In my view a trading journal should be more like 1. Post a trade you open in real time, or even before, maybe with some reasoning behind it. 2. Post any adjustments along the way. 3. Post the results after you close, maybe with some postmortem analysis.
And the trading posts plus monthly summaries that I have provided since the beginning of this journal do not accomplish this because?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If yiu wish to trade SPY and not violate the PDT rule create a synthetic with the options cheers john
Put it to a vote. I vote Howard lists all the details of his trades YTD, and post future trades in at least close to real time or stop posting on this site forever. All real traders know that if you are trying to prove something to people or get them to subscribe to your tutelage then you have to show your actual trades, this is not a point up for debate.
But you cannot close the synthetic in the same day. Twice in one day and you will trigger PDT. Each leg is considered one day-trade. IOW, options fall under the purview of PDT.
I'll do better than that. This is every trade I've made since I started trading the current strategy. I've yet to finish my bookkeeping for March but I didn't want to prolong the disclosure.
Yes, I kind of lend toward the way TOAD used to report his trades. There was a running equity balance. I don´t know if he died, or got wiped out, but it was impressive while it lasted. His old websites are still on the internet. He used to start with $75,000 a year and for some years he made another $75,000 on top of that. He did day trading pretty much and had some ( to me ) horrendous drawdowns. I learned a lot from the TOAD though never had the capital at the time to try it. Plus, he actually made more teaching, with people going to his house for a few days to get live experience for $25,000. He wasn´t shy about telling what he was judging the market with either.
For heaven's sake... HoCo has explicitly told you his strategy -- he sells credit spreads, based on what he believes to be their 'value' relative to a delta-like measure he calls 'probability of touching.' And he's shown you all his trades... If you don't like his style of trading, don't read his posts, and don't buy any futures wares he might vend... But it's unreasonable to ask him to post his bank / brokerage account statements. Do you post yours?... As my grandfather used to say -- what do you want, egg in your beer?