Friday, March 14, 2008 On old world maps when the cartographers had to depict unknown areas they would sometimes write "Here Be Dragons". That's how I feel right now, I can't trade this mess -- way too fast for me. For those of you able to trade these crazy days, I envy you. A gap-and-crap, then massive plunge on the Bear Stearns news. I took a long at 510T support after a pullback to 5 minute support, expecting a pop up. I got a little one right before the big plunge. So it didn't go up as far as expected, and I made a whopping 0.75 points: 0940 Long ES @ 1320 at 510T 18MA support. Moved stop as 18MA climbed, kept stop about 2 ticks below MA. Stopped out at 0943 @ 1320.75. +0.75 Now I expected that there would be a pop back up, and there was a little after 10am, but it happened almost as fast as the plunge down with no pullback to support just a near-vertical climb. There was a short signal on the PBF Squeeze bias line at 0943 (this is the beginning of the plunge that stopped me out), and then a pullback to "curling over" 510T resistance at 0944 and 0945. Taking the short at 1321-ish would have yielded a 12-13 point move. I didn't take it, as it got away from me too quickly and I suppose I was still looking for a short-term long, which would have made sense at the time before the Bear Stearns news broke. Oh well... As I write this, there is chop @ 10:30. Nothing I want to trade. So in typical fashion, I'm taking my +0.75 and going home. P.S. -- If anyone is reading these journal entries just give me a quick PM. I'm just curious if I'm writing to myself or what. Thanks
Monday, March 17, 2008 At 0930 the ES were about 25 points below the 5 min 18MA of 1286, so I was waiting for a long entry trigger on the 510 tick chart, which came at 0932. 0932 Long ES 1262.75 at push above, then a pullback to 510T 18MA support. My stop was -1 point (1261.75), which was never in danger of being hit. I continually raised my stop to 1262.75. 1263.50, 1264, then 1266. I set a profit target at 1269.50, which was hit at 0937 for a profit of 6.75 points. I can't really explain why I set the profit target where I did, but I kept the trailing stop tight enough that I would not have given too much back if the profit target was not hit and instead retraced. If the price had not gone up so steeply - note that the gap between the price and the MA is widening with each bar - I would have used the 18MA (purple line) as my trailing stop. As this is a "textbook" entry for my trading system, I am uploading a annotated screen shot. Also note that the PBF squeeze indicator fired a long entry on the bias line (horizontal dashed line on the red/green sinewave looking thingy) at 0930. This could also have been used as a long entry, though often on a large green candle up there is a pullback before continuing on, which could cause a stop to be hit. So I waited for a pullback to the 18MA instead, which worked out well as the entry price would have been the same if not a tick or two lower. I'm done for the day, +6.75 points on the ES.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008 Rough trading day today for me. Decent entries, but kept getting stopped out. Ended up down 4 pts total on the ES. 0931 Short 1301.75 Red PBF Bias line, stopped out at 1300.75. -1 0941 Short 1302.50 at 510T resistance, MA curling over. Stop hit @ 1303. - 0.5 0955 Short 1303.75 @ Red PBF bias line and cross of 510T 18MA. Stop hit at 1304.75. -1 1006 Long 1305.50 at 510T support on uptrend. Stopped out at 1305.50. +0 1026 Short 1304.75 @ 510T resistance. Stopped out at 1305.25. -0.5 1030 Long 1304.75 @ 510T support and green PBF bias line, then pullback. Stop hit @ 1303.75, -1. 1105 Long 1310.25 @ pullback to 510T 9MA which was acting as a trendline (at least until I got in). This is not a trade per my plan, and I paid for it by getting stopped out at 1309.50 for a -0.75 point loss. 1113 Long 1310 @ 510T 18MA support. Stopped out (starting to see a pattern here?) at 1309. -1 1123 Long 1310.25 @ 133T MA cross, also @ 510T support. This is not really per plan, but was an attempt to get in earlier since the moves had been so small. It worked, with a 1.5 pt gain before getting my trailing stop hit at 1311.75. +1.5 1150 Long 1312.50 at 510T support. Stopped out at 1311.75. -0.75 1220 Long 1311 @ 133/510T MA cross, green bias line on 510T PBF indicator. Stop hit @ 1310. -1. 1301 Long 1313.75 @ 510T support. Used a trailing top, ended up getting stopped out at 1315.75. +2 Total: down -4 ES points for the day. I stopped trading at 13:27, as trading was lousy and there is an FOMC announcment (rate cut again?) at 14:15. A few mistakes were made today. To begin with trading on an FOMC day is probably not right for me. Seems the market today was in a holding pattern, with small indecisive moves waiting on the FOMC announcement in the afternoon. Risk/Reward ratio was not high enough in this case. Also, I took a couple of short entries that I should not have. Clearly the 5 minute 18MA was uptrending all day (at least until 13:27 when I stopped trading), and any shorts taken were against the underlying trend. Since the ES had opened about +22 points above the 5 minute 18MA, I had expected a pullback to the 5min support but it never happened. The morning shorts account for -3 of my -4 for the day. Something to note: I made +6.75 points yesterday on a single trade. Even including commissions, at my maximum drawdown today of -6 points with the 1220 trade, yesterday's trade paid for all of today's losses and commissions. If there was ever an example of cut your losses and let your winners run, this was it. The good days help offset the losses of the bad days, and hopefully far surpass them. I'm sure some big moves will come this afternoon, but my experience has been that I tend to get on the wrong side of such moves. So I will sit out the remainder of the trading day. Good luck to anyone who is going to trade arround the announcement.
I am reading, especially if you attach charts. A picture tells a thousand words! Keep it up and thanks for the effort.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008 Another tough day... 6 trades today all but one losers - but the winner was enough to be up 1.75 for the day. 0927 Long ES 1339 @ 510T 18MA support. Stopped out at 1338. I don't normally trade before 9:30am but I thought I saw a good entry and was hoping for a pop at open. -1 point. 0934 Long ES 1340.25 on a price cross of 133T/519T resistance. Stop hit 1339.25. -1 0939 Short ES 1338 at 510T 18MA resistance. Stopped out at 1339. -1 1003 Long ES 1336 at green PBF Squeeze bias line. I raised my stop too early here but it ended up not making any difference. Stop hit 1335.50. -0.5 1040 Short ES 1329.50 @ 510T 18MA resistance. Stop hit 1330. -0.5 1056 Long ES 1330.75 at pullback to 510T 18MA trend support. Continually raised my stop. I was hoping for a 10 point gain here, even had a profit target ready to sell at 1340.75, which I later backed down to 1339.25 - which there the price did hit at 11:43 but I was stopped out by the push down at 11:31 @ 1336.50 for a gain of +5.75 Up +1.75 for the day. I ended the trading day here as I had a lunch appt and other stuff to do. Also, I will be away Thursday and Friday so no trading and no journal updates. I will pick back up on Monday. I'm uploading a 510T chart showing my trades. The purple line is the 18MA, which I used for support and resistance.
Monday, March 24, 2008 Only two trades this morning, and most likely will be done for the day. The ES at 09:30 were about +9 points above the 5 minute 18MA, so I was looking for a pullback and a short opportunity early on. I took one short trade on a cross of the 510T 18MA, without waiting for the MA to roll over and start trending down. I lost -1 point on this trade. This seems to be a recurring problem for me, entering trades before all the signals are there - especially trying to go against the immediate trend (I use the 510 tick chart, 18MA for the trend). My next trade fared much better, as I decided to trade *with* the trend this time, and I made +5.5 points. Below are the trades, and I've also attached a chart showing entry and exit points. 0949 Short ES @1341 at red candle breaking 510T 18MA support, then a slight pullback to the MA. Normally a good trade, but only if the 18MA is trending down - which it wasn't. So a counter-trend trade and not part of my trading plan. Stopped out almost immediately for -1 point. 1006 long ES @ 1348.25 (actually entered order at 1348.50 limit but got an extra 0.25 somehow, slippage this time in my favor). I was able to move the stop to the entry price early on in the trade for worse case of breakeven, which is always a stress reliever. I set my profit target at 1353.75. I can't say why I did, it was more of a "gut feeling" then anything else. The profit target was only 0.75 below the high of 1354.50 made at 10:15am. Out at 1353.75 at 10:12am for +5.5 ES points. Total for day is +4.5 ES points.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 Man, what a day.... and not in a good way. It started off bad and got progressively worse as I traded during times I shouldn't (poor market action and low volume) trying to make up losses. At one point I was down -11.5 ES points, though at the end of the day I was able to shave that down to -9.75 ES points. There are too many trades to post - 25 in all and I really don't want to relive all the pain - so I'm only going to post an annotated 510 tick chart of the day. Most of the trades were per my trading plan. In some cases I tightened up stops too quickly, in others there wasn't enough volume to support the pop up so I got stopped almost immediately after entering the trade. As I always do, I'm going to run a simulation later tonight of what I "should" have done and see how it compares to what I actually did. Here's hoping for better trading days this week....
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 Took four trades this morning and will probably call it a day, I have stuff to do this afternoon. 0941 Long ES 1345.75 at green bias line on PBF Squeeze indicator, then a pull back. This is a bad counter-trend trade, though the 510T 18MA downslope wasn't as apparent at the time. Also, I was expecting a pop back up to the 5 min 18MA resistance, which didn't occur until later. This cost me -1 points. 0957 Long ES 1344.25 at green bias line and pullback to 510T support. Was able to raise stop to entry price, but did so too early, effective moving my stop right at support - which it hit and then bounced back up at 1001. I wanted to get a breakeven quickly since news was being announced at 10am (new home sales). This probably cost me a point or two, but the net result of the trade was breakeven +0. 1004 Long ES 1345 @ 510T support. Kept raising stop and was able to lock in 0.5 points of profit before trailing stop was hit when price broke 18MA support around 10:14am. +0.5 1039 Short ES 1342.75 @ 510T resistance. There was a better entry point at 10:25, but with news being announced at 10:30am (crude inventories) the downtrend wasn't strong enough for me. I got in a tick below the 18MA resistance of 1343, and was able to move my stop to the entry price early on for worst-case breakeven. I initially set a profit target at 1337.75 which would have been a gain of 5 points. I raised it up to 1338.50, though the price ended up going down to 1337.50 anyways. +4.25 on this trade. +3.75 points on the ES today.
Thursday, March 27, 2008 Another good trading day today. I made a total of 5 trades, with the final trade being for 2 contracts. Up until this point, all my trades have been on 1 contract. 2 contracts will allow me to take some profits off the table after a few points have been earned. I'm not quite sure how to report the number of ES points gained/lost for the individual trade or daily totals with some trades being for 1 contract and others 2 contracts. I'll probably just report the total gain/loss per contract at the end of the day. 0943 Long 1 ES 1344 at green bias line on PBF indicator, then pullback to 510T 18MA support. Stop hit a couple of minutes later at 1343. -1 point. 0950 Long 1 ES 1345.25. This trade was actually a mistake - I meant to set the limit price at 1343.75 and entered 1353.75 instead (at 510T support). It got filled immediately of course, so I quickly tightened up the stop from 1 point to 0.5 point, leaving the trade in in case it took off. It didn't, and I took a 0.5 point loss. The original planned trade would have failed anyway, since it punched through support a minute or so later. -0.5 1000 Long 1 ES 1343 at green bias line on PBF indicator and pullback to 510T support. Tightened top and it was hit for a -0.5 point loss. Overall 510T trend was very slightly down so should not have gone long. 1015 Short 1 ES 1342 @ 510T resistance. I tightened up my stop too early, missing part of the big run down from 10:15-10:37am. Moved stop to entry 1342 and stopped out. +0 1027 Short 2 ES 1337 @ pullback to 510T resistance on a nice trendline down. I set a profit target for 1 contract at 1335.50 (slightly above yesterday's low) to lock in a little profit, then let the remaining contract run. I set the profit target for the remaining contract at 1331.50, which it hit at 1033am. I only missed the bottom by 1 point, so not bad. +1.5 points on one contract, +5.5 on the second one. Mistakes made today: Going long against the slight downward slope of the 510T 18MA line. I must have a contrarian personality, as I keep doing this. It cost me -2 points today, whereas my two shorts (*with* the trend), netted me +7 points total. +5 points on the ES today.