Nice blog, thanks for posting it. I've been working on keeping a much better trading journal and your blog has inspired to get on that much more aggresively. What is the preferred methodology of attaching trades to charts for review, or do you not do a visual trade diary? Noticed your comment on cycling and since you're such a quant with your trade stats does that mean you use a power meter like the power tap when you ride?
Pretty decent week, but I had to wait until Friday for it to happen. +$16,800 gross 576,000 shares traded. Monday started off with a couple grand in the error file as I accidentally canceled an order to get me out of a stock Friday afternoon and carried it short into Monday. Another $2000 error on Thursday when I completely missed same store sales news in BKE and had it long off the open. I have an assistant who helps me double check that stuff but she left for holidays on Thursday- figures. I've been holding some very small long positions in ES and SPY options for a couple weeks now. Trading around them a little on big spikes. Thursday sucked as those positions were down 8 grand, but for the week they ended up flat. However I had an outsized SPY short hedge in another account on Thursday so the day ended only a small loss. The volatility spike finally paid off on Friday with a +14k day- everything clicked, no significant red in any system. Would be nice to see this volatility continue, but history shows it usually fizzles out before long. Gotta make hay while the sun is shining.
I don't attach charts to my trades, but I used to when I was mainly swing trading. I would save the charts in a folder then use a hyperlink in my excel sheet on the line for that trade. Clicking the link would bring up the chart. I do use a power meter, I have an SRM system on two of my bikes and power tap on another. I like analyzing that data too
Even though the ES dropped 25 points from open to close on Thursday, intraday mean reversion stuff was decent. Just because the market is trending doesn't mean it is completely linear. There can be lots of opportunity along the way. Now, on longer term mean reversion trades, stuff I might be in for days or weeks, yeah that wasn't good, but I keep those kinds of trades pretty small.