You have no idea how "high" your leverage is (all-in or not) until you are on the wrong side of a runaway gapping (or better, a death spike) market. Stops triggered far far away from your price. Stop limits, well you better not be on vacation. IMO, your strategy is not suited for daytrading at all. Sorry.
There was some commentary on it on CNBC. http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/03/markets/bondcenter/bonds/index.htm I had to go out and didn't get to play the 3PM move. Wow, market took a complete reversal. Good action for daytraders today. Lots of volume and volatility.
Possibly a mistake here, but just closed last unit at 1288.50 for 8.25 point profit--no positions on for now(except for my 1289 short in the positional account)
day two results: 4 trades involving 7 units 2 winners 2 losers Profit of 11.75 pts $587.50 Total commission $43.89 Net profit $543.61 per contract in the initial unit size
B1S2, I've been reading through this journal and checking your entries on the chart. To me it looks like you focus on price/volume when you put on a trade. Would you mind sharing your trading screen setup with us (what charts/timeframes you have up and what else you follow)? Not necessarily the setups you trade. If this journal is just for others to comment on your trade management and you don't want to publish this, you can just PM me. If you don't mind sharing this with me that is Regarding trade management. You seem to take a lot of heat on your trades with some of them going several points against you before you act. I believe there was a 7 point loss somewhere today. How many points are you looking for on each trade? How do you find your targets and how do you handle your stops? It seems like you pick your entries very well as you come out ahead on both of these two last trading days, and the only thing negative I have to say about the trades is that you should rather try to follow the trend than picking the tops of the trend channel when volume spikes. This is OK for scalping but it seems like you are gunning for the larger moves and those are found by trading with the trend. I haven't read any of your previous posts, but I'll browse trough them and see if they can give me a clearer picture of how you trade. It seems like you're on the right path with your intraday trading though. Looking forward to follow this thread the next couple of weeks. -Skog
After a quick search here on ET I found out that you were more an indicator kind of guy. From what I read you follow (among other things) BB, MACD and RSI on your daily charts. Do you use many of your "daily" tools when trading intraday? If I'm bothering you with technicalities just disregard this message -Skog
You aren't bothering me at all. I am using the exact same strategy for day trading as I do for position trading. I think it may be a matter of just finding the right stops etc to be able to day trade. Actually I would call it more short term trade than day trade as I have no problem holding overnight if need be and closing the next day or during the night session. I do not focus on volume at all as it is very subjective how it is interpreted compared to the indicators. I was dissappointed today in the one trade early where I manually stopped myself out with a 1.25 pt profit and didn't go long. I was driving with the laptop on in the passenger seat and was distracted from what I would consider my normal analysis. This may eventually be a reason that I won't be able to trade short term, but we'll see.