Trading Journal +1R

Today was a mixed day, I've been following some stocks in the morning, but most of them changed direction on me so I kinda lost interest, but after a while I found a few trades, but still managed to only do +1R, nothing more..

I'll only show one graph today:

OMRI gapped up this morning, and therefore went into my watchlist, I almost deleted it from my watchlist when it went down at 10:30, but I stayed put, and waited for the 11:40am base to break, so I decided to buy it afterwards.

Thats it for today.

Trading Journal +2.5R

Today I've had a decent day, I caught the change in trend at 10:00am, and thus was able to make some bucks out of it.

PETM is a stock that have been on my radar lately, and I saw that it reacts almost the same as the NQ, so I decided to buy it long after I saw accending triangle, and it worked nicely, not so much profit on the R side, only 1.5R, but then again that is nice as well.

Here is the chart of today's best trade:

Sorry for posting so little, I'll get back to fully posting soon, it helps me with the proccess of learning the stock market.

Blogging and more..

Who said working nine to five is hard? I think that blogging is hard as well, committing to a blog is a difficult thing to do, and while trading wasn't so bad lately, I've decided to get back to blogging and posting my results, as a continuation of my trading journal.

So what have I been up to lately? I've been trading mostly gaps as always, and was doing pretty nice job in that, I've finally became profitable, and had a profits of 482$ net in October, I know it's not much, and it's not something one could live of, but it is nice to start being profitable, and I'm glad it finally happened, that's it for now, that was my short update, I will be updating more often from now on.

Daily Journal Break even..

Today was nice, it felt in control, I've risked only 20$ per R, which means that I was gross positive, and NET break even(tiny on the positive side).

I've made my research before entering the markets, finally things slow down at work, so I had some time to do my research, then I had my entry triggers, and I took them as planned, it's difficult making any money with this 20$ = R, but I'm sure it will allow me being more relaxed in my trading.

I might higher my R, but only in a little bit, I don't want to get crazy with highering R too much, since I don't want it to be a psychological stress for me to trade, I want to make trading fun again, like it did before I went trading with no plan and no rules.

One of my trades which I didn't like so much today was SQNM, I took it on a mini downtrend, which made me loss after a short while, I shouldn't have taken that trade.

Anyways, nice day, no money made, but I'm getting my confidence back, today was pretty much in control, and very patient, waiting for signals and executing the plan just in time. I just really god my mood down after SQNM, so I stopped trading, right on time, I'm learning lately that there are times on which you shouldn't trade, like if I'd keep trading after SQNM, I would take non-setup trades just to "make up for the loss", and that's the recipe for a blow up day :)
Blow up skipped, ThX for my studies on the market.

Have a nice day.

Update of the 17 Sept..

I'm actually not as bad as I thought! After I've talked with a friend of mine (Eitan from the links menu on the right), I've decided to put the charts of today's losers (3 of them), and found out that I'm actually closer to "The holy grail" than I thought, I was really about to "Stop digging" and give up pretty soon, since there is no one really that encourage me to stay in the game, and I keep losing money, even if it's small money (only 65$ today), it's frustrating to lose day after day.

I've written everything about each trade in the graph himself, notice to my readers, please let me know:
1. If the way I put on charts is convenience.
2. What do you think about my losers of today.

AAUK:



ESLR


CEDC:

Trading Journal -1.5R

Stuff aren't going well, I mean.. I didn't have a profitable day in the longest time, part of it because I don't have time to trade, and part of it just because I suck lately.
After breaking down, it seems that I finally don't make mistakes that concern not being loyal to my trading plan, I truly am loyal, I'm not breaking the rules and it's an improvement.

So Why do I lose money? I think I've came to a place in my pocket where I'm trading scared money, and as we all know, scare money is losing money, I just trade a size that is too big for me, I've decided to lower my R to just 20$, until I have 2 consecutive months on which I acually am profitable, otherwise what will it bring me, to lose big money, the highering R system will work only once I become profitable.

So what will happen now? I won't be scared to lose money, and I'll finally gain some, very small, but some indeed.
Hopefully this bad era will end soon, because I'm starting to be a bit frustrated on the Trading side.

Trading Journal +0.4R

I've been a bit busy at work lately, so didn't really have much time to trade, but I'm still here, alive :) and that's a good thing.

I only made one trade in AMZN today, and it was a small trade, which went well at start, but then delayed on the 1R mark, so I took partial, and sold the rest at about entry, so with commissions it meant I made only a little less than 0.5R.

I've been utilizing methods I've learned lately, about mood in trading, and it shows results, usually when I trade but don't really feel like it, it causes me to force trades that aren't necessarily that good, and furthermore, I've discovered lately a bit more about my self, I saw that when I have a losing days, it's usually consecutive trades, which I take as "half revenge trade", because I want to make up for the lost money from the last trade, therefore I would try not trading for about 5 minute after a losing trade, so the emotions won't sweep me to take the next losing trade.

That being said, I've to get back to work, good day and good trading everyone :)

Daily Journal +1.3R

A nice solid day, I've only made one trade today, and it went nice indeed.
I just need to keep trading like today, calmly, and I'll get somewhere, I finally took full size even thought the stop was a bit tight (22 cents), and also I kept my trading rules finally.


Here is how today looked like:


I took ppdi at an early base and break, after I saw that some other stocks that were on my watchlist like clne biod were breaking up, the market was weak but gap is gap, so the stock ignores the rest of the market and run it's way, I've set a stop loss 22 cents aways from entry, and got about +33 cents out of this stock, finally I took it in full share size so it did make something nice.

Usually I tend to take some trades in less quantity of shares, and thus win less money, but the losing trade I do take in full size, so I win +2R(lets say R=30$ but I took it with R=15$) for example on a half share size stock, and lose -1R full size which equal let's say -30$, this takes me no where, so today I finally risked the proper amount of money, only to have a winning trade, I'm glad that happened :)

That's it for today

Daily Journal -1R

Today I took two losses, and as you can see they combined to make -1R, since in one of them I took smaller size, and in the other I lowered my exposure after it bounced back to my entry point.

I'm finally starting to control my down days, I'm actually "glad" that I didn't make money in the last two days, yesterday I had some mistakes, and today I was able to overcome those mistakes and lower the exposure when the trade isn't going my direction.

Of course that ultimately it would be nice to make money, but as they say, easy come easy go, so when I was beginning to day trade I made about 10R or so, easy, and then it went down and I'm in losses now, now that it's hard, and I better appriciate every winning day, I think it's time to make some money.

I missed an opportunity to actually make money today in AMZN, the stock that I'm watching closely and I can predict a little, when the day started the market was going down, and then the market broke up, so I put a buy order in AMZN as soon as it broke up as well, but I put it about 2 cents below the price that it was traded at and it made me miss the opportunity to make about 3R, the lesson here is not to be greedy, those 2 cents wouldn't mean much, I should of put the buy order in the price that I knew I could enter with, and therefore be on the wave of the winning trade.

Speaking of waves I went surfing today, only to discover that there are no waves, so I didn't even bother getting in the water, so I went away, and then I read in the forum that we'll have waves satureday for sure, so then I'll be at sea :)

Another thing that was good today is that the first trade I took, distructed my mind a little, I was a little less sharp, and the second trade was a trade that I already prepare so it was taken with trigger, but then I noticed that the first trade kept ringing on top of my head, so I knew I shouldn't take any other trades, I didn't even bother looking for them, because they are what we call "revenge trades", I'm glad I finally start trading by the rules, and stop trading in bad moods

Tomer

Daily Journal -1R

While it wasn't the best of days, it was a really productive one, I've actually learned from the actions I've made today and I'll detail the lesson.

SQNM:

I wrote it all in the graph, but the key note is that as Stewie says in the headline of his blog "Trader - Knows that winning trades work almost right away, which in my simplification I think that if trade went your way, and then went down, you should lower your exposure by selling half or more of the size when it comes back to entry point, because now that the trade didn't go your way, it can even go down to your stop, and we all hate losing a lot of money :) so I'll be lowering the size to lose half of it.

XCO:

XCO is the perfect gapper I caught in days, I got into the trading session kinda late today, so I spotted it a bit after it broke the nice B&B, and got in on the low of the up trading channel, the mistake here was that I didn't partial out, I quit full size which cause me to gain less than I could (problem of rich people hehe).

CLNE:

Just not a good trade, and again I should of limit the exposure..

So the lesson from today is about exposure, we want to be the least exposed to the market as possible, I didn't lose a lot of money today like I got used to (-6R and stuff hehe), so its a good thing, I'm still learning a lot, but I'm getting there :)

Have a nice day,

Daily Journal +1.6R

Finally pumping some more profits, today was a day that went well for gap up breakout plays, I've had so many opportunity, if only I could focus more on trading than I did, I'd bank coin.

It was pretty simple, 1 winner 1 loser, I'll show you the winner since it was more educational, the loser was a play that I made in AMZN since the market made an attempt to go up, and AMZN usually go in co-relation with the rest of the market.

SRS:

That's it for today, simple and short post, SRS trade last less than 2 minutes, aggresive aren't we? :)

Daily Journal -0.45R

Almost half R down and I'm disciplined, in July a day like today would of end up being -4R or something, because I was out of control, I'm feeling the confidence coming back up, and I'm glad it happened.

BTW I've had a car accident last Friday, nothing serious, a toyota rav4 got into me after I stopped the car on the middle of the road like everyone else since there was a traffic jam.My car got a little damaged so they are fixing it right now, need to replace the trunk and rear bumper, at least in Israel we have a law that whoever hit you from the back is due to pay for damages (for insurance that is).

I'm safe and all, and got myself a sweet replacement car with sunroof and stuff so I'm good :)

Today I couldn't trade the morning session, so I traded mid day, which was pretty dead.

All of today's actions in one graph:

SNDK, 1 loser trade, 1 winner trade (that was smaller than the loser)

After this trades I just called it a day.

Daily Journal +0.35R

Slowly but surely, I'm gaining confidence again, after reading http://theimpatienttrader.blogspot.com/2008/08/position-sizing-finding-your-max-pain.html by stewie, I decided that I could higher my R by 5$, I am trading good lately, no critical mistakes, and I intend to keep it that way.

After such a long time I'm posting charts! whenever I post charts I trade better, so I will post more charts from now on, today I've made only 2 trades, both were positive overall (but a little), I put my stops too low, I'm not sure why, so the results are small profits.


NVDA:

I saw NVDA breaking yesterday's highs, so I immediately took whatever position I could once I saw it, but I put the stop below the day's low, which was 60 cents away, on a 12$ stock it means my profits will come only if it will make a $+, which is 9%, very unlikely, but happens, anyways here are the charts:




CTRP:
It was #1 on the gappers list, so I saw it early, and I liked the fact that it keeps going up, at the time I saw it, it seems like there's no stopping for it, usually it keep going, and I'd hate to miss it :)
This one is most frustrating, even though I only took 30 shares (lack of confidence in setup), it went so high once I sold it. I sold it after being impatient.


That's it for today, feels like I started trading again, as a new man, without those fullish emotional trades that I made, I'm gaining confidence in myself again and that's the best thing, after seeing all of those big # on DT's blog, I still think its the right thing to do (to trade), I've had my doubts, but I think that once I'll master it, it will be a nice source of income that suits my lifestyle :)

Daily Journal +1.25R

Building confidence back from scratch, today I took two positions early, when I saw 2 stocks getting near their gap up base and break, and it went well.

1 of the positions made almost 2R, and the other went up almost 2R, but then reversed so I sold it when it went back when I entered it, so altogether I've had a +1.25R today net.

I'm glad it happened, I really didn't have a green day for such a long time.
In the future I will ride the wave of a green day, but I just wanted to set my mind a nice pivot point to know that I can have green days also, I've had a traumatic month of almost only red days, because of lack of discipline, so right now I'm glad I could go from there to being green.

Usually when days like today happen I should trade more aggressively since I've had another "almost entered" positions that were supposed to be profitable, its just that I was afraid a little since I was insecure.

Confidence is high right now, but also my competence, I will not make fullish mistakes thinking "I must be always right", and follow my rules regarding trading.

I didn't break any rule today, and it is what matters most right now, not the money, or the R results, only the rules, if they will be kept, I will make money long term.

I'm happy right now, and relieved finally from the burden of the losing period, I finally broke it, and even though its small, I am glad its there at all:)

Now lemme go back to work, I wish this day would end already and I could go back to my house flying the RC Helicopter I've got, I'll post video of it flying on youtube and add it here.

Tomer.

Daily Journal -1R

Well finally I'm coming back.. I'm currently working on developing my attitude towards the markets, and I didn't find many gap b&b opportunities, so I took a position too late, and didn't take the small profits while I could (less than 1R..), so it went down on me, right now my R is 25$, so I'm kinda playing it safe.

I had a lot of disciplne today, and thats a good thing, I want to develop my mind to work on every condition, I knew that if I'll take another trade, it would be a revenge trade, since I wanted to take exactly the opposite of the trade that I took, and it did went my way eventually, but my stop was too tight since I took the position too late as I already mentioned.

Today I didn't brake any rule, I didn't make any money, but I managed to limit a losing day, three weeks ago a day like this would have gone to -4R when my R was 50$, losing 200$ in one day is dangerous to someone with account value like mine (less than 10K$).

I saw this blog : http://blog.tradingrm.com/ in Obat(http://onebadtrade.blogspot.com/) blog, and it seem really nice, they seem to know what they are talking about, so I'll be following that blog for a while to see if it has more good stuff to say, I really didn't knew about how I was approaching day trading, and about 1 star days, 3 and 5 stars days, today for example was a 1 star day for me, since I didn't really find any opportunity, so I played it safe, and managed to lose minimum amount of money.

Have a great week everyone!

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 +1.86R

(warning - long post)
Ahh.. finally an up day, lately I've been having some bad time, my R became higher (50$), so also my losses became higher, and my profits weren't, so I'm glad today went well, and hopefully I'll have better days in the future.. where are the days where I've had +4R and so on? :)

I've changed my "Trading guide" file and made a "Trading rules" file, since the guide was only a guiding line, and rules is more stricked.

I've read once in Alexander Elder's book that one of his friends once was trading for a firm, and made that firm a lot of money, so he decided to go lone wolf on them, and try his luck profiting from the same method he have learned from that trading firm.
Of curse he was losing money, and then he researched what was he doing wrong.. he was trading the same as he was with the firm, but kept losing money. so he figured out that "not having a boss" is the reason for his failure, he was having hard time following all of the rules, and bent them as wished, which caused him to lose money.

He then figured out that having a boss is acually the only thing that have changed after he left that firm, and so he started trading as if his boss is in a vacation abroad, and the boss will give him a big bonus only if he kept the rules, and not by out well he was doing.
Having a virtual boss acually worked for him, and so I think I'll have to adopt myself one.

Here are my trading rules, I will have to follow the rules, so my vacationing boss will eventually give me so bonus for following the rules :)

1. Only take trades that are suited (entry point is logical), and if my mind is clear (didn't revenge trade).

2. I take my stops when I'm supposed to.

3. If I lose money twice in the same stock, I stop trading it for the day.

4. Exit a position if I'm negative after 10 minutes.

5. I'm done for the day if I have 3 consecutive losing trades.

6. I'm done for the day if I am down more than 2R.

7. I sell partial upon reaching 2R.

8. I higher my stop to entry point after being +1R.

9. I take the first trades with smaller profit, 1R-2R more or less, to build confidence.

10. I don't leave a position open un-noticed.

11. The trend is my friend.

Another thing about today is that I noticed that I'm starting to familierize with AMZN, I've been having -120$ in the beginning of the day, and then I've made about +220$ in AMZN alone, with 3 trades I think.. meaning that I start feeling when AMZN will go up or down, and sometimes when I'm wrong I get days with -150$, so I'll have to limit my trading in AMZN to until I have 2 consecutive losses in it.

Daily Journal +1R

Monday.

Well not reall +1R number wise, since I higher my R to 50$, but I only risked about the amount that I profited from.

I had to leave early today, and my mind was distructed because of the preperations, so I only traded 1 stock.

BRL - dummy gapper of the day:

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 +1.42R

Today I've been doing the sort of trading that does work for me lately, and it is trading lightly, and quit as soon as I got more than an R. why am I doing that?
Because lately, every time I reached +1.5R, I just went down to -3R afterwards, when I said "1.5R isn't enough", but the way I think about it, if I keep making 1.5R a day consistently almost every day, that means I get about.. 10R a month, now it's not much, since my R is 45$, but when my R will be 400$.


It'll mean I'll be making 4,500$ a month, working about a hour a day, which rocks! since I could tend to other ventures and do the thing I love doing, I could virtually work from everywhere, and therefore fulfill a long wished dream of doing a winter season only snowboarding! that's one of my dreams, and I think that I'm ready to fulfill it.


I'm not trading really for the money, money sucks, I trade for the freedom to have time for myself, the way I see it now, I'm at work 9:30am until 6pm, or later (software companies..), then I go to the GYM 3 times a week, that means that my day really starts at about 8:30pm, I spend most of my day stuck at a place, not living life, just working. I'll start surfing in the mornings when there are waves, like next Sunday, so it'll be a nice addition to my day.. waking up at 6:30am..


I honestly think that people who are stuck at the whole working environment are missing out life, I see them talk about work all day long, when they come back home, they check emails, in the weekends, they don't do anything special, because they are stressed of what will happen at work when they come back, I don't want to live life like that.


In Israel we must recruit to the army when we turn 18 for 3 years, so we really start "living" at the age of 21, which sucks, so we all work for some time, and for a "after army trip", at least most of us go, they go to Australia, South America, and other exotic places for about half a year or so.. I went to Thailand and China for 4 months, and caught the "travel bug", it really opens your eyes for the world, you meet new people, explore the cultures, I even studied a bit Chinese because it is so difficult to get around there, so what I'm trying to say is that after that trip, and my 2 months trip to the USA when I was young, and other assorted amount of trips, I really like being "on the suitcase", and going from place to place.

I even match my trading style to that, I trade with 1 screen setup so when I'll get to travel, I could carry a laptop everywhere, I trade only a hour a day or so, again, so I could have more time for myself, and less "screen time", I do everything to get to my goals of "financial freedom", and what I like most about trading, is that it's still is exciting, and not as mechanic as everyone say it is, when you trade less, you don't have much time accumulated and not get bored.

Anyways, I hope things will turn out right, and I'm glad to say that after 2.5 months day trading stocks, I'm still profitable, hehe, well that's after losing money day trading futures against the odds, so it's ok. coming to think about it now, it seems like forever, day trading only 2.5 months, I thought I'm trading for about 4 months, damn this day trading is extensive..

Have a good day everyone! :)