Hey folks, here are today's trades (April 20th) I made 4 trades in the morning. 3 winners and 1 loser. I executed my entry and stop criteria systematically, however, I am not satisfied with my exits. (a pattern in my trading is emerging already). According to my system I should have tried to catch 25 ticks on each of the winning trades. In each case given my entry that 25 ticks could have been realized. I averaged about 13 ticks on my winning trades. My broker doesn't have sever side stops hence I have to sit and baby sit every trade, tick watching. The end result is that I take profits for emotional reasons rather than rational ones. I spent the afternoon programming some excel based stops that I tested and should work well tomorrow. I intend to bracket the trade immediately after entry and let the market do the rest. Had I done that today my end results would have been 3 times more profitable. As it is I realized 43 bucks. Like market wizard Ed Seykota said, if you watch the live quotes, you end up feeding your computer like a slot machine. Again, I intend to make the bets and walk away.
Here is a chart of the day's trades. EBAY dropped like a rock today off the open. I guess the institutions decided earning aren't looking up to scratch. At any rate I had to wait for the A- Down to time confirm my short bias, I then missed entry on the first significant bounce of the day. On my first trade I got short despite the fact that no short term strength existed. The sell pressure was so intense that I just decided to get short on the spot. I caught 20 tics and then covered. On my second trade the stock was bouncing, I waited patiently and then sold short on a Fib level. Although the level looked good at first, as the stock paused and started coming off, it quickly stabilized and started moving up again. Rather than holding my stop I decided to snatch a quick 7 tic profit. I wasn't systematic on this trade because I'm not supposed to analyze the trade while I'm in it. I'm supposed to simply hold my risk point or capture a full 20 tics +. On the 3rd trade I was stopped out for a 12 tick loss (2 tics of slippage on my 10 tic stop). On the 4th trade I caught a 21 tick profit. To summarize 3 winners 1 loser for a gain of $93.00 At that point I stopped trading for the day because the market and stock were acting strong and yet my bias according the ACD system was still short. So the only thing to do was stay out of the market all together.
Attached are my trades listed in excel (imported from my brokers trading platform) Hope it can be interpreted on your side.
I didn't trade on Friday. Today I had a number of technical difficulties with the automation of my stops. I tested them extensively on Friday and found today that my broker is having trouble processing MKT orders to ARCA. I ended up with allot of slippage due to the fact that I had to exit losing positions manually once I became aware that the stops were failing. I spent a good part of the day in contention on the phone with my broker and my focus was definitely sub par. I was stopped out of 8 trades and took profits on 4. The net result after commissions was a loss of 128.00 I overtraded today and I'm not happy with a number of my entry points. Looking at the chart, it was a difficult day on EBAY. Pretty choppy. On the positive side I did take my losses as planned. I also traded in accordance with the bias of the day as defined by the opening range. On the charts I have only noted my entry points. If interested in exits then read through the list of trades attached to the next posting. Tomorrow nothin changes, I will however try to be more selective with my entries.
I noticed one day in April, your blotter was 1600 shares for Ebay. Is this typical volume to get the .003 rate and are you paying amonthly software fee? Thanks