Refocusing...

Lately my trading was mixed out, and that caused some losses, I hate the fact that I'm losing money, and it's not something I want, I was profitable from the first month, doing stuff according to the rules, and only when I "outsmarted" the rules I started losing money.

So from now on, the rules are holy, the boss have gone to a business trip and will give me a hugh bonus if I'm keeping the rules, and not upon money results.

Thus, I decided to lower my R size from 50$, back to 25$, so I'll take things easy, I'll do that for 3 weeks, and I am sure that it will show a positive results, I'll focus on the method of trading more than on the money returns, I'll take good trades, and make money.

What's left is to post the trading rules so everyone could see what rules I'm talking about.

That's it for now, progress is in the making :)

Update..

Haven't posted lately, all graphs seem the same, breakout, buy, after a while sell, etc. so I didn't want to bore everyone out, or myself for all I care.

I see a pattern because I write a detailed journal of my every day trades, it seems that I keep having a few small up days, and then a big one or two down days, which sux, so I have to limit those down days.

I was breaking even 3 weeks ago, since my initial R was 20$, and then I higher it to 30$, and lost few days one after the other with the new and higher R, last week my R was 35$, and I made about 3R or something, since I didn't trade all week, this week my R will be 40$, I'm getting used to the higher risk reward slowly but surely, when I'll have R= 70$ I will need to re-finance my account, since it won't be able to support the high R.

right now I guess its more of a practice, because I really don't make much money, and I just want to see that it is consistent enough for me to re-finance the account, the first milestone is still R = 100$, I'll get there in a few months time, but I'm confident that it will be ok, as things go now, it seems that I'm getting used to trading, and it starting to become a part of me.

A month ago I was still trading with a chatroom, which has many good people in it, and even better calls of stocks, but I realized that it wasn't for me, their talking affects my trading, why? because when I'm long in some stock, and someone tries to scalp the same stock for short, I hesitate in my mind against my own trade, and sell it, only to see that it keep on going my way (long), and also, some why I have too many "available trades" there, so I take a lot of them, and overtrade.

Recently..

I've decided to thin the blogging, since there are not so many replys and it sux just writing stuff without getting feedback, so I'll just post charts from time to time, just so I could look back and see what I've done and know how I felt when I took the trade.

My performance haven't been so good lately, I finished last month only about +4R, and I am looking forward for this month, which started with about +1R of yesterday.

Lets see how it develops...

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

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.

Wondering about trading..

Lately I've been wondering a lot about trading, whether it's possible to have consistent results or not, if it worth it or not, and such.

I see that two of the bloggers (tyro, phileo)quit day trading for a while, and it makes me wonder..

Why do we all drawn into trading? well that's easy, it promises big money with little amount of effort, well the truth being is that it's "enough money" with "a lot of effort", just face it, we all go through a long journey before seeing the real money, lately I've had some consistency and it's still not enough to pay any of my bills, but what my advise would be to gain confidence in your ability to trade, save a lot of money working for a regular paycheck, and only then start trading for a living.

Trading is a style of life, and while it doesn't offer the same challenges as you have at your work, it offer something else, it offers freedom, yes, you've read correctly, freedom, and that is the ability to do your job (in our case trade) from anywhere on the planet, and be able to make as much money as you do at work and more (if you play your cards right), trading doesn't seem like a gamble to me, nor does it seem like something that needs luck, it's just a calculated risk vs calculated profit, you need to love it in order to dedicate a big chunk of your life into it.

I guess trading doesn't suits everybody's lifestyle, and it might be psychologically difficult to handle with days like last Friday (down day for all of the swing traders since the whole market went down), I still believe that if you think positive enough, you will be able to generate a positive results.