it went down sharp, I decided it might go against me, and settled for +10$ :(

This is one of the trades I made today:

Yesterday I was out of focus, I should never trade on days where I'm out of focus, at least I didn't break my daily stop loss rule yesterday.

My goal for december is only 400$, nothing more, I just need to assure myself that when I'm not "testing stuff" or making foolish mistakes like losing 300$ one day, I can make money on the long term, I must provide myself with the proof.