Need Improvement.

I was just re-thinking my trading on the past 2 days, and I found few things worth mentioning.

I need to trade less, I mean.. I take too many trades, and its just not the way, I need to concentrate on quality, not on quantity.

I need to utilize the R method better, in the last two days I was just slacking, I always took trades with 100 shares, and that means that my stop was always 20c below, which isn't that good, since some trades took more space to go, and others were winners that needed only 10c stop which means I could buy 200 shares and make twice as much money, so I really need put my focus on quality of a trade, instead of just trading whatever moves.

The markets make your mind blurry when they are open, so I need to make a mental preparation before the market starts, and be just fluent when the market is open.

I hope I'll utilize the stuff I write here on my trading, that way I'll get better.

Daily Journal -1.5R

Beginer's luck gone! real life is here :)
Well not really, today I lost only 15$, so it's ok, the fact of the matter is, if this is a losing day, its great! in my Futures times losing day would cost me 200$ or so..

I'll be reviewing the trades I made today, I don't think many of them were that bad, I just think I had too many of them, again I had 1 stock making me about 5R and few others losing like falling birds, I need to find that stock that does 5R, and only trade it and 1 or 2 more, like on the days I'm profitable.

As I said before, I see a pattern, losing days tend to be more aggressive, many stocks are being trade, while in winning days I trade a few, and make it fast and well, I should think again before I take each and every trade, and maybe limit myself to trade less amount of stocks, more quality.

Hope you had a better day than I did,
Tomer

1 Chart..

Nothing much to say, I just wanted to cheer myself up so I put the best trade of the last few days..

I think that the faster the trade goes your way, the better it is ranked by me, and this one was very fast going..

LDG 22 May:

Daily Journal -3.2R

Today I have had a bad day, that happens too, it's part of the business of the stock market.

Some key points from today:
1. I came to my father's home at north, and the trading system wasn't ready, my whole enviroment wasn't ready and I only finished making it ready by 9:30am, and then started to acumulate watch list, etc, but when the market is on, the mind is disturted, so I didn't really have a real watch list.
What should be done? I should only come 30 min before the market open and get ready, this week I had a day where I wasn't ready, and I just didn't trade, this what I should do.

2. I traded A LOT today, something like 18 different trades, this is too much for me, my trading style works mainly in the morning, and today, I didn't have so many good setups in the morning, I should do like Trader X is saying and come to the market thinking "I don't really have to trade today", and ignore the bad setups.
I also thought about a new rule, whenever I have 20+ tickets of buy/sell, I should watch my PNL, if it's +1.5R, I'm doing ok and I should continue doing what I'm doing, and if it's less, I should stop trading for the day so I won't have a very bad day.. only a minor loss..

The system is all about taking small losses and big winners, you can't beat the house, and I intend to be the house :)

I have got to admin that today I took about 2-3 trades without a signal, I just wanted to be in the stock for the pure gambling of that, I guess that's what happens when your day start going wrong. I'm glad I didn't have a blow up day, and I didn't lose all the profits I worked so hard to accumulate in the past 3 weeks.

Bottom line, I'm still profitable, I'll get ready for next week, and after that goes well, I'll higher my R Size by 5$.

Daily Journal +4.85R

Today was the fastest day I've ever had, after trading for 27min I finished, I don't want to give back anything to Mother Market :) so I just called it a day.

I'll detail the trades with charts later since there were only 3 of them, 1 loser (ESLR) and 2 winners (LDG, FLIR).

Yesterday I took a day off, I was too "overconfident" to trade, I didn't want to have a blowup day, and also I wasn't prepared well enough before the market was open, mentally and technically.

I want to keep things like this for the next week, and then higher my risk 5$ a week, if I'm losing some week, I'll lower it by 10$.

Have a good day,
Tomer

Blog?

I'm not sure if anyone is reading my blog, since there are no comments, but I think the blog serves a purpse, every day when I finish the day I automatically report the results for this blog, this way I finish the day without making foolish mistakes.

I found that my style works best at the first 1 and a half hours, so I trade at that time, I saw evolution trader's post where he said that he too finish the day at about 10:30 - 11:00, I don't see any good reason to trade after that hours, and also I've got tight schedule in my life so I don't have any more time..

My focus now is on 3 milestones:

First milestone - To get to a point where my R(risk) is 100$, this should be tough, since my R now is 20$, I plan to higher it by 5$ every week starting two weeks from now.

Second milestone - To get to a point where my R is 200, it will be hard since I don't have th capital yet to support such a move, so I'll have to dig into my savings to find it, or just earn it on the way to the point where my R is 100$.

Third milestone - To get to a point where my R is 400$, this is the ultimate challange, as I see it, I can make about +2.5R on a winning day, which means that once my R is 400$, I can possibly make 1000$ a day, which is my goal for now, I'll see how it develops, but I think that 1000$ a day is very good, especially if I wanna do "around the world" travel while trading, I could work few days each month, and it should be sufficent to "fuel" my trip.

So again, why blog? I have all of the information in excel sheets, well I blog because it's one way to keep me disciplned, and it give me a routine to do everyday after I finish trading, it's like signing off trading, I post Daily Journal, and then I cannot put another trade, because then I'll be only misleading myself.

So, I'll keep this blog up to date, until I see that I can be disciplned without it.

Oh and did I say that today that Disciplne is the key in trading? well it is, you have a method, and money management, but the third piece is disciplne, it is the key to make every thing work best, without foolish mistakes, we all should aspire to be highly disciplned, I hope you guys are.

Daily Journal +2.8R

I'm starting to think trading is harder than I thought..

Today I had a hard day, I took so many losers, it was one of those "lose" days, but somehow one trade changed it all, DRYS just went about a dollar my way, so I said "thanks you god", closed other losing position, and called it a day.

I'm not sure exactly what my trading style is, I know it's fast, and I know I need to interrogate some of today's trades, they came off too much impulsive, yesterday trades were "clean", I took them right on the break, today was.. as I said before, HARD.

Good day and good luck trading,
Tomer

Thanks Asaf!

I'd like to devote this post to a dear friend of mine, Asaf, he also has a blog at http://stockhunter-dt.blogspot.com/ , but he doesn't update it anymore, so I acually have to talk to the guy each time I want him to keep me updated.. that sux :)

Long long time ago, we met at some Israeli forum, both swing traded, and did well, after some time, we both realized that swing trading is so slow, but only he had the capital to Day trade, so he started..

He learned the way, made his mistakes and profits, and after gaining much confidence in his trading, he stopped posting, but he is still activly trading, and doing great, at that time I day traded Futures and lost so much money, I could have had fun going to a stripper club and tip all of the girls instead of losing the Futures money.

Anyways, he helped me improve a lot, and be in the position I am today (started day trading stocks two weeks ago, and hve 7 winner days and 2 loser days), so I just wanted to say "Thank you", even today's trades were his stock picks hehe (except for SOLF, which I have an affair with lately :)

I wish you well, and see you when I'll be a bit richer and start my "Around the world" trip !

Charts!

I Finally got the time to put some charts on..



Here are two good charts from Friday 16th May:

BMC - The mistake of the day.. how not to trade:

SOLF, Educational of the day, I exited the stock in 3 different spots:






And for Today's Charts (19th of May):

LOW - How to turn a loser to a V.Small winner :



And ACH - Winner of the day:



I know I don't write much in the post, it's because the whole explanation is inside the charts..

Daily Journal +3.4R

Hmm ok, so just a reminder, R is the amount of money Risked per trade, in my case it's only 20$, which means I've "earned" 68$ today, net, after commissions..

I see a pattern in winning days, they have less trades, I'm risking less, today I was at a stock which went a little lower than my entry (higher since it was short), but I got out of it at a small gain, instead of gambling whether it will continue or not.

Winning trades go fast, they start fast, if it isn't moving, it means it's a medium / bad trade, so I just quit it, what I hate in trading is losing money, and today I had 3 winners, and I really don't need more than that to "call it a day" and stop trading, I'm actually very busy at work, so it's a good thing that I'm not trading out of boredom, it took me a hour to generate 3.4R, and if my R will be 100$ or more, a year from now, I'll have 340$ for a hour's work, sounds damn good to me:)

Gotta go,
Hope you guys had a good day,

Tomer

Daily Journal +2.25R

Well well well.. not easy on the market today..

I started by making a 60 cents loss on 100 shares mistake on BMC, the stock moved down while I "gave it a place to grow", how silly from me, and so my market order caught it -60 below my entry.. not a fun way to start the day.

I was going no where with NOK, trying to short it at the beginning of the day, lost only 8 cents there since I saw that the just isn't working. again went no where with SRCL, losing 6 cents while the stock just did NOTHING. today really was frustrated for me in the morning, at least I caught AMLN for a ride at about 10am.

I will post charts later, promise!

Thats it for now, I'll go eat something, this spicy doritos I ate while trading doesn't count as food.

Daily Journal -1.5R

I'm not sure what happened today, but I see a pattern, whenever I'm due to have a losing day I trade like 6 different stocks, and whenever the day is good I trade fewer.. lets see where this develops..

Anyways, I did get 1 stock that got a 1$ gain, and still got to the point where the day is negative, I'm glad I stopped before it went bad like it usually does on losing days..

At the end of the day I said to myself "lets take this trade, and see if it gets me to be break even", the trade did make me NET positive, after partial, but the other half was brutal, it just went down so fast that my market order hit and gave me slippage, I hate it when that happens..

Charts will follow later..

Hope you had a better one,

Tomer

14 May Charts JASO, YGE

Charts Charts Charts...

Well I'll post two of them, I think that they are both solid, not over the head, I didn't make 1$ in any of them, but the few cents that I did make were worth it anyways.

JASO -Fast phase trade that became boring :





YGE - Another dummy trade:


I also traded ESLR, nothing special there..

Daily Journal +4.1R

What a nice day! 3 winners, +4.1R net, I couldn't be happier :)

I think I'm starting to fall in love with trading all over again, I mean.. damn it's fun, it's fast, when you have a loser, you cut it fast, when you have a winner, you let it grow, see how much you can extract from him.

Today I finally have been highly disciplined, followed my plan, didn't over trade, utilized the R system completely, took partials on 2R like my friend have taught me, everything just blend perfectly, I think it was my day trading at it's best.

I took a step back from the 1min charts like my friend said about yesterday's trades, and moved higher to 5min and 15min charts, and it went just fine..

The philosophy I like best is what Trader X wrote in his blog, come to the markets with the mindset of "I don't have to trade today", and that way I don't take mediocare set-ups, and just went for the best I could find, I finished the day as soon as I saw that the next trade will only going to ruin things, if after 3 winners I'd have a loser, I'll think "ahh, I've made 3 straight winners, I can't be wrong!", and keep eating my profits lose after lose, so I just realized I should stop trading since I've had enough R for today :)

Hope you guys have a good day yourself.

Daily Review

Today's special, All of today's trades charts in one post !

But first, little statistics : 4 winners and 2 losers, worst loser -3.5R (slippage of market order), best winner +2.5R.

HUN - The first loser of the day:

As written in the graph, the stock seem to not have volume at the time of the "breakout", so lesson learnt for next time, I will only trade stocks that have volume when I trade them..

SYMC - The almost perfect trade of the day graph wise, the only error I had here was that I didn't take partial:

SNDK - The one that got away easy.. I exit the trade too soon without any good reason:

BYI - this one I have question for you, take a look at the graph, and tell me if I should have waited for a cup and handle to happen, or should I re enter maybe? :

GIGM - The one I got bored with, should I really have exit it?:

FWLT - The one who got me losing 3.5R out of slippage, bad market order and slow reaction:

Sorry for the long post, but your answers will be much of help to me :)

Daily Journal +0.5R

Hmm.. I'm not sure whether to be happy with the results or not, I've been day trading stocks for about 5 days now, after 8 months of day trading Futures, so I know how to trade, but this stocks is a whole different thing.

I've gotta admit that trading the Futures sometimes bore me to sleep, honestly, I slept few minutes before a good breakout came many times, since it's that boring, all I did was looking at the same graph of the NQ all day long, and nothing really happened, except for a few magical times. When you day trading stocks every thing moves! and fast, sometimes I miss good trades, other times I miss bad trades and feel thrilled with luck that I missed taking a bad trade, but mostly, IT JUST MOVES!

I'll get used to it in a couple of weeks I guess, but for now it is strange, and fun at the same time :) I'll post later about the stats, and some graphs so you could see how coward of trader I am :)

Take care and good luck trading.

Daily Journal -106$

Ironic enough, this is the whole gains from last week :) I think I'll retire.. Not!!!

Before I review what I did today, I'll give you some stuff from my trading plan.
Since I've just started Day trading stocks, I'll utilize the R system, and for now my risk per trade, is 20$, my daily stop loss is -3R, which means -60$, and I set myself another "anti blow up days rule" which is to quit trading after 3 bad trades in a row.

So what the hell went wrong today? why didn't I just stop after losing 60$?
First of all I'd like to say that I'm very proud of myself, for one thing, I KEPT ALL OF MY STOPS! meaning, I didn't make the mistake most people who start trading do and "prey" the stock will go my way while losing tons of money on the process, every time a stock went -20$, a market order was hit and a small slippage occurred.

So again, you're asking what the hell is wrong with me? OVERTRADING, yes yes, I've gotta admit, I over traded today, thinking this will help me get out of the hole that I dig myself, but it was just the opposite, last week my Win/Lose percentage was 70% win 30% loss, and today alone it was like 14% win and 86% loss, so.. this should teach me a lesson-

"After a 3 losing trades, I should always STOP trading"

The mind is so upset and clouded by the fact that you have lost, and the next trade you take is just random, and not because a good setup (of course at the time, every trade looks like the perfect setup).

Even if YHOO just announced they are planning to buy google (LOL), I'm not trading, today it was really funny, I had 1 stock that immediately failed and gave me about -23$ in PnL after commissions, and 2 others which got to +1R, so I set the stop to the entry, and then they both stopped out with small slippage which gave me to be -30$ total on the day, which is -1.5R, that's a good "losing day", and not -5R like today.

I hope this will not happen anymore, I know that you've got to learn stuff on your own skin, even if I read it in many books, it happened to me, now after the damage I've caused to my small account, I'll take the lesson with me and more forward.

Have a nice day,
Tomer

ATPG and YHOO 8th May

ATPG:

What is the setup? - Nice B&B with large enough stop.

Entry and stop are in the graph himself:

YHOO:

What is the setup? - Whole number breakout

Target and stop in the graph himself:

Daily Journal +5.5$

Today was one of those days I usually get punched in the face when I used to trade Futures, the stock market was friendlier..

Considaring the fact that I entered and exited 14 trades, I still managed to be positive in the NET side, and it's pretty amazing.. I totally overtraded today, but it's only because I was so convinced that "trading is easy" :)
I even got to catch TRLG on the 22$ break, the best I could find today, but I only rode it like 40 cents, instead of the whole move..

I managed to handle 3 positions at the same time, using Stops etc I was able to do so, and I'm glad I didn't lose money doing some foolish mistakes.

I need to orginaize my trading this week end, and see how things go.

Have a nice weekend !

Daily Journal +66$

Well again, it's not alot, but it's good to start day trading stocks with such a "begginer's luck" as I have :)

I hope I won't get the trading high, get into god mode and think every trade I make is a winner from now on, because when that's happen, you start losing X3 more than you win in avg day...

Today I had 2 trades, both were base and break setup, and I'll post charts later..
One thing I did wrong today, in my YHOO trade, I had 10 cents stop loss, and my R right now is 20$, but I took only 100 shares which means I put a different R, 10$ one, and that's not a good idea, to adopt such a bad habits, as my friend (and only reader of this blog?) told me, the customs I adopt now will accompany later on my trading carrier, so I must obey the R system.

Charts will be upped later today,

Daily Journal +34.5$

Hi all,

I know it's close to nothing, but I think it's impressive for a first trade..

I saw ERES on the most gainer stocks of this morning, and thought that while it went out side of range, and it's forming sort of base and break, it can very well be a nice first trade to take.

What is the Setup? - Gapping up outside of range, and B&B.

Where is Entry? - Higher than the B&B (Base and break) 14.47

Where is the Stop? - Lower than the last swing low at 14.23

Where is the Targer? -It wasn't predefined, I know I wanted to get between 1.5R to 2.5R

ERES Trade:

And for the mistake, the market is still on and the highest point(it's 10:10am now) of ERES is 15.24, so I could take more profits, but I really have to go and I had no time to wait..

Hope this continues like this, I really enjoyed trading today, and seemed like I picked a stock that even when the market was going down, the stock went up, so I'm happy with that :)

Have a nice day,

Tomer

Evolution of a day trader.

I must admit, I did lose money trading futures, you can't run from the truth, so after saying that, I'd like to talk about it a little bit..

I think that trading the US Futures markets, YM (Dow jones) and NQ (Nasdaq) is really like basic training in the army, and I served in the Israeli army so I should know what they say there, they say "Hard in training, easy in battle", and I think that trading the US Futures markets was really hard training, I'm not saying that it's going to be "easy in battle" when I'll trade stocks, but I think that losing this amount of money, knowing I won't get it back, controling my emotions when I lost sometimes, and mostly just doing foolish mistakes, got me better prepared for trading stocks :)

So what's next? I haven't lost faith, I still think I can do this, I have the belief that I can trade the stock market and make money, so I'm going to Day trade US stocks.

The evolution went from Swing trading profitably US stocks, to day trading US futures since I didn't came to the 25K$ criteria of the pattern day trader, to now, day trading US stock market with starting amount of 6K$, under LLC firm so I could day trade with less than 25K$ (which I currently don't have).

I'm currently in the process of learning a lot, I have set my LLC account last week, but still haven't made a single trade, not even a test of the new broker, I'm reading all of the methods, trying to see what trading style suits best, I've grown up from being impulsive and "just put on trades and pray", to wait for until I learn as much as I can, and only after doing such a research, putting on a trade, and not even hoping for it to be successful, in the perfect world I would like every trade I make to be profitable, but in the trading business one must know that he is in the business of making money, but in the trading business there is never 100% profits, and I think that having "the beginner's luck" might make me over confident and cause me to lose money..

I'll update about the method that I think that is most suited to me in the next few days, and hopefully have a better third time trading (swing, futures, now stocks). :)

Wish me all luck, and I hope you guys are doing great yourself.

Tomer