Thought I'd join the band wagon of trading journals, kinda nice to get some insight into what other people think of my trading. Times are close, but since I don't want to list every single trade with time and explanation, I will generalize for the most part. 9:36 - Went long LUV @ 18.81, the XAL was moving up and LUV was down, figured that it was a fairly safe trade since XAL seems to lead early in the morning. 9:38 - For the next two minutes started to short the chips. RFMD, AMAT, ALTR, TXN, KLAC and for some dumb reason DELL also. 9:43 - Looked like SOX was going to make a two-day low. WRONG. Started to get out with a .25 loss, actually ended up being more b/c chips will run hard when they make a turn making it a little more difficult to get out. Took a big hit. TXN hurt the most cause I was dumb. Was flat in TXN while the SOX was turning up, held it when I should have jumped ship. 9:45 - Out of LUV @ 19.01, wanted to lock in some green, after the hit in the SOX. WRONG AGAIN. Could have gotten about another dime out of it easy. "Don't let one bad trade affect the rest of your day!" 9:51 - Started going long a basket of SEMIS, SOX hit an intraday high if I remember. Bought the strong ones that were hitting highs: QLGC. Bought BRCD with a consolidation. Bought NVLS, KLAC, AMAT b/c the moved up the moving averages (7 & 21 on a 5 minute chart) that I use. 9:51 - Was long CMCSK 35.59, 10:01- News came out, some indicator. Futures went crazy for about 30 seconds, stupid me got out of the basket of SEMIS I had. But before that happened I had a keystroke error, ended up selling CMCSK instead of the chips. Should have bought it back, check the chart...left almost a point on the table. 10:31 - Went short ADLAC, AEIS and NTRS. I believe they are banks...banking index started going down, charts on these three setup real well. 10:04 - Covered ADLAC, AEIS, and NTRS for a nice profit. If you look at a three day chart these stocks had about a one point range, once the hit this area of the range got out of these stocks. If I held NTRS would have made a little bit more. ADLAC I should held, just dumb...get little anxious if I hold to long. Rest of the day ended up scalping, early on did well, but over traded in the end of day...flat, but way...way...to many trades. Overall flat against the market and down after commissions, not feeling to bad. And now I need to sleep.
So far, I like the looks of your journal. All I ever want from someone who has something to tell me about their trades are 3 things: 1. Be honest about reporting your trades. 2. Give a GOOD explanation about why you entered. If it's technical, give parameters you use. 3. Give a GOOD explanation of why you got out. One comment, give us entry and exit prices. I noticed you did on some, but not all. I know that it's more effort, but it'll help us. Looks like you're headed down that road. Keep it up.
AEIS is also not a bank. Banking sector was a good trade though, looked like a pretty steady downturn throughout the day. One AEIS had a nice looking chart on the downside and ADLAC, well chart wasn't great, but it was good. Should have held that sucker longer though. Another note, saw that Stockkbroker quit writing his journal, which always sucks, cause I'm sure it helps out a lot of people to see in detail what other people are doing. But can see sometimes flaming is a problem on this board, not as bad as some others though. I'll try to answer all the questions I can, but will try to keep out of areas where the flaming can start. Basics, I've traded for four years, never had a down year, sometimes didn't make to much, have trained traders at one time or another, and I've evolved my trading from scalping in the early years to more position and sector trading.
DaytraderDave, Sounds like you know what you're doing. Looking forward to reading your journal. Maybe you could explain your approach a little? Good trading.
Always nice to go drinking when you have a great day, good day, and crappy day in the market. So I've got a few Fat Tires in me (Tuesdays $2.00 Fat Tires) and had to pick something up from the office thought I'd check in to this thread. Another note on my journal for those who plan on following it. Most trades I get into, I will remember why, but sometimes I'm in so much stuff, I won't explain as much as I should, hell sometimes I don't even remember why I got in. On the question about my trading style, I go with whatever works. Scalping, position trading, etc... But lately I've been looking for consolidation near the high of the day or high of the past two days. I've been loading up on a lot of these type of trades, and with a stop loss for the most part of a .25, but this could change. Previously in the past two months I've been scalping, b/c the market (NASDAQ) has been in a pretty tight range about 30 pts a day, which doesn't help in position trading. I trade the following sectors: Airlines, Semiconductors, Oil and Oil Servicers, sometime Biotech (Speads and volitility are bit much), sometimes broker/dealers and banks. Lately as I stated in a previous post, been using the moving averages a bit more. Still have yet to fine tune it, but it seems to help set points in getting in and out of the market. And for anyone else who wants to address me, I'll make it easy, just call me Dave. DaytraderDave is kinda wrong. Another note, take a look at the poll, I voted for Great Googly Moggly so the numbers are a bit off.
How about SuperDave? After that guy who used to be on what was it, MTV? He would always do these outrageous stunts that would almost get him wiped out. At least that's the way I remember it. Pretty funny stuff. I vote for SUPERDAVE in capital letters... You could call your posts "The exploits, travels and trades of SUPERDAVE".
Alright SuperDave works... wasn't so super this morning though. One thing I noticed that might help others, position, scalping, etc... during the middle of the day is pretty worthless. No one is there to help support the moves up, especially with no news, and you get a lot of fake moves. And consider this you trade 100 shares and lose a .05 cent, add commissions (in & out) times that by a couple dozen trades, and right there you could have what would have made you a net up or down day. Yes there are exceptions to all these things I say, but for the most part its been proven true, especially in this market. Now to the trading...let me start off by saying I over traded and didn't let my winners run as much as I should. I'm going to highlight a few specifics stocks today, take a look at the intraday chart if you have a chance. But lets say that I overtraded all day long, that will account for about 150 of my trades today (In and out). 9:38 - BLDP is racing up hard, so I buy FCEL @ $22.13 (Should have bought some BLDP also) but FCEL is another fuel cell company, and seems to be the one of the major stocks in the sector. 9:42 - Sell FCEL @ 22.50. Could have held a bit longer but BLDP seemed to be turning down. In between these hours, I trade some baskets of SOX, honest I don't remember why, don't have the charts in front of me. I do know I pretty much flated them. 9:50 - Short VRSN @ 36.14, known to run down more than a point or two on a fairly regular basis. Chart pattern looked good, I believe it was hitting a new intraday low. 10:06 - Buy CMCSK @ 36.89, chart pattern looks a lot like it did yesterday and it is hitting new highs, low risk stock, moves pretty slow compared to what elese I play. 10:09 - Covered my VRSN short a little to early @ 35.76. More random trades (overtraded today, did I mention that?) 10:13 - Buy some CIEN @ 15.86, in the same sector as JNPR which was up for the day about a point. CIEN was around lows for the day, bought in and used the low of the day as my stop. 10:16 - Stupid me, didn't follow my own stop, covered CIEN @ 15.79, looked at the chart later in the day, I was right near the bottom, after which it ran up a good 50 cents of easy money. Ughhh. 10:26 - Short TEVA @ 63.07, intraday and two day low. 10:30 - Out of CMCSK @ 36.78. Lost a little. I turn around and short it b/c it looks like its breaking that upward channel. Throughout the day, played some news plays. BSX received FDA approval, and BRCM annonced in a conference that they were going to exceed estimates. Our new reader is so fast, that we get in to soon, so we are always like, thats it. Then everyone else gets the news circulated and BAMM, it runs up. So know this I held BSX today from $22.59 with a stop at the low of the day which was $22.50. Was slow to move at first but then made a nice move but held to long so only made a little bit (about a dime a share). BRCM, I bought on the news without looking at the chart or quote box, cause this type of news is usually good for a point. Too bad it was already up 3 points. Covered with a fairly big loser. 10:40 - Cover TEVA @ 62.2, could have held for more, but good money none the less. Bought FLEX somewhere in here (Would get more detailed but when your making over 200 trades in a day, hard to remember what, why and where, even with the printouts) b/c FLEX moves well with the SOX for the most part, but SOX was up and FLEX hadn't moved. Played this to quick, since I got out with a small profit, but had I held would have been worth over .50 cents a share. 11:42 - Short RFMD @ 18.59. Hitting new intraday low. This one is known to move a point or two every once in a while. 12:15 & 12:22 - Covered half both these times for any average price of RFMD @ 18.00. Should never have gotten out of this trade, instead of riding it down, I covered to lock in profits. Only problem, looking at a 5min chart, around this time it was consolidating tightly and should have been held onto, since I went down in a SOX upturn. This could have been worth an easy .50 cents, with low risk by putting a stop at the top of this consolidation. Bought some biotechs at 13:13, BTK broke above the previous intraday highs from the previous few hours. Bad time to load up though, market was really slow. Ended up moving in my favor, but then it hit around the high of the day, and just turned around hard. 15:00 - THE RETURN OF THE SCALPER! SOX around this time broke a intraday low, followed with the BTK doing the same thing. I go heavy short AMAT, KLAC, NVLS, LLTC, ALTR, PDLI, GENZ....the list goes on. This was a perfect breakdown on the SOX. Low risk, because you can jump out if the SOX goes back to previous intraday low. I got in and out of about six baskets, and I was on FIRE!!! Had my headphones on listening some Jay-Z followed with POD...and the list goes on, and was just doing everything right. SOX will hurt you though if you are in one way or another and you don't quickly move. I've been in things before where I'm up over .50 cents and a small green tick in the SOX will wipe it out. Today, I ended up flat again! But the root cause was overtrading, so with that in mind, I will be more selective tommorrow. Before I 15:00, I was flat against the market, and down commissions, and at 15:00, if you look at KLAC or AMAT, chart from that point, I locked in about a 3/4 of those moves. But because of the huge amounts of volume that I did this morning and afternoon, ended up flat overall. It was one of those days where I was right on the brink of greatness. Could have locked in smaller profits today, but I'm not in it to make a couple hundred a day... I'm in it to take home at least a $1,000 a day. Did you know you have to make somewhere around $4,000 a day trading to gross a $1 million dollars in a year? Went snowboarding this afternoon, tore it up, and now folks I'm off to sleep. Don't know if anyone else is getting some use out of this... will keep posting as long as there is some interest out there. SuperDave.