Daily Journal -4.36R

Well well well, it's starting to be somewhat normal that I lose a big amount of money, I think I won't get my bonus after all..

If you've read my last post, I suggested putting a firm trading rules, and pretend having a boss which is abroad, that will give me a big bonus if I'll keep up with the trading rules, that means I wouldn't get my bonus if I keep up like this.

Trading rules broken:
1. Only take trades that are suited (entry point is logical), and if my mind is clear (didn't revenge trade). - I revenge trade since I've lost money on a stock... bad for business.
2. I take my stops when I'm supposed to. - I took stops after I lost a little more than a R.

3. If I lose money twice in the same stock, I stop trading it for the day. - I lost money twice in AMZN and kept trading it.

4. Exit a position if I'm negative after 10 minutes. - I waited longer than I should have in VDSI.

5. I'm done for the day if I have 3 consecutive losing trades. - I did have 3 consecutive losing trades and I still didn't finish the day.

6. I'm done for the day if I am down more than 2R. - Looking on my daily journal, I did lose more than 2R didn't I? twice as much? more? ....

Looking at things, it seems that I had all of the reasons to quit, and yet I didn't what a shame.. I'll be printing my Trading rules so I'll look at them before each and every trade I make, I guess any one of those rules could of helped me not losing 4R, I could quit before but I just had to "play with luck" and prove again that "I must be right".

Toasted today..

I will trade tomorrow, only with paying close attention to my Trading rules, the boss won't be happy if he'll come back and see that I kept breaking the rules every day.. he might.. fire me? (or I might just blow up my account hehe).

Hope everyone else had a better day,

Tomer

Daily Journal -6R - BLOWUP

How to blow out your account, true story T.t

Well, First trade I set a stop at -45$, which is my R, and got out at -63$, market orders suck right? well the next trade I put a stop at -45$ again, and got out at -87$ !!!! Now that's pissing off!!
After I've had those two very traumatic trades, I wrote myself a memo - "Never trade in OPEX, Never trade in OPEX".. and kept trading.. well you don't really call it trading, it's more like "Revenge trading".. so at one point I was -400$, fucking frustrated, and feeling pretty useless at the time, in Israel it's about two weeks of minimum wage, I just wasted it in about half an hour, so.. I told to myself - "Well.. what have I got to lose? I've lost so much already.. let's trade saint..", so I initiated some "smart" trades, and got it to -234$ gross, and -270$ after commissions, which still sucks, but under the circumstances, I haven't got much to lose..

I'm sure I learned from the mistake, and added additional rule to my trading rules, which is to stop trading if you've lost the first trade with slippage, and I think I'll also add to stop trading if my mind isn't really focused on trading, and more focused on how much frustrating something (like losing 87$ instead of only 45$) is.

Now I've got to negative, my account value have dropped below where I started it back in May, 184$ losses.. well well.. I'm still learning.. I've also added money from my MBT account, to support higher R's, since I only plan to risk 1% max on each trade, and my account value is so small..

The good thing is that I still think positive, after looking at DT's blog, and seeing how some ACE is making 42K$ a day, I still believe that I could make a modest 1000$ a day trading, and be free from a day job, even after what happened today, ah and moreover, I wasn't panicked at any moment, the revenge trade have clouded my judgment, but after I saw how bad I really am doing, I started recovering a little bit.

BlowUp day today, I hope everyone else was doing great!

Good day,
Tomer

Ahh and for sure I'm taking a break tomorrow, to clear things out..

Daily Journal -3R

Today sucked, I'm not sure why, but it seems that 1 trade cause all of this, all of the other trades were fine, nothing big really, but there was one trade I couldn't handle..

I took AMZN with 200 shares, which about the max share size my R=40$ permits, and I was suppose to sell it when it went down 20 cents, but.. I had to "prove that I'm right", and wind up losing about 150$ on that trade alone.. I never saw my PNL in stock markets go down so much, so I immidiately shorted AMZN for a 50$ gain, coming to think about it, it was stupid, and very emotional, but I think it was so many trades that slip away...

Yes Asaf, I'm waiting for setups, but they come so "rarely", and I always miss them, so I take stupid trades with "no setup" that usually works, this time AMZN proved me otherwise, but I was frustrated that about 3 breakout trades slip away from me, that I had to take AMZN... this stock and V are always moving somewhere :) and I like joining them on whichever direction.

Overall I'm a disappointed, I truly thought I went trough this emotion thing, but I guess the way for being "a machine" is still infront of me.

Daily Journal -1.5R

The bottom line of today is.. that "it could have been worse", I was one point at -100$, and then had 2 nice trades (1 scalp other small gainer) that just made me finish with a little more respect..

I traded AMZN 3 times today, not sure why, the first two times caused me losing a R each, and the third time I've had a small winner which didn't help a thing..

I think I'll upload some charts later on, I've gotta go from work right now..
I hope I'll have time to post charts, they are educational and will help me ,and hopefully you guys improve.

Later...

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 -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

Blogging..

After losing yesterday more than I should (116$), I think I'll have to start blogging again.

Why? I'm down 250$ this month, and if I won't say it, it will continue, I remember times like October, where I had a great month, and why did I have that? because I was keeping a diary, analyzing my graphs, and just keeping my spirit up.

Lately I'm not, I'm just coming to the market each day, in a hurry, trying to make a killing, and get out, and it's not the way to do it, in October I just took small winners each day, something like a trade a day, and it worked.

Yesterday I traded impulsively, without thinking so much, or a certain method, and it was bad, the results show that it was bad..
Friday, I was +60$ up, and I manage to finish the day down, not down by a lot, but it still stupid to finish the day down after you have something in your pocket.

Today I decided to try something different, I must just watch the market, take paper trade when opportunity is perfect, and see the results, after yesterday's impulsive behavior, I must take some time off (like today) from real trading, and see what happens.

Tomorrow I will be allowed to trade only if I didn't trade today.

From now on I'm back on blogging, I will be accounted for and therefore will be pushing myself into results.

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.

-87$ one of these days..

Well I'm glad it has only been -87$ down day, instead of what happened to me Friday which was losing 154$ (54$ more than my rules say).

I started the day with a loser(1R), then a winner (1.5R), and from then it got messy, I kept trying to bet where the bottom will be, and go long, instead of just going with the flow, and short the market, I'm not sure how many times can I read the basic rule "The trend is your friend" and still not follow it, unpredictably enough the only good trades I made were on the short side..

In days like this, what I should do it stop try to fight the trend, wait something like 40 to 60 minutes recap myself, and begin the hunt for a good trade, today I was focused too much on the same false breakout, trying to win it all over again, and it didn't break the upper trend line of the downtrend.

Overall I wasn't in sync with the markets today (forcing long trades in downtrend), and I hope to do better tomorrow.

P.S - Tweety animation is coming along great, I'll post the result in the next few days.

About -150$(net) - why?

I seem to be going two steps forward, and then two steps backward hehe.

Look, there are some days where I just shouldn't trade, and today is one of these days, I was having a nice start as always, but then I had about two or three bad trades and I just couldn't stop, I think the commissions I'm going to pay to MBT today is about 50$, which is way too much..

What happend? I wasn't in sync with the markets, I was taking impulsive trades, keep hopping from one trade to another, and two times I was about to get out of the minus, and had a trade moving 90$ my way, but then I let it turn into a loss!!!! that's why I said yesterday that I should always take about 70$, stop with the greed already! I should have had a good day if I would have sold some of the positions earlier..

Well now I feel crappy, I'm acually flat since September, all of the time spent learning the markets, trading, having the familier andrenaline rush you get when you trade impulsively(like today), having some quiet days like yesterday where everything adds up and is fine, and still, I seem to not be able to control my bad days.. I'll write myself notes from today and put them next to my screen..

Note#1 - "Stop with the greed, take minimal profit while you can (70$ / 3.5NQ pts).
Note#2 - "After having a bad trade, step back from the screen, don't get rushed into taking another trade so quickly".
Note#3 - "Always obey to the money management rules, if you are close to expose more than 100$ to the markets just finish the day, you will have a better day tommorow".

That's all for now, need to think more positive, and the results will come..

Out of Sync lately..

Well I'm out of sync lately..
Friday I was "trying" ES for the first time, and man is it fast... I managed to lose 179$ in a matter of seconds.. too bad I took a wrong trade..

Today (Monday) I was just out of sync, I'll need to focus for tomorrow if I wanna be profitable.. I took 3 trades today, the first I quit fast since I went to eat, and had a "gut feeling" it was wrong, it turned out to be a 10 points trade, but I quit after getting one point since I didn't believe in the trade:( and the rest of the trades were just silly.. nothing to go on too much, the third was on the right direction but then flipped and I already put my stop on the initial position, so I didn't lose too much money..

PNL today -58.5$, sux, but I'll live :)

Hope to do better tomorrow

-143.5$ Losing day

Ok, So today I've lost money, the reason being was that I was too anxious to prove that I'm right, I entered almost at the same place (just before the collapse) and went long, losing 88.5$ combined, and then when I had the "guts" to go short, my stop was to tight.. so even though my call was right this time, I couldn't join it again because of the limits I've set to myself, which is while having this small account, never risk more than 150$ a day.

I'm Glad I've got to listen to my trading plan, and don't feel bad at all about losing this money. long term I'll still win this game :)

Gapping down :(

Quick update:
Today my swing position of VDSI have gapped down today and is now -33.95% only today, this have been my biggest nightmare, usually stocks gap down 10% max, and it is ok since other swings are winners and overall I'm usually up, but this is too much, the last straw? might just be.
I'll be thinking about it this weekend, I hate it when stuff like this happen, after I'm finally up 327$ on my day trade, which used to be harder for me than swing trade, I'm almost break even on the month results because of my swing trading.
Also, I think that I didn't day trade in the last few days because my mind was too busy thinking what should I do with the swing trading..

I think that swing trading is too stressful for me, and today's gap down have shown me what I hate the most about this style of trading, this unexpected stuff are terrible for business, in day trade you don't hold positions over night and therefore you go to sleep with the profit / loss that you had that day, and when you come back to trade a week later it remains the same..

I'll think about it over the weekend, any thoughts from my 2.5 readers?

Yet another losing day -70$

Today I've made some mistakes, but I'm still happy with the result, let me explain..

Ok so the first trade I took was stupid, but it was stopped right after losing 2 NQ pts, and then I made another trade and decided to sell on profit after 2 NQ pts, so were even now right? Nope, commissions make me be on the downside at the beginning of the day.

Then I had spotted a beautiful setup, took it, and it actually ran 4 pts up, and I really wanted to sell 3.5 pts in up but greed have made me not to, I saw that the direction of the trend is changing against me and still waited for the initial stop loss, not good, at one point I wanted to quit at the entry and just be even, but stupidity didn't let me.

As for the rest of the day I had spotted two 5pts NQ moves and froze before taking them, so I decided to just quit the trading day very early, and put myself into a test, when I first day traded I would open my trading platform after saying I wouldn't, but nowadays I do all sort of thing in order to avoid it, yesterday I just went having fun with friends, and today I tested my self control and stayed home, with the computer, and yet didn't open my trading platform, that is why I said up there that I'm still happy with today.

Hope to have a better day tomorrow :)

Monday trades..

The PnL for today is -8.5 NQ points and here are the mistakes.
First of all I traded at work even thought I have a rule against it, so the trades were stressed, and not nice.

Since I'm new to NQ I didn't put myself auto stop loss like I have 10pts in YM, so after investigating the charts I set myself a rule of risking only 2 NQ points each trade, unless the market volatility grows (happens rarely).

You know what is freefalling? this is what I did with the futures today, just letting them fall on me, it's not good for business, also I traded against the main trend, even thought all markets confirmed that there might be a direction change.

The second trade was stupid, I didn't know how exactly should I risk so I just went on with the trade, and quit too early, it was eventually to be a winner but I sold at it's weakest point.

Note to self - next time you don't have time to trade, just don't.. you need a piece of mind in order to trade.

When do you stop?

Today I'll be talking about the daily stop loss, since yesterday I had a strange day, I started it at up, then made another money, combined I made my profit for the day, which was roughly 150$, and then I started plunging down, and kept going all the way to my stop loss..

So here is what I realized yesterday, I should always start with my initial stop loss of the day (1.5% of capital), and once I'm up with profit, just move the -Daily stop loss- up, which means sometimes I can earn 100$ on a profitable day, or on days like monday when my method works well, I won't stop myself after earning 200$, but rather at 800$ profits, it's what they say "cut losers short, and let winners run" :) I always realized it on stocks, but now I starting to learn my lesson on my equity curve.

So many lessons to learn trading, let's hope I'll stop paying my tuition soon.

Balance in trading.

Recently I've been paying too much attention to the stock market, trading, and anything that is financial, I need to balance it a little bit, and continue studying spanish and chinese like I want.

Today I lost 66$ after commisions, which is ok since I only been infront of the market for 30 minutes combined, my sister came for a visit which made me happy, so I didn't have too much time to trade, I had so many missed opportunities, and when I was finally +80$ on the day after starting it in a -100$ loss, I managed to take few wrong calls and lose the profits, then I decided to stop the trading day and go eat dinner (at 22:40 israel time which is 15:40 USEAST time).

After last week, and today, I really believe that making money in the markets is easy when you follow your plan, as I said I'm going to reward myself each day I follow my plan, and not each day I make money, because sometimes (rarely) it's inevitable to lose.

Finally, losing day is not so big.

Friday I was -130$ on the money, and It's good, finally I didn't make stupid mistakes, didn't risk more money than I could have won, and waited with discipline for trades.

I realized that on days like Friday, where the market is almost not moving, it is hard to make money future trading, but after the market closed I paper trade it and saw that my method of waiting for 10 points gain, and if it happens moving the stop loss to +5 points, which means preserving profit, brought me +30 points on the day, I should always use it, but anyways it has been a good day as far as following my trading plan, and that's what matters.

My trading is developing rapidly, and I know that soon I'll be making money since in the long run, my method is working, I should just follow it, and wait for days like thursday where I extracted 60 points from the dow jones.

Have a good weekend and good bye for now.

Today -150$



I've had a bad day today, looking at the day I made only about 3 mistake trades out of 14 trades, which makes me think I improved, but still I'm not exceeding my expectations, which is trade my method and always make money.





The mistakes today consisted of not following my method, which manifests itself as one of the trades I took, was after the trend line broke down, I took a long position to try and stay with the current uptrend, and that was a mistake, my trading style says that after a trend line is broken, I sell the current position and short / buy long to the opposite direction.


Right after mistake #1 I took a short too low, which I then decided to stop before it hit my stop loss (-10 points), and the trend kept going down right after I covered my short, it seems like one mistake leads to the next, tomorrow I'll try to avoid both.





This is how the market looked today :



My method, in paper trade, produced only 9 points today, which is unusual to my method, because usually it produce at least 25 points, I guess it's just happened to be a day where the market didn't move so much, and deceived my method a lot (false breakout of trends etc.).
My method usually means going with the current trend, get in sync with the market, and when it catches the market, it should make me nice profits.

Having a bad week.

This week I think I went -681$ overall, which is the exact opposite of what I intended to do, there are a few reasons why and I would like to tell you what I have learnt from this week:

1. Don't scalp in futures trading, the commissions will eat you alive.

2. Keep your stop loss, if you don't you get to a point of losing 20 dollars here, 20 dollars there, and then you "scalping" your way to losing money, what happened to me this week is that I went out of trades before my stop loss have been met, on false alerts, while the market was going sideways, I lost a lot of money trying to join the next market move.

3. Keep the method simple, buy on breakout of resistance, or in a forming trend, don't guess the market next 2 minutes trend, just go with the flow, I could have gotten 30 points Friday without a sweat, but instead I just scalp my way up, which means I took about 19 points, maybe less including commissions.

4. Don't ever set unrealistic goals, like 500$ a day (on 1 contract), just because you feel like that, because it will cause what happened to me Friday, which is averaging up (buying another contract on the top of the trend), and then when Dow went down few points, all of my profit was lost due to the other contract, basically don't trading more than you can handle to lose, for me 2 contracts is too much for you now, and it caused me coming from a profit of 150$, to losing 130$ Friday.

I hope it will help me form somewhat of a trading rules in futures trading, learning from mistakes is the best way to evolve as a day trader, and I would like to help you guys learn from my mistakes.

Have a great week end!