Worked from home today & was able to trade ES & NQ in between conference calls. Won a few, lost a couple, finished nicely in the green. +$392 USD
Really awful trading tonight. Had no sense of trade selection, and managed my trades very poorly. Ended in the green, but not happy with the techniques and number of contracts traded. I debated not trading tonight because I felt ill all afternoon, but went against my better judgement since I will likely not be able to trade every night this week due to work committments. +532 HKD ($68 USD)
So after last night's poor display of discipline I told myself I was just going to be a good little sniper tonight and only take prime, A-quality setups, and the result was a really good night. Not a record profit or anything, but the kind of low volume, high patience, high quality trading where all you need to do is size up and you're taking it to the bank. Whereas last night I traded a rediculous 27 MHI contracts, tonight I only traded 6 and made a higher profit. I'm patting myself on the back tonight for a job well done. +744 HKD ($95 USD) If you look at the blotter you'll also notice $96 in USD profit from an ES trade earlier in the day. I almost never do this type of thing, but I was eating my lunch today at work in the office and I pulled up the intrady ES chart just out of curiosity and saw an insanely high probability setup occuring (strong reversal to the north made higher high, after which a slow, grinding pullback that hadn't yet made a significant attempt to retest the high, pulled back to the 38% retracement + the 21 EMA at the same level, almost always good for at leat a 2 point pop), so I logged into IB's webtrader and scalped a couple easy points while finishing my lunch. Again, I only do this very rarely (once or twice a year) when in the office, since the nature of my job doesn't allow me to focus well on the market while working (I don't know how Neke and some of the other guys on this site do it)
No trades last night; I had to go to a corporate "teambuilding event" with our external auditors, and I didn't get home until an hour after the session had started. It's a shame, because there were several clean, no-brainer setups that would have resulted in easy money, by the time I got home the market started consolidating. That's the way it goes though.. just one of the prices to pay when working for someone else.
This blotter includes Thursday night's trading as well as a couple ES/NQ trades for Friday. HKD on top, USD in the middle, total in USD at the bottom. Thursday night was disaster, even though I finished with a small profit. I decided to put on an experimental, buy-on-the-open trade that has nothing to do with any of my setups, because I thought there was a large probability we'd see a 1% intraday upmove within the first hour, and I didn't want to be scalping for ticks during the move, I wanted to catch the whole thing. Well, pretty much the opposite happened, but I got stubborn and refused to see the downtrend on my screen and instead of exiting at a loss, continued to add to my position on every valid long, counter-trend setup, of which there were plenty because the market made so many double, triple, and quadruple bottoms during the morning session (obviously in hindsight it was just chop). To offset the risk of this growing long position, I started hedging with HHI and HSI scalps (first w/ HHI, then ditched HHI for HSI because it was a purer hedge against MHI) when a short setup would occur. However, once the market got really choppy, I started reversing on my HSI stops because I thought the failure of the short setup would surely result in a higher high and then my cash register would start ringing like crazy. That never happened though, the market spent the last hour and a half of the morning session in an extremely tight range. I exited almost my entire position right before the lunch break close, but kept a small position open during the break so I could have exposure if we gapped up and started jamming north. So instead of going to bed, I stayed up to 1:30am to see how the afternoon session would open. No gap, after a very feeble attmept to make a higher high, the market broke down again, so I reversed my position, went short and made back all of my losses on the resulting downmove to finish with what's shown in the blotter. It could have easily gone the other way though, and I could instead be saying that I'd given back last week's profits due to a stupid, experimental trade that I couldn't give up on. Friday was much more controlled, I worked from home and took advantage of two perfect setups, one with ES, another with NQ. Didn't try to hit a homerun, just took what the market gave me. The purpose of this journal was to make myself accountable to the world for doing stupid things like I did on Thursday night. I went into Thursday night's session exhausted, and the last thing I wanted to do was trade, so I think I was looking for an easy way out. I'm going to force myself to take next week off, no trades in Hong Kong or US. This will give me a week to refresh, get caught up with some stuff at work, spend some time with the family, and then come back the following week ready to be disciplined and keep working towards my goal. I've found that I need to do this every couple months to keep things in balance, and it's time. I'll report back on the 21st. Hong Kong - Thursday night +314 HKD ($40 USD) US - Friday day +$204 USD
First day back at it after last week's break and I was rusty. Was late to the party on every micro trend and took it in the shorts with MHI. HHI trades worked much better, 3 winners, 1 loser. Due to the recent volatility contraction (with the exception of the last couple of days), MHI setups are performing more poorly and providing less profit when they do. If volatility continues to contract I am going to say close is close enough and switch over to HHI as my main instrument. Right now I am still about 4400 HKD ($560) short of my goal, but again, if a good MHI setup can't even produce 20 ticks anymore, the commissions will simply destroy me. + 196 HKD ($25)
A good night... decent volatility with some clean moves. If only it was always this easy... 5 trades, just one loser, only 7 MHI contracts. Was selective with my entries, appropriately stubborn at the right times and willing and/or quick to bail at the right times. Could have been better but have to accept where I am right now and not beat myself up for every missed opportunity or mistake. +1030 HKD ($132 USD)
I find trading MHI so difficult. The bid/ask spread is 4-5 points. My charting (QT) plots bars based on last price and volume is so thin that graph hardly moves. Comment welcome, Thanks