Starting this log just to keep myself honest and enforce a weekly review. About Me: I am a new trader and I am consistently break-even after about 8 months live trading. I day trade equities, but will consider swing trading in future. I'm using this log to force myself to do a weekly review and to call myself out if I violate my rules. I currently trade 2 strategies intraday. I will simply refer to these as "strategy 1" and "strategy 2". Looking at historic setups, both have a >50% win rate. In general, I prefer a high win rate as I've found lots of losing trades erodes my confidence and leads to overtrading. I'll evaluate each strategy after I have 30 trades. If I continue to trade them, I will keep reviewing them monthly to see how they are behaving. I may add new strategies but no more than once a month.
Week 1 2015-01-05 Off to a good start, +142 for the week on $50 risk per trade and 6 trades. Strategy 1: Trades: 3 Wins: 1 Strategy 2: Trades: 3 Wins: 2 So far, 50% winners. I still averaged almost $25/trade. Since this is only a few trades, we aren't really statistically significant yet.
Week 2 2015-01-12 Sorry for the delay, hope everyone had a nice weekend. Second week was rough. I had massive slippage on one trade that saw me in too much risk. Of course, it went against me so I lost 2R on that one. It's unusual to see this kind of slippage on that setup but in future I shall just use a firm limit order and let them go without me. Overall, my Strategy 1 and 2 trades this week wiped out the gains of last week. The bigger problem was Thursday. On Thursday nothing was setting up for me. I had also just watched a webinar by a successful trader and a lot of what he said resonated with me. These things are kryptonite for me as I started forcing trades on Thursday so as not to "miss out". None of the trades looked bad but down another 2R ($100ish) after 5 trades. As for the two strategies, Strategy 1 has not been doing so well so far. We are nowhere near 30 trades yet, but I am a bit surprised. The one bit of good news, Strategy 2 is doing OK albeit still want a higher win rate. I am investigating other strategies I could choose from to add in but so far sticking with just these 2. They both need about 24 more trades to really have an idea how well they are working. Risk has remained at $50 throughout all trades. Updated Totals for the first two weeks: Total PnL: -231 (including the 5 random trades from Thursday) (updated to include commissions) Strategy 1: Trades: 7 Wins: 2 Expectency: -0.2 Strategy 2: Trades: 5 Wins: 2 Expectency: +0.19