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.

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

+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

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.

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:

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.

Great week!

Had a busy weekend so I couldn't post about thursday and friday, but here goes.. Thursday I closed +165$ after commissions, and friday +114$, I really starting to get the hang of day trading, and I'd like to talk about the most important thing about trading.

Self discipline, this is the most important trait in day trading, without it you are lost, I've lost a lot of money in the last few week, sometimes 2K$ a day, but I still had faith, which led me to better understanding of what I am doing, I saw that whenever I stop the trading day, and paper trade, no emotions involved, I "make money", even if it's on paper, it convinced me that money can be made from the markets, it's just that I have to discover what in myself is not letting me grab it.

This week had been great since I traded only on signals, and not on "2 minutes scalp" that just got me losing money, I only did what my method had told me, except on monday when I lost 90$, which is not too bad since after losing that money I saw that keeping my way would have got me winning money, so to make stuff simple, discipline discipline discipline, this is the most important trait, if you can wait for the right moves, and just enter with speed and power, you can make a lot of money.

I noticed that most of this week I traded for about an hour, and still managed to make 1-2% on my account, which means that heavily overtrading is not recommended, when you can just wait for the 5-15 minute moves that just makes the day like in my last posts.

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:

Things could be better.

I didn't post in the past few days, but I finally got the feeling of trading again, and lost the rush of andrenaline, or addiction, whatever you call that feeling of being hooked to the screen, hoping your "trade", which is more like gamble when it comes without indicators system or method, praying you will earn some money..

Eyes unfold now, I'm in trouble, finally I see how bad I've been doing, while still hoping to do good, since my system does make nice results, I'm unable to keep it.

I've decided to read "Come Into My Trading Room" again, which is a great book about trading method, money management and pshycology, I'm now seeing how many mistakes I've repeatedly made, and start get discipline again, Today I logged all of my trades, and finally there were few of them, so I wasn't overtrading like friday where I put about 40 trades one day (commission will eat me eventually if I won't change).

Here are the trades of today, hope it teaches you guys some stuff, because it sure did teach me that my rule about setting stop win at +5 points in YM after I'm up 10 points is crutial for times were market is moving sideways at times.

Just to note that I will not trade the first one and a half hours for now since I want to know the direction and theme of the day before I enter a trade, today for example YM seem to pull the market up, and today I wasn't home most of the time anyways so I took such a little amount of trades.

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$).

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.

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 :)

It's my birthday!!

Today is my birthday, and I finally grow up in age, and mentally as well, I'm 23, and I'm happy : )



Last two days have been bad, I've repeated my old mistakes, and I glad to say that I think I found the reason.. It's something in me that I have to change, I'm changing it lately but it's still there.



You know it when you drive you car, and the other driver doesn't let you pass? so after you do pass him, you start rushing ahead "making up" for the lost seconds of when the other driver didn't let you pass? well.. maybe you guys aren't like me, but I'm one hell of an impatient guy, I can't wait a second, since I was a little kid I wanted it all here and now.



Now it's time to change, being a day trader require some core characters, for example diligence, you must see the light at the end of the tunnel, positive thinking, you must believe you will make it, self dicipline, you must be able to put your stops on the right place, these and more the the required day trader's characters.



But the one I lack most is "Patiance", this is the key element I lack, today I took 3 "Home run" trades, each given me about 120$ gain on 1 YM contract, and I still didn't finish the day green.

I've made so many "rush trades" that came without any real trigger, I was just simply bored.. and thought I'm right, this what got me to lose money the last few days, from now on I promis myself, I'll be more patiance, I will trade only on real trigger, and not a "revenge scalp trades" which I made, yesterday I even rise my quantity to 2 contracts so it made my losses bigger, I think after making the same mistakes twice, I learned my lesson, at least I hope I do, because this tuition becomes very expensive.



I still think positive, and know I'll make it trading, but I see that I still have a lot to learn, 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 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.