Yeah I agree, although I still think the best measure is a volatility of account including unrealised profits/loss. Yes, I'm based in Australia. Makes for some late nights sometimes....
______________________ Start of week = $105,000 End of week = $115,400 Weekly P&L = +$10,400 YTD P&L = +$105,400 ______________________ It was a good week for trading and I ended it with a very decent profit. However its was also about lost opportunities where I could easily made triple this profit. Notable Trades: EUR/USD = +$3,806 (4 trades) NFLX = -$2,771 (1 trade) S&P500 = +$7,187 (1 trade... still holding 75%) Fortescue Metals = +$1,725 (existing trade... still holding) Whitehaven Coal = +$1,450 (existing trade... still holding) Note that some trades were/are unrealised so doesn't equate exactly to weekly P&L. The weekly P&L is the movement +/- of my account for the week. My biggest trades were a short going into the week on EUR/USD and covering/switching into a long. Didn't maximise this long but still it was good trading. I shorted the market at the very end of Wednesday's session, S&P500 short @2,080 (currently trading 2,020) which meant Thursday was a great day for me!! It really looked like we were broadly going to move lower, obviously I didn't know that it would happen on next session (so good timing). My view is we will move quite dramatically lower over the next month or so. I've covered only 25% of my short so only $2k of the $7k profit on the trade is realised. Will trail this going forward. Big misses this week. Was short on 1,000 share of NFLX @$123.50. Got squeezed out on the last day before we dropped hard. I took a loss of $2.7k instead of a profit of $15k. This really hurt. I don't mind getting out but I should have taken it back when it didn't move higher. Very significant trade missed here. Another big miss on TSLA short 300 shares @$260. I covered for a flat and had no reason to get out. This was really disappointing because next session would have meant +$8k. So between these two trades alone I missed out on $20k+. I take comfort from the fact that my entry was right, just my exit was wrong. I'll be sticking closer to a stop loss rather than defensively getting out early. Probably just reduce size and only exit on market getting to stop loss. So there you go... my first week posting and it was in the black. Looking forward to some good volatility in the market for the next few weeks!! Good luck trading!
_________________________ Start of week = $105,000 End of week = $120,380 Weekly P&L = +$15,380 YTD P&L = +$110,380 _________________________ As I'm on Australian time so my week had finished but I've now added in the U.S. Friday session. After the close of US session my market short trade has increased to +$13,250 WED Shorted 100 @2,080 THUR Covered 25 @2,023 FRI Covered 25 @1,974 I've attached a chart showing this trade. You can see each of my covers and also my stop loss at 2,130. Now I pretty much have a risk free trade left on my remaining 50 which I'll now trail for a few weeks. I may also add 50 on a bounce back. Now it's turned into a very good week!! Looking forward to next ...
________________________ This is for the past 2 weeks; Start = $120,380 End = $132,530 Fortnightly P&L = +$12,150 YTD P&L = +$122,150 _________________________ Well it's been a very eventful two weeks for my trading. Biggest trades (including by biggest loss to date) is listed below in order they took place; ES +$2,829 ASX200 (-$25,496) ES (-$3,853) ES (-$2,791) Oil +$10,592 ES +$12,735 EUR/USD +$3,508 ES +$2,020 NFLX +$8,623 TSLA +$4,474 So this last fortnight began with a bad mistake compounded by another bad mistake which lead to my worst loss on single trade this year. I took a short on the bounce on the Australian index after the collapse in US. The swing from bottom to top was circa 9%. I put on a trade made the mistake of not sizing it correctly given the movement and was quickly down $10k. I compounded this by holding the position and letting it move to a $25k loss before banging out. This whole trade really disappointed me both for my initial mistake and then compounding it by holding. Not proud of it and took a big drawn down as a result. After that I sat back and thought it over for few hours to clear my head. Coincidently, to rub salt in the wounds, it didn't move more that another 1k further against me and it then swung from -26k to what would have been a 20k profit.... that hurt. I was still convinced this market was a dead cat bounce and was keen to short the ES when it was coming up. Took a few losses on both of the trades after being positive a few $k on each. Was trading badly. Took a breather. So at this point I was having a terrible week. Then I noticed that Oil was catching a bid and loaded up. Within a few hours it was up 10% and I was out for a $12k profit. Could have trailed it longer for the additional 5% but this trade got me back on track. This was a great trade which restored mojo. After failing to break though 2,000 on ES I was really convinced that this market was going back down to test the recent lows. So I load up short on ES @1,985. I also shorted NFLX @$118 and shorted TSLA @$250 combined with a long on EUR/USD 1.1185. I had decent outs and was risking about $5k in total. In retrospect it was perfect timing as the market started crashing overnight, I progressively closed out my ES trade before US open for +$13k and the EUR/USD trade for +$3.5k. I then trailed the NFLX and TSLA positions for another day. Closed these out end of Thursday's US equity close for a NFLX +$8.6k and TSLA +$4.5k. So this overall short on the market netted me circa +$29k. While the start of this past 2 weeks was terrible I turned it around and capped it off with a killer short. Losses are part of the game and I really aim to not repeat the mistakes of that trade. This would have been an amazing trading profit without having taken that drawdown but then maybe it was a lesson I needed to have. Happy to have moved forward by $12k. Trading well and looking forward to more of this volatility. My thought is that things will be very interesting on Monday after Chinese holiday. I'll likely be taking a short on ES going into the weekend. Good luck trading to you all...
What is the point of keeping a journal like this? You're just listing trades after the fact, no real discussion of strategies, or rules and the ability or inability to follow them, or emotions and ways to remain objective, etc.