Daily Journal +1.5R

Yet another profitable day, goody :)

Today I had something wiered going on.. I nailed V twice, and didn't extract even 50% of the movement. take a look at this:

I managed to scalp my trades, I was trading scared.. all of this trades were after a losing trades, which means.. I should probably detach my emotions from trading, easy to say, hard to do.

Other than that, today was crazy! I didn't find so many candidates, but all in all there was action, I missed APWR at 25$ in morning session, I mean.. I didn't really missed it, I decided to "Paper trade it", since I didn't believe anything can go up in the downtrend we had in the morning, I didn't want to trade against the trend.. well the trade did work for anyone who took it.

That's all for today..

Daily Journal +0.7R

I didn't see so many opportunities in the pre market today, so I took V in the morning, for a fast gain, then it turned around on me, so I quit it for the modest gain of +1R.

Then I bought the break of SPWR but it hit my stop and kept going up, my luck was that I took a small quantity because I didn't want to risk anything, today smells strange to me, so I don't wanna be trading today.

I came back after a week of not trading, and I have a small win day, it's nice, I'm glad I'm starting the week positive. I higher my R +5$ again, and I still manage to think clear when I trade, I think this small escelation is nice, and only doing good, hopefully I'll get to my first milestone very soon, which is having R = 100$.

Right now my R = 40$, and I higher it +5$ each week, but after I'll have R=60$, I'll higher it +10$ each week.

Meanwhile, here is a nice video clip to keep me motivated:

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

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 +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 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,

+100$(net) means a nice day..

Today I had a nice day, starting with an initial losing trade, and then a streak of 4 profitable trades, while some of them could have given me more profit, I took minimal profit from some of them because I wasn't sure what the market will do.

I like days like today, where everything is sain, all rules are kept, finishing the day with profit.. that's the way it always should be.

I stopped trading early today since I'm currently working on some 3d animation I'm doing to try and win free ski vacation (maybe in the alps!), I love snowboarding and I love 3d animation so the mix is perfect, here is a WIP (work in progress) from my animation:

Moving on..

Well after a short absence I'm back, And what was my lesson from last week:

Things can go bad after going good.. October as a fertile month where I made 8% of my equity, but then started November and after a week or so I was down -9%, right now I'm -6%, but it's still negative number, so I'm not happy.

Why did it happen? because I didn't follow my daily stop loss rule, and lost in 1 day more than what I make in a few, which sux, at least it happened to me only once, so I know I can control it from now on, and I will not do it again.

Moving on to today.. +152.5$, finally profitable day after some time.. Monday for example I made 1.5$ after commissions, which is ridiculous but still it beats losing money :)

What I've learned this week? my risk number for now is 40$-50$ per trade, so when I say I'm up 3R today I mean I'm up 150$, so after playing with this technique for a week I saw that it really helps keeping track of your result.

What I came to realize from the experience of trading the NQ, is that I usually can risk 2 points(which is 40$, but 45.5$ after commissions and sometimes 50$ after slippage), and gain 3.5 points many times after a short period of time, so instead of trying to search for the holy-grail which we all know doesn't exist, so instead of trying to pump 5-10 points out of every 2 points risk trade, I'll try to get out after humble 3.5 points profit, and that way I can come faster to my desired daily profit.

Desired daily profit I said? well for my account anything from 120-150$ will be good, weekly desired profit for now will be as low as 300$ since my capital and experience is so low, it will get higher as I grow as a trader.

Today's action..

I'll put three trades, two winning and one losing:

Winner#1 - Speed!
I came and go quickly, as soon as I saw the downtrend channel break up, I went long, putting a sell order on my desired profit(3.5 points) and let the market work for me ;)



Loser of the day, even with slippage :
The call was right, the the uptrend did break and my short would have work should I take enter it again, but I came 4 minutes earlier, and my stop was too tight..




Winner #2 - It will go higher :
This one I took after I saw that the channel broke upward, I initiated long position with sell order 3.5 point higher, but as the market went, and as the other indices got up, I know NQ have to go higher, so I closed the sell order of 3.5 points higher, and put stop loss on the entry, and let the trade go, as it went by and started losing speed, I put sell order 4.5 points higher, and it got hit :)

Weired day..

I can't complain, I'm finally up today, +126$, let's try to use the R system, I risk about 45$ each trade, so I'm up 2.8R today.

I'm too tired to post charts, but they aren't that bright anyways, I took two trades today, and missed 10NQ points (200$ on 1 contract) short at 12:15, I wrote in my charts "paper trade short 2210, stop 2212, and it could have been the trade of the day, but I just couldn't pull the trigger, the problem was that I was right twice before (on paper too hehe), and couldn't believe I'm right again, so I just put another "paper trade" but this time it was very good trade :(

Well I'm glad I was profitable today anyways, ahh and a new rule I've got, since my money is running low I'll only risk 2R each day, which means 100$ max after commissions, that's why I quit yesterday when I was at -58.5, I couldn't take another trade because it could lead me to losing more than my daily stop loss.

I'm glad I'm finally obey my rules fully, I think I'll add some money soon so I could trade more than twice each day before I reach my daily stop limit, being under capitalized sux :)

At least when I started day trading I had what I call "tuition money cushion" which means I had a lot of money to throw away on stupid mistakes, and now that I'm smarter I think I'll refill the money.

Great day! +238$

Monday was a great day for me, I sold all of my swing positions due to the FED coming soon, the market has gapped up and my stocks did very well, sold most after a nice solid profit.

From now on I'll minimize my "overnight risk" as much as I can, I see that swing trading has given me 1/3 as much profits as day trading futures has given me, so I think that I'll stick to disciplined day trading.

I took only 1 day trade Monday, for a profit of 4 NQ pts (+75.5$ after commissions), I'll post chart later when I'll get my Internet connection home up and running.

Update:

This is the trade I took, I went long NQ at 2217 since I saw that the line I draw (lets call it intra-day resistance) was broken upward, which signal me to get long, I don't think I'd go short on 2214 and lower since it didn't seem like the time for short looking at the other indexes(s&p and djia).

I somehow knew the market will hit the resistance line there at about 2222 so I just sold for a minor profit, but still, profit is a profit :)

I start to see that I'm evolving my own style, or method, w/e you call it, I wait everyday patiently for the best setup I can find, and I take it, usually risking 2 NQ pts to win 4++ points, this is some nice risk reward ratio, and statistically long term the method should work, so some day I'll lose 40$, maybe 50$ after com's and slippage on one contract, but long term I don't need to be right more than 50% of my trades in order to make money (due to risk reward ratio Begin higher than 2:1).

I hope my positive attitude over trading will finally pay off, right now I'm in deep losses due to the initial mistakes of my day trading carrier, and I know that there are a lot of mistakes I shouldn't make again, and this "1 trade a day" method is the most relaxed I can, and doesn't encourage "overtrading", if I'll keep it going well until the end of November I'll start higher my size, and trade more contacts.

Trading is all about discipline, and patience, trading is the best field in the world, you discover yourself everyday, I really love trading, and sure glad my account had enough cushion to land on when I first started day trading and lost Hugh sums of money :)

If my plans continue accordingly I will be able to quit my job about 3 years from now, it might sound far, but I'll only be 26 by then, and hopefully a bit "richer" than today.

The market is going random!

First of all I'd like to admit that I don't get the stock market sometimes, today for example I started -200$ on my swings, and after about 25 minutes in I was up already, I'm not sure how can it be but.. I'm happy anyways :)

Today I went to a wedding so I didn't trade, only to come back after hours and see that AAPL is going +11$ after market, so my immediate thought was "hmm, I wonder if it hit my price target.." and it did, my target was 180$ and the stock is up to 185.9, so I just sold my position as described in the following screen shot:

Weired day today, but I'm happy I've got to earn some bucks after all of the harsh time that the market has put us through.

+60$ NQ, -230$ swings hehe

Well swings positions are not closed at all, but they made me undesireable "unrealized loss" of 230$ today, I guess it wasn't so smart to take positions one day b4 options expiration day.

I call it a good day since I was able to make money in the NQ's. Anyways I'm glad I'm building my Futures day trading confidence, in the long term I can always decide which style suits me more, the reason I left swing trading a few months ago is a days like this, where all of the market is down and I only have Long swings, which are all red for the day, I had it happening to me many times and decided it is better for my health to day trade, not leaving money on the table over night.

But lately I saw that my day trading has developed to such extent that I can also continue swing trade and make some money "on the side".

Today's trade wasn't so exsiting so I will not post a chart, but again it was in one trade, bahh if I would just short at the beginning of the day and cover in the end... ez money lol :) but no one could have guessed the market will act so bazar lately.

Have a greet weekend,

And on the personal side, I've made a good skydiving jump today, I need 4 more to complete my AFF course and be able to jump out of airplanes alone.. (hehe I think all of us traders are a bit of andrenaline junkies, take dino for example surfing them waves : )

+105$ and loving it :)

Ok you guys, I finally feel more optimistic about my future as a trader, it doesn't mean I will not take precaution steps to avoid being in a "God-Mode" and thinking my trades will always go my way, but I'm starting to trust myself again, and truly believe in myself, and as they say, "with success come confidence", this time they are right :)

What happened?
A recipe for a good trader - First, lose money doing foolish mistakes, and promise yourself you never do them again, Second, lose even more money doing the same foolish mistakes, over trading, thinking "the next trade will save me for sure" and take trades without proper setup, try to scalp your way up, higher your quantity before you can handle 1 contract in NQ (or in stocks 1000 shares instead of just 100).

And Finally (step 3), after you promise yourself you wouldn't make mistakes again, lose enough money that will make you reflect on things for a month, and tell yourself "It's either I survive in this game, or go bust in less than a month..", and trade well, stop losing money, and even start making some.. just a little thought..

So you're asking what happened? I bet you do.. well I believe I'm in step 3, I finally lost enough money to shake my confidence in the business of day trading, and started actually to become cautious, I start following my trading plan by heart, disconnecting emotion from trading as much as I can, and cut losses so fast that two days ago I lost 70$ on 3 trades (2 losing 1 winning) and just finished the day, I cannot afford myself to lose a lot of money in one day, and that is the mistake I made in the start, I could lose 1000$ in one day (on small account!), now was I stupid or what?

Well enough with the educational part about losing money and stuff, and let's get to the report of the day:

Arriving home late after a relaxed day at work, I got back just in time to "miss" the 14:15 short, well at least I think it was a nice setup breaking the uptrend. I saw it with my own eyes, but wasn't able to take the trade since I still have some self confidence issues..

So I waited like a hawk, stocking his pray, which in this case was the NQ Future, and at 14:54 I decided I saw a setup of a double bottom and that the market will break up and took a long @ 2201, setting my stop at 2199.25 (below latest swing low), soon after I took the trade I had a little "heart attack" when NQ went down to 2200.

But hey, it's only a point down, so I stood my ground which in this case was the stop loss :), after seeing the NQ perform well, driving his friends the ES and YM up I figure it would be nice to set what I call a "stop win" at 2203.25, below the next swing low, and after a while (16 min in the trade) I sold at 2106.5, for humble 5.5 NQ pts, it's not a lot, but hey, it's money! :)

Here is the visual:


Oh and did I say Thank you NQ? ahh no, so 10Q NQ ;)

Have a nice day everyone!

Btw - another "1 trade a day", I think it's enough for me to find one good setup a day..

Things look better +130$

Woopy! a profitable day with only one trade!

Today I've made only 1 trade since I see that whenever I overtrade I lose money, so I just took 1 trade and it's enough for me for today, I couldn't take the morning breakdown because I was at work, but at least I got to take the reversal.



At 14:26 I took 1 long NQ@2163.75 , which I took since the downtrend was breaking down and the 2nd resistance point of NQ was hit, also I saw that during the last few day NQ couldn't go lower than that point so I figure it is a strong support, soon after dealing with my "greed" issues, I sold my position at 14:42 @ 2170.5, which is a 6.75 NQ pts, give me this "much" points everyday and I'm happy, for now I trade only 1 contract, but in a few years when I'll have enough capital 6.75 pts with 10 contracts will be 1300$, which is almost half of my monthly salary today hehe :)

Notice it's not the end of the trading day just yet, but after a nice "performance" as this I'm finishing my day early, going to eat and stuff,

Have nice day

+5 points at NQ..

I feel like a changed trader, lately I take my trading in a more mature way, I don't over trade, and I feel my confidence is building with every success I make, and I don't get arrogant after a winning streak, this was learned the hard way, after believing so much in my "good calls" for trades and going without a stop.. so this is what I did today:

At 12:47 I thought the market will continue his rally up, and took a long position:

soon after taking the long position I saw that the market breaks down and figured it would be a nice time to sell my long for a small loss(1.5pts) and join the bears with a short position two minutes later (at the same price that I've sold my long position).

It looked like this:

After that I had enough of real money day trading for the day, and put myself a "paper trade" of long 1 @ 2185.5 at 13:30, I'm happy it was a profitable call, even though it was only on paper, I still happy with my result.

Overall I had a nice day, my swings did nice today and once I'll see some of them I'll put on charts and investigate how I reacted with the positions.

Good trading day today!

I'm glad to say that today I finally got it right, after a long time of losing many trades for the "market noise" in YM, since I'm well undercapitlized and can't take such a big loss, I finally did the right thing and moved to trade NQ.

I got back from work (Israel.. I come back at about 12:30am your time), trying not to think about work too much, too many strange things happen lately, boss being bitchy etc, so after eating dinner I went to look at my stocks screen, which I'll soon cover (fairly simple), and lurked the futures good.

After watching some cool skydiving videos I saw that ES is about to make a move, and the volumes of NQ confirmed, so after my market compass (ES / YM / NQ) which was ES this time showed me that there is about to be a move, I looked at NQ, and figured I can risk 2 points to see if the market really changed direction in the second half of the day.
I tried buying NQ@2186 @ 13:45 but couldn't get a fill, I wanted this trade badly since ES was really showing it's about to change direction, so I put an order @2187 and got instant fill, had a small heart attack at 14:10 since NQ moved down to 2185.5, but then continued to trend nicely until I had enough and got out at 2192.5 (+5.5), I could of stayed in this trade and make more bucks but I had to go so I just sold as high as I could.

NQ Chart:


ES my humble market Compass of the day:

Getting control again.

Two days have past since my "Things could be better" post, and I finally gain self control again, and starting to be more disciplined, today I was one point down 105$ (two losing trades in the beginning of the day), I kept following my rules, and got out of the day +160$ after commissions, on 5 trades.

Today I went to the gym after work (11:00 am US eastern time but in Israel it's in the evening), and just said to myself that I have to do all of the exercise, even the ones I don't like and usually skip after doing few sets, this time I did it all, and whenever I thought "I wonder what the market is doing now" I just completely ignored it and wasn't in a rush to get back home and trade, I was down 50$ since the first trade I took from work (remote control hehe), the trade was done following my plan, and just didn't work, so in my mind I had that -50$ on the day, but I got used to ignoring that, telling myself "sometimes you win, sometimes you lose".

When I got back home as I said, I was disciplined, and finished the day profitable after no more than 45 minutes, the best trade itself (which you'll see in a minute) took me only 5 minutes and 21 seconds, and gain me 45 points on YM which roughly translate to 225$ on one YM contract.

Today I finally realized the power of sitting on the sidelines, waiting for a familiar pattern to emerge, it's million times more powerful than second guessing where the market will go in the next 20 seconds (we call it scalping).

I've decided to reward myself for following my plan, and not on money returns, which means I put discipline higher than "making money", each day I follow my trading plan, and quitting in the right time (like today after doing my daily profit), I will give myself a nice reward, today it was some nice chocolate, yesterday it was toffife, I know that my method works, and now my mind come togather with the method, so I start making money.

Best trade of the day:

Finally starting to pay off my tuition

Well I've got to admit, I had another profitable day, and it feels great! I'm up 190$ net on YM today, and things starting to feel right again.

I started the day going +135$, and then went down to +20$ after 3 bad trades, but I kept doing my best, not letting any good trade lose me money, and kept my stop loss the way I wanted, and it basically have been another good day.

I think that I pretty much understand how to make money in a days where the market does moves like today, Mini-sized dow (YM) moved about 130 points up and down intraday, and I took 54 net home, which doesn't seem so good, but it is for me since I want to make only 32 points a day average.

A mistake I didn't do today was not leaving a trade without a stop when you go to eat, at one point I was +12 points on a trade, and wanted to go to eat, so I just put a +5 points stop win and went to eat, a little reminder, this kind of behavior had cost me about 2000$ one day, when I was on 2 YM contracts and went eating pizza.

My profit / loss now is -23.9% since I started day trading Futures, and I finally start paying off my tuition which cost me so heavily (more than 4K$).

Yet, another good day

I'm up 276$ on the day (after commission), and I hope it stays this way.

What I did today was just following the bigger trend, instead of fighting to understand where the market is going in the next couple of minutes, I started going with the flow, and I really got in sync with the market, today I had a very good discipline, my stops were reasonable, I didn't get away from the computer without having a stop loss market order in my broker, and it saved me once.

I had to go help out my dad for a couple of minutes, so I put a stop loss in the broker, and when I came back I saw that I lost Internet connection, and when the Internet did work I saw that YM was down 20 points from where I entered, but my stop loss was 5 points above my entry (what we call stop win:), so I managed to earn money while not even watching the computer, I really believe that I'm developing in my trading every day.

Today I had 90% winners, which is usual for days that have certain main trend, I just join the market on the move and watch my profits run, +60 points on the day is very good for me, my goal is to get +32 a day average, so when my account grow I'll just add to my quantity, which is now 1 since my account size is so small, I'm not trying to reach the sky, but getting 32 points a day can be achieved in 2 hours of work.

On the personal side, I've just had a nice BBQ with my friends and it was really fun watching them all on my birth day, I think this is going to be my best b-day yet :)

Having a good day..

Since it's the first post about a trading day I'll just say few of my methodologies.

I'm trading mainly the YM now since I don't have enough to day trade stocks, usually a breakouts of support and resistance throughout the day, and I risk 10 pts each trade, to win at least 12 pts, unless I'm entering a scalping spree (happens in flat market).

Discipline is the key on my style of trading, and I've had a day where I lost 2000$ so it taught me a lot about taking my stops seriously.

Today I took only two trades, first one at about 9:40, took short YM 13531, since I believed the market is continuing the downtrend, which it didn't, and the market changed direction rapidly so I couldn't catch it at 10pts lose, so instead I catch it after 14 pts lose, and took long at 13549, which became the trade of the day for me, and it made me 54 pts gain so I decided not to trade more today, and keep discipline doing that, I "could" make more money today because the market made few more big trends, but I'm fine with not taking the trades since I've made enough money today, PNL 192$ (1 contract) after commissions.

This is a nice day for starting my blog, hope you guys enjoy, learn about what I do, and most of all have fun reading.